Text -- 1 John 3:1-2 (NET)

3:1 (See what sort of love the Father has given to us: that we should be called God’s children– and indeed we are! For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know him. 3:2 Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

What manner of love ( potapēn agapēn ).

Qualitative interrogative as in 2Pe 3:11; Mat 8:27. Only here in John’ s writings. Originally of what country or race.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

Hath bestowed ( dedōken ).

Perfect active indicative of didōmi , state of completion, "the endowment of the receiver"(Vincent).

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

That we should be called ( hina klēthōmen ).

Sub-final use of hina with the first aorist passive subjunctive of kaleō , to call or name, as in Mat 2:23.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

Children ( tekna ).

As in Joh 1:12 and with an allusion to gegennētai in 1Jo 2:29 in an effort "to restore the waning enthusiasm of his readers, and to recall them to their first love"(Brooke).

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

And such we are ( kai esmen ).

"And we are."A parenthetical reflection characteristic of John (kai nun estin in Joh 5:25 and kai ouk eisin in Rev 2:2; Rev 3:9) omitted by Textus Receptus, though, in the old MSS.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:1

Because it knew him not ( hoti ouk egnō auton ).

Second aorist active indicative of ginōskō , precisely the argument in Joh 15:18.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

Now ( nun ).

Without waiting for the parousia or second coming. We have a present dignity and duty, though there is greater glory to come.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

It is not yet made manifest ( oupō ephanerōthē ).

First aorist passive indicative of phaneroō . For the aorist indicative with oupō with a future outlook Brooke notes Mar 11:2; 1Co 8:2; Heb 12:4; Rev 17:10, Rev 17:12.

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

What we shall be ( ti esometha ).

Not tines (who), but ti (what) neuter singular predicate nominative. "This what suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God"(Bengel).

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

If he shall be manifested ( ean phanerōthēi ).

As in 1Jo 2:28, which see. The subject may be Christ as in 1Jo 3:9, or the future manifestation just mentioned. Either makes sense, probably "it"here better than "he."

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

Like him ( homoioi autōi ).

Autōi is associative instrumental case after homoioi . This is our destiny and glory (Rom 8:29), to be like Jesus who is like God (2Co 4:6).

Robertson: 1Jo 3:2

We shall see him even as he is ( opsometha auton kathōs estin ).

Future middle indicative of horaō . The transforming power of this vision of Christ (1Co 13:12) is the consummation of the glorious process begun at the new birth (2Co 3:18).

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

Behold ( ἴδετε )

Lit., behold ye . The plural is peculiar. The usual form is the singular ἴδε or ἰδού . See Joh 1:29; Joh 11:3, etc.; Joh 4:35; Joh 19:26, Joh 19:27. Elsewhere the plural is used of something actually visible (Gal 6:11).

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

What manner of ( ποταπὴν )

The word is of infrequent occurrence in the New Testament, but is found in all the Synoptists and in 2Pe 3:11. Only here in John's writings. Originally it means from what country or race ; then, of what sort or quality . It is used of the quality of both persons and things.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

Hath bestowed ( δέδωκεν )

Emphasizing the endowment of the receiver . Compare χαρίζομαι , from χάρις grace , favor , which emphasizes the goodwill of the giver. See Gal 3:18; Phi 2:9; Phi 1:29.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

That ( ἵνα )

See on Joh 15:13.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

We should be called ( κληθῶμεν )

Or, named . As Mat 2:23; Mat 21:13; Luk 1:13, Luk 1:31, etc. The verb is never used by John of the divine call. In Joh 10:3, for καλεῖ calleth , read φωνεῖ .

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

The sons ( τέκνα )

Rev., better, children . See on Joh 1:12.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:1

And such we are ( καὶ ἐσμεν )

Lit., and we are . Added by Rev., according to the best texts. A parenthetical, reflective comment, characteristic of John. See on 1Jo 1:2.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

Beloved

See 1Jo 2:7.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

Now are we and, etc.

The two thoughts of the present and the future condition of God's children are placed side by side with the simple copula, and , as parts of one thought. Christian condition, now and eternally, centers in the fact of being children of God. In that fact lies the germ of all the possibilities of eternal life.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

It doth not yet appear ( οὔπω ἐφανερώθη )

Rev., more correctly, it is not yet made manifest . See on Joh 21:1. The force of the aorist tense is, was never manifested on any occasion .

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

What we shall be ( τί ἐσόμεθα )

" This what suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God" (Bengel).

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

But we know

Omit but .

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

When He shall appear ( ἐὰν φανερωθῇ )

Rev., correctly, if He (or it ) shall be manifested . We may render either " if it shall be manifested," that is what we shall be ; or, " if He ," etc. The preceding ἐφανερώθη it is (not yet) made manifest , must, I think, decide us in favor of the rendering it . We are now children of God. It has not been revealed what we shall be, and therefore we do not know. In the absence of such revelation, we know (through our consciousness of childship, through His promise that we shall behold His glory), that if what we shall be were manifested, the essential fact of the glorified condition thus revealed will be likeness to the Lord. This fact we know now as a promise, as a general truth of our future state. The condition of realizing the fact is the manifestation of that glorified state, the revealing of the τί ἐσόμεθα what we shall be ; for that manifestation will bring with it the open vision of the Lord. When the what we shall be shall be manifest, it will bring us face to face with Him, and we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.

Vincent: 1Jo 3:2

As He is ( καθώς ἐστιν )

Strictly, just as . Rev., even as .

" As long as the festivity

Of Paradise shall be, so long our love

Shall radiate round about us such a vesture.

Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor,

The ardor to the vision; and the vision

Equals what grace it has above its worth.

Dante , " Paradiso ," iv ., 37-42 .

Wesley: 1Jo 3:1

That is, should be, the children of God.

Wesley: 1Jo 3:1

They know not what to make of us. We are a mystery to them.

Wesley: 1Jo 3:2

Even to ourselves.

Wesley: 1Jo 3:2

It is something ineffable, which will raise the children of God to be, in a manner, as God himself. But we know, in general, that when he, the Son of God, shall appear, we shall be like him - The glory of God penetrating our inmost substance.

Wesley: 1Jo 3:2

Manifestly, without a veil. And that sight will transform us into the same likeness.

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

Calling attention, as to some wonderful exhibition, little as the world sees to admire. This verse is connected with the previous 1Jo 2:29, thus: All our doing of righteousness is a mere sign that God, of His matchless love, has adopted us as children; it does not save us, but is a proof that we are saved of His grace.

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

Of what surpassing excellence, how gracious on His part, how precious to us.

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

He does not say that God hath given us some gift, but love itself and the fountain of all honors, the heart itself, and that not for our works or efforts, but of His grace [LUTHER].

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

"what manner of love"; resulting in, proved by, our being, &c. The immediate effect aimed at in the bestowal of this love is, "that we should be called children of God."

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

Should have received the privilege of such a glorious title (though seeming so imaginary to the world), along with the glorious reality. With God to call is to make really to be. Who so great as God? What nearer relationship than that of sons? The oldest manuscripts add, "And we ARE SO" really.

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

"on this account," because "we are (really) so."

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

The children, like the Father.

JFB: 1Jo 3:1

Namely, the Father. "If they who regard not God, hold thee in any account, feel alarmed about thy state" [BENGEL]. Contrast 1Jo 5:1. The world's whole course is one great act of non-recognition of God.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

By the Father, and therefore by me.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

In contrast to "not yet." We now already are really sons, though not recognized as such by the world, and (as the consequence) we look for the visible manifestation of our sonship, which not yet has taken place.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

Greek, "it hath not yet ('at any time,' Greek aorist) been visibly manifested what we shall be"--what further glory we shall attain by virtue of this our sonship. The "what" suggests a something inconceivably glorious.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

Omitted in the oldest manuscripts. Its insertion in English Version gives a wrong antithesis. It is not, "We do not yet know manifestly what . . . but we know," &c. Believers have some degree of the manifestation already, though the world has not. The connection is, The manifestation to the world of what we shall be, has not yet taken place; we know (in general; as a matter of well-assured knowledge; so the Greek) that when (literally, "if"; expressing no doubt as to the fact, but only as to the time; also implying the coming preliminary fact, on which the consequence follows, Mal 1:6; Joh 14:3) He (not "it," namely, that which is not yet manifested [ALFORD]) shall be manifested (1Jo 3:5; 1Jo 2:28), we shall be like Him (Christ; all sons have a substantial resemblance to their father, and Christ, whom we shall be like, is "the express image of the Father's person," so that in resembling Christ, we shall resemble the Father). We wait for the manifestation (literally, the "apocalypse"; the same term as is applied to Christ's own manifestation) of the sons of God. After our natural birth, the new birth into the life of grace is needed, which is to be followed by the new birth into the life of glory; the two latter alike are termed "the regeneration" (Mat 19:28). The resurrection of our bodies is a kind of coming out of the womb of the earth, and being born into another life. Our first temptation was that we should be like God in knowledge, and by that we fell; but being raised by Christ, we become truly like Him, by knowing Him as we are known, and by seeing Him as He is [PEARSON, Exposition of the Creed]. As the first immortality which Adam lost was to be able not to die, so the last shall be not to be able to die. As man's first free choice or will was to be able not to sin, so our last shall be not to be able to sin [AUGUSTINE, The City of God, 22.30]. The devil fell by aspiring to God's power; man, by aspiring to his knowledge; but aspiring after God's goodness, we shall ever grow in His likeness. The transition from God the Father to "He," "Him," referring to Christ (who alone is ever said in Scripture to be manifested; not the Father, Joh 1:18), implies the entire unity of the Father and the Son.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

Continual beholding generates likeness (2Co 3:18); as the face of the moon being always turned towards the sun, reflects its light and glory.

JFB: 1Jo 3:2

Not in His innermost Godhead, but as manifested in Christ. None but the pure can see the infinitely Pure One. In all these passages the Greek is the same verb opsomai; not denoting the action of seeing, but the state of him to whose eye or mind the object is presented; hence the Greek verb is always in the middle or reflexive voice, to perceive and inwardly appreciate [TITTMANN]. Our spiritual bodies will appreciate and recognize spiritual beings hereafter, as our natural bodies now do natural objects.

Clarke: 1Jo 3:1

Behold, what manner of love - Whole volumes might be written upon this and the two following verses, without exhausting the extraordinary subject contained in them, viz., the love of God to man. The apostle himself, though evidently filled with God, and walking in the fullness of his light, does not attempt to describe it; he calls on the world and the Church to behold it, to look upon it, to contemplate it, and wonder at it

What manner of love. - Ποταπην αγαπην· What great love, both as to quantity and quality; for these ideas are included in the original term. The length, the breadth, the depth, the height, he does not attempt to describe

Clarke: 1Jo 3:1

The Father hath bestowed - For we had neither claim nor merit that we should be called, that is, constituted or made, the sons of God, who were before children of the wicked one, animal, earthly, devilish; therefore, the love which brought us from such a depth of misery and degradation must appear the more extraordinary and impressive. After κληθωμεν, that we might be called, και εσμεν, and we are, is added by ABC, seventeen others, both the Syriac, Erpen’ s Arabic, Coptic, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Vulgate

Clarke: 1Jo 3:1

Therefore the world - The Jews, and all who know not God, and are seeking their portion in this life; knoweth us not - do not acknowledge, respect, love, or approve of us. In this sense the word γινωσκειν is here to be understood. The world Knew well enough that there were such persons; but they did not approve of them. We have often seen that this is a frequent use of the term know, both in Hebrew and Greek, in the Old Testament and also in the New

Clarke: 1Jo 3:1

Because it knew him not - The Jews did not acknowledge Jesus; they neither approved of him, his doctrine, nor his manner of life.

Clarke: 1Jo 3:2

Now are we the sons of God - He speaks of those who are begotten of God, and who work righteousness. See the preceding chapter

Clarke: 1Jo 3:2

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be - Ουπω εφανερωθη· It is not yet manifest; though we know that we are the children of God, we do not know that state of glorious excellence to which, as such, we shall be raised

Clarke: 1Jo 3:2

When he shall appear - Εαν φανερωθη· When he shall be manifested; i.e., when he comes the second time, and shall be manifested in his glorified human nature to judge the world

Clarke: 1Jo 3:2

We shall be like him - For our vile bodies shall be made like unto his glorious body; we shall see him as he is, in all the glory and majesty both of the Divine and human nature. See Phi 3:21; and Joh 17:24 : Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. John had seen his glory on the mount when he was transfigured; and this we find was ineffably grand; but even this must have been partially obscured, in order to enable the disciples to bear the sight, for they were not then like him. But when they shall be like him, they shall see him as he is - in all the splendor of his infinite majesty.

Calvin: 1Jo 3:1

1.Behold The second argument is from the dignity and excellency of our calling; for it was not common honor, he says, that the heavenly Father bestowed on us, when he adopted us as his children. This being so great a favor, the desire for purity ought to be kindled in us, so as to be conformed to his image; nor, indeed, can it be otherwise, but that he who acknowledges himself to be one of God’s children should purify himself. And to make this exhortation more forcible, he amplifies the favor of God; for when he says, that love has been bestowed, he means that it is from mere bounty and benevolence that God makes us his children; for whence comes to us such a dignity, except from the love of God? Love, then, is declared here to be gratuitous. There is, indeed, an impropriety in the language; but the Apostle preferred speaking thus rather than not to express what was necessary to be known. He, in short, means that the more abundantly God’s goodness has been manifested towards us, the greater are our obligations to him, according to the teaching of Paul, when he besought the Romans by the mercies of God to present themselves as pure sacrifices to him. (Rom 12:1.) We are at the same time taught, as I have said, that the adoption of all the godly is gratuitous, and does not depend on any regard to works.

What the sophists say, that God foresees those who are worthy to be adopted, is plainly refuted by these words, for, in this way the gift would not be gratuitous. It behooves us especially to understand this doctrine; for since the only cause of our salvation is adoption, and since the Apostle testifies that this flows from the mere love of God alone, there is nothing left to our worthiness or to the merits of works. For why are we sons? Even because God began to love us freely, when we deserved hatred rather than love. And as the Spirit is a pledge of our adoption, it hence follows, that if there be any good in us, it ought not to be set up in opposition to the grace of God, but, on the contrary, to be ascribed to him.

When he says that we are called, or named, the expression is not without its meaning; for it is God who with his own mouth declares us to be sons, as he gave a name to Abraham according to what he was. ⁷⁵

Therefore the world It is a trial that grievously assaults our faith, that we are not so much regarded as God’s children, or that no mark of so great an excellency appears in us, but that, on the contrary, almost the whole world treats us with ridicule and contempt. Hence it can hardly be inferred from our present state that God is a Father to us, for the devil so contrives all things as to obscure this benefit. He obviates this offense by saying that we are not as yet acknowledged to be such as we are, because the world knows not God: a remarkable example of this very thing is found in Isaac and Jacob; for though both were chosen by God, yet Ishmael persecuted the former with laughter and taunts; and Esau, the latter with threats and the sword. However, then, we may be oppressed by the world, still our salvation remains safe and secure.

Calvin: 1Jo 3:2

2.Now are we the sons of God He comes now to what every one knows and feels himself; for though the ungodly may not entice us to give up our hope, yet our present condition is very short of the glow of God’s children; for as to our body we are dust and a shadow, and death is always before our eyes; we are also subject to thousand miseries, and the soul is exposed to innumerable evils; so that we find always a hell within us. The more necessary it is that all our thoughts should be withdrawn from the present view of things, lest the miseries by which we are on every side surrounded and almost overwhelmed, should shake our faith in that felicity which as yet lies hid. For the Apostle’s meaning is this, that we act very foolishly when we estimate what God has bestowed on us according to the present state of things, but that we ought with undoubting faith to hold to that which does not yet appear.

But we know that when he shall appear The conditional particle ought to be rendered as an adverb of time, when But the verb appear means not the same thing as when he used it before. The Apostle has just said, it does not yet appear what we shall be, because the fruit of our adoption is as yet hid, for in heaven is our felicity, and we are now far away traveling on the earth; for this fading life, constantly exposed to hundred deaths, is far different from that eternal life which belongs to the children of God; for being enclosed as slaves in the prison of our flesh, we are far distant from the full sovereignty of heaven and earth. But the verb now refers to Christ, when, he shall appear; for he teaches the same thing with Paul, in Colossians, where he says,

“Your life is hid with Christ in God: when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”
(Col 3:3)

For our faith cannot stand otherwise than by looking to the coming of Christ. The reason why God defers the manifestation of our glory is this, because Christ is not manifested in the power of his kingdom. This, then, is the only way of sustaining our faith, so that we may wait patiently for the life promised to us. As soon as any one turns away the least from Christ, he must necessarily fail. ⁷⁶

The word to know, shews the certainty of faith, in order to distinguish it from opinion. Neither simple nor universal knowledge is here intended, but that which every one ought to have for himself, so that he may feel assured that he will be sometime like Christ. Though, then, the manifestation of our glory is connected with the coming of Christ, yet our knowledge of this is well founded.

We shall be like him He does not understand that we shall be equal to him; for there must be some difference between the head and the members; but we shall be like him, because he will make our vile body conformable to his glorious body, as Paul also teaches us in Phi 3:21. For the Apostle intended shortly to shew that the final end of our adoption is, that what has in order preceded in Christ, shall at length be completed in us.

The reason that is added may, however, seem inappropriate. For if to see Christ makes us like him, we shall have this in common with the wicked, for they shall also see his glory. To this I reply, that this is to see him as a friend, which will not be the case with the wicked, for they will dread his presence; nay, they will shun God’s presence, and be filled with terror; his glow will so dazzle their eyes, that they will be stupefied and confounded. For we see that Adam, conscious of having done wrong, dreaded the presence of God. And God declared this by Moses, as a general truth as to men,

“No man shall see me and live.” (Exo 33:20.)

For how can it be otherwise but that God’s majesty, as a consuming fire, will consume us as though we were stubble, so great is the weakness of our flesh. But as far as the image of God is renewed in us, we have eyes prepared to see God. And now, indeed, God begins to renew in us his own image, but in what a small measure! Except then we be stripped of all the corruption of the flesh, we shall not be able to behold God face to face.

And this is also expressed here, as he is He does not, indeed, say, that there is no seeing of God now; but as Paul says,

“We see now through a glass, darkly.”
(1Co 13:12.)

But he elsewhere makes a difference between this way of living, and the seeing of the eye. In short, God now presents himself to be seen by us, not such as he is, but such as we can comprehend. Thus is fulfilled what is said by Moses, that we see only as it were his back, (Exo 33:23;) for there is too much brightness in his face.

We must further observe, that the manner which the Apostle mentions is taken from the effect, not from the cause; for he does not teach us, that we shall be like him, because we shall see him; but he hence proves that we shall be partakers of the divine glory, for except our nature were spiritual, and endued with a heavenly and blessed immortality, it could never come so nigh to God yet the perfection of glory will not be so great in us, that our seeing will enable us to comprehend all that God is; for the distance between us and him will be even then very great.

But when the Apostle says, that we shall see him as he is, he intimates a new and an ineffable manner of seeing him, which we enjoy not now; for as long as we walk by faith, as Paul teaches us, we are absent from him. And when he appeared to the fathers, it was not in his own essence, but was ever seen under symbols. Hence the majesty of God, now hid, will then only be in itself seen, when the veil of this mortal and corruptible nature shall be removed.

Refined questions I pass by: for we see how Augustine tormented himself with these, and yet never succeeded, both in his Epistles to Paulus and Fortunatus, and in the City of God, (2:2,) and in other places. What he says, however, is worthy of being observed, that the way in which we live avails more in this inquiry than the way in which we speak, and that we must beware, lest by wrangling as to the manner in which God can be seen, we lose that peace and holiness without which no one shall see him.

