Authorship. The style of 1 John is so close to that of the author of the Gospel of John that no one questioned that they were written by the same person until the twentieth century. Some writers have pointed to minor stylistic differences and have proposed that 1 John was written by a different member of the “Johannine school.” Sometimes *disciples of famous teachers would seek to imitate their teachers’ works (often even their style), so this proposal cannot be ruled out on a priori literary grounds.
One can account for the minor stylistic differences, however, simply by recognizing the difference between an epistle and a Gospel; the latter *genre is literarily related to ancient biography, which went through several stages in the writing process before it was complete. Conversely, this epistle probably does not represent a major literary production (although literary epistles did exist).
One can explain the purported differences in theology and outlook by the different situation each addressed; by the standards used to suggest that the same person did not write both, different sermons of the average preacher today would often have to be attributed to different authors as well! Most important, the author claims to be an eyewitness (1:1) but does not claim to write in another’s name (he provides no *pseudepigraphic preface).
Genre. The form is generally more like a homily than a letter (except 2:12-14). That the epistolary prescript (opening) and conclusion are missing need not surprise us; they were sometimes removed when letters were incorporated into collections (although 2 and 3 John retain standard elements of letters). But the document as a whole flows more like a sermon, albeit one not structured by the *rhetorical conventions of the day. It thus resembles the form of letter known as a “letter-essay,” although it nevertheless addresses the specific situation of the readers.
Situation. If the setting of 1 John is the same as that of the Fourth Gospel, it is meant to encourage Christians expelled from the *synagogues, some of whose colleagues have returned to the synagogue by denying Jesus’ *messiahship (2:19, 22; 4:2-3). The letter can be read in this way and makes sense on these terms.
But John was concerned about situations in cities other than those addressed in his Gospel. While Christians apparently were expelled from synagogues and betrayed by the Jewish community in Smyrna (Rev 2:9-10) and Philadelphia (Rev 3:7-9), they were tempted with the heresy of compromise elsewhere, including compromise with idolatry advocated by false prophets (Rev 2:14-15, 20-23; cf. 1 Jn 4:1; 5:21). One form of idolatry of particular concern may have been the imperial cult, to which people in the East needed to show their loyalty or, in some cities, pay serious consequences (cf. Rev 13:14-15), possibly including death (1 Jn 3:16). First John could address a community like Ephesus, where the *church had expelled the false teachers but needed love for one another (Rev 2:2-4).
On the one hand, the issue in view might be simply some false prophets (1 Jn 4:1-6) advocating compromises, perhaps even with the imperial cult to save one’s life. On the other hand, the issue might be one of the movements of false teaching that was developing toward full-blown second-century *Gnosticism. Docetists believed that *Christ was divine but only seemed to become human (cf. 4:2); Cerinthians (followers of Cerinthus) believed that the Christ-Spirit merely came on Jesus, but denied that he was actually the one and only Christ (cf. 2:22). Gnostics also tended to define sin in various ways, hence some Gnostics believed that they were incapable of committing real sins, although their bodies could engage in behavior non-Gnostic Christians considered sinful. Any of the above backgrounds fits the letter itself; thus the commentary mentions all of them at relevant points below. But one point is beyond dispute: the primary troublemakers are clearly “secessionists,” people who had been part of the Christian community John addresses but who had withdrawn from that community. John advocates testing the spirits by two main tests: a moral-ethical test (keeping the commandments, especially love of the Christian community) and a faith test (the right view of Jesus).
Commentaries. Among those useful for background are I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978); Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, WBC 51 (Waco, TX: Word, 1984); D. Moody Smith, First, Second and Third John, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Westminter John Knox, 1991); and Robert W. Yarbrough, 1–3 John, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008). The most detailed commentary is Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, AB 30 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), although its reconstruction of the situation overreaches the evidence. A sample of my primary source material appears in Craig Keener, “Transformation Through Divine Vision in 1 John 3:2-6,” Faith & Mission 23, no. 1 (2005): 13-22.
