▸ AUTHOR: First John was universally accepted without dispute as authoritative by the early church. The internal evidence supports this tradition because the “we” (apostles), “you” (readers), and “they” (false teachers) phraseology places the writer in the sphere of apostolic eyewitness (1:1–3; 4:14). John’s name was well known to the readers, and it was unnecessary for him to mention it. The style and vocabulary of 1 John are so similar to those of the fourth Gospel that most scholars acknowledge these books to be by the same hand. First John was probably written in Ephesus after the Gospel of John, but the date cannot be fixed with certainty.
▸ TIME: c. A.D. 89–95
▸ KEY VERSES: 1 John 1:3–4
▸ THEME: Shortly after the church began, people like the Gnostics continually tried to recast the gospel in their own terms. Gnosticism made a distinction between the material or carnal, which was evil to them, and the spiritual, which was pure. John writes as one who was acquainted with Jesus personally, physically, and spiritually. He wants the reader to take the Christ he knew at face value. John wants his readers to believe the truth of his experience of Jesus and not the philosophical speculation of the Gnostics. In these letters we see the same themes as in John’s Gospel—light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death, love and hate. John weaves these themes together with a straightforward skill and fatherly care.