Defender: 1Jo 3:1

We can be called "sons of God" because we have been "created in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:10) and are, thus, "new creatures" in Him (2Co 5:17). Only those specially created by God (Adam and the angels - Luk 3:38; Job 38:7) can properly be called "sons of God." In the last three chapters of this epistle, those who have been thus uniquely "born of God" are said to "not commit sin" (1Jo 3:9), "love one another" (1Jo 4:7), "believeth that Jesus is the Christ" (1Jo 5:1), "overcometh the world" (1Jo 5:4), and "keepeth himself" (1Jo 5:18)."

Defender: 1Jo 3:2

We have been predestined "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom 8:29), because when He comes again, He "shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body" (Phi 3:21). He will "make all things new" again (Rev 21:5). Although the Bible does not say specifically, perhaps this means that those who died in old age will be made young again, and those who died in infancy will grow to vigorous maturity, so that all who are Christ's "shall be like him.""

TSK: 1Jo 3:1

what : 1Jo 4:9, 1Jo 4:10; 2Sa 7:19; Psa 31:19, Psa 36:7-9, Psa 89:1, Psa 89:2; Joh 3:16; Rom 5:8, Rom 8:32; Eph 2:4, Eph 2:5, Eph 3:18, Eph 3:19

that : Jer 3:19; Hos 1:10; Joh 1:12; Rom 8:14-17, Rom 8:21, Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26; 2Co 6:18; Gal 3:26, Gal 3:29, Gal 4:5, Gal 4:6; Rev 21:7

the world : Joh 15:18, Joh 15:19, Joh 16:3, Joh 17:25; Col 3:3

TSK: 1Jo 3:2

now are we the : 1Jo 3:1, 1Jo 5:1; Isa 56:5; Rom 8:14, Rom 8:15, Rom 8:18; Gal 3:26, Gal 4:6

it : Psa 31:19; Rom 8:18; 1Co 2:9, 1Co 13:12; 2Co 4:17

what : Psa 17:15; Rom 8:29; 1Co 15:49; Phi 3:21; 2Pe 1:4

when : Mal 3:2; Col 3:4; Heb 9:28

for : Job 19:26; Psa 16:11; Mat 5:8; Joh 17:24; 1Co 13:12; 2Co 3:18, 2Co 5:6-8

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: 1Jo 3:1

Behold, what manner of love - What love, in "kind"and in "degree."In kind the most tender and the most ennobling, in adopting us into His family, and in permitting us to address Him as our Father; in "degree"the most exalted, since there is no higher love that can be shown than in adopting a poor and friendless orphan, and giving him a parent and a home. Even God could bestow upon us no more valuable token of affection than that we should be adopted into His family, and permitted to regard Him as our Father. When we remember how insignificant we are as creatures, and how ungrateful, rebellious, and vile we have been as sinners, we may well be amazed at the love which would adopt us into the holy family of God, so that we may be regarded and treated as the children of the Most High. A prince could manifest no higher love for a wandering, ragged, vicious orphan boy, found in the streets, than by adopting him into his own family, and admitting him to the same privileges and honors as his own sons; and yet this would be a trifle compared with the honor which God has bestowed on us.

The Father hath bestowed upon us - God, regarded as a Father, or as at the head of the universe considered as one family.

That we should be called the sons of God - That is, that we should "be"the sons of God - the word "called"being often used in the sense of "to be."On the nature and privileges of adoption, see the Rom 8:15-17 notes; 2Co 6:18 note, and practical remarks on that chapter.

Therefore the world knoweth us not - Does not understand our principles; the reasons of our conduct; the sources of our comforts and joys. The people of the world regard us as fanatics or enthusiasts; as foolish in abandoning the pleasures and pursuits which they engage in; as renouncing certain happiness for that which is uncertain; as cherishing false and delusive hopes in regard to the future, and as practicing needless austerities, with nothing to compensate for the pleasures which are abandoned. There is nothing which the frivolous, the ambitious, and the selfish "less"understand than they do the elements which go into the Christian’ s character, and the nature and source of the Christian’ s joys.

Because it knew him not - It did not know the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, the world had no right views of the real character of the Lord Jesus when he was on the earth. They mistook him for an enthusiast or an impostor; and it is no wonder that, having wholly mistaken his character, they should mistake ours. On the fact that the world did not know him, see the 1Co 2:8 note; Act 3:17 note. Compare Joh 17:25. On the fact that Christians may be expected to be regarded and treated as their Saviour was, see the notes at Joh 15:18-20. Compare Mat 10:24-25.

Barnes: 1Jo 3:2

Beloved, now are we the sons of God - We now in fact sustain this rank and dignity, and on that we may reflect with pleasure and gratitude. It is in itself an exalted honor, and may be contemplated as such, whatever may be true in regard to what is to come. In the dignity and the privileges which we now enjoy, we may find a grateful subject of reflection, and a cause of thankfulness, even if we should look to nothing beyond, or when we contemplate the fact by itself.

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be - It is not fully revealed what we shall be hereafter; what will be the full result of being regarded as the children of God. There are, indeed, certain things which may be inferred as following from this. There is enough to animate us with hope, and to sustain us in the trials of life. There is one thing which is clear, that we shall be like the Son of God; but what is fully involved in this is not made known. Perhaps,

(1)\caps1     i\caps0 t could not be so revealed that we could understand it, for that state may be so unlike the present that no words would fully convey the conception to our minds. Perhaps,

(2)\caps1     i\caps0 t may be necessary to our condition here, as on probation, that no more light should be furnished in regard to the future than to stimulate us to make efforts to reach a world where all is light. For an illustration of the sentiment expressed here by the apostle, compare the notes at 2Pe 1:4.

But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him - It is revealed to us that we shall be made like Christ; that is, in the bodies with which we shall be raised up, in character, in happiness, in glory. Compare the Phi 3:21 note; 2Co 3:18 note. This is enough to satisfy the Christian in his prospects for the future world. To be like Christ is the object of his supreme aim. For that he lives, and all his aspirations in regard to the coming world may be summed up in this - that he wishes to be like the glorified Son of God, and to share his honors and his joys. See the notes at Phi 3:10.

For we shall see him as he is - It is clearly implied here that there will be an influence in beholding the Saviour as he is, which will tend to make us like him, or to transform us into his likeness. See the nature of this influence explained in the notes at 2Co 3:18.

Poole: 1Jo 3:1

1Jo 3:1,2 It is a mark of God’ s singular love toward us, that

we are now called his sons, and designed for further

happiness hereafter,

1Jo 3:3-10 and therefore we must obediently keep his commandments,

1Jo 3:11-24 and love one another with true brotherly kindness and

actual beneficence.

So late mention having been made of that great thing, in the close of the foregoing chapter, being born of God, the holy apostle is here in a transport, in the contemplation of the glorious consequent privilege, to be

called his sons and of that admirable love, from whence the whole hath proceeded.

What mannerpotaphn or, how great!

Called here, (as often referring to God as the author), signifies to be made, or to be, Mat 5:9,45 Joh 1:12 Rom 4:17 . He confers not the name without the thing; the new, even a Divine nature, 2Pe 1:4 , in regeneration; the real advantages and dignity of the relation by adoption; and all of mere (and the greatest) kindness and good-will, Tit 3:5-7 . Hence he intimates, it ought not to be counted grievous, that

the world knoweth us not i.e. doth not own or acknowledge us for its own, is not kind to us, yea, hates and persecutes us; knowing often (after the Hebrew phrase) signifying affection, 1Co 8:3 2Ti 2:19 ; and accordingly, not knowing, disaffection, and the consequent effects, Mat 7:23 . Nor should it be thought strange,

because it knew him not: the Father, and the whole family, are to it an invisum genus, hated alike.

Poole: 1Jo 3:2

Our present state he affirms to be unquestionably that of

sons whatsoever hardships from the world, or severer discipline from our Father, we must for a while undergo; but for our future state, it is much above us to comprehend distinctly the glory of it;

it doth not yet appear it is yet an unrevealed thing, Rom 8:18 ; a veil is drawn before it, which is to be drawn aside at the appointed season of the manifestation of the sons of God, 1Jo 3:19 . But so much we in the general know of it, (so certain are the apprehensions of faith), that

when he shall appear or display his own glory in the appearance of his Son, who is then to come in the glory of his Father, Mat 16:27 1Ti 6:14-16 ,

we shall be like him as it befits children to be unto their Father; i.e. his image shall then be perfected in us, which was defaced so greatly in the apostacy, is restored imperfectly in regeneration, Eph 4:24 Col 3:10 , must be daily improved in progressive sanctification: so that as God was above said to be light, Christians are to shine as lights, as the sons of God, without rebuke, representing and glorifying their Father, Mat 5:16 Phi 2:15 1Pe 2:9 : but is then to be advanced in us to a far higher pitch than ever, in respect both of holiness and blessedness.

For we shall see him as he is i.e. so far as the limited capacity of our natures can admit; and are therefore by that likeness to be qualified for such vision: which eternal, efficacious vision doth also coutinue that likeness, the causal particle,

for admitting both those references: see Psa 17:15 .

PBC: 1Jo 3:2

After John says that it does not appear, (we don’t know all) he does say that there are some things that we do know- "We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is."

51

Haydock: 1Jo 3:1

Behold what manner of charity (or of love) the Father hath bestowed upon us. St. John had said in the last verse of the foregoing chapter that every one who doth justice, is born of him; i.e. is the son of God by adoption. But the world knoweth us not, nor esteems and values us as such: and no wonder, because they have not known, nor acknowledged, nor reverenced God as they ought. We indeed are the sons of God; we believe it, because God has assured us of it; but it hath not yet appeared what we shall be, (ver. 2) to what glory or happiness we shall thereby be exalted hereafter, for neither eye hath seen, nor the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for those who love him. (1 Corinthians ix. 2.) We only know this, that his elect shall be like to him, because they shall see him as he is, when they shall enjoy him in heaven. (Witham)

Gill: 1Jo 3:1

Behold what manner of love,.... See, take notice, consider, look by faith, with wonder and astonishment, and observe how great a favour, what an instance of matchless love, what a wonderful blessing of grace,

the Father hath bestowed upon us: the Father of Christ, and the Father of us in Christ, who hath adopted us into his family, and regenerated us by his grace, and hath freely given us the new name:

that we should be called the sons of God. The Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version, add, "and we are", or "be"; and the Ethiopic version, "and have been"; for it is not a mere name that is bestowed, but the thing itself in reality; and in the Hebrew language, "to be called", and "to be", are terms synonymous; see Isa 9:6; in what sense the saints are the sons of God; See Gill on Gal 4:6; this blessing comes not by nature, nor by merit, but by grace, the grace of adoption; which is of persons unto an inheritance they have no legal right unto; the spring of it is the everlasting and unchangeable love of God, for there was no need on the adopter's side, he having an only begotten and beloved Son, and no worth and loveliness in the adopted, they being by nature children of wrath; it is a privilege that exceeds all others, and is attended with many; so that it is no wonder the apostle breaks out in this pathetic manner, and calls upon the saints to view it with admiration and thankfulness:

therefore the world knoweth us not; that is, the greater part of the world, the world that lies in wickedness, the men of the world, who have their portion in this life, whom the god of this world has blinded, and who only mind the things of the world, and are as when they came into it, and have their conversation according to the course of it; these do not know the saints are the sons of God; the new name of sons is what no man knoweth but he that receiveth it; they do not own the saints as theirs, as belonging to them, but reckon them as the faith of the world, and the offscouring of all things; nor do they love them, and that because they are not their own, but hate them and persecute them: the reason is,

because it knew him not; neither the Father, whose sons they are, and who has bestowed the grace upon them; wherefore they know not, and disown and persecute his children; see Joh 17:25; nor the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, the firstborn among many brethren; who, though he made the world, and was in it, was not known by it, but was hated, abused, and persecuted; and therefore it need not seem strange that the saints, who are the sons of God by adoption, should be treated in like manner.

Gill: 1Jo 3:2

Beloved, now are we the sons of God,.... By adoption, secretly in God's predestination, and in the covenant of grace; and openly in regeneration, through faith in Christ, and by the testimony of the Spirit:

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; though they are sons, they do not appear now as such, as they will do, when they shall be introduced into their Father's house, and into the many mansions there prepared for them; when Christ shall publicly own them as the children given unto him, and when they shall be put into the possession of the inheritance they are heirs of; besides, they will appear then not only to be kings' sons, but kings themselves, as they now are; they will then inherit the kingdom prepared for them, and will sit down on a throne of glory, and have a crown of righteousness, life, and glory, put upon them; and will appear not only perfectly justified, their sins being not to be found; and the sentence of justification afresh pronounced, and they placed out of the reach of all condemnation; but they will be perfectly holy and free from all sin, and perfectly knowing and glorious; they have a right to glory now, and glory is preparing for them, and they for that: and they are now representatively glorified in Christ, but then they will be personally glorified: now, though all this shall certainly be, yet it does not now manifestly appear; it appears to God, who calls things that are not as though they were and to Christ, whose delights were with the sons men, these children of God, before the world was, and saw them in all the glory they were to be brought to; but not even to angels, until they are owned and confessed before them; much less to the world, who do not know what they are now, and still less what they will be, seeing them now in poverty, meanness, under many reproaches, afflictions, and persecutions; and even this does not appear to the saints themselves, whose life is a hidden life; and that by reason of darkness, desertion, and diffidence, for want of more knowledge, and from the nature of the happiness itself, which is at present unseen:

but we know that when he shall appear; that is, Jesus Christ, who is now in heaven, and out of sight, but will appear a second time: the time when is not known, but the thing itself is certain:

we shall be like him; in body, fashioned like to his glorious body, in immortality and incorruption, in power, in glory, and spirituality, in a freedom from all imperfections, sorrows, afflictions, and death; and in soul, which likeness will lie in perfect knowledge of divine things, and in complete holiness;

for we shall see him as he is; in his human nature, with the eyes of the body, and in his glorious person, with the eyes of the understanding; not by faith, as now, but by sight; not through ordinances, as in the present state, but through those beams of light and glory darting from him, with which the saints will be irradiated; and this sight, as it is now exceeding desirable, will be unspeakably glorious, delightful, and ravishing, soul satisfying, free from all darkness and error, and interruption; will assimilate and transform into his image and likeness, and be for ever. Philo the Jew observes ^k, that Israel may be interpreted one that sees God; but adds, ουχ οιος εστιν ο θεος, "not what God is", for this is impossible: it is indeed impossible to see him essentially as he is, or so as to comprehend his nature, being, and perfections; but then the saints in heaven will see God and Christ as they are, and as much as they are to be seen by creatures; God will be seen as he is in Christ; and Christ will be seen as he is in himself, both in his divine and human natures, as much as can be, or can be desired to be seen and known of him.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: 1Jo 3:1

¹ tn The ἵνα (Jina) clause is best understood (1) as epexegetical (or explanatory), clarifying the love (ἀγάπην, agaphn) that the Father has given to believers. Although it is possible (2) to regard the ἵνα as indicating result, the use of ποταπήν (potaphn, “what sort of”) to modify ἀγάπην suggests that the idea of “love” will be qualified further in the following context, and this qualification is provided by the epexegetical ἵνα clause.

² tn “Indeed” is not in the Greek text but is supplied to indicate emphasis.

³ tc The phrase καὶ ἐσμεν (kai esmen, “and we are”) is omitted in 049 69 Ï. There seems to be no theological reason to omit the words. This has all the earmarks of a classic case of homoioteleuton, for the preceding word (κληθῶμεν, klhqwmen, “we should be called”) ends in -μεν (-men).

tn The indicative mood indicates that the verb ἐσμέν (esmen) at the end of 3:1a is not governed by the ἵνα (Jina) and does not belong with the ἵνα clause, since this would have required a subjunctive. If the verb ἐσμέν were subjunctive, the force of the clause would be “that we should be called children of God, and be (children of God).” With ἐσμέν as indicative, the clause reads “that we should be called children of God, and indeed we are (children of God).”

⁴ tn Lexically it is clear that this phrase indicates reason, but what is not clear is whether (1) τοῦτο (touto) refers to what follows, (2) to what precedes, or (3) to both (as with the ἐν τοῦτο [en touto] phrases throughout 1 John). Διὰ τοῦτο (dia touto) occurs 15 times in the Gospel of John, and a pattern emerges which is so consistent that it appears to be the key to the usage here. Six times in the Gospel of John (5:16, 18; 8:47; 10:17; 12:18, 39) the phrase refers to what follows, and in each of these instances an epexegetical ὅτι (Joti) clause follows. Nine times in John (1:31, 6:65, 7:21-22, 9:23, 12:27, 13:11, 15:19, 16:15, 19:11) the phrase refers to what precedes, and in none of these instances is it followed by a ὅτι clause. The phrase διὰ τοῦτο is used three times in the Johannine Epistles. In two of these (1 John 4:5, 3 John 10) there is no ὅτι clause following, and so the διὰ τοῦτο should refer to preceding material. Here in 3:1 there is an epexegetical ὅτι clause following, so the διὰ τοῦτο should (unless it is the only exception in the Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles) refer to what follows, that is, to the ὅτι clause itself. This is indicated by the colon in the translation.

⁵ sn The pronoun him is a clear reference to Jesus Christ (compare John 1:10).

NET Notes: 1Jo 3:2

¹ tn The subject of the third person singular passive verb ἐφανερώθη (efanerwqh) in 3:2 is the following clause τί ἐσόμεθα (ti esomeqa): “Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we shall be has not yet been revealed.”

sn What we will be. The opponents have been revealed as antichrists now (2:19). What believers will be is to be revealed later. In light of the mention of the parousia in 2:28, it seems likely that an eschatological revelation of the true character of believers is in view here.

² tc The Byzantine text, the Syriac Peshitta, the Bohairic Coptic, and one ms of the Sahidic Coptic supply δέ (de) after οἴδαμεν (oidamen) in 3:2b. Additions of coordinating conjunctions such as δέ are predictable variants; this coupled with the poor external credentials suggests that this addition is not likely to be original.

tn The relationship of 3:2b to 3:2a is difficult. It seems best to regard this as a case of asyndeton, although the Byzantine text, the Syriac Peshitta, the Bohairic Coptic, and some mss of the Sahidic Coptic supply δέ (de) after οἴδαμεν (oidamen) in 3:2b. This addition is not likely to be original, but it does reflect a tendency among scribes to see an adversative (contrastive) relationship between 3:2a and 3:2b. This seems to be an accurate understanding of the relationship between the clauses from a logical standpoint: “and what we shall be has not yet been revealed; but we know that whenever he should be revealed, we shall be like him.”

³ tn The first ὅτι (Joti) in 3:2 follows οἴδαμεν (oidamen), a verb of perception, and introduces an indirect discourse clause which specifies the content of what believers know: “that whenever it should be revealed, we shall be like him.”

⁴ tn In this context ἐάν (ean) does not indicate (1) uncertainty about whether or not what believers will be shall be revealed, but rather (2) uncertainty about the exact time the event will take place. In the Koine period ἐάν can mean “when” or “whenever” and is virtually the equivalent of ὅταν (Jotan; see BDAG 268 s.v. ἐάν 2). It has this meaning in John 12:32 and 14:3. Thus the phrase here should be translated, “we know that whenever it is revealed.”

⁵ tn Many take the understood subject (“he”) of φανερωθῇ (fanerwqh) as a reference to Jesus Christ, because the same verb was used in 2:28 in reference to the parousia (second advent). In the immediate context, however, a better analogy is ἐφανερώθη τί ἐσόμεθα (efanerwqh ti esomeqa) in 3:2a. There the clause τί ἐσόμεθα is the subject of the passive verb: “what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” From a grammatical standpoint it makes better sense to see the understood subject of φανερωθῇ as “it” rather than “he” and as referring back to the clause τί ἐσόμεθα in 3:2a. In the context this makes good sense: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it shall be revealed, we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is.” This emphasizes the contrast in the verse between the present state (“not yet been revealed”) and the future state (“shall be revealed”) of believers, and this will of course take place at the parousia.