The basis for fellowship as Christians (1:3) is precisely what divided John’s readers from those who had withdrawn from the community. If (as many scholars think) 1:1 alludes back to the opening of the Fourth Gospel, John speaks of God’s Word that had always been (see comment on Jn 1:1-18). Although philosophers and Jewish teachers alike spoke of the divine Word, none of them spoke of the Word’s becoming human. By saying that Jesus’ witnesses had touched and felt him, John indicates that Jesus had been fully human; he was not simply a divine apparition like the current “manifestations” of the gods in which the Greeks believed (though merely “testifying” what one saw “with one’s eyes” could be used more broadly, e.g., 2 Maccabees 3:36).
It is possible that the secessionists believe, like some later *Gnostics, that they have achieved a state of sinlessness. Given the emphasis on God’s holiness in this passage and later statements about the secessionists, however (3:6, 9), it is perhaps more likely that they believe, like some later Gnostics, that they are sinless in a different sense—they do not regard the sins they commit as sinful. (On the sins they are especially committing, see comment on 3:6, 9.)
1:5. Other Jewish texts (especially the *Dead Sea Scrolls, e.g., 1QM 1.1, 11) also used the light-darkness image to contrast the followers of righteousness with those of sin, regarding God as wholly righteous. The *Old Testament also affirmed that God was wholly righteous (e.g., Ps 92:15).
1:6. The Old Testament often described “obeying” God’s commands as “walking” in them—so often that Jewish teachers called their view of the way Jewish people should behave halakhah, “walking.” The image of walking about in darkness connoted the danger of stumbling (2:10-11). The Old Testament condemned mixing up light and darkness, right and wrong (Is 5:20; cf. 2:5).
1:7. Although water, not blood, cleansed in a physical sense, blood also purified in an Old Testament ritual sense (see comment on Heb 9:21-22). Sacrificial blood set apart what was sacred for God, purifying from sin by making *atonement (Lev 16:30).
1:8-10. The Old Testament prophets had often condemned false protestations of innocence as self-deception (e.g., Jer 2:35; Hos 8:2; cf. Prov 30:12); God required instead both admission of the sin and *repentance (cf. Lev 5:5; 16:21; Ps 32:1-5; Prov 28:13; Jer 3:13). (Some *synagogue prayers for forgiveness were also preceded by confessions of sin, indicating that Jewish people in the first few centuries A.D. generally recognized the idea; cf. also *Psalms of Solomon 9:6, etc.) On cleansing, see 1 John 1:7. On the sins of the secessionists, see comment on 3:6 and 9.
Jesus’ followers were new people, and while they might not be living absolutely sinless lives yet (1:8-10), the newness of their life in *Christ would affect their lifestyles; because sin was real (1:5-10), moral behavior was a valid way of testing real commitment to Christ. This moral examination especially emphasizes the test of love (2:5, 9-11). For paradox, cf. 2:7-8. Judaism also stressed that true participants in God’s covenant obeyed his commandments.
2:1. Philosophers and Jewish teachers sometimes addressed their *disciples as “children.” “Advocate” often meant “intercessor” or sometimes “defending attorney.” In the *Old Testament, God could plead his people’s case before the nations (Jer 50:34; 51:36); in ancient Judaism, such advocates as God’s mercy or Israel’s merit pleaded Israel’s case before God. Jesus is naturally the advocate, as elsewhere in the *New Testament (cf. Rom 8:34), because of his position, his righteousness and his work (see 1 John 2:2).
2:2. A “propitiation” (KJV, NASB) was an *atonement, a way to appease or satisfy the wrath of a God whose standard had been violated; it alludes to the sacrifices offered for atonement in the Old Testament. In Judaism, the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was for Israel alone; but Jesus’ sacrifice was offered not only for Christians but even for those who chose to remain God’s enemies, leaving them without excuse.
2:3-4. In the Old Testament, Israel “knew” God—were in covenant relationship with him—when they obeyed his commandments (e.g., Jer 22:16; 31:33-34).
2:5. One was to demonstrate love for God by obeying his commandments (Deut 6:5-6); this idea was understood throughout ancient Judaism.
