threat far more perilous than any persecution from outside; the very existence of the Christian faith was at stake.
The Message of John
The First Letter of John is a short letter, and we cannot look within it for a systematic exposition of the Christian faith. Nonetheless, it will be of the greatest interest to examine the basic underlying beliefs with which John confronts those threatening to wreck the Christian faith.
The Object of Writing
John’s object in writing is twofold; yet the two aspects are one and the same. He writes that the joy of his people may be completed (1:4), and that they may not sin (2:1). He sees clearly that, however attractive the wrong way may be, it is not in its nature to bring happiness. To bring his people joy and to preserve them from sin are one and the same thing.
The Idea of God
John has two great things to say about God. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all (1:5). God is love, and that made him love us before we loved him, and made him send his Son as a remedy for our sins (4:7–10, 16). John’s conviction is that God is self-revealing and self-giving. He is light, and not darkness; he is love, and not hate.
The Idea of Jesus
Because the main attack of the false teachers was on the person of Christ, this letter, which is concerned to answer them, is specially rich and helpful in what it has to say about him.
(1) Jesus is the one who was from the beginning (1:1, 2:14). When we are confronted with Jesus, we are confronted with the eternal.
(2) Another way of putting this is to say that Jesus is the Son of God, and for John it is essential to be convinced of that (4:15, 5:5). The relationship of Jesus to God is unique, and in him is seen God’s ever-seeking and ever-forgiving heart.
(3) Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah (2:22, 5:1). That again, for him, is an essential article of belief. It may seem that here we come into a region of ideas which is much narrower and, in fact, specifically Jewish. But there is something essential here. To say that Jesus is from the beginning and that he is the Son of God is to preserve his connection with eternity; to say that he is the Messiah is to preserve his connection with history. It is to see his coming as the event towards which God’s plan, working itself out in his chosen people, was moving.
(4) Jesus was most truly and fully human. To deny that Jesus came in the flesh is to be moved by the spirit of antichrist (4:2–3). It is John’s witness that Jesus was so truly human that he himself had known and touched him with his own hands (1:1–3). No writer in the New Testament holds with greater intensity the full reality of the incarnation. Not only did Jesus become a man, he also suffered for men and women. It was by water and blood that he came (5:6); and he laid down his life for us (3:16).
(5) The coming of Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension all combine to deal with human sin. Jesus was without sin (3:5); and human beings are essentially sinners, even though in our arrogance we may claim to be without sin (1:8–10); and yet the sinless one came to take away the sin of sinning humanity (3:5). In regard to our sin, Jesus is two things.
(a) He is our advocate with the Father (2:1). The word is paraklētos. A paraklētos is someone who is called in to help. The word could be used of a physician; it was often used of a witness called in to give evidence in favour of someone on trial, or of a defending lawyer called in to defend someone accused of an offence. Jesus pleads our case with God; he, the sinless one, is the defender of sinning men and women.
(b) But Jesus is more than that. Twice, John calls him the expiation for our sins (2:2, 4:10). When we sin, the relationship which should exist between us and God is broken. An expiatory sacrifice is one which restores that relationship; or, rather, it is a sacrifice through which that relationship is restored. It is an atoning sacrifice, a sacrifice which once again puts us at one with God. So, through what Jesus was and did, the relationship between God and all people, broken by sin, is restored. Jesus does not only plead the case of sinners; he sets them at one with God. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1:7).
(6) As a result of all this, through Jesus Christ, all who believe have life (4:9, 5:11–12). This is true in a double sense. Believers have life in the sense that they are saved from death; and they have life in the sense that living has ceased to be mere existence and has become life in its fullest sense.
(7) All this may be summed up by saying that Jesus is the Saviour of the world (4:14). Here, we have something which has to be set out in full. ‘The Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world’ (4:14). We have already talked of Jesus as pleading our case before God. If we were to leave that without addition, it might be argued that God wished to condemn human beings and was deflected from his dire purpose by the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But that is not so, because, for John, as for every writer in the New Testament, the whole initiative lay with God. It was God who sent his Son to be the Saviour of men and women.
Within the short span of this letter, the wonder and the glory and the grace of Christ are most fully set out.
The Spirit
In this letter, John has less to say about the Spirit; for his highest teaching about the Spirit, we must turn back to the Fourth Gospel. It may be said that, in 1 John, the function of the Spirit is in some sense to be the liaison between God and his people. It is the Spirit who makes us conscious that there is within us the abiding presence of God through Jesus Christ (3:24, 4:13). We may say that it is the Spirit who enables us to grasp the precious fellowship with God which is being offered to us.
The World
The world within which Christians live is hostile; it is a world without God. It does not know Christians, because it did not know Christ (3:1). It hates Christians, just as it hated Christ (3:13). The false teachers are from the world and not from God, and it is because they speak its language that the world is ready to hear them and accept them (4:4–5). In a sweeping statement, John says that the whole world is in the power of the evil one (5:19). It is for that reason that Christians have to overcome it, and their weapon in the struggle with the world is faith (5:4).
Hostile as the world is, it is doomed. The world and all its desires are passing away (2:17). That, indeed, is why it is folly to give one’s heart to the world; the world is coming to an end. Although Christians live in a hostile world which is passing away, there is no need for despair and fear. The darkness is past; the true light now shines (2:8). God in Christ has broken into time; the new age has come. It is not yet fully brought to fruition, but the consummation is sure.
Christians live in an evil and a hostile world, but they possess the means to overcome it; and, when the destined end of the world comes, they will be safe, because they already possess that which makes them members of the new community in the new age.
The Fellowship of the Church
John does more than move in the high realms of theology; he has certain most practical things to say about the Christian Church and the Christian life. No New Testament writer stresses more consistently or more strenuously the necessity of Christian fellowship. Christians, John was convinced, are not only bound to God; they are also bound to each other. When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with each other (1:7). Those who claim to walk in the light but who hate their brothers and sisters are in reality walking in darkness; those who love their brothers and sisters are the ones who are in the light (2:9–11). The proof