⁶ sn Is revealed. It may well be that the use of the same passive verb here (from φανερόω, fanerow) is intended to suggest to the reader the mention of the parousia (Christ’s second coming) in 2:28.

⁷ tn The second ὅτι (Joti) in 3:2 is best understood as causal, giving the reason why believers will be like God: “we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is.”

⁸ sn The phrase we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is has been explained two ways: (1) believers will really become more like God than they now are, and will do this through seeing God as he really is; or (2) believers will realize that they are already like God, but did not realize it until they see him as he is. One who sees a strong emphasis on realized eschatology in the Gospel of John and the Epistles might opt for the second view, since it downplays the difference between what believers already are in the present age and what they will become in the next. It seems better, though, in light of the statement in 3:2a that “what we will be has not yet been revealed” and because of the reference to Christ’s parousia in 2:28, that the author intends to distinguish between the present state of believers and what they will be like in the future. Thus the first view is better, that believers really will become more like God than they are now, as a result of seeing him as he really is.

Geneva Bible: 1Jo 3:1

Behold, ^{( 1 ) ( a )} what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be ^{( b )} called the sons of God: ^{( 2 )} therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

^{( 1 )} He begins to declare this agreement of the Father and the Son, at the highest cause, that is, at that free love of God towards us, with which he so loves us, that also he adopts us to be his children.

^{( a )} What a gift of how great love.

^{( b )} That we should be the sons of God, and so, that all the world may see that we are so. ^{( 2 )} Before he declares this adoption, he says two things: the one, that this so great a dignity, is not to be esteemed according to the judgment of the flesh, because it is unknown to the world, for the world knows not God the Father himself.

Geneva Bible: 1Jo 3:2

^{( 3 )} Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be ^{( c )} like him; for we shall see him ^{( d )} as he is.

^{( 3 )} The other: This dignity is not fully revealed to us ourselves, much less to strangers, but we are sure of the accomplishment of it, in as much as we shall be like the Son of God himself and shall enjoy his sight indeed, such as he is now, but yet this is deferred until his next coming.

^{( c )} Like, but not equal.

^{( d )} For now we see as in a glass (1Co 13:12)

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: 1Jo 3:1-24

1 He declares the singular love of God towards us, in making us his sons;

3 who therefore ought obediently to keep his commandments;

11 as also to love one another as brethren.

Maclaren: 1Jo 3:1

The Love That Calls Us Sons

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God… '--1 John 3:1.

ONE or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce what else I have to say on these words.

The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the fact that we are called the sons of God as the great exemplification of the wonderfulness of His love. That is a perfectly possible view of the connection and meaning of the text. But if we are to translate with perfect accuracy we must render, not that we should be called,' but in order that we should be called the sons of God.' The meaning then is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to contemplate with wonder and gratitude is not only the fact of this marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which it has been given to us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in favour of the more vague that' of our version. God gives His great and wonderful love in Jesus Christ, and all the gifts and powers which live in Him like fragrance in the rose. All this lavish bestowal of love, unspeakable as it is, may be regarded as having one great end, which God deems worthy of even such expenditure, namely, that men should become, in the deepest sense, His children. It is not so much to the contemplation of our blessedness in being sons, as to the devout gaze on the love which, by its wonderful process, has made it possible for us to be sons, that we are summoned here.

Again, you will find a remarkable addition to our text in the Revised Version--namely, and such we are.' Now these words come with a very great weight of manuscript authority, and of internal evidence. They are parenthetical, a kind of rapid aside' of the writer's, expressing his joyful confidence that he and his brethren are sons of God, not only in name, but in reality. They are the voice of personal assurance, the voice of the spirit by which we cry Abba, Father,' breaking in for a moment on the flow of the sentence, like an irrepressible, glad answer to the Father's call. With these explanations let us look at the words.

I. The Love That Is Given.

We are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity but the quality of that love, which, in both respects, surpasses all our means of comparison and conception.

Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have no line long enough to sound its depths, and no experience which will give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we can do, John would have us do--that is, look and ever look at the working of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it.

We can no more behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end unwearied and ready for their task as when it began. Here are we, ninety odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its heat, lighted by its beams, and touched for good by its power in a thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many aeons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects! In like manner, who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the ardours of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love? But we can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so can, in some degree, understand it, and feel that after all we have a measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can thus behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us.'

So we have to turn to the work of Christ, and especially to His death, if we would estimate the love of God. According to John's constant teaching, that is the great proof that God loves us. The most wonderful revelation to every heart of man of the depths of that Divine heart lies in the gift of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bids me behold what manner of love.' I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which shrinks from no sacrifice, but gives Him up to death for us all.' I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which is evoked by no lovableness on my part, but comes from the depth of His own Infinite Being, who loves because He must, and who must because He is God. I turn to the Cross, and I see there manifested a love which sighs for recognition, which desires nothing of me but the repayment of my poor affection, and longs to see its own likeness in me. And I see there a love that will not be put away by sinfulness, and shortcomings, and evil, but pours its treasures on the unworthy, like sunshine on a dunghill. So, streaming through the darkness of eclipse, and speaking to me even in the awful silence in which the Son of Man died there for sin, I behold,' and I hear, the manner of love that the Father hath bestowed upon us,' stronger than death and sin, armed with all power, gentler than the fall of the dew, boundless and endless, in its measure measureless, in its quality transcendent--the love of God to me in Jesus Christ my Saviour.

In like manner we have to think,, if we would estimate the manner of this love,' that through and in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ there comes to us the gift of a divine life like His own. Perhaps it may be too great a refinement of interpretation; but it certainly does seem to me that that expression to bestow His love upon' us, is not altogether the same as to love us,' but that there is a greater depth in it. There may be some idea of that love itself being as it were infused into us, and not merely of its consequences or tokens being given to us; as Paul speaks of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts' by the spirit which is given to us. At all events this communication of divine life, which is at bottom divine love--for God's life is God's love--is His great gift to men.

Be that as it may, these two are the great tokens, consequences, and measures of God's love to us--the gift of Christ, and that which is the sequel and outcome thereof, the gift of the Spirit which is breathed into Christian spirits. These two gifts, which are one gift, embrace all that the world needs. Christ for us and Christ in us must both be taken into account if you would estimate the manner of the love that God has bestowed upon us.

We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an emphasis--which I dare say the writer did not intend--on one word of this text, and think of the love given to us,' such creatures as we are. Out of the depths we cry to Him. Not only by the voice of our supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our misery pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes upon our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract, which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness and joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by our unworthiness.

From all His works the same summons echoes. They all call us to see mirrored in them His loving care. But the Cross of Christ and the gift of a Divine Spirit cry aloud to every ear in tones of more beseeching entreaty and of more imperative command to behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.'

II. Look Next At The Sonship Which Is The Purpose Of His Given Love.

It has often been noticed that the Apostle John uses for that expression the sons of God,' another word from that which his brother Paul uses. John's phrase would perhaps be a little more accurately translated children of God,' whilst Paul, on the other hand, very seldom says children,' but almost always says sons.' Of course the children are sons and the sons are children, but still, the slight distinction of phrase is characteristic of the men, and of the different points of view from which they speak about the same thing. John's word lays stress on the children's kindred nature with their father and on their immature condition.

But without dwelling on that, let us consider this great gift and dignity of being children of God, which is the object that God has in view in all the lavish bestowment of His goodness upon us.

That end is not reached by God's making us men. Over and above that He has to send this great gift of His love, in order that the men whom He has made may become His sons. If you take the context here you will see very clearly that the writer draws a broad distinction between the sons of God' and the world' of men who do not comprehend them, and so far from being themselves sons, do not even know God's sons when they see them. And there is a deeper and solemner word still in the context. John thinks that men (within the range of light and revelation, at all events) are divided into two families--the children of God and the children of the devil.' There are two families amongst men.

Thank God, the prodigal son in his rags amongst the swine, and lying by the swine-troughs in his filth and his husks, and his fever, is a son! No doubt about that! He has these three elements and marks of sonship that no man ever gets rid of: he is of a divine origin, he has a divine likeness in that he has got mind and will and spirit, and he is the object of a divine love.

The doctrine of the New Testament about the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of man does not in the slightest degree interfere with these three great truths, that all men, though the features of the common humanity may be almost battered out of recognition in them, are all children of God because He made them; that they are children of God because still there lives in them something of the likeness of the creative Father; and, blessed be His name! that they are all children of God because He loves and provides and cares for every one of them.

All that is blessedly and eternally true; but it is also true that there is a higher relation than that to which the name children of God' is more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name is confined. If you ask what that relation is, let me quote to you three passages in this Epistle which will answer the question. Whoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,' that is the first; Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God,' that is the second; Every one that loveth is born of God,' that is the third. Or to put them all into one expression which holds them all, in the great words of his prologue in the first chapter of John's Gospel you find this: To as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.' Believing in Christ with loving trust produces, and doing righteousness and loving the brethren, as the result of that belief, prove the fact of sonship in its highest and its truest sense.

What is implied in that great word by which the Almighty gives us a name and a place as of sons and daughters? Clearly, first, a communicated life, therefore, second, a kindred nature which shall be pure as He is pure,' and, third, growth to full maturity.

This sonship, which is no mere empty name, is the aim and purpose of God's dealings, of all the revelation of His love, and most especially of the great gift of His love in Christ. Has that purpose been accomplished in you? Have you ever looked at that great gift of love that God has given you on purpose to make you His child? If you have, has it made you one? Are you trusting to Jesus Christ, whom God has sent forth that we might receive the standing of sons in Him? Are you a child of God because a brother of that Saviour? Have you received the gift of a divine life through Him? My friend, remember the grim alternative! A child of God or a child of the devil! Bitter words, narrow words, uncharitable words--as people call them! And I believe, and therefore I am bound to say it, true words, which it concerns you to lay to heart.

III. Now, Still Further, Let Me Ask You To Look At The Glad Recognition Of This Sonship By The Child's Heart.

I have already referred to the clause added in the Revised Version, and such we are.' As I said, it is a kind of aside,' in which John adds the Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters toiling and moiling obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too, the present possession of that sonship, realising it as a fact, amid all the commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's little day. Such we are' is the Here am I, Father,' of the child answering the Father's call, My Son.'

He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles is nothing; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, whom all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my brother? Can you say, And such we are?'

Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say I know that I am a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous, timorous lips have never ventured to say I know.' They will say, Well, I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will put in an adverb or two, and say, I humbly hope that I am.' It is a far robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, ay, and a humbler one too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when God says, My son!' says My Father; and when God calls us His children, leaps up and gladly answers, And we are!' Do not be afraid of being too confident, if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourselves; but be afraid of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of self-righteousness masquerading under the guise of such a profound consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a child of God. It is not a question of worthiness or unworthiness. It is a question, in the first place, and mainly, of the truth of Christ's promise and the sufficiency of Christ's Cross; and in a very subordinate degree of anything belonging to you.

IV. We Have Here, Finally, The Loving And Devout Gaze Upon This Wonderful Love.

Behold,' at the beginning of my text, is not the mere exclamation which you often find both in the Old and in the New Testaments, which is simply intended to emphasise the importance of what follows, but it is a distinct command to do the thing, to look, and ever to look, and to look again, and live in the habitual and devout contemplation of that infinite and wondrous love of God.

I have but two remarks to make about that, and the one is this, that such a habit of devout and thankful meditation upon the love of God, as manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of the Divine Spirit, joined with the humble, thankful conviction that I am a child of God thereby, lies at the foundation of all vigorous and happy Christian life. How can a thing which you do not touch with your hands and see with your eyes produce any effect upon you, unless you think about it? How can a religion which can only influence through thought and emotion do anything in you, or for you, unless you occupy your thoughts and your feelings with it? It is sheer nonsense to suppose it possible. Things which do not appeal to sense are real to us, and indeed we may say, are at all for us, only as we think about them. If you had a dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would even cease to be dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. If he were really dear to you, you would think about him. We may say (though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the matter) that, in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think about Christ, and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly accurate measure of our Christianity.

Now will you apply that sharp test to yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and decide how much of your life was pagan, and how much of it was Christian? You will never make anything of your professed Christianity, you will never get a drop of happiness or any kind of good out of it; it will neither be a strength nor a joy nor a defence to you unless you make it your habitual occupation to behold the manner of love'; and look and look and look until it warms and fills your heart.

The second remark is that we cannot keep that great sight before the eye of our minds without effort. You will have very resolutely to look away from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning, so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent depths of Heaven, though it blaze with a myriad stars. If you hold a sixpence close enough up to the pupil of your eye, it will keep you from seeing the sun. And if you hold the world close to mind and heart, as many of you do, you will only see, round the rim of it, the least tiny ring of the overlapping love of God. What the world lets you see you will see, and the world will take care that it will let you see very little --not enough to do you any good, not enough to deliver you from its chains. Wrench yourselves away, my brethren, from the absorbing contemplation of Birmingham jewellery and paste, and look at the true riches. If you have ever had some glimpses of that wondrous love, and have ever been drawn by it to cry, Abba, Father,' do not let the trifles which belong not to your true inheritance fill your thoughts, but renew the vision, and by determined turning away of your eyes from beholding vanity, look off from the things that are seen, that you may gaze upon the things that are not seen, and chiefest among them, upon the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you have never looked on that love, I beseech you now to turn aside and see this great sight. Do not let that brightness burn unnoticed while your eyes are fixed on the ground, like the gaze of men absorbed in gold digging, while a glorious sunshine is flushing the eastern sky. Look to the unspeakable, incomparable, immeasurable love of God, in giving up His Son to death for us all. Look and be saved. Look and live. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on you,' and, beholding, you will become the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.

Maclaren: 1Jo 3:2

The Unrevealed Future Of The Sons Of God

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'--1 John 3:2.

I HAVE hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything that can be said concerning them, and they cover such immense fields of dim thought, that one may well be afraid lest one should spoil them by even attempting to dilate on them. And yet they are so closely connected with the words of the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed that sermon with this.

The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: Now we are the sons of God, and' (not but') it doth not yet appear what we shall be.' Some men say, Ah! now are we, but we shall be--nothing!' John does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will always be so. There are three things in this verse, how, if we are God's children, our sonship makes us quite sure of the future; how our sonship leaves us largely in ignorance of the future, but how our sonship flings one bright, all-penetrating beam of light on the only important thing about the future, the dear vision of and the perfect likeness to Him who is our life. Now are we the sons of God,' therefore we shall be. We are the sons; we do not know what we shall be. We are the sons, and therefore, though there be a great circumference of blank ignorance as to our future, yet, blessed be His name, there is a great light burning in the middle of it! We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

I. The Fact Of Sonship Makes Us Quite Sure Of The Future.

I am not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two:--first, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and, second, that a man here can pray, and trust, and love God, and feel that he is His child. As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word rendered sons' might more accurately be translated children.' If so, we may fairly say, We are the children of God now--and if we are children now, we shall be grown up some time.' Childhood leads to maturity. The infant becomes a man.

That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with his poor, unskilled lips the name Abba! Father! will one day come to speak it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that can lift up his heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that a man who can look up and say, My Father,' shall be crushed by what befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge and seal of eternal life. That is a thought whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.' We are the sons of God,' therefore we shall always be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may become of this poor wrappage in which the soul is shrouded.

We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our religious experience takes points in the same direction.

As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. The child is father of the man'; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state, where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us. Think of the ordinary Christian character. The beginning is there, and evidently no more than the beginning. As one looks at the crudity, the inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of others, or of oneself, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect exhibition is all that so divine a principle has been able to achieve in this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we shall be all which the transforming power of God's spirit can make us. The very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong reasons for believing in the perfect life of Heaven as their purities and virtues are. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work upon Christian souls--the power of the Cross, the power of love issuing in obedience, the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious and divine is somewhere, and at some time, to bring forth something better than these few poor, half-developed flowers, something with more lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic; does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and richer soil, where it will be at home?

There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in. Christian men and women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings, stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man. Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.' They fit exactly, and correspond to their environment.' But a man!--there is an enormous amount of waste faculty about him if he is only to live in this world. There are large capacities in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which are like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked Not wanted on the voyage.' These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God I have much in me that is not wanted on the voyage,' and the more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me, in proportion as i am brought into harmony with the things beyond.

That consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am God's child, will make me sure that when I have done with earth, the tie that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home, where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the crescent moon, into full-orbed beauty. Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature' shall be able to break that tie, and banish the child from the conscious grasp of a Father's hand. Dear brother and sister, can you say, Now am I a child of God!' Then you may patiently and peacefully front that dim future.

II. Now I Come To The Second Point, Namely, That We Remain Ignorant Of Much In That Future.

That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness which lies on that beyond. We are the sons of God, and,' just because we are, it does not yet appear what we shall be.' Or, as the words are rendered in the Revised Version, it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.'

The meaning of that expression, It doth not yet appear,' or, It is not made manifest,' may be put into very plain words. John would simply say to us, There has never been set forth before men's eyes in this earthly life of ours an example, or an instance, of what the sons of God are to be in another state of being.' And so, because men have never had the instance before them, they do not know much about that state.

In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about amongst men upon earth after Resurrection. Christ has been raised to the right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the glorified Christ, and although He has set forth before man's senses irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent given glimpses and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose that the glorious body' of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the cloud received Him out of their sight,' nor, indeed, could it be assumed while He moved among the material realities of this world, and did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognise that Christ's Resurrection and Ascension have brought life and immortality to light,' we must remember that it is the fact, and not the manner of the fact, which they make plain; and that, even after His example, it has not been manifested what is the body of glory which He now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be when we are fashioned after its likeness.

There has been no manifestation, then, to sense, or to human experience, of that future, and, therefore, there is next to no knowledge about it. You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. You may speculate and argue and guess as much as you like, but that does not thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has no more faculty or opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like than man here, in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The chrysalis' dreams about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a man's imagination of what a future life will be.

So let us feel two things:--Let us be thankful that we do not know, for the ignorance is the sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to nourish imagination and hope. If we had more knowledge, supposing it could be given, of the conditions of that future life, it would lose some of its power to attract. Ignorance does not always prevent the occupation of the mind with a subject. Blank ignorance does; but ignorance, shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one way seems all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden, stimulates desire, hope, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce in the limited knowledge.

Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot answer, and will not ask. There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our own future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist, become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them; it is not so easy to say: Thank God, we cannot answer them yet!' If we could it would only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the experience of Heaven; and that would be to bring the future down to the low levels of this present. Let us be thankful then that so long as we can only speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we have yet to learn the vocabulary of Heaven. Let us be thankful that our best help to know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are, and that the loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the future lie in negatives like these:--I saw no temple therein.' There shall be no night there.' There shall be no curse there.' There shall be no more sighing nor weeping, for the former things are passed away.'

The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit, shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in ignorance, and thankfully say, Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not appear what we shall be!

III. Now I Must Be Very Brief With The Last Thought That Is Here.

Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I am the less unwilling to be so because we cannot travel one inch beyond the revelations of the Book in reference to the matter. The thought is this, that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that future, in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness. we know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

When He shall be manifested'--to what period does that refer? It seems most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that spoken of only a verse or two before. And now, little children, abide in Him, and when He shall be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming (1 John 2:28). That coming' then, is the manifestation' of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming in His glory that His servants shall be like Him, and see Him as He is.' Clearly then it is Christ whom we shall see and become like, and not the Father invisible.