2:6. Moralists commonly appealed to imitation of God or of a famous teacher in ancient moral exhortation. John here alludes to Jesus’ example of sacrificial love to the point of death (Jn 13:34-35).
2:7-8. In antiquity, paradox was one graphic way of forcing an audience to think through the meaning of one’s words; John uses it here (“old, not new,” “but new”). The love commandment was old, always part of God’s word (Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18, cited by Jesus—Mk 12:30-31), but also new, based on a new and ultimate example (Jn 13:34). Jewish sources that used the light-darkness imagery for good and evil portrayed the present age as ruled mainly by darkness but the *age to come in terms of the triumph of the children of light (e.g., 1QM 14.17 in the *Dead Sea Scrolls).
2:9-11. Part of John’s application may be that the secessionists who have withdrawn from the Christian community that John addresses have broken fellowship with true Christians, thus showing that they “hate” rather than “love” them. The Old Testament and Judaism forbade “hatred of brothers and sisters” (Lev 19:17); in a Jewish context, this language referred to fellow Jews (though cf. also 19:34); in a Christian context, it refers to fellow Christians.
“I am writing” is probably not intended to convey a sense different from “I wrote”; it was common to vary style to make one’s writing more interesting. One could write “I have written” in a letter one was presently writing; grammarians call this convention an “epistolary aorist.”
Some argue that “fathers,” “young men” and “children” (John does not exclude women from consideration here but employs the language categories of his day, which used masculine forms for mixed groups) could refer to different stages of progress in the Christian faith; see comment on 2:1. More likely is that John offers age-appropriate instruction; in antiquity, some writers addressed different kinds of moral instruction to different age groups to which particular points were most relevant (e.g., Isocrates, Ad demonicum 44; the Greek philosopher Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius 10.122; cf. Prov 20:29; 2 Tim 2:22).
Fathers (a title often accorded older persons) held positions of honor and authority, and were respected for their wisdom (e.g., Diodorus Siculus 1.1.4; Tosefta Avodah Zarah 1:19). Children were in positions of learning and lacked status and authority. Young men were generally associated with strength and vigor (cf. Jn 20:4; 21:7-8; Job 33:25; Prov 20:29); here they had overcome the evil one by participating in Christ’s victory (1 Jn 4:4; 5:4) over sin (3:10-12). Although some ancient writers often considered young men more vulnerable to particular temptations (passions such as anger and especially sexual immorality), John expresses his confidence in them.
2:15. “The world” could refer to everything but God; here it means the world system in competition with God. Just as Israel in the *Old Testament repeatedly had to decide between allegiance to God and allegiance to the values of the pagan nations around them, the Christians scattered among the nations had to choose *Christ above whatever in their cultures conflicted with his demands. In the case of John’s hearers, refusal to compromise might be a costly proposition (3:16).
2:16. The Old Testament often related the eyes to desire, especially sexual desire, and pride. Both Judaism and philosophers (e.g., *Aristotle, *Epictetus) condemned arrogant boastfulness. By listing the three vices together, it is not impossible that John alludes, as some commentators have suggested, to Genesis 3:6, although the language here is more general.
2:17. Judaism spoke of the world passing away but of God’s word remaining forever (cf. also Is 40:6-8). John’s words here could encourage those who preferred death for the sake of Christ over the survival that the world offered (cf. 1 Jn 3:16).
John needs to assure his readers that they, not the secessionists, are true followers of God. To the ethical test (2:1-11) John now adds a theological test: they must hold the proper view of Christ. John carries on the thought of the end time (v. 18) from 2:17.
2:18. It was a common Jewish belief that evil would multiply in the end time; the duration of this period immediately preceding the end of the age was often left indeterminate (as here), although some Jewish writers assigned a specific duration to it (e.g., forty years, four hundred years). Some Jewish people also appear to have envisioned a particularly evil figure as a *high priest or ruler oppressing God’s people, an idea that became much more prevalent in Christian circles (e.g., 2 Thess 2:3-4). John argues that by definition there are many “antichrists” already. (John is the only *New Testament writer to use this term. “Anti-” could mean “instead of,” though John might call a substitute *Christ a “false Christ,” like “false prophets” in 4:1. Cf. Paul’s argument that the “mystery of lawlessness is already at work”—2 Thess 2:7.)
2:19. The Old Testament was clear that the righteous could become wicked (e.g., Ezek 18:24-26) but also that one’s deeds could reveal the sincerity or falsehood of one’s heart (e.g., 2 Chron 12:14). Both Greek and Jewish teachers condemned *disciples who proved unfaithful or unable to endure the tests of discipleship, frequently assuming that their initial commitment had been inadequate. Judaism recognized that many converts were false, although they regarded even more severely Jewish apostates who had once embraced but now rejected the *law.
Some New Testament texts (e.g., Jn 6:70-71; 1 Jn 2:19) may view the issue from the standpoint of God’s foreknowledge, and other texts from the standpoint of the believer’s experience (e.g., Gal 5:4; 1 Tim 4:1-2). But unlike many modern interpreters, ancient Jewish interpreters would not see a contradiction between these two perspectives.
2:20-21. In the Old Testament people were literally anointed with oil to perform a specific task, especially for the priesthood (e.g., Ex 29:29; 40:15) or kingship (e.g., 1 Sam 10:1; 2 Kings 9:6); the term translated “anointed” is used figuratively for those ordained by God to particular tasks. Christians had been appointed to discernment (see 1 Jn 2:27).
2:22-23. By themselves, these verses would counter equally well a non-Christian Jewish opposition and a Cerinthian opposition to Christian faith. Compromising the absolute uniqueness of Jesus as the Christ and the only way to the Father would probably permit Jewish believers to remain in the *synagogues, thus protecting them from direct challenges from the imperial cult and threat of persecution. That false prophets would advocate such compromise (cf. 4:1-6) is by no means difficult to conceive (see the introduction to Revelation). Cerinthus, who may have taught around A.D. 100, believed that the Christ-Spirit came on Jesus but was not identical to him; the late-second-century Christian writer Irenaeus also attributed this view to many later *Gnostics.
2:24-27. Many commentators hold that the “anointing” (v. 27) is the *Spirit (cf. Jn 14:17, 26; Acts 10:38); others suggest that it refers in context to the word, the message of the *gospel; in either case it alludes to the Old Testament practice of God setting particular people apart for his calling, which here applies to all believers. The Old Testament used anointing oil symbolically to consecrate or separate people (such as kings) or objects (such as the tabernacle) for sacred use. The ultimate consecration for such use arose when the Spirit came on people (Is 61:1; cf. 1 Sam 10:1, 9; 16:13).
As the readers have been abiding in Jesus (v. 27), so they are to continue to do (v. 28); on abiding (dwelling, remaining), see comment on John 15:1-8.
2:28. In Jewish tradition, the coming of God to judge the world would be a fearful day for those who were disobedient to his will (cf. Amos 5:18-20).
2:29. It was an ancient commonplace that children inherited the natures of their fathers. (So thoroughly was this belief held that many writers even warned that adulterers would give themselves away, because their image would be stamped on the children of the union.)
3:1. No one who agreed with John that Christians were God’s children would have disputed his point here. A younger but roughly contemporary Jewish teacher, Rabbi *Akiba, celebrated, “Beloved is humanity, since they were created in God’s image; greater still is the love, that God made it known to humanity that they were created in the image” (Mishnah Avot 3:15). Rabbi Meir, later in the second century, proclaimed, “Beloved is Israel, for . . . they are God’s children.”
3:2-3. In some Greek thought, one’s nature was transformed toward that of the divine by contemplating the divine; philosophers like *Plato believed that they accomplished this transformation through the vision of the mind rather than through knowledge derived through the senses. Philo agreed that one attained the vision of God mystically, because he affirmed that God was transcendent; he believed that God endowed Israel and especially the prophets with this vision, that this vision was preceded by virtue and purity of soul, and that the vision would be made complete when one was perfected. The idea also occurs in some Palestinian Jewish texts, especially in Jewish mysticism (cf. transformation through vision of the divine in *1 Enoch 71:10-11). Perhaps more to the point, this vision of God was often associated with the end time, and some Jewish *apocalyptic thought seems to have envisioned transformation through beholding God’s glory.