To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of assimilation by the power of loving contemplation, is the blessed way of ennobling character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted grace. Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such and to look on them has been an education. The same process is exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But all these are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with which that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy hearts that behold Him, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him which will be printed in light upon their faces.

It matters not, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, if to all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our all-sufficient answer, We shall be like Him.' As good old Richard Baxter has it:--

My knowledge of that life is small,The eye of faith is dim;But, tis enough that Christ knows all,And I shall be like Him!'

It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord.' There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about the manner of that vision. He Himself prayed, in that great intercessory prayer, Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.' That vision of the glorified manhood of Jesus Christ--certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it comes through sense or through thought--to behold that vision is all the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect, and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and the likeness' to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite Beauty.

As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, moulding and transforming us to its own beauty. With unveiled face reflecting as a mirror does, the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into the same image.' We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

Dear brethren, all begins with this, love Christ and trust Him and you are a child of God! And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.'

MHCC: 1Jo 3:1-2

Little does the world know of the happiness of the real followers of Christ. Little does the world think that these poor, humble, despised ones, are favourites of God, and will dwell in heaven. Let the followers of Christ be content with hard fare here, since they are in a land of strangers, where their Lord was so badly treated before them. The sons of God must walk by faith, and live by hope. They may well wait in faith, hope, and earnest desire, for the revelation of the Lord Jesus. The sons of God will be known, and be made manifest by likeness to their Head. They shall be transformed into the same image, by their view of him.

Matthew Henry: 1Jo 3:1-3

The apostle, having shown the dignity of Christ's faithful followers, that they are born of him and thereby nearly allied to God, now here,

I. Breaks forth into the admiration of that grace that is the spring of such a wonderful vouchsafement: Behold (see you, observe) what manner of love, or how great love, the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, effectually called (he who calls things that are not makes them to be what they were not) the sons of God! The Father adopts all the children of the Son. The Son indeed calls them, and makes them his brethren; and thereby he confers upon them the power and dignity of the sons of God. It is wonderful condescending love of the eternal Father, that such as we should be made and called his sons - we who by nature are heirs of sin, and guilt, and the curse of God - we who by practice are children of corruption, disobedience, and ingratitude! Strange, that the holy God is not ashamed to be called our Father, and to call us his sons! Thence the apostle,

II. Infers the honour of believers above the cognizance of the world. Unbelievers know little of them. Therefore (or wherefore, upon this score) the world knoweth us not, 1Jo 3:1. Little does the world perceive the advancement and happiness of the genuine followers of Christ. They are here exposed to the common calamities of earth and time; all things fall alike to them as to others, or rather they are subject to the greater sorrow, for they have often reason to say, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, 1Co 15:19. The unchristian world, therefore, that walks by sight, knows not their dignity, their privileges, the enjoyments they have in hand, nor what they are entitled to. Little does the world think that these poor, humble, contemned ones are the favourites of heaven, and will be inhabitants there ere long. And they may bear their case the better since their Lord was here unknown as well as they: Because it knew him not, 1Jo 3:1. Little did the world think how great a person was once sojourning here, that the Maker of it was once an inhabitant of it. Little did the Jewish world think that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was one of their blood, and dwelt in their land; he came to his own, and his own received him not. He came to his own, and his own crucified him; but surely, had they known him, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, 1Co 2:8. Let the followers of Christ be content with hard fare here, since they are in a land of strangers, among those who little know them, and their Lord was so treated before them. Then the apostle,

III. Exalts these persevering disciples in the prospect of the certain revelation of their state and dignity. Here, 1. Their present honourable relation is asserted: Beloved (you may well be our beloved, for you are beloved of God), now are we the sons of God, 1Jo 3:2. We have the nature of sons by regeneration: we have the title, and spirit, and right to the inheritance of sons by adoption. This honour have all the saints. 2. The discovery of the bliss belonging and suitable to this relation is denied: And it doth not yet appear what we shall be, 1Jo 3:2. The glory pertaining to the sonship and adoption is adjourned and reserved for another world. The discovery of it here would put a stop to the current of affairs that must now proceed. The sons of God must walk by faith, and live by hope. 3. The time of the revelation of the sons of God in their proper state and glory is determined; and that is when their elder brother comes to call and collect them all together: But we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him. The particle, ean , usually translated if, is here well rendered when; for the Hebrew particle am (to which this is thought to correspond) is observed so to signify, as Dr. Whitby has here noted; and not only is ean sometimes used for hotan , but some copies even here read hotan , when. And accordingly it seems proper so to render it in Joh 14:3, where we read it, And if I go, and prepare a place; but more naturally and properly, When I shall have gone, and shall have prepared the place, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, or paralēpsomai - I will take you along with myself, that where I am there you may be also. When the head of the church, the only-begotten of the Father, shall appear, his members, the adopted of God, shall appear and be manifested together with him. They may then well wait in faith, hope, and earnest desire, for the revelation of the Lord Jesus; as even the creation itself waiteth for their perfection, and the public manifestation of the sons of God, Rom 8:19. The sons of God will be known and be made manifest by their likeness to their head: They shall be like him - like him in honour, and power, and glory. Their vile bodies shall be made like his glorious body; they shall be filled with life, light, and bliss from him. When he, who is their life, shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory, Col 3:4. Then, 4. Their likeness to him is argued from the sight they shall have of him: We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Their likeness will be the cause of that sight which they shall have of him. Indeed, all shall see him, but not as they do; not as he is, namely, to those in heaven. The wicked shall see him in his frowns, in the terror of his majesty, and the splendour of his avenging perfections; but these shall see him in the smiles and beauty of his face, in the correspondence and amiableness of his glory, in the harmony and agreeableness of his beatific perfections. Their likeness shall enable them to see him as the blessed do in heaven. Or the sight of him shall be the cause of their likeness; it shall be a transformative sight: they shall be transformed into the same image by the beatific view that they shall have of him. Then the apostle,

IV. Urges the engagement of these sons of God to the prosecution of holiness: And every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure, 1Jo 3:3. The sons of God know that their Lord is holy and pure; he is of purer heart and eyes than to admit any pollution or impurity to dwell with him. Those then who hope to live with him must study the utmost purity from the world, and flesh, and sin; they must grow in grace and holiness. Not only does their Lord command them to do so, but their new nature inclines them so to do; yea, their hope of heaven will dictate and constrain them so to do. They know that their high priest is holy, harmless, and undefiled. They know that their Go and Father is the high and holy one, that all the society is pure and holy, that their inheritance is an inheritance of saints in light. It is a contradiction to such hope to indulge sin and impurity. And therefore, as we are sanctified by faith, we must be sanctified by hope. That we may be saved by hope we must be purified by hope. It is the hope of hypocrites, and not of the sons of God, that makes an allowance for the gratification of impure desires and lusts.

Barclay: 1Jo 3:1-2

It may well be that the best illumination of this passage is the Scottish Paraphrase of it:

Behold the amazing gift of love

the Father hath bestow'd

On us, the sinful sons of men,

to call us sons of God!

Concealed as yet this honour lies,

by this dark world unknown,

A world that knew not when he came,

even God's eternal Son.

High is the rank we now possess,

but higher we shall rise;

Though what we shall hereafter be

is hid from mortal eyes.

Our souls, we know, when he appears,

shall bear his image bright;

For all his glory, full disclosed,

shall open to our sight.

A hope so great, and so divine,

may trials well endure;

And purge the soul from sense and sin,

as Christ himself is pure.

John begins by demanding that his people should remember their privileges. It is their privilege that they are called the children of God. There is something even in a name. Chrysostom, in a sermon on how to bring up children, advises parents to give their boy some great scriptural name, to teach him repeatedly the story of the original bearer of the name, and so to give him a standard to live up to when he grows to manhood. So the Christian has the privilege of being called the child of God. Just as to belong to a great school, a great regiment, a great church, a great household is an inspiration to fine living, so, even more, to bear the name of the family of God is something to keep a man's feet on the right way and to set him climbing.

But, as John points out, we are not merely called the children of God; we are the children of God.

There is something here which we may well note. It is by the gift of God that a man becomes a child of God. By nature a man is the creature of God, but it is by grace that he becomes the child of God. There are two English words which are closely connected but whose meanings are widely different, paternity and fatherhood. Paternity describes a relationship in which a man is responsible for the physical existence of a child; fatherhood describes an intimate, loving, relationship. In the sense of paternity all men are children of God; but in the sense of fatherhood men are children of God only when he makes his gracious approach to them and they respond.

There are two pictures, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, which aptly and vividly set out this relationship. In the Old Testament there is the covenant idea. Israel is the covenant people of God. That is to say, God on his own initiative had made a special approach to Israel; he was to be uniquely their God, and they were to be uniquely his people. As an integral part of the covenant God gave to Israel his law, and it was on the keeping of that law that the covenant relationship depended.

In the New Testament there is the idea of adoption (Rom 8:14-17; 1Co 1:9; Gal 3:26-27; Gal 4:6-7). Here is the idea that by a deliberate act of adoption on the part of God the Christian enters into his family.

While all men are children of God in the sense that they owe their lives to him, they become his children in the intimate and loving sense of the term only by an act of God's initiating grace and the response of their own hearts.

Immediately the question arises: if men have that great honour when they become Christians, why are they so despised by the world? The answer is that they are experiencing only what Jesus Christ has already experienced. When he came into the world, he was not recognized as the Son of God; the world preferred its own ideas and rejected his. The same is bound to happen to any man who chooses to embark on the way of Jesus Christ.

Barclay: 1Jo 3:1-2

John, then, begins by reminding his people of the privileges of the Christian life. He goes on to set before them what is in many ways a still more tremendous truth, the great fact that this life is only a beginning. Here John observes the only true agnosticism. So great is the future and its glory that he will not even guess at it or try to put it into inevitably inadequate words. But there are certain things he does say about it.

(i) When Christ appears in his glory, we shall be like him. Surely in John's mind there was the saying of the old creation story that man was made in the image and in the likeness of God (Gen 1:26). That was God's intention; and that was man's destiny. We have only to look into any mirror to see how far man has fallen short of that destiny. But John believes that in Christ a man will finally attain it, and at last bear the image and the likeness of God. It is John's belief that only through the work of Christ in his soul can a man reach the true manhood God meant him to reach.

(ii) When Christ appears, we shall see him and be like him. The goal of all the great souls has been the vision of God. The end of all devotion is to see God. But that vision of God is not for the sake of intellectual satisfaction; it is in order that we may become like him. There is a paradox here. We cannot become like God unless we see him; and we cannot see him unless we are pure in heart, for only the pure in heart shall see God (Mat 5:8). In order to see God, we need the purity which only he can give. We are not to think of this vision of God as something which only the great mystics can enjoy. There is somewhere the story of a poor and simple man who would often go into a cathedral to pray; and he would always pray kneeling before the crucifix. Someone noticed that, though he knelt in the attitude of prayer, his lips never moved and he never seemed to say anything. He asked what he was doing kneeling like that and the man answered: "I look at him; and he looks at me." That is the vision of God in Christ that the simplest soul can have; and he who looks long enough at Jesus Christ must become like him.

One other thing we must note. John is here thinking in terms of the Second Coming of Christ. It may be that we can think in the same terms; or it may be that we cannot think so literally of a coming of Christ in glory. Be that as it may, there will come for every one of us the day when we shall see Christ and behold his glory. Here there is always the veil of sense and time, but the day will come when that veil, too, will be torn in two.

When death these mortal eyes shall seal,

And still this throbbing heart,

The rending veil shall thee reveal

All glorious as thou art.

Therein is the Christian hope and the vast possibility of the Christian life.

Constable: 1Jo 1:5--3:1

II. Living in the light 1:5--2:29

"The teaching of 1 John is concerned essentially with the conditions for true Christian discipleship. The two main divisions of the letter set out these conditions and exhort the readers to live in the light (1:5-2:29) as children of God (3:1-5:13)."²⁷

John began his exposition of how his readers could enjoy fellowship with God by introducing the concept of God as light (1:5-7) and then explaining with four conditions what fellowship with God requires (1:8-2:29).

Constable: 1Jo 1:8--3:1

B. Conditions for living in the light 1:8-2:29

John articulated four fundamental principles that underlie fellowship with God to facilitate his readers' experience of that fellowship. One must renounce sin (1:8-2:2), obey God (2:3-11), reject worldliness (2:12-17), and keep the faith (2:18-29) to live in the light of God's presence.

"If the readers are to have fellowship with the Father and with the Son (v. 3), they must understand what makes this possible. They must know who God is in himself and, consequently, who they are in themselves as creatures of God. So the author first describes the moral character of God in terms of light (v. 5) and then goes on to deny three claims made by those who falsely boast of their knowledge and fellowship with God. The false positions are (1) moral behavior is a matter of indifference in one's relationship to God (v. 6); (2) immoral conduct does not issue in sin for one who knows God (v. 8); and (3) the knowledge of God removes sin as even a possibility in the life of the believer (v. 10). True tests' or evidence of fellowship with God or walking in the light are (1) fellowship with one another (v. 7), with subsequent cleansing by the blood of Christ; (2) confession of sin, (v. 9) which brings both forgiveness and cleansing; and (3) trusting that if we sin we have Jesus Christ as an advocate and sacrifice for our sins (2:2)."⁴³

"It would be difficult to find any single passage of Scripture more crucial and fundamental to daily Christian living than 1 John 1:5-10. For here, in a few brief verses, the disciple whom Jesus loved' has laid down for us the basic principles which underlie a vital walk with God."⁴⁴

Constable: 1Jo 3:1--5:14

III. Living as children of God 3:1--5:13

"In the second division of this document (3:1-5:13) John concentrates on the developing spiritual life of his followers, rather than sustaining his attack on the heretics, some of whom have already seceded from his church (2:19). The latter, however, are still in view (cf. 3:4, 7; 4:1-6).

"John's teaching in this new section follows the same literary pattern as before. After an initial statement about the character of God as Father (3:1-3 [cf. 1:5-7]), a number of conditions are set out for living as God's children. These balance almost exactly the conditions for living in the light announced in the earlier chapters. . . . The following table makes the parallels clear:

"Live in the light (1:5-2:29)	Live as children of God (3:1-5:13)
(a) God is light	(a) God is Father
(b) 1st condition: renounce sin	(b) 1st condition: renounce sin
(c) 2nd condition: be obedient	(c) 2nd condition: be obedient
(d) 3rd condition: reject worldliness	(d) 3rd condition: reject worldliness
	(e) 4th condition: be loving
(f) 4th condition: keep the faith	(f) 5th condition: keep the faith."103

Constable: 1Jo 3:1-3

A. God as Father 3:1-3

This section introduces John's recapitulation and expansion of his exposition of what is necessary for people to have fellowship with God. He changed his figure from God as light to God as the Father of the believer.

"John begins his description of God as Father (with its correlative: believers are his children) by combining the themes of regeneration (v 1) and parousia (v 2). These twin ideas look back to 2:28-29, where they are found in the reverse order."¹⁰⁴

3:1 The production of righteous behavior in abiding Christians is evidence of God's great love for us. Scripture calls us God's children (Gr. tekna) because that is what He has made us. The name simply expresses the reality.

"The thought here is of the community of nature with the prospect of development (teknon, comp. 2 Pet. 1. 4), and not of the position of privilege (huios)."¹⁰⁵

Unbelievers cannot fully comprehend the children of God. The reason for this lack of perception is their failure to comprehend God fully. Since they do not "know" the Parent they do not "know" the children (cf. John 1:12-13; 5:37; 7:28; 16:3).

"The author wants his readers to know that approval by the world is to be feared, not desired. To be hated by the world may be unpleasant, but ultimately it should reassure the members of the community of faith that they are loved by God, which is far more important than the world's hatred."¹⁰⁶

". . . the world hates the children of God (3:13), just as it hated Jesus (Jn. 15:18f.), since they do not belong to the world. This very fact is a further proof that the readers are children of God: the way in which the world does not recognize them as being on its side is proof that they belong to God."¹⁰⁷

3:2 Even though we are presently God's children we do not yet fully reflect His image as we shall. However when (not "if," another third class condition) Jesus Christ appears and we see Him, we shall experience full transformation (i.e., glorification). Evidently seeing Jesus Christ will fully transform us physically and spiritually (cf. 1 Cor. 13:12).

"A child of God is here and now, indeed, like a diamond that is crystal white within but is still uncut and shows no brilliant flashes from reflected facets."¹⁰⁸

"He will not be anything essentially different hereafter, but he will be what he is now essentially more completely, though in ways wholly beyond our powers of imagination."¹⁰⁹

Note that John's references to the parousia in 2:28 and 3:2 frame his references to the new birth in 2:29 and 3:1.

3:3 In the meantime we anticipate seeing and knowing Jesus Christ fully, and that anticipation has a purifying effect on us now (cf. 2:1, 6, 29; 3:7, 16; 4:17; Matt. 5:8).¹¹⁰ Similarly in the future seeing and knowing Christ will have a completely purifying effect on us (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18). The believer's hope is not "in him" (AV and NIV; i.e., "within himself"), but "on Him" (NASB; i.e., "set on Christ"; Gr. ep auto).

College: 1Jo 3:1-24

1 JOHN 3

B. GOD'S LOVE FOR HIS CHILDREN (3:1-3)

¹ How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears ^a , we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³ Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure"

^a 2 Or when it is made known

3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,

The word translated "lavished" is from divdwmi (didômi, "to give"). However when we think of the awesomeness of having God give to us, it does become lavish. God has granted to us physical being, everyday blessings, health, the ability to be happy, and on top of all of this, a spiritual fellowship with him and his Son Jesus Christ. When God, "who owns all the cattle on a thousand hills" (Ps 50:10) gives to us, then we should be deeply humbled! We sustain a very special relation with God. The world does not have that kind of a relationship. And the world does not realize how greatly blessed we are because "it did not know him." There is a cause-relation kinship between the world knowing us and the world knowing God. They did not know God, so they could not know us. The greatest wonder of all is that we are children of God! None of us has had anything to do with who our natural parents are. But in the case of our Heavenly Father, we make a determined choice. God does not force us to become his children. We obey his commands, and he makes us his children. There is a parallel between this verse and Jesus' teaching to Nicodemus about the new birth (John 3:1-3). It is not because of our own righteousness that we are children of God. It is brought about because of God's great love for us.

that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

John makes a strong exclamation: we are to be called children of God . And then to emphasize his thought he adds, And that is what we are! Again, he stresses that the world does not know us. The reason? Because it did not know him. These Gnostics, the false teachers, do not know us because they do not know God! Earlier, John stated that they are not of us. "If they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us" (see 1 John 2:19).

3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God,

Some emphasis seems to be given to the word "now." We know what we are now : we are children of God . John makes three statements which represent the sequence of some events to follow: first, when he shall appear (v. 1); second, we shall be like him, (v. 2); and , third, we shall see him as he is. Of this we can be assured. All of this is because we are children of God. No one has ever seen God (John 6:46). The nearest anyone has come was to see Jesus, for he said "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).

We know what we are now; we are children of the Father in heaven. We know some things about our earthly existence as part of the fellowship of God. We know that angels and the prophets longed to see and experience what we enjoy. "Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things" (1 Pet 1:10-12).

and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

One of the reasons that we cannot know what he is now is because we do not have the ability to peer into the spiritual realm. Our language and our understanding is not sufficient to look into the spiritual and eternal realm. This is one reason why what we will be has not yet been made known. God has not revealed to us the manner of transformation we will experience when we meet our Savior. But we are assured that we will experience a transformation. Paul told the Corinthian Christians that "we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:18). The Gnostics would not have understood what John is saying. How can one who was human (as Jesus was) also be a spiritual, eternal being; and how can he at his coming make us to be like he is? Undoubtedly, John is establishing a very important concept for those who did not follow the heretics who had left them. Why would they want to follow them when the privileges of following Christ were so magnificent and awe-inspiring? What John is saying is that "this transformation will take place because we shall see him as he is."