John may derive most of the image of transformation by beholding glory from the *Old Testament (Ex 34:29-35; see comment on Jn 1:14-18). For him, one who knows God’s character purifies himself or herself accordingly, and the final and ultimate purifying will take place when one knows God perfectly at the end.
In traditional Jewish fashion, John contrasts sin and righteousness, along with those aligned with either side (3:4-9). He then explains why the unrighteous oppose the righteous, appealing to a stock Jewish illustration for this principle: the righteous love one another, but the wicked, like Cain, hate the righteous (3:10-18). This was the test that would make clear who would ultimately triumph in the day of judgment (3:19-24).
3:4. Greeks could view sin as imperfection; the Old Testament and Judaism saw it more concretely as transgression of God’s *law.
3:5. Here John may use sacrificial language; cf. John 1:29. The point is that those who are in Jesus have their sins taken away, so they no longer live in them.
3:6-7. This verse again alludes to the transformative power of beholding God (cf. 3:2-3). Some commentators think that the claim to sinlessness here is ideal, “to the extent that” one abides in Christ. (In this way *Plato argued that to the extent one was a craftsman, one’s craftsmanship would be perfect; but where one’s craftsmanship failed, it was because one was not acting as a true craftsman at that point.) Others think it is potential: one is capable of living sinlessly (cf. Jn 8:31-36). But verse 9 is worded too strongly for either of these options.
More likely, John is turning the claims of the false teachers and their followers (1:8-10) against them: unlike those errorists who merely claim to be sinless, true believers do not live in sin. (Many commentators suggest that the present continuous tense of “sin” suggests “living in” sin, sinning as a natural way of life. This is different from one who lives righteously but sometimes succumbs to temptation or deception and genuinely repents.)
*Stoics, *Essenes and Jewish wisdom literature divided humanity into ideal types: righteous and unrighteous, or wise and foolish. All of these sources, however, recognize the imperfection of the righteous or wise; they might not fit the ideal type in all respects, but their allegiance is clearly decided.
The particular sins that dominate John’s portrayal of these secessionists are violations of the two basic precepts John stresses in this letter: the right attitude toward members of the Christian community and the right view about Jesus (3:24). Thus John may mean that they commit the sin that leads to death, i.e., leading out of *eternal life (cf. 5:16-17).
3:8. In the *Dead Sea Scrolls, all sins were influenced by the spirit of error. Given the traditional Jewish view that the devil had introduced sin into the world (cf. John 8:44), all sins were ultimately the devil’s works and reflected his character.
3:9-10. On the claim to sinlessness, see comment on 3:6-7. Some scholars have suggested that John borrows the image of “seed” here from his opponents, since the idea is later attested among the *Gnostics; but the image was already widespread in Christian tradition (Jas 1:18, 21; 1 Pet 1:23; see comment on 1 Pet 1:23). Some thought of divine seed in humans (e.g., Ovid, Fasti 6.5-6; *Seneca, Epistle to Lucilius 73.16; *Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.4-6), an idea Christians could adapt for those born from the *Spirit. A child was believed to inherit his or her father’s nature through the seed, hence John is able to use this image to make his point: those who are born from God through conversion reflect his character now in them, and those who are not reveal this by their nature as well. In the Old Testament one could overcome sin by the word written or dwelling in one’s heart (e.g., Deut 30:14; Ps 119:11; Jer 31:32-33).
3:11-13. Cain’s murder of Abel is often rehearsed with little adornment in Jewish tradition; at other times, Jewish tradition expounds on Cain’s wickedness in great detail. He became a stereotypical prototype for wickedness (e.g., *Jubilees and *1 Enoch; *Pharisees sometimes associated Cain with the *Sadducees and their denial of the life to come); one pre-Christian Jewish text calls him “the unrighteous one” (Wisdom of Solomon 10:3). Philo used Cain repeatedly as a symbol of self-love and made him an illustration that “the worse attacks the better,” as here (cf. Gal 4:29). Some later antinomian Gnostics took Cain as a hero.