3:3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

This hope is obviously referring to the hope that we will be changed and will be like him. It is a hope that is in him (that is, in Jesus). It is not surprising that John would connect our being like him to the concept of purity. Jesus was pure and he stressed purity. This would be in contradistinction to the Gnostics' denial of sin (see 1:8-2:2) and to the impurity of the lives of some of the Gnostics we read about in ancient literature. Some of them taught and practiced "free love," and if there is no sin, they undoubtedly practiced other activities that would tend to be impure.

Purity does not come to the Christian through anything the Christian is or has done . Purity comes about through the shedding of Jesus' blood on the cross. The docetic Gnostics denied that Jesus died on the cross. He only seemed to die. John has emphasized before that since Christ is righteous, we need to practice righteousness (through obedience to his commands) if we expect to be righteous. Nothing but the blood of Christ can remove the guilt and stain of sin on our lives (see 1:7; 1 Pet 1:22; 2 Cor 7:1).

C. WARNINGS AGAINST SIN (3:4-10)

⁴ Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵ But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶ No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

⁷ Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸ He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. ⁹ No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰ This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

Again, John makes a sudden change in the thought. It is all connected to his central theme, which is to discredit those "who went out from them." The gnostic philosophy did not have any place in it for a doctrine of sin. If one had the "special" gift of knowledge that they claimed to have, he was above sin. In the first part of this section of Scripture, John begins first by telling us about the nature of sin and the sinner.

3:4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.

Paul pointed out this same truth to the Romans. It was through the law that Paul learned about sin. The law itself is not sin, but disobeying what the law said was sin (see Rom 7:7-12). It does not appear here that the "law" is referring to the Law of Moses. Rather, sin appears to be just the opposite of righteousness. Righteousness has already been described as obedience of the commands, or commandments, given to us through the Son. So, as Jesus is righteous, so we also should be righteous when we obey the commands. This in no way is giving us the ability to be righteous on our own. It is through the shedding of Jesus' blood that we are made righteous. Living a lawless life is living as if there were no law. There were two major approaches to the definition of sin in John's day. Lawlessness (ajnomivan, anomian , "no law") was one form. To the Jewish population, this would be very clear, for they were bound by the law. The other meaning of sin was the Greek concept of sin, "missing the mark," from the Greek word aJmartiva ( hamartia , literally, "missing the mark" or "sin"). John uses the word hamartia here when he says "sin is lawlessness." He covers both of these meanings here in his text.

3:5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.

This was the redeeming work of Jesus. The verb used here is not the one used for "to atone for" but rather "to take away, to bear away." Jesus was a "ransom" price for all men (1 Tim 2:6). He was an ajntivlutron ( antilytron , "ransom price"). Satan had all of humankind in his clutches. He could rightly say that all men had disobeyed God's laws and that they had to pay the penalty. But then Jesus stepped in to pay the penalty for us and to set us free. We now belong to God! We could have only been redeemed by one who was not vulnerable to Satan's accusations himself. Jesus had no sin or else he could not have ransomed us.

3:6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

John is not claiming that Christians do not sin, for he has already said (1:8-10) that if we claim to be without sin, we are liars. The expression "who lives in him," literally means "abides, or remains" in him. This statement was not intended to mean that we do not sin; it means we do not live a life of sin. See notes on verses 8-9 later. John wants to make it perfectly clear that the gnostic idea of sin was not in keeping with what had been revealed from the Savior. No one who continues to live a life of sin has either seen him or known him .

3:7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray.

In this very grave warning, John uses the word "little children." Perhaps he wants them to realize that he both loves them (for this is a very endearing word) and that he wants to impress upon them their fallibility in the face of serious temptation to follow new and fanciful doctrines. Even in our own day, there must be constant vigilance for those who would teach error. As we have tried to impress, many of the teachings of the Gnostics have arisen in different situations throughout the ages, and we have many of them in such new heresies as the New Age movement. The apostle Paul gave serious warnings not unlike those of John. To the elders (the leaders and shepherds of the flock of Christians) Paul warned, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number [emphasis mine] men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears" (Acts 20:29-31). None of us is totally out of the devil's reach. Without constant protection from our Father and Jesus his Son, we could all fall into the hands of Satan.

He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Living right, or righteously, is living according to law or not missing the mark. John's first statement here is really self-explanatory. It seems, however, that John is emphasizing this great truth because some were in danger of being led astray by the gnostic teachings that sin was not a reality. They needed to be told that forgiveness and cleansing from sin are vitally important to all of them. Paul faced this same problem, and he deals with it in Romans 6:1ff. He asked them "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" to which he answered, "By no means!" Whether he was dealing here with gnostic teachers or someone else who was trying to minimize the terribleness of sin, we do not know. Both John and Paul deal very forthrightly about the terrible consequences of sin and how we must avoid sin. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Jesus is undoubtedly the one who is righteous. John uses the same emphatic word as he did in verse 3 to refer to Jesus. Associating (or, fellowshiping) with Jesus will assure us the right example and the appropriate standard by which to build our lives.

3:8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

We have seen that sin is incompatible with Christ, and Christians should therefore avoid it. A second reason why we should avoid sin is because of its origin. It is not merely "missing the mark." It puts us into the "family of Satan." The devil is the originator of sin; he is the father of sin. He evidently was disobedient to God from the very beginning. There are a number of statements in the Scripture that indicate that Satan was a rebellious, fallen angel. John pushes the time of his rebellious fall to an early point: from the beginning. The devil has been sinning from the beginning; and ever since that time it has been the very nature of the devil to be a sinner.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

The mission of Jesus in his first coming was to destroy sin and the devil. Paul says that Christ "must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:25-26). Even though death is still present among us, Paul assures us that Jesus has actually destroyed death through his resurrection. We indicated earlier that Jesus' first coming was as a savior and his second coming will be as a judge. This is certainly true so far as the devil is concerned.

3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.

Born of God is from the word gegennhmevno" (gegennçmenos, a perfect passive participle, meaning "has already been born of God"). Being a perfect tense, it signifies that the Christian has already been born of God and remains in that condition. And the expression will continue to sin is a continuous present tense, indicating that one born of God will not continue living a life of sin. Again, it is not intended to suggest that the one born of God will never sin or make a mistake; it means that he will not live a life that is characterized by sin.

3:10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

How do we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are? Very simply: by their fruits. Those who continue living a life of sin cannot be children of God. And those who do not love their brothers are not children of God. There is an interesting inference that we might draw from John's discussion. One would assume, from the number of times John discusses it, that the Gnostics may not have believed in or practiced love for their brothers. We read that they were a very self-centered people who believed that they were better than others. After all, they divided people into three categories: sinners, ordinary Christians (who had not received the special gift of spiritual knowledge), and the gnostic Christians (who had this special knowledge which separated them from all others). Is it possible that this also included not loving their brothers?

D. LOVE ONE ANOTHER (3:11-24)

¹¹ This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹² Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. ¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. ¹⁹ This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence ²⁰ whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴ Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

These next fourteen verses give us one of the most powerful expressions of love that you will find. John returns to the role of love as proof that we are walking in the light. He reminds them that this is a central part of the message they had received in the beginning.

3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

This part of his message to them is connected with the previous statements about who is a son of righteousness and who is a son of the devil. He begins verse 11 with the words, o{ti au{th (hoti hautç, "because this" is the message from the beginning), indicating the direct relation of the two thoughts. In other words, it is because it is connected to the message from the beginning, then we should love one another.

3:12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous.

When we fulfill this commandment to love one another, we must be careful that our lives are not like that of Cain (see Gen 4:2-16) who committed the first murder by killing his own brother. John is showing that Cain did not love his brother, as evidenced by his cold-blooded murder of Abel. The situation between them arose because the two brothers had offered sacrifices to God; God accepted Abel's offering but rejected Cain's offering. We are not certain why Abel's was acceptable but Cain's wasn't. John said the reason he murdered Abel was because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. What he did that his actions were evil, we do not know. Was it because Cain offered from the produce of the field while Abel offered a blood sacrifice from his flocks? Was it because only Abel offered his sacrifice "by faith" (Heb 11:4)? We are not told, but for some reason Cain was rejected because he did not properly obey God. John used the illustration of Cain to show the depth of love that we should have for our brothers. Cain's hatred for his brother illustrates a life without righteousness.

3:13 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.

It is likely that the Christians of this time were enduring hatred and mistreatment by those "on the cutting edge," as it were, of Christian thinking. These Gnostics were probably making fun of the other Christians for not going along with their false teaching. Certainly the "world" was rejecting this new belief called the "Way," and John is warning them not to be discouraged. Even in our day, we should not "be surprised if the world hates" us; neither should those of John's day have been surprised if they hated the Christians. The same situation exists in our world (and in their world) as existed with Cain and Abel. If the world is evil and God's children are righteous, why should it be surprising that the world hated them?

3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

John is showing in these verses that love is the evidence of righteousness, not the basis of spiritual living. Earlier John stated that to be righteous, one must obey the commandments (commands) of God. Now, he equates righteousness with loving one's brother. In verse 14, hating one's brother is identified as murder. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says the same thing: "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment," and ultimately this can lead to hell (Matt 5:21-22).

3:15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Hatred of our brother is identified as murder, and murderers have no place in heaven. This is altogether reasonable, because the one who destroys life has set himself against eternal life.

3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

This verse is obviously a comparison, in John's mind, of Cain and Christ. Cain showed his feelings by murdering his brother. Jesus shows his love to us by laying down his life for us. Here John gives us a definition of "love." He defines it by giving an example of what it does. We know love, he says, because Jesus . . . laid down his life for us. Love takes place when we become "other-centered" rather than "self-centered." In his Gospel, John quotes Jesus as saying, "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The extent of Jesus' love is also seen in John 15:12-13, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And Jesus demonstrated the power of his love in laying down his life for all of his friends (or, disciples). Marshall has this comment, "It [this passage in 1 John 3:16] indicates that one is prepared to give up one's own life in order that others may live. Love means saying 'No' to one's own life so that somebody else may live. Finally, it should be noted that the laying down of life is done for the benefit of the other person." John then makes this action of Jesus even more personal to his readers by saying that we too should lay down our lives for each other.

3:17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

John now illustrates the extent to which our love should reach. It is a demanding requirement! In our day (especially in highly developed nations like America) most of us have far more than we actually need to sustain ourselves. John demands that we lay down part of that which we have to give to a needy brother. This is how koinwniva (koinônia, "fellowship, oneness") should work in our lives. The early church "shared everything they had" (Acts 4:32) with each other. We certainly realize that this was a special situation when people had come from throughout the world, were converted to Jesus Christ, and stayed on in Jerusalem to learn more about this new "Way" they had just found. Certainly there is a kind of spiritual practicality that we must be able to use in applying this to our lives. May God forbid that we use this "spiritual practicality" inappropriately for our own selfish gain, but each person should examine his/her life to decide how we apply this "definition" of love to our own spiritual lives.

3:18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

This brief section shows how we can have assurance that we are acceptable to our Lord. Our love must not be merely for show. We must do more than just "talk a good love." I knew a farmer many years ago who could "talk a good crop" for the next year during the winter months. But when it came time to carry out his plans, they were not very successful. Many are this way with their love. They talk about and tell how great their love is. But it is only love with words or tongue , as John charges. We must put our love into action. Only then will it be love in truth .

3:19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 3:20 whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Our love helps us to know whether we belong to the truth. John tells us that when we know that our hearts condemn us, our love is insufficient. Since God is greater than our hearts, then he can know who we are and what we are. Let us not try to deceive God by having only a "love with words or tongue." God knows our hearts. We can set our hearts at rest in his presence if we are obedient to his command. We know that we "belong to the truth" when our consciences are at ease in his presence.

3:21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God

J.W Roberts gives a very good overview of verses 21-23. He writes, "As a conclusion to his second major part of the epistle, John mentions three things which seem unrelated to each other but which tie to the major themes of the epistle. First he expands the mention of the believer's confidence before God to include the answer to prayer (vss. 21, 22). Next, he combines the two themes of believing in Jesus as the Son of God and loving one another as the commandment of Christ (vs. 23). Lastly he confirms the fellowship of those who do the commandments by their having the Holy Spirit (vs. 24)." In verse 19, John discusses "hearts at rest" and hearts that "condemn." If our hearts are in tune with God's heart, then our consciences are at rest. This is what John is saying here. If our hearts do not condemn us, then we are "in tune" with God and we have confidence before God. How can one have confidence before God when that heart is impure?

3:22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

Although the impure, or pure, heart is a very important element of Christian living, this was not the major reason John mentions it here. He mentions it here to show the relationship we have with God. We will receive from him anything we ask . Why can we be confident that we will receive what we ask? Because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. God will be responsive to his children, and his true children will be obedient to him and will make him proud because we seek to please him. This is the essence of how we keep a clean conscience - to remain in his fellowship.

3:23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

As if his readers have forgotten what his commands are, John tells them. God's command is singular: to believe Jesus Christ and to love one another. It would appear from John's statement that you can't have one without the other. Many in our world would have us believe that all that is necessary to be a good Christian is to just be filled with love for one another, but this is not what John is saying here or elsewhere. The love must be coupled with faith in Jesus Christ. It is not true that anyone who shows love for others is a Christian. Again, it should be emphasized that an idle, inactive faith can be a damnable thing to have. Faith, to be acceptable to God, has to be accompanied with works of obedience (see the first and last sentences of the book of Romans. James warns that even the "demons believe . . . and shudder" (James 2:19). So it is not enough to believe and do nothing about it. Nor can we have love without doing something. Love is one of the greatest motivators we have. You cannot truly love without demonstrating it. So, when John summarizes the meaning of the commands of Jesus, he is stressing the deepest involvement with the Lord that we can have.

3:24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.

One of John's favorite phrases (and certainly, one of Paul's) is "in him." Both of these apostles use this to describe the relationship that we have with Jesus. We are "in him" and he is "in us," as we can see from the first part of this verse. It sounds like this is not possible, for how can I be "in him" and he be "in me" at the same time? This is another way of saying that if we have the proper relationship with Jesus, then we have a common identity. This language reminds us of John's use of such terms as "abide in him," the union and fellowship (koinônia) that we share with Jesus. We are told in John's Gospel that "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me" (John 14:23-24). John insists that obedience to the commandments of God is the condition for having communion with him. This relationship was undoubtedly pointed to the Gnostics who said that it is impossible for man to come into a communion or direct fellowship with God. This was because God is spiritual and mankind is material.

And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

How do we know that we have fellowship and communion with God? We know it by the Spirit he gave us. This is the same Spirit that Jesus promised he would send after he left his disciples. "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26). God did not leave us alone when Jesus returned to heaven; we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

Lapide: 1Jo 3:1-24

CHAPTER 3

Ver. 1 . — Behold what great love the Father hath bestowed on us (unworthy, enemies and sinners as we are), that we should be called, and be the sons of God. Love, actively, His wondrous love to us, and passively, as communicated and infused into us. "How much He loved us," says Vatablus, "in giving us that love whereby we are called the sons of God. For our created love flows out of His uncreated love, as a ray from the sun," &c. For those whom God loves with His uncreated love, He makes to love Him in return with that created love which He infuses. For love is friendship or mutual affection between God and a righteous man. And just as we His creatures owe Him, as our Creator, all honour, worship, and service, so do we as His servants owe Him, as our Lord, fear, reverence, and obedience, and as the Father of all do we owe Him our highest love, our whole, heart, our whole will and affections.

S. John had before stated that he that doeth righteousness is born of God. He here teaches the excellence of that Divine sonship, its fruit and its reward, in order to excite the faithful to those works of righteousness, which show that they are His thankful and worthy children, and to lead them to preserve this their sonship, till it attain the reward of eternal life. Each of S. John's words has great weight, and inspires fresh inducements to love. By the Father we understand the whole Trinity, but especially the Person of the Father, because it is the Father's work to beget children like to His Only Begotten Son, and because our calling, our election, our predestination are the proper work of the Father, and the effect of all these is our justification and adoption as sons. As S. Augustine says ( de Nat. grat. cap. ult.), "Inchoate love is inchoate righteousness, advanced love is advanced righteousness, perfect love is perfect righteousness." And S. Dion ( Eccl. Hier. 1. 2) says, "The first motion of the mind to heavenly things, and its aiming after God, is love. And the first step of holy love towards fulfilling the commands of God, is an unspeakable operation, because we have it from above. For if this heavenly state has a divine origin and birth, he who hath not received it will neither know nor do those things which are taught by God." And hence S. Cyril ( Is. xliv. and Tesaur. xii. 3) calls love the stamp of the Divine Essence, the sanctification, refashioning, the beauty and splendour of the soul.

That we should be called the sons of God (by adoption, as Christ is by nature) and be such. Many are named that which they are not. But we are so named, in order that we may be such. For as S. Augustine says ( in loc.), "If any are called sons and are not, what doth the name profit, where the thing is not? How many are called physicians, who know not how to heal, or watchers, who sleep all the night through? And in like manner many are called Christians, and are not found to be really such, because they are not that which they are called, in life, in faith, in hope, in charity." But what are the words here? " That ye should be called and should be the sons of God." As S. Paul says, Gal. iv. 6. Let the innovators note this who say that we are called righteous only by Christ's imputed righteousness, that the words ' and be such ' are wanting in many MSS. But then the meaning is included in the words 'are called.' For those who are called anything by God are made to be that which they are called. As a king by calling any one by a title, confers that title upon him, much more does God do so, by infusing real gifts of grace in those whom He calls His sons, thus making them worthy of the name, which a king cannot do. For as God in begetting His Son communicated to Him His very nature and divinity, so does He by regenerating us make us partakers of His Godhead, as S. Peter says and the Psalmist also (Psa 82:6). As God is holy in His essence, so does the righteous man who is born of God partake of His sanctity, and all His other attributes, being Almighty, unchangeable, heavenly, impeccable, full of goodness. He is omniscient, as being taught of God; imperturbable, as living above the world; liberal, and envying no man, but promoting every one's interest, as though it were his own. He glows with charity, rendering his enemies good for evil, and thus making them his friends. He is upright, patient, constant, even-minded, prudent, bold, sincere. See Jam 1:18; Hos 1:10.

Hence it follows that we are by justification the sons of God in a threefold respect—(1.) In the past by our spiritual generation. See 2Pe 1:4;  Joh 1:12;  and above, 1Jo 4:4 and 1Jo 4:6, and 1Jo 5:18. (2.) By His fatherly care over us. (See Psa 55:23; above Psa 5:18; Luk 12:7.) "Why fearest thou," says S. Augustine, "since thou art in the bosom of God, who is both thy father and thy mother?" (3.) He is our Father, by the heavenly inheritance which He will give us, making us heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. See Ps. xvi. 6. The Gentiles used falsely to boast of their descent from the gods. But the Christian's boast is a true one. And the truer it is, the more should it stimulate us to godlike deeds. As S. Cyprian says ( de Spetaculis ): "No one will admire the works of men, who knows that he is the son of God. He, who can admire anything after God, casts himself down from his high estate. When the flesh solicits thee, say, 'I am a son of God, I am born to greater things than to be the slave of appetite;' when the world tempts, reply, 'I am a son of God, and destined for heavenly treasures, and it is beneath me to seek for a morsel of white or red earth.' And when Satan offers me honour and pomps, I say, 'Get thee behind me, for as being a son and heir of God, and born for a heavenly kingdom, I trample all worldly honours under my feet.' Devote then the rest of thy life (it may be short indeed) to such noble, arduous, and divine works as Christ and the Saints have performed. Art thou called to a state of perfection, to devote thy life to the salvation of souls?—art thou called to heathen lands, to the cross and martyrdom?—surrender thyself to the call, as becomes the son of so great a father." Alvarez (as De Ponte relates in his life) used to apply this stimulus to himself. "Do not fall away from the lofty purposes of God's children."

Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knoweth Him not. It knows Him not practically, because worldly men do not love or worship Him. "They know not that we are citizens of heaven (says S. Chrysostom), and associates of the Cherubim. But they shall know in the day of judgment." (See Wisdom 5:3 seq.)

Ver. 2.— Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. Not in nature but in quality, in happiness, in eternal glory. The world—which knows us not now, because it beholds not our inward beauty—will then know us as like Christ, perfectly holy, just, pure, loving God. And as God enjoys the vision of Himself, so will our mind behold Him as He is, will be blessed in the sight, and our sonship and adoption be thus perfected, when we attain as the sons of God our glorious and happy inheritance.

Observe. We are in three ways like God.—1. As having a rational and intelligent nature. 2. By grace, as S. Bernard says, "consisting in virtues, and the soul strives by the greatness of its virtues to imitate the greatness of the supreme God, and by its constant perseverance in good to imitate His unchangeableness and eternity." 3. The highest and most perfect resemblance to God will be by the beatific glory in heaven, when, as S. Bernard says, "man becomes one spirit with God, not merely by unity of will, but more expressly by not being able to will anything beside, through union with His power." This third resemblance then consists in the Vision of the Triune God. As S. John says, "We shall see Him as He is." Accordingly, Œcumenius places this resemblance in the love and glory of adoption. See Psa 16:11, Psa 47:9, Psa 26:4, Psa 35:10;  1Co 13:12. The Schoolmen thence teach that the Blessed see the very Essence of God, Its three Persons and all Its attributes. For they behold Him in a vision, and draw Him as it were into themselves, and thus derive every good. Accordingly [Pseudo]-S. Augustine says ( de cognit veræ vitæ ad fin.), "This vision and this glory is called the kingdom of heaven because it is only the heavens, that is the just, who enjoy this vision, for theirs is the highest and chiefest Good in whom they have the fulness of joy from the fulness of all goods."

Again, in seeing God they form his image in their minds, which thus represents Him to them. As S. Augustine says ( Euchind. cap. iii.), "When the mind is imbued with the beginning of faith which worketh by love, it strives by holy living to reach that sight wherein is that ineffable beauty, which holy souls know, and in the full vision of which is supreme happiness." And again, they will be like Him, as partaking of His everlasting blessedness. See S. Gregory, Hom. ii. in Ezek.

Then follows on this another resemblance, viz., in will, in the perfect love of God beheld and possessed. As S. Fulgentius says, "We shall be like Him, in imitating His righteousness." And this love will make a man love God with all his heart and soul, so as to have no wish or desire to love anything else than God. As S. Augustine says ( Confessions ), "When I cleave to Thee with my whole heart, I shall have no pain or labour. My life will be full of Thee, but now, when I am not full of Thee, I am a burden to myself."

Moreover, this love will last for ever, and will ever enkindle the blessed to praise God. (See S. Augustine, Serm. cxviii . de Divers. cap. 5.) "When we are like to Him, never shall we fall away, or turn aside. Let us be sure then, the praise of God will never cloy. If thou failest in love, thou wilt cease to praise, but if thy love be never-ending, never be afraid of being unable to praise Him, whom thou wilt ever be able to love." And from this glorious vision there will follow all the endowments of the glorified soul and body of Christ, for there will be entire peace, concord, and harmony in all our powers of action. Our bodies will be impassible, bright, subtle. See 1Co 15:42. Just as the sun shining through a cloud makes mock suns one or more, so will it be with the Godhead as it shines through the bodies and souls of the blessed. And what a happy and glorious sight will this be! See Col 3:3;  1Co 15:45;  Phi 3:21;  2Co 3:18;  Rom 6:5, Rom 8:29.

For we shall see Him as He is. God in His own essence, as the Schoolmen teach.

Again, we shall see Christ as man, clothed as man with a glorious Body (see Bellarmine, de Beat. Sanct. i. 3; Gregory, de Valent., &c.)

And this too, not in a glass and in a figure, but face to face. For in this life we do not see God as He is, but as He became clothed with flesh for our sakes. (See S. Augustine ( in loc.); Origen, Hom. vi . in Gen., and S. Gregory, Hom. ii . in Ezek.)

Ver. 3.— And every one that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even as He is pure. The Apostle next shows us the way to attain this likeness to Christ. We must put our whole trust in Him. To be like Him in glory, we must strive to be like Him in holiness, in suffering, and in passion. For no one will be like Christ in heaven, who is unlike Him on earth. For it is His to give us grace to lead us to accomplish so arduous a work. "The mercy of God is the ground for hoping" to strive after sanctity. It is not enough to place our hope in God unless we put our hand to the work, and labour together with Him. See Rom. viii. 17; Heb. xii. 14; Matt. v. 8. [Pseudo]-Augustine admirably says ( de cognit veræ vitæ, in fin.): "To this highest good the righteous are drawn by one link after another. First faith, then hope, then love, perfected in action, action led on by its intention to the highest good, this again issues in perseverance, which will bring us even to God Himself, the fountain of all good."

Purifieth himself, sanctifieth himself, for sanctity "is freedom from every kind of pollution, the most uncontaminated and most perfect purity." (Dionysius, de div. nom. cap. xii.)

The true sanctity of men consists in purification from sins, and rooting out of vices, as S. Paul says, 2Ti 2:21.

Moreover, this cleansing from vices is effected by the implanting and exercise of the contrary virtues, as the rooting out of pride by humility, &c. Sanctity then includes all the virtues with which the soul is sanctified and devoted to God. For that is the meaning of 'sanctus.' Some then explain the word in this sense. Just as Priests and 'Religious' dedicate themselves. And indeed all the faithful in a more imperfect way who are by baptism consecrated to God. See 1Pe 2:9. And Christ said (Joh 17:19), " I sanctify Myself (I offer myself as a holy victim), that the also may be sanctified in the truth."

S. Gregory Nazianzen says, "What is sanctity? To hold converse with God." And S. Bernard ( de Consid. v. 14) says, "Holy affection, which is of two kinds, the fear of God, and holy love, makes a man holy. For a soul which is completely affected by these motives, embraces Him with both its arms, and says, I hold Him and will not let Him go." And he says also ( Serm. xxv . inter parvos ), "There are three things which make a man holy,—simple living, holy deeds, a pious intention," &c. (this is pursued at great length).

As He is holy. See Lev. 26. and Lev 27:28. St. John enforces great sanctity, like the sanctity of God Himself, and continued and daily progress therein, that we may be more and more like Him. See Mat 5:48.

If thou wishest to be holy, set before thee the pattern of sanctity, the life and passion of the Lord. As St. Ambrose says ( de Isaac ), "Let every one strip off the filthy wrappings of His soul, and prove it, when cleansed from its filth, as gold in the fire. But the beauty of a soul, when thus cleansed, consists in a truer knowledge of heavenly things, and the sight of that supreme Good from which all things depend, being Itself from nothing." And S. Gregory Nazianzen, "Let us restore to His image its beauty, let us recognise our dignity, follow our pattern, learn the power of the mystery, and for what purpose Christ died. Let us be as Christ, since He became as one of us. Let us be gods for His sake, as He became man for ours." And speaking of God he says, "He holds nothing so precious as purity or cleansing." ( Orat. vi . )

Ver 4.— Whosoever committeth sin, also doeth iniquity, for sin is iniquity. "For whosoever sins," says Bede, "acts contrary to the equity of the Divine Law." The faithful ought to sanctify themselves in order to be like Christ, and on the contrary sin is α̉νομία, a breaking of the Divine Law, and makes us utterly unlike God, and hateful to Him. He means "deadly sin."  S. Augustine ( contr. Faust. xxii. 7) says, that "sin is anything we say, do, or desire, against the Divine Law." And S. Ambrose ( de.Parad. cap. 8), "Sin is disobedience to the Divine commands." In like manner iniquity is a departure from the equity which the law prescribes, and injustice is contrary to justice, and α̉νομία is what is contrary to law. Sin and iniquity mean, in S. John, the same thing, though in popular speech iniquity has a worse meaning than sin. See S. Gregory, Mor. xi. 21.  S. Ambrose ( Apol. Dav. cap. 13) says the exact contrary, regarding sin as the worse of the two.

But every sin, even against human or ecclesiastical law, is contrary to God, as being contrary to His eternal law, which is the source of all law. As S. Thomas says (1. 2, quæst. 91), "Law is the highest reason existing in the Divine mind, according to which He directs the actions of all creatures to their own proper ends. For as there is in God the reason for His creating things, so also is the law by which they are to be governed. And as the one is the conception in the Divine mind, which decided how they were to be made, so is the other that eternal law, by which every creature should discharge its own functions, together with the will which obliges them, or at least impresses on them an inclination, to follow it.

Ver. 5.— And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins. That is Christ. "And He takes away our sins," says Bede, "by forgiving the sins which have been done, by keeping us from doing, and by leading us to that life where they cannot be committed." The word αίζνιν and the Syriac nasa, both of them signify to bear, and take away. Both meanings are suitable here. See Isa 53:4-6, and Isa 53:11;  Joh 1:9;  1Pe 2:24;  Rom 3:25.

Morally. Here learn what a grave evil sin is, for Christ to come down from heaven, to suffer and be crucified in order to take it away. And to teach us that we should endure every kind of suffering to take away sin and to convert sinners. "No room," says Œcumenius, "is left for sin, for since Christ came to destroy it, being Himself entirely free from sin, you who have been born again, and confirmed in the faith, have no right to sin." Each one of the faithful should then make it his work to crush sin in himself and others, just as they would destroy serpents' eggs or young wolves.

And in Him is no sin. For He was all-powerful to destroy sin, being in His own nature sinless by reason of the hypostatical union. For by this union the Divine Person of the Word so guided His manhood in all its actions, that it could not sin even in the slightest degree, for otherwise the sin and offence would have affected the Person of the Word, which is an impossible thing, for its actions would have been the actions of that very Person who was bound to keep from sinning that nature which It had assumed.

Lastly, "the will of Christ was so deified, as undoubtedly not to oppose the will of God," as S. Gregory Nazianzen says ( Orat. xxxvi.) And S. Cyril ( de recta fide ) says, "That the Word had as thoroughly imbued the soul of Christ with His own holiness, as a fleece takes in the colour in which it has been dipped."  S. John here quotes Isa. liii 9. See also Heb. vii. 26.  S. Augustine here says, "Because there was no sin in Him, He came to take away sin. For had there been sin in Him, it would have had to be taken from Him, and He would not have taken it away."

Whosoever abideth in Him, sinneth not. As long as He abides in Christ. For grace and sin are as contrary to each other, as heat and cold, black and white, and because the grace of Christ strengthens a man to overcome all sin. "And he," says Œcumenius, "abides in Christ who constantly exercises his powers, and never ceases from exercising them."

Whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him neither knoweth Him. "Hath not seen Him in His manhood: not known Him in His Godhead by faith," says the Gloss. But this is too subtle a distinction. The two words mean the same thing. For he who sins knows not Christ, because he considers not His boundless love, our Redemption by Him, and the reward promised to the righteous, and the punishments prepared for sinners. For did he carefully consider them, he would assuredly not sin. Whence S. Basil says ( Reg. lxxx . in fin.), "What is the characteristic of a Christian? To set God always before him."

Again, he who sins knows not Christ, with that savour of knowledge and affection which is conjoined with love and charity. He knows not that loves not Christ, does not strive to please, or be acceptable to Him. For did he truly love Christ, he would, under any temptation, say with Paul, "Who shall separate us," &c., Rom 8:35; or with the Bride, Son 8:7, "Many waters shall not quench love," &c. S. John everywhere in this epistle speaks of 'knowing' in the sense of loving or esteeming.

Bede says, "Every one that sinneth hath not seen Him or known Him, for had he tasted and seen how sweet the Lord is, he would not by sin have cut himself off from seeing His glory," &c. And Didymus, "Every one who sins is estranged from Christ: has no part in Him, or knowledge of Him," &c.

Ver. 7. — Little children, let no man deceive you. Neither Simon nor the Gnostics, who teach that a man is justified by faith only, and that good works are not required in order to his justification, and that if a man retains faith he can love as he pleases.  S. Peter, James, and John, all of them opposed this heresy.

He that doeth righteousness is righteous. Not merely some works of righteousness, but perfect and entire righteousness. For no one can completely fulfil the law of God, unless by grace and love, which the righteous alone has. See Jam 2:10.

(2.) S. John here contrasts the children of God, and the children of the devil. See above ii. 29. He here speaks of righteousness, in a general sense, as the aggregate of all virtues.

(3.) He who doeth righteousness is righteous, because his acts, which flow from a habit of righteousness, prove him to be righteous; and they also gain for him an increase of righteousness. And also because he should ever exercise himself in works of righteousness, if he wishes to preserve it. The Apostle speaks not of the infusion, but of the exercise of righteousness, says Thomas Anglicus.

Morally. S. John teaches us that the righteous man should ever be advancing in righteousness, like the Bride in Son 6:10, and Pro 4:15.  S. Augustine says, "That the whole life of a good Christian is a holy longing." See Phi 3:14;  Eze 1:12, of the four living creatures; S. Gregory, Hom. iii.;  S. Bernard, Ep. ccliv.;  S. Basil, Hexaem. Hom. xi . ; and S. Jerome, ad Celantium.

Even as He is righteous. See Psa 15:10, Psa 111:7, Psa 145:13.

The word 'as' does not signify equality, but resemblance. No creature can equal the righteousness and holiness of the Creator, but he can imitate it. Just "as a mirror represents the image of a man, not the man himself," says Bede. Hear S. Augustine. "He is pure from eternity, we from faith. We are righteous, even as He is righteous. But He is so in His perpetual unchangeableness, we are righteous by believing in Him we see not, in order that we may see Him hereafter. But not even when our righteousness is perfected, and when we become equal to the angels, shall we become equal to Him. How far then is our righteousness from His now, when even then it will not be equal to His?"

Ver. 8. — He who committeth sin is of the devil, because he follows his practices and suggestions. To be of the devil is to imitate the devil. For, as S. Augustine says, "The devil made no man, begat no man, but whoever imitates the devil, is born of him, by imitating him, and not actually by being born of him." He then who sinneth is of the devil as his follower and imitator, and not, as the Manichees dreamed, as being descended from him. There is a similar phrase, Ezek. xvi. 3, respecting wicked Jews.

For the devil sinneth from the beginning, not from the first moment of his creation, but shortly after it. And this was the beginning of sin. As S. Augustine says ( in loc.) and S. Cyril ( Catech. ii.), the devil is the beginning of sin, and the father of the wicked. To which Didymus adds, "He infuses the first suggestions of sin, and lastly he perseveres in his sin," as the Ps. [lxxiv. ult.] says, "The price of them that hate Thee ever rises up."

S. John alludes to his own Gospel, Joh 8:44; on which Isidorus ( De Summo. Bono, i. 3) remarks, "He abode not in the truth, because he fell as soon as he was made. He was created in the truth, but by not standing therein he fell from the truth." To which Bede adds, "He never ceased to sin, unrestrained either by his enormous sufferings, nor by the dread of sufferings to come. And he, therefore, who neglects to keep himself from sin is rightly said to be from him." He explains further that his sin was pride, and rebellion against God.

For this Purpose was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. To loose, that is, for sins are the cords which the devil twines, to entangle and ensnare the sinner. See Pro 5:22; Isa 5:10. And Christ gave His Apostles power to burst those bonds asunder.

It is clear from this that Christ would not have been incarnate if Adam had not sinned, though some of the Schoolmen think otherwise. But both Scripture and the Fathers give no other reason for His Incarnation than our redemption from sin. See Nicene Creed. And the Church sings at the blessing of the Paschal candle (using the words of S. Gregory), 0 most necessary sin of Adam, which was blotted out by the death of Christ. 0 blessed sin which required so great a Redeemer. So S. Ambrose, S. Augustine, S. Leo, and others.

Ver. 9.— And he cannot sin, because he is born of God. Hence Jovinian, Luther, and Calvin taught that a man could not fall away, but was sure of his salvation. But S. John says, " My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not." Consequently they could sin, faithful though they were. And it is contrary to daily experience, for we find daily the faithful becoming heretics and falling into sin. And the Council of Trent (vi. 23) rules otherwise. What then is S. John's meaning that he who is born of God cannot sin, that is mortally and gravely?  1. We must take the word collectively—and then it will mean, So long as he preserves the seed of grace, he cannot sin. So Œcumenius, Thomas Anglicus, Cajetan, and S. Hierom, lib. 11 extra Jovin. And accordingly theologians say that he who has effectual grace cannot sin, because effectual grace in its very conception includes its result. For that grace is called 'effectual' which (as is foreseen) will produce its effect, which is to lead our free will to co-operate in a good work. But, speaking abstractedly, he who has effectual grace can resist it, and commit sin. (See Conc. Trid. sess. vi . can. 4.)

2. He who is born of God cannot (in a formal sense) commit sin, that is as far as relates to his heavenly new birth. For if this be allowed to act, and is not withstood by our free will, it is fully able to keep out all sin. (See S. Augustine, de grat. Christi, cap. xxi.) Thus Adam is said in his state of innocence to have been immortal, because he could not die, as long as he remained therein. But as he could fall, so also could he die. Thus we say that this medicine, e.g., is so powerful that any one who takes it could not die of the plague. But a man refuses to take the medicine and then dies; so can he who has the grace of God refuse to use it, and thus fall into sin.  S. John here distinguishes between the supernatural action of Divine grace, and the exercise of moral virtues, the first of these preventing every sin, while the others do not. But the habit of temperance is not lost by one act of intemperance, even as temperance is not acquired by a single act of temperance. Again, the grace of Christ is distinguished from the grace given to Adam, which gave the power but not the will, whereas the grace of Christ gives both the will and the power. See S. Augustine ( de corrupt. et gratia ), "It is so provided (to meet the weakness of the human will), that Divine grace never fails, is never overpowered by any difficulty, so as ever to resolutely will that which is good, and obstinately refuse to abandon it." And it is thus that he explains the words of S. John, "Every one that is born of God sinneth not."

3. He cannot sin. He sins with difficulty. He has no wish to sin, says Œcumenius. Others explain the words, He has power not to sin, this power being given him by God.

4. Rightfully and properly he cannot sin, though he may in fact sin against all that is right and proper.

5. Gagneius says, "He cannot sin, i.e., by unbelief, which S. John calls a sin unto death."

6. Some take these words as referring to those who are predestinated and absolutely elected to eternal life. But this must be understood, not of antecedent, but consequent impossibility, which consists with our liberty of will, as including and presupposing it.

The first and second of these explanations seem to be the best.

Anagogically. S. Augustine ( de peccat. et merit. ii. 7) says that the righteous man cannot sin, by reason of his hope of eternal life.

In like manner he says ( de nupt, et concup. i. 23, and de Spirit. et lit. cap. ult.), "We cannot observe perfectly in this life the two commandments, 'Thou shalt not covet,' and 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,' &c. But we are exhorted to attain to that place where we shall perfectly fulfil them. It is impossible not to feel concupiscence in this world, but we are directed not to yield to it. And the same with the other commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' See Rom. vii. 7."

Morally. S. John here teaches us an easy and certain way of avoiding sin, namely, by carefully attending to those holy inspirations which God suggests, and thus shut out from our minds all the evil suggestions of the devil. For he who sins must needs give way to evil thoughts, for we cannot desire or wish anything unless the mind suggests it to us as a good to be desired. And accordingly the Blessed cannot sin, because they behold God as their chief and boundless good, and are swallowed up in Him as the very abyss of all good.  S. Francis Xavier used for this very reason to occupy himself in good thoughts, in ruminating on some holy sentence of Scripture, or the doings or virtues of some saint. For the mind in this way drives out all other thoughts which lead to sin. And so with regard to our will. For he who fixes his mind on holy affections and desires cannot give his mind to evil lusts, and consequently cannot sin. He says with Joseph, "How can I do this wickedness and sin against God?" See Gen 39:9. As S. Leo says ( Serm. viii de Epiphany ), "He who wishes to learn whether God dwells within him, should honestly examine the secrets of his heart, and carefully ascertain with what humility he resists pride, with what good will he strive against envy, how he is not charmed with flattering tongues, and how pleased he is at another's happiness. Whether he does not render evil for evil, and would rather pass over injuries than mar in himself the image of Him who sends His rain upon the just and unjust, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good. And not to enter on a more minute enquiry, let him see whether he find within him such love of God and his neighbour, as to wish to render even to his enemies that which he desires to be rendered to himself."

For His seed remaineth in him. Œcumenius by the 'seed' understands Christ. See Gal 3:29.   (2.) S. Augustine and others understand by it the word of God. See Luk 8:11;  Jam 1:18;  1Pe 1:23.  (3.) Lyra, Hugo, Cajetan, and Thomas Anglicus most fitly understand by it the grace of God. For, 1. All other virtues spring from it. 2. Because it is the seed of glory. (See D. Thorn. par. i . quæst. 62, art. 3.) 3. Because as a seed must die in order to bear fruit, so does grace suffer death and martyrdom, from whence all good, both public and private, proceeds. See Joh 12:24.

Ver. 10.— In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. The two tests are, the doing righteousness, and loving his brother. Righteousness and charity are of God, unrighteousness and hatred are of the devil. Righteousness is here taken in its widest sense, as including all virtues. But St. John here states that among all kinds of righteousness none shows more that we are the sons of God, than charity and the love of our neighbour, as the contrary vices show us to be the children of the devil. And hence S. John, the beloved disciple, breathes forth love only. Hear S. Augustine ( in loc.): "Love alone distinguishes between the children of God and the children of the devil. Let all sign themselves with the sign of the cross, let all answer Amen, let all sing Alleluia, let all be baptized, let all go to church, let all build churches. Yet the sons of God are distinguished from the children of the devil only by charity. They who have charity are born of God, they who have it not are not born of God. Have what thou wilt; if this alone thou have not, it profiteth thee nothing. If thou hast not anything else, have this: thou hast fulfilled the law." But by charity God is loved for His own sake, and our neighbour for the sake of God. Whence charity is "the fulfilling of the law." Rom 13:10. And S. Augustine ( de Nat. et. Grat. cap. xlii.). "Charity is the most true, complete, and perfect righteousness." S. Clement Alex. calls it "The highest duty of a Christian man." S. Cyprian ( de Bono Patient.) terms it "The foundation of peace, the firm bond of unity, surpassing even the deeds of martyrdom."  S.Basil, "The root of the commandments."  S. Gregory Nazianzen ( Epist. xx . ), "The head of all our teaching."  S. Jerome ( Epist. ad Theophylact ), "The parent of all virtues."  S. Ephraim ( de Humil.), "The support of all virtues."  S. Augustine, "The stronghold of all virtues." ( Serm. liii . de temp.). Prosper ( de Vita Contempl. iii. 13), "The most powerful of all our affections, the sum of good works, the protector of virtue, the end of heavenly precepts, the death of sins, the life of virtues." "Firmness in every virtue" (S. Cyril). "The mother and guardian of all good" (S. Gregory). "The mother of men and angels, bringing peace, not only to all things in earth, but even in heaven" (S. Bernard, Epist. ii.).

Lastly, S. Basil says, "Where charity fails, hatred comes in its room. But if God (as S. John says) is love, the devil must undoubtedly be hatred. And as he who has love has God, so he who has hatred, fosters a devil within him."

Ver. 11. — For this is the message, ever to be announced by us the Apostles of Christ. It is the message of good tidings, which Christ brought from heaven. He might have exacted from us many hard and painful sufferings. But He is satisfied if we love each other. And what is more joyous, pleasant, and easy than this? For as God ordered us to love our brethren, He orders our brethren to love us in return—love in this way eliciting and demanding love. See John xv. 12. On which S. Augustine remarks that charity is here distinguished from mere human love. We should love men, not merely as men, but as we love ourselves as the children of the Most Highest.

Ver. 12.— Not as Cain. For he loved himself only, and hated his brother because he saw that his offering was acceptable to God. As God says to Cain (according to LXX), "Hast thou not sinned, if thou offerest rightly, but dividest not rightly?" "For Cain did this," says S. Augustine ( de Civ. xv. 7), "giving to God something which was His, but gratifying himself. Which," says he, "all who do not follow the will of God, but their own will, and in their perversity of heart make Him an offering with which they think He can be bought off, and this too even to gratify their depraved desires." And accordingly Eusebius ( de Præp. xi. 4) says that he was appositely called Cain from the Hebrew word kana to envy. See S. Gregory, Mor. x. 6;  S. Chrysostom, in Matt. 18., where he speaks of nine degrees of love; and S. Augustine ( de Doct. Christ, i. 22), who says, "The rule of love is laid down by God. And in saying 'the whole heart,' &c., He left no portion of our life unemployed, and left no room for the enjoyment of ought beside. So that whatever else comes into our minds as an object of love, it should be swept away into the full current of our complete love for Him. He then who loves his neighbours aright, should at the same time love God with all his heart and mind. And thus loving his neighbour as himself, he should refer all his love of himself and his neighbour to that love of God, who suffers not a single drop to be withdrawn from Him, so as to diminish our love for Him."

Who was of that wicked one. Cain was not of God, but of the devil, by imitating him, and listening to his suggestions. For when the devil could not injure God Himself, he sought to injure man who was His image; the malignity of Cain, and of the devil also, consists in hatred and envy. Such too is the life of tyrants, who like fishes prey upon those who are weaker than themselves. A fish was a type of envy. (See S. Clement, Strom. lib, v.)

And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil. Because he took little account of God, and offered Him the poorer victims, reserving the better ones for himself, and, moreover, envied Abel, who by the more excellent offerings he made was the more acceptable to God. From this envy sprang hatred and ultimately murder. S. Cyprian dwells on this at great length in his treatise " de zelo et livore."

But his brother's righteous. Innocent, righteous, and holy. For he esteemed God above himself, and therefore presented the best offerings he could. There were three special grounds for praising him, his virgin life, his priesthood, and his martyrdom. (As the writer of the Quastiones ad Orosun says); and S. Cyprian ( de Bono Patiant.) calls him the Protomartyr. So also Rupert in Isa. lix.;  S. Jerome iv. 42.;  S. Augustine ( contr. Faust, xii . 9 and 10), and others.  S. Augustine commences his "City of God" from Abel, and the city of the devil from Cain. See Book xv. 8.

Ver. 13.— Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hall you. This is an inference from the previous antithesis of the children of God, and the children of the devil. Our Lord alludes to the hatred of wicked men against Christ in S. John xv. 18. Everything is opposed to and hates its contrary, as black is opposed to white, cold to heat, sweetness to bitterness, &c. The world hates the faithful—1st Because their ways of going on are so different. See Wisdom 2:15. And S. Leo ( Serm. ix . de Quadrig.), "Wickedness never is at peace with righteousness. Drunkenness ever hates temperance, &c.; and so obstinate is this opposition, that when there is peace without there is war within, so that it never ceases to disquiet the hearts of the righteous; and it is true that they who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, and that our whole life is a temptation." And he gives as another reason the craft and malice of the devil, who when he cannot overpower our virtue would undermine our faith.

2d. There is further the envy which worldlings feel when they see that the righteous are not ensnared by their evil desires, but are stedfastly going on towards heaven, while they themselves are sinking down and down to hell.

3d. They hate the righteous, because they withdraw themselves from their company. See Mat 15:18; Wisdom 2:16.

4th. Because their conduct is a tacit reproof to the worldly. See Wisdom 2:12; and Joh 15:8.

5th. Worldlings are full of self-love, but Saints are full of the love of God, for which reason they hate them.

S. James (Jam 4:4) agrees with S. John, and so does S. Paul, Gal 1:10. Tertullian and others read here, "Be not afraid," for some not only marvelled, but were afraid of the hatred they would incur in becoming Christians. S. John therefore exhorts them not to be surprised or afraid, for those whom the world hates God loves. "It would be a greater wonder," says Didymus, "if wicked men did love those who were godly." We must not therefore in the least regard the hatred of such persons, but rather persevere in holiness and love of God, and make it our endeavour to make them our friends when they hear that we surpass them in charity.

As S. Peter says, 1Pe 4:12. And Sencea ( de Prov. cap. i . ) says, "God brings not up a good man in delicate ways; He makes trial of him, He hardens him, and thus prepares him for Himself, while the man himself considers all misfortunes as means of training, and as teaching him how much his patience can bear." And S. Basil ( adm. ad filii spirit ) says that "Patience is the highest virtue of the mind, enabling us most speedily to attain the height of perfection."  S. Augustine gives the reason, that God, through the hatred of the world, may draw us on to love Himself. "Oh the unhappiness of mankind! The world is bitter, and yet is loved. But how much more would it be loved, if it were sweet! How gladly wouldest thou gather its flowers, since thou withdrawest not this hand even from its thorns."

Ver. 14.— We know that we have passed from death unto life. Not because we believe that we are predestinated, but as a moral certainty, by the testimony of a good conscience, by the innocency of our life, and the consolation of the Holy Spirit.  S. John says this for their consolation and to keep them from dreading the hatred of the world. Be comforted by the thought, that by faith ye have been translated from the death of sin to a state of grace in this world, and in the world to come to glory, which will raise us above all hatred. And the clear proof of this is that we love the brethren. For this love is an undoubted sign and effect of sanctifying grace, and of the Holy Spirit Himself, from whom, as from an uncreated source, all love proceeds.  S. Basil truly says, "When can a man be fully persuaded that God has remitted his sins? When he finds that his feelings are like his who said, 'I have hated and abominated iniquity' (Psa 119:163)."

He gives here three signs of indwelling grace and righteousness. (1.) Hatred of sin; (2.) mortifying the flesh, and all evil desires; and (3.) zeal for the salvation of others, like S. Paul (2 Cor. xi. 29). And S. Gregory ( Dial. i. 1), "The mind which is filled with the Divine Spirit, furnishes its own proofs, viz., virtuous actions and humility. And if those perfectly co-exist in the same mind, it is clear that they witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit." And S. Leo ( Serm. de Epiph. viii.) gives these three signs of grace and sanctity, humility, forgiveness of injuries, and doing as we would be done by. And "let every one who is such, doubt not that God rules and dwells within him."

He who loveth not (when he ought, or he who hates) abideth in death, with the stain of habitual sin, which abides after the act of sin is over; and from this he cannot escape, except by the grace of Christ, says Thomas Anglicus. But how the soul though immortal can yet die through sin, S. Augustine explains ( de Civ. iii. 1), "The death of the soul takes place when God forsakes it, just as, the body dies when the soul leaves it. It is then the entire death of a man, when the soul which has been forsaken of God, leaves the body, for in this case it does not itself live by God, nor does the body live through it." And in like manner S. Cyril Alex. says, "Death, properly speaking, is not that which separates body and soul, but that which separates the soul from God. God is life, and he who is cut off from Him, perishes."

Nay more, this death of the soul is absolutely termed death in our deeper teaching, for that death of the body which we dread so much is but a shadow and image of that true death, and not to be compared with it. See S. Gregory ( Mor. iv. 17). And S. Augustine ( de Civ. vi. cap. ult.), "If the soul lives in everlasting punishment, it should rather be called everlasting death, and not life." And S. Basil ( Hom. v. on the Martyr Julitta ) says, "Sin is the death of the soul, which would else be immortal. It deserves to be lamented with inconsolable grief," &c, And S. Jerome, on Isa. xiv. ( Lib. vi . ), terms a sinner "the devil's carcase, for no one can doubt that sin is a most fœtid thing, when the sinner himself says, 'My wounds stink and are corrupt.'"

Ver. 15. — Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. As he said before, "He that loveth not abideth in death."  S. John counts 'not loving' and 'hating' as the same thing, by miosis, when little is said, but more is meant, and also because want of love is counted as constructive hatred. Moreover, he who hates his brother is in will and desire a murderer. See S. Jerome ( Epist. xxxvi . ad Castorin.) and S. Mat 5:28, and hatred moreover disposes to murder, as desire disposes to adultery.

Mystically. He who hates his brother murders his own soul. As S. Ambrose says, "He who hates murders himself in the first place, slaying himself with his own sword." And S. Gregory ( Hom. x. 11) says the same thing more at length. Again, " he who hates his brother, ofttimes destroys his soul, by provoking him to anger and contention."

[Pseudo]-Alexander says, "He who calumniates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer hath any part in the kingdom of God." For, as Dionysius says, there are three kinds of murder, Bodily, Detraction, and Hatred.

Hath not eternal life abiding in Him. Hath not grace abiding in him, nor doth he abide in that grace whereby eternal life is obtained. It is a metonymy, say Cajetan and others. Or else he will not have eternal life; he cannot have it, the present being taken for the future tense. Which comes to this, He who hateth, hath no hope of eternal life, but abideth in the death of sin. As S. Augustine says ( Præf. in Ps. xxxi.), "As an evil conscience is full of despair, so is a good conscience full of hope; as Cain said, 'From Thy face shall I be hid, and shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth,'" &c.; as S. Jerome says, "Whosoever finds me out, from the trembling of my body and the agitation of my mind, will know that I deserve to die." Just as Orestes for the murder of his mother was continually harassed by the Furies.

Ver. 16.— Hereby we know the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.  S. John here goes back to the law and living pattern of perfect charity, even Christ, who by laying down His life for us, taught us in like manner to lay down our lives for the brethren. For in Him there shone forth that boundless love which far exceeds the love of all parents and kinsfolk. For He, the Infinite God, laid down His life for us unworthy and ungrateful sinners, with great suffering and shame to Himself, and thus tacitly gave us a pattern for us to imitate, by laying down our lives for the brethren.

But yet we must not risk our own salvation in order to save the souls of others, though we are bound to risk our life for their salvation, which is of more value than our own earthly life, which we must undoubtedly sacrifice for the eternal good of others, as S. Paul did and the other martyrs.

But you will ask, are we bound to risk our own lives for the sake of the lives of others? In ordinary cases, No, but in extraordinary cases, Yes. As when bound by oath or promise, or in defence of our country. But a friend is not bound to risk his own life for that of his friend, since that would be to love his neighbour even more than himself, which, S. Augustine says ( de Mend. cap. 10), goes beyond the rule laid down. But yet to do so would be laudable, for a man would risk his life for the sake of honour, and for the virtue of friendship. And this is a spiritual good, higher than life itself. So S. Augustine teaches ( de Amic. cap. 10); and S. Jerome on Micah vii. says, "When a man was asked, What is a friend? he replied, 'A second self.' And accordingly two Pythagoreans gave themselves up to the tyrant as mutual pledges for each other." (See S. Ambrose, Off. lib. iii.; Fr. Victoria, Relect. de Homicid.;  Soto, de Just. i. 6;  and S. Thomas, 2. 2, q. 26, art. 4, ad 2). And Valentia adds this case, "Ought a man to suffer himself to be killed rather than kill his assailant?" And he rules that he ought rather to be killed himself, than kill another who would die in the very act of sin. We should also risk our life to preserve another's chastity. As the soldier who saved Theodora by changing clothes with her in prison, and who in the end suffered with her. And Paulinus, who became a slave in the place of a widow's son (slavery being a kind of civil death), and who was highly praised for his act by S. Augustine and other fathers.

Instances are also given from heathen authors of those who gave up their lives for their friends, which is the highest proof of love. See Joh 15:13.

Ver. 17.— But whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? He deduces this as a consequence from the former verse. It is an argument from the less to the greater. If the love of Christ obliges us to lay down our lives for the brethren (which is most difficult), much more does it oblige us to give alms to the needy, which is most easy. And again, our laying down our lives for the brethren is a case which seldom happens, the duty of relieving the needy frequently occurs. So Œcumenius and S. Augustine.

Many doctors argue from this passage that the precept of alms-giving is binding not only in extreme but even in grave cases of necessity, so that a rich man is obliged to give up, not only superfluities, but even things necessary for his station, if he can avert in this way a grave loss to his neighbour. (See Gregory, de Valent. Tom. iii . Disput. iii . ; and Bellarmine, de bonis Oper. lib. iii.  See Eccles. iv. 1,  S. Ambrose, de 0ff. iii 31;  S. Gregory Nazianzen, de cura pauper ;  and S. Chrysostom, de Eleemos.)

And shutteth up his bowels from him. The bowels being the seat of compassion and pity. See Lam 2:11;  Col 3:12. They are the symbols of paternal as well as of maternal love. See Phile. 7, and Je. Iviii. 7. This teaches that alms should be given with much kindness and affection. As S. Gregory says ( Moral xx. 16), "Let the hard and merciless hear the thundering words of the wise man." Pro 21:13

Salvian, lib. iv., exhorts the faithful to put on these bowels of mercy, when teaching that Christ, in the persons of the poor, is a mendicant and in need of everything, and that they are cruel who squander their goods on their relations who are in no need, and suffer Christ in the person of the poor to be in want. . . . He shows that they have no faith, and that they do not believe in Christ, who promised abundant rewards to His almoners. . . . And next he shows that they greatly sin, not only because they do not relieve the poor, but also bestow those goods which they have laboriously acquired, on those who misapply them for purposes of display, gluttony, and luxury. "If thou wishest to have eternal life" (he continues), "and to see good days, leave thy substance to the saints that are in want, to the lame, the blind, the sick; let thy means be sustenance to the wretched, thy wealth the life of the poor, and may the refreshment thou givest them be thy own reward, that their refreshment may thus refresh thee." He concludes by severely inveighing against them, and more especially against ecclesiastics, who are particularly bound to relieve the poor, and not to enrich their kinsfolk out of the funds of the Church, which Prosper calls the patrimony of the poor. See S. Bernard ( Epist. xxiv.), who says that a bishop must not indulge in luxuries, but merely live on the funds of the Church: everything more which thou takest out of them is robbery and sacrilege. See, too, S. Basil on Luke xii. 18. The Stoics thought, on the contrary, that pity was no virtue, but rather the mark of a weak mind. See Seneca ( de Clem. ii . 5) and Plautus, as quoted by Lactantius, xi. 11, who condemns any giving of alms as being a waste, and an injury to the recipient. Valerius ( Max. iv . 8), on the other hand, records with approval the bountifulness of a certain Silicus.

Ver. 18.— My little children, let us not 1ove in word, and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. He condemns here all false charity, which exhibits itself in words only, as S. James (Jam 2:15) does also.  S. Gregory ( Moral. xxi. 14) says that our charity must ever be exhibited in reverent words, &c., and in ministering bountifully. And S. Bernard (in Son 2:4) explaining the words, "He ordered charity in me" (see. Vulg.) says, "He requires not the craft of the lying tongue, nor the taste of affected wisdom. Let us love in deed and in truth, being moved to good deeds by the impulse of living charity rather than by any affected love. Give me a man who loves God with all his heart, himself and his neighbours, and everything else relating to God with well-ordered love, and I boldly pronounce him to be a wise man, to whose taste all things seem to be just as they really are, and who can in truth safely say, Because He hath ordered love in me. But who is he?"