Murder of a brother was considered one of the most hideous crimes possible in antiquity (so, e.g., *Cicero, Horace); John applies “brother” or “sibling” to any member of the Christian community. A murderer was a child of the devil (3:10), for one of the devil’s first works had been to bring death to Adam (see comment on Jn 8:44); some later rabbinic texts claim that Cain’s father was a bad angel, even the devil himself. Sibling rivalry (Gen 37:8; 1 Sam 17:28) was normally outgrown, but Cain’s act did not allow that to happen.
3:14-15. Murder was a capital offense under Old Testament law and thus merited *Gehenna in post-Old Testament Jewish thought. Jesus included as murder the attitude that generated the literal act (cf. Mt 5:21-22).
3:16. John’s hearers might anticipate persecution and the possibility of death, although few had actually been martyred so far (Rev 2:13). Refusal to participate in the worship of the emperor would brand them as subversives, and their enemies would be more than happy to betray them to the government as such. Since noncitizen prisoners were sometimes tortured for information, especially if they were slaves, Christians might have to pay a tremendous price to avoid betraying their fellow Christians to death.
3:17. In addition to being ready to sacrifice one’s life for fellow believers (3:16), John also demands of them a practical commitment to love in the present. Their opponents, who had withdrawn from the community, perhaps to avoid persecution, are responsible for others’ deaths as Cain was; but the true Christians are to live sacrificially on behalf of others daily. As in some Jewish thought, withholding goods from someone in need was equivalent to starving him or her (cf. Jas 2:15).
3:18. Ancient literature often coupled “word” and “deed” (e.g., in Isocrates, Demosthenes, *Quintilian, Seneca, *Lucian, Wisdom of Solomon); one who did both was praised, but one who only spoke and did not act accordingly was viewed as a hypocrite.
3:19. The Dead Sea Scrolls sometimes called the righteous “children of truth” or “the lot of God’s truth” (1QS 4.5; 1QM 13.12; 1QHa 17.35; 18.29; 19.14).
3:20-21. Judaism repeatedly stressed that God knew the hearts of all people (cf. Jer 29:23); some texts even call him “searcher of hearts.” As one Jewish wisdom writer expressed it, “Happy is the one whose soul does not accuse him” (Sirach 14:2).
3:22-24. John’s practical interest in this subject may be because these commandments are precisely those that the secessionists are violating: by leaving the Christian community they have demonstrated their lack of love for their supposed brothers and sisters, and by not believing Jesus as the only true *Christ (2:22) they have failed the faith test as well. On the promise of answered prayer, see John 14:12-14. Most Jewish people did not believe that the Spirit (1 Jn 3:24) was available to many in the present age (the *Essenes, like the Christians, were apparently rare in this regard).
4:1. Judaism especially associated the *Spirit of God with *prophecy but acknowledged the existence of false prophets, who John says are moved by other spirits. His readers would understand his point; Jewish people were familiar with the idea of other spirits besides the Spirit of God (see especially comment on 4:6). There were many pagan ecstatics in Asia Minor, as well as Jewish mystics claiming special revelations; the need for discernment would be acute.
4:2-3. The issue may be the secessionists’ denial that Jesus has come as the Christ (if the opposition is Jewish); or it might be a Docetic denial that Jesus was actually human and actually died (see introduction), a heresy an eyewitness would be well positioned to refute. It may simply be a relativizing of Jesus’ role to the position of a prophet like John the Baptist, which allows enough compromise to avoid persecution. Perhaps they deny the Jesus who is known from the eyewitness material in the Fourth Gospel. Whatever the error, the secessionists are claiming the authority of inspiration for it, as do some similar groups today. John does not deny the reality of the inspiration; he merely denies that the spirit working in them is God’s Spirit.