But observe here, that if any one cannot succour in deed and act (as, e g., being too poor), yet he can do so in words and kind feelings. And again, he who gives relief should not give it grudgingly, or with words of reproof, but cheerfully and kindly. See Rom 12:8; Ecc 18:15.

S. Gregory ( Hom. iii. in Evang.) says well, "Let not any one credit himself with anything which his mind suggests, unless his acts bear witness to it. For in loving God, our tongue, our thoughts, and our life are all required. Love towards Him is never idle. It worketh great things if it really exist, but if it refuses to do so, it is not love." And S. Chrysostom ( Hom. liii . et lxviii . ad pop. ) says, "The more thou givest to God, the more does He love thee, and to those He loves more, He gives more grace; when He sees any one to whom He owes nothing, He flies from him, and avoids him; but when He sees any one to whom He owes something, He runs up to him at once. Thou shouldest therefore do everything to make God thy debtor." And then he explains how this can be done, viz., by showing mercy to the poor. "Give largely, that thou mayest be rich, scatter abroad, that thou mayest gather in, imitate a sower. Sow in blessings, that thou mayest reap in blessings." And S. Leo ( Serm. vi . de Jejun. x. Mensis ) says, "Persevere, 0 Christian, in thy bounty, give that which thou wilt receive back again, sow what thou wilt reap, scatter that which thou wilt gather up. Fear not the cost, be not anxious or doubtful about the result. Thy substance, when well laid out, is increased, and to wish for rightful profit for thy piety, is to traffic for the gain of an eternal reward. He who rewardeth thee wishes thee to be munificent, and He who gives that thou hast, orders thee to give it away, saying, 'Give, and it shall be given,' and so on." S. Chrysostom accordingly said rightly, "that almsgiving was of all things the most gainful."

Ver. 19.— Hereby we know that we are of the truth, that we have true love, that we are the sons of truth, of true and genuine charity.

Secondly, we are of God, who is the chief and highest truth, and true charity. See John xiv. 6, xviii. 37. And accordingly S. Augustine rightly concludes ( de Moribus Eccl. cap. xxxiii.), "Let our meals, our words, our dress, our appearance be blended with charity, and be united and joined together in one charity; to violate this is counted as sinning against God . . . if only this be wanting, everything else is vain and empty; where it exists is perfect fulness."

And shall assure our hearts before Him. (1.) Hugo, Lyranus, and Dionysius explain, We shall induce our hearts to please God daily more and more. (2.) Ferus explains it, We shall gain confidence to ask anything of God. (3.) We shall have our hearts at peace, for we shall persuade them that we are striving after true charity, when we love, not in word, but in deed and in truth. (4.) The sense most clearly is this, We, shall approve our hearts to God in manifesting the fruits of love. We can lie to men by pretending love in our hearts, but we cannot lie to God, who sees the heart. They then who love their neighbour in deed and in truth fear not the eye and judgment of God, but would boldly appear in His sight, lay their hearts before Him, and show that they were resting on real charity. So Œcumenius; and see Gal. i. 10, "Do I wish to persuade men or God?" That is, I strive to prove my cause to God. So S. Chrysostom.  S. Augustine reads in this passage, "I wish to make myself approved to God, and not to men." As S. Augustine ( contra Secundi, num. i. 1) says, "Think as you please about Augustine, provided only my conscience accuses me not in the sight of God."

Morally. S. John here teaches us to examine all our deeds by the rule of God's judgment. For frequently we are deceived into thinking that we are acting purely from the love of God, when in fact we are acting from the impure motive of self-love. Before beginning anything conform thyself to this rule, act as in the sight of God, who sees, and will call thee to account. Do it as though it were thy very last act. And in any doubt, adopt that course which thou wouldest wish thou hadst adopted when thou comest to die. So did the Psalmist (Psa 16:8); Elisha ( 2Ki 3:14); and S. Paul (2Co 1:12).

And S. Francis Xavier, "Wherever I am, I would remember that I am on the stage of the world." And Campion, when about to suffer martyrdom, said, "We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men" (1 Cor iv. 9). Let us imitate these, and thus "shall we persuade our hearts in His sight."

Ver. 20.— For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. If we cannot conceal our hypocrisy from our own hearts, much less can we conceal it from God, who is greater and deeper even than our own heart, who is more intimately acquainted with it, and is nearer to it than we are ourselves. If thy conscience condemns thee, how much more will God, who rules over and judges thy conscience? "If we cannot hide anything from our conscience," says Œcumenius, "how can we hide it from God who is ever present?" "Thou hidest thy conscience from man," says S. Augustine, "hide it from God if thou canst. Let thy conscience bear thee witness, for it is of God. And if it is of God, do not boast of it before men, because the praises of men exalt thee not, nor do their reproofs bring thee down. Let Him see thee who crowneth thee: let Him, by whose judgment thou wilt be crowned." Diadochus says ( de perf. Spirit. cap. c.), "The judgment of God is far above that of our conscience." See 1 Cor. iv. 1 and Ps. lxiii. (Vulg. 7). "Man will go down to his deep heart, and God will be exalted," that is, man will think many evils in the depth of his heart, but God will be deeper than it. But Lyra, Aquila, and Theodotion read iorem, will shoot at it. See A. V.

Thomas Anglicus merely applies the passage thus, If the sin of the heart is great, greater is God's compassion in forgiving. And God too is greater than our heart, because He alone satisfies the desires of our heart, and even overflows and surpasses them.

Ver. 21.— If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God, viz., that we shall obtain from Him all that we ask. See Psa 119:6. The contrary is the case with the wicked. See Pro 28:9, as S. Gregory says ( Mor. x. 15, or 17), "He who remembers that he still refuses to listen to the command of God, doubts whether he will obtain what he wishes for. And our heart blames us when we pray, when it calls to mind that he opposes the will of Him whom he is addressing. 'As oil makes the light to shine, so do good deeds give confidence to the soul.'"

Ver. 22.— And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him. Wh

Commentary -- Other

Contradiction: 1Jo 3:1

96. Is it that everyone sins (1 Kings 8:46; 2 Chronicles 6:36; Proverbs 20:9; Ecclesiastes 7:20; 1 John 1:8-10), or do some not sin (1 John 3:1, 8-9; 4:7; 5:1)?

(Category: misunderstood the Greek usage & Imposes his own agenda)

This apparent contradiction asks: 'Does every man sin?' Then a number of Old Testament passages that declare this are listed followed by one New Testament passage from 1 John 1:8-10:

"If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives."

After this it is claimed by Shabbir that: 'True Christians cannot possibly sin, because they are children of God.' This is followed by a number of passages from the First Epistle of John showing that Christians are children of God. Shabbir is here imposing his view on the text, assuming that those who are children of God, somehow suddenly have no sin. It is true that a person who is born of God should not habitually practice sin (James 2:14ff), but that is not to say that they will not occasionally fall into sin, as we live in a sinful world and impinged by it.

The last of the verses quoted is from 1 John 3:9 which says:

"No-one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God."

Shabbir in his quote uses an older translation for 1 John 3:9 and so states, "No one born of God commits sin...and he cannot sin...," which is not a true translation of the Greek. In the newer translations, such as the NIV they translate correctly using the present continuous in this verse, as it is written that way in the Greek. Thus those born of God will not continue to sin, as they cannot go on sinning..., the idea being that this life of sinning will die out now that he has the help of the Holy Spirit in him or her.

It is interesting how Shabbir jumps around to make his point. He begins with 1 John 1, then moves to 1 John 3-5, then returns to the 1 John 1 passage at the beginning of the Epistle and re-quotes verse 8, which speaks of all men sinning, with the hope of highlighting the seeming contradiction. There is no contradiction in this as Shabbir obviously hasn't understood the apostle's letter or grasped the fact that the letter develops its theme as it goes on. Therefore quoting from the beginning of the letter, then moving to the middle of the letter, and finally returning to the beginning of the letter is not the way to read a letter.

The Scriptures clearly teach that all men have sinned except for one, the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore we have no quarrel with Shabbir on this point. As to Shabbir's second point I am glad he has come to realize that Christians are children of God therefore we have no quarrel with him on this subject.

It is Shabbir's third point, however, which is a contentious one because it does not take on board the development of the themes of the letter, of which the one pointed out here is the call to holiness and righteousness because of the forgiveness of sins by Jesus Christ's atoning death. It is for that reason that we are called not to continue in our sinful ways but to be changed into Christ's sinless likeness. In his attempt to show an apparent contradiction Shabbir has mischievously rearranged the order in which the verses were intended to be read in order to force a contradiction, which doesn't exist.

Introduction / Outline

Robertson: 1 John (Book Introduction)

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

ABOUT a.d. 85 TO 90

By Way of Introduction

Relation to the Fourth Gospel

There are few scholars who deny that the Epistles of John and the Fourth Gospel are by the same writer. As a matter of fact " in the whole of the First Epistle there is hardly a single thought that is not found in the Gospel" (Schulze). H. J. Holtzmann ( Jahrbuch fur Protestantische Theologie , 1882, P. 128) in a series of articles on the " Problem of the First Epistle of St. John in its Relation to the Gospel" thinks that the similarities are closer than those between Luke’s Gospel and the Acts. Baur argued that this fact was explained by conscious imitation on the part of one or the other, probably by the author of the Epistle. The solution lies either in identity of authorship or in imitation. If there is identity of authorship, Holtzmann argues that the Epistle is earlier, as seems to me to be true, while Brooke holds that the Gospel is the earlier and that the First Epistle represents the more complete ideas of the author. Both Holtzmann and Brooke give a detailed comparison of likenesses between the First Epistle and the Fourth Gospel in vocabulary, syntax, style, ideas. The arguments are not conclusive as to the priority of Epistle or Gospel, but they are as to identity of authorship. One who accepts, as I do, the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel for the reasons given in Volume V of this series, does not feel called upon to prove the Johannine authorship of the three Epistles that pass under the Apostle’s name. Westcott suggests that one compare John 1:1-18 with 1Jo_1:1-4 to see how the same mind deals with the same ideas in different connections. " No theory of conscious imitation can reasonably explain the subtle coincidences and differences in these two short crucial passages."

Gnosticism

The Epistle is not a polemic primarily, but a letter for the edification of the readers in the truth and the life in Christ. And yet the errors of the Gnostics are constantly before John’s mind. The leaders had gone out from among the true Christians, but there was an atmosphere of sympathy that constituted a subtle danger. There are only two passages (1Jo_2:18.; 1Jo_4:1-6) in which the false teachers are specifically denounced, but " this unethical intellectualism" (Robert Law) with its dash of Greek culture and Oriental mysticism and licentiousness gave a curious attraction for many who did not know how to think clearly. John, like Paul in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles, foresaw this dire peril to Christianity. In the second century it gave pure Christianity a gigantic struggle. " The great Gnostics were the first Christian philosophers" (Robert Law, The Tests of Life , p. 27) and threatened to undermine the Gospel message by " deifying the devil" (ib., p. 31) along with dethroning Christ. There were two kinds of Gnostics, both agreeing in the essential evil of matter. Both had trouble with the Person of Christ. The Docetic Gnostics denied the actual humanity of Christ, the Cerinthian Gnostics distinguished between the man Jesus and the aeon Christ that came on him at his baptism and left him on the Cross. Some practised asceticism, some licentiousness. John opposes both classes in his Epistles. They claimed superior knowledge ( gnōsis ) and so were called Gnostics ( Gnōstikoi ). Nine times John gives tests for knowing the truth and uses the verb ginōskō (know) each time (1Jo_2:3, 1Jo_2:5; 1Jo_3:16, 1Jo_3:19, 1Jo_3:24; 1Jo_4:2, 1Jo_4:6, 1Jo_4:13; 1Jo_5:2). Some of the leaders he calls antichrists. There are stories about John’s dread of Cerinthus and his unwillingness to be seen in the same public bath with him. The Apostle of love, as he is, is a real son of thunder when Gnosticism shows its head. Westcott thinks that the Fourth Gospel was written to prove the deity of Christ, assuming his humanity, while 1 John was written to prove the humanity of Christ, assuming his deity. Certainly both ideas appear in both books.

Destination

It is not clear to whom the Epistle is addressed. Like the Gospel, the Epistle of John came out of the Asiatic circle with Ephesus as the centre. Augustine has the strange statement that the Epistle was addressed to the Parthians. There are other ingenious conjectures which come to nothing. The Epistle was clearly sent to those familiar with John’s message, possibly to the churches of the Province of Asia (cf. the Seven Churches in Revelation).

The Date

The time seems to be considerably removed from the atmosphere of the Pauline and Petrine Epistles. Jerusalem has been destroyed. If John wrote the Fourth Gospel by a.d. 95, then the First Epistle would come anywhere from a.d. 85 to 95. The tone of the author is that of an old man. His urgent message that the disciples, his " little children," love one another is like another story about the aged John, who, when too feeble to stand, would sit in his chair and preach " Little children, love one another." The Muratorian Fragment accepts the First Epistle and Origen makes full use of it, as does Clement of Alexandria. Irenaeus quotes it by name. Polycarp shows knowledge of it also.

JFB: 1 John (Book Introduction)

AUTHORSHIP.--POLYCARP, the disciple of John [Epistle to the Philippians, 7], quotes 1Jo 4:3. EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 3.39] says of PAPIAS, a hearer of John, and a friend of POLYCARP, "He used testimonies from the First Epistle of John." IRENÆUS, according to EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 5.8], often quoted this Epistle. So in his work Against Heresies [3.15; 5, 8] he quotes from John by name, 1Jo 2:18, &c.; and in [3.16,7], he quotes 1Jo 4:1-3; 1Jo 5:1, and 2Jo 1:7-8. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA [Miscellanies, 2.66, p. 464] refers to 1Jo 5:16, as in John's larger Epistle. See other quotations [Miscellanies, 3.32,42; 4.102]. TERTULLIAN [Against Marcion, 5.16] refers to 1Jo 4:1, &c.; [Against Praxeas, 15], to 1Jo 1:1. See his other quotations [Against Praxeas, 28; Against the Gnostics, 12]. CYPRIAN [Epistles, 28 (24)], quotes as John's, 1Jo 2:3-4; and [On the Lord's Prayer, 5] quotes 1Jo 2:15-17; and [On Works and Alms, 3], 1Jo 1:8; and [On the Advantage of Patience, 2] quotes 1Jo 2:6. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture states, "There are two of John (the Gospel and Epistle?) esteemed Catholic," and quotes 1Jo 1:3. The Peschito Syriac contains it. ORIGEN (in EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 6.25]) speaks of the First Epistle as genuine, and "probably the second and third, though all do not recognize the latter two"; on the Gospel of John, [Commentary on John, 13.2], he quotes 1Jo 1:5. DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA, ORIGEN'S scholar, cites the words of this Epistle as those of the Evangelist John. EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 3.24], says, John's first Epistle and Gospel are acknowledged without question by those of the present day, as well as by the ancients. So also JEROME [On Illustrious Men]. The opposition of COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, in the sixth century, and that of MARCION because our Epistle was inconsistent with his views, are of no weight against such irrefragable testimony.

The internal evidence is equally strong. Neither the Gospel, nor this Epistle, can be pronounced an imitation; yet both, in style and modes of thought, are evidently of the same mind. The individual notices are not so numerous or obvious as in Paul's writings, as was to be expected in a Catholic Epistle; but such as there are accord with John's position. He implies his apostleship, and perhaps alludes to his Gospel, and the affectionate tie which bound him as an aged pastor to his spiritual "children"; and in 1Jo 2:18-19; 1Jo 4:1-3, he alludes to the false teachers as known to his readers; and in 1Jo 5:21 he warns them against the idols of the surrounding world. It is no objection against its authenticity that the doctrine of the Word, or divine second Person, existing from everlasting, and in due time made flesh, appears in it, as also in the Gospel, as opposed to the heresy of the Docetæ in the second century, who denied that our Lord is come in the flesh, and maintained He came only in outward semblance; for the same doctrine appears in Col 1:15-18; 1Ti 3:16; Heb 1:1-3; and the germs of Docetism, though not fully developed till the second century, were in existence in the first. The Spirit, presciently through John, puts the Church beforehand on its guard against the coming heresy.

TO WHOM ADDRESSED.--AUGUSTINE [The Question of the Gospels, 2.39], says this Epistle was written to the Parthians. BEDE, in a prologue to the seven Catholic Epistles, says that ATHANASIUS attests the same. By the Parthians may be meant the Christians living beyond the Euphrates in the Parthian territory, outside the Roman empire, "the Church at Babylon elected together with (you)," the churches in the Ephesian region, the quarter to which Peter addressed his Epistles (1Pe 5:12). As Peter addressed the flock which John subsequently tended (and in which Paul had formerly ministered), so John, Peter's close companion after the ascension, addresses the flock among whom Peter had been when he wrote. Thus "the elect lady" (2Jo 1:1) answers "to the Church elected together" (1Pe 5:13). See further confirmation of this view in Introduction to Second John. It is not necessarily an objection to this view that John never is known to have personally ministered in the Parthian territory. For neither did Peter personally minister to the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, though he wrote his Epistles to them. Moreover, in John's prolonged life, we cannot dogmatically assert that he did not visit the Parthian Christians, after Peter had ceased to minister to them, on the mere ground of absence of extant testimony to that effect. This is as probable a view as ALFORD'S, that in the passage of AUGUSTINE, "to the Parthians," is to be altered by conjectural emendation; and that the Epistle is addressed to the churches at and around Ephesus, on the ground of the fatherly tone of affectionate address in it, implying his personal ministry among his readers. But his position, as probably the only surviving apostle, accords very well with his addressing, in a Catholic Epistle, a cycle of churches which he may not have specially ministered to in person, with affectionate fatherly counsel, by virtue of his general apostolic superintendence of all the churches.

TIME AND PLACE OF WRITING.--This Epistle seems to have been written subsequently to his Gospel as it assumes the reader's acquaintance with the Gospel facts and Christ's speeches, and also with the special aspect of the incarnate Word, as God manifest in the flesh (1Ti 3:16), set forth more fully in his Gospel. The tone of address, as a father addressing his "little children" (the continually recurring term, 1Jo 2:1, 1Jo 2:12-13, 1Jo 2:18, 1Jo 2:28; 1Jo 3:7, 1Jo 3:18; 1Jo 4:4; 1Jo 5:21), accords with the view that this Epistle was written in John's old age, perhaps about A.D. 90. In 1Jo 2:18, "it is the last time," probably does not refer to any particular event (as the destruction of Jerusalem, which was now many years past) but refers to the nearness of the Lord's coming as proved by the rise of Antichristian teachers, the mark of the last time. It was the Spirit's purpose to keep the Church always expecting Christ as ready to come at any moment. The whole Christian age is the last time in the sense that no other dispensation is to arise till Christ comes. Compare "these last days," Heb 1:2. Ephesus may be conjectured to be the place whence it was written. The controversial allusion to the germs of Gnostic heresy accord with Asia Minor being the place, and the last part of the apostolic age the time, of writing this Epistle.

CONTENTS.--The leading subject of the whole is, fellowship with the Father and the Son (1Jo 1:3). Two principal divisions may be noted: (1) 1Jo. 1:5-2:28: the theme of this portion is stated at the outset, "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all"; consequently, in order to have fellowship with Him, we must walk in light (1Jo 1:7); connected with which in the confession and subsequent forgiveness of our sins through Christ's propitiation and advocacy, without which forgiveness there could be no light or fellowship with God: a farther step in thus walking in the light is, positively keeping God's commandments, the sum of which is love, as opposed to hatred, the acme of disobedience to God's word: negatively, he exhorts them according to their several stages of spiritual growth, children, fathers, young men, in consonance with their privileges as forgiven, knowing the Father, and having overcome the wicked one, not to love the world, which is incompatible with the indwelling of