4:4-6. The *Dead Sea Scrolls similarly distinguish between God’s children and the rest of the world, though they go far beyond John in asserting that every act is determined by either the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. (The language of “two spirits” probably extended beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls, although the best attestation outside the Scrolls is in the *Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. These testaments contain a number of references to spirits of falsehood, but the closest to 1 John 4:6 is Testament of Judah 20, which, with the Testament of Levi, is one of the testaments most often suspected of harboring Christian interpolations. Thus the issue is not settled, although the Testament of Judah reference is probably not Christian, reflecting an idea similar to the general Jewish doctrine of the two impulses, which the *rabbis especially developed and expounded; on this doctrine, see comment on Rom 7:15-22.) The promise that the one with them was greater than the one with the world (1 Jn 4:4) recalls an *Old Testament principle (2 Kings 6:16; 2 Chron 32:7-8).
4:7-10. Again (3:9-10) John argues that one’s nature shows one’s spiritual lineage; those who are like God are his children, and God’s supreme characteristic is his love, revealed in the cross of Christ. The secessionists proved their lack of love by withdrawing from Christian fellowship. On propitiation, see comment on 2:2.
4:11-12. Even true Christians’ love had to be perfected, but unlike the secessionists, they had remained within the Christian community, thus maintaining a commitment to love one another. The false teachers may have been claiming to have had mystical visions of God (see comment on 3:2-3; 4:1), but John includes a corrective: God was unseen (Ex 33:20), and the sense in which believers could envision him is in his character of love fleshed out in the cross (4:9) and in Christians’ sacrificial love (4:12).
4:13-16. Although the *Qumran community as a group claimed to possess the *Spirit, most of ancient Judaism relegated the Spirit’s most dramatic works to the distant past and future, or to very rare individuals. John could speak of the first witnesses, but for him also who prophetically endows them to testify the truth about *Christ (see comment on 4:1).
4:17. In the *Old Testament (e.g., Amos 5:18-20) and Judaism, “the day of judgment” was something to be feared by the disobedient (2:28). But those who continued in love could be confident of acquittal before God’s tribunal in that day, for they are agents of his unselfish love.
4:18. It was understood that sin often leads to fear (e.g., Gen 3:8; *Letter to Aristeas 243). Although *Stoic philosophers emphasized not fearing anything, because circumstances cannot ultimately destroy one’s reason, in this context John’s assurance that true believers need not fear is not explicitly directed toward all circumstances. His assurance applies specifically to punishment in the day of judgment (4:17).
4:19. The Old Testament also recognized that God’s people learned how to treat others from God’s gracious treatment of them (Ex 13:8; 22:21; Lev 19:34; Deut 10:19), although the ultimate expression of the principle is the example of Christ (1 Jn 4:10; cf. Jn 13:34).
4:20-21. Principles like arguing on the basis of what was near at hand rather than from something related to the gods (e.g., *Plutarch) and that a new friend would treat you as he had treated others (e.g., the fourth-century B.C. *rhetorician Isocrates) were also recognized by others in antiquity. In the Old Testament, God accounted behavior toward those who could not repay it as if it were done to him (Prov 19:17; cf. Deut 15:9).
5:1. Families were often viewed as a unit, hence one could not love one member of a family while despising other members. (This principle of group allegiance extended even to friendship networks.) This verse may also reflect the idea that children bear their parents’ nature.
5:2. On love being demonstrated actively, compare 3:18.
5:3. God’s commandments had never been too heavy for those in whose hearts they had been written (Deut 30:11-14). Many Jewish teachers regarded some parts of the *law as “heavier” or “weightier” than others (as in Mt 23:23), but they meant that some were more crucial for daily life, not that any of them were too hard to keep.
5:4-5. The image of achieving “victory” was used in military, athletic, debate and courtroom situations but always involved a conflict or test. John calls his readers to “overcome” or “triumph” in the face of opposition, persecution and possible martyrdom (perhaps including suffering for refusal to compromise with the imperial cult).
5:6-13. Many scholars have suggested that the secessionists, like Cerinthus and some later *Gnostics, said that the Christ-Spirit came on Jesus at his *baptism but departed before his death; or that, like the Docetists and some later Gnostics, the secessionists believed that Jesus was actually baptized but could not actually die, being eternal. It is also possible that some Docetists saw in the “water and blood” of John 19:34 the picture of a demigod: Olympian deities in Greek mythology had ichor, a watery substance, instead of blood. Thus they may have stressed his divinity at the expense of his humanity. The reference could also be more general than any of these suggestions.
In any case, ancient sale documents sometimes included the signatures of several witnesses attesting a sale, and the *Old Testament and later Jewish courts always required a minimum of two dependable witnesses (Deut 17:6; 19:15). John cites three witnesses whose reliability could not be in dispute. (The trinitarian formula found in the KJV of 1 Jn 5:7 is orthodox but not part of the text. It appears in only four manuscripts—of the twelfth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [the last in a marginal note]—out of the thousands available, placed there by *scribes who knew it from the Latin Vulgate, which took it from an early marginal note based on a popular early interpretation of the text. The KJV includes it only because that translation was based on a recension dependent on the third edition of Erasmus’s Greek text; Erasmus included the verse to fulfill a wager, protested it in a note and withdrew it in subsequent editions of the text.)
5:14-15. For background applying to the general principle in these verses, see comment on John 14:12-14. But the specific issue emphasized here might be prayer for an erring brother or sister, undoubtedly including one attracted to the false prophets’ ideas (4:1-6); see 5:16-17 (cf. Mt 18:15-20).
5:16-17. Given the use of “life” for *eternal life and “death” for its opposite in this epistle, a “sin unto death” (KJV) would seem to be a sin leading one away from eternal life (cf. Gen 2:17; 3:24). The two sins John would likely have most prominently in mind would be hating the brothers and sisters (the secessionists’ rejection of the Christian community) and failing to believe in Jesus rightly (their false doctrine about his identity as the divine Lord and *Christ in the flesh); see comment on 3:23.
The *Old Testament and Judaism distinguished between willful rebellion against God, which could not be forgiven by normal means, and a lighter transgression. More relevant here, some ancient Jewish texts (e.g., *Dead Sea Scrolls CD 9.6, 17; *Jubilees 21:22; 26:34; 33:18; cf. the Hebrew of Deut 22:26) also spoke of a capital offense as “a matter of death,” which was normally enforced by excommunication from the community rather than literal execution. Those who were sinned against could secure forgiveness for their opponents by prayer (Gen 20:7, 17; Job 42:8), but a sin of willful apostasy from God’s truth nullified the efficacy of secondhand prayers for forgiveness (1 Sam 2:25; Jer 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). John is presumably saying: God will forgive erring believers at your request, but those who have gone completely after this severely false teaching are outside the sphere of your prayers or (on another interpretation) simply must directly repent to receive forgiveness.
5:18. *Satan could not touch Job without God’s permission (Job 1:11-12; 2:3-6). Judaism recognized that Satan needed God’s permission to test God’s people, and that God rejected Satan’s accusations against God’s own people.
5:19-20. Judaism acknowledged that all the nations except themselves were under the dominion of Satan and his angels. The source of this idea is not hard to fathom; nearly all *Gentiles worshiped idols, and most also practiced sexual immorality and other sins.
5:21. “Idols” could refer to anything that led astray from proper worship of the true Lord (thus “idols of one’s heart” might mean falsehoods or sins in 1QS 2.11 in the *Dead Sea Scrolls; cf. antichrist in 1 Jn 4:3). A literal meaning (physical images of false gods) makes good sense to a congregation in Asia Minor. It could include worshiping the image of the emperor, to which many Christians were eventually required to offer incense to show their loyalty to the state (Pliny, Epistles 10.96). It could also refer to compromise with idolatry in a broader sense—Asia Minor afforded plenty of temptation for former pagans, such as food offered to idols. Ancient Jewish texts often condemned idolatry as the worst sin—surely a capital offense or a “sin unto death” (5:16-17); if the false prophets in 4:1-6 are like other false prophets affecting Asian *churches in this period (Rev 2:20), the idolatry may well be literal; see comment on Revelation 2:14; 9:20; 13:12 and 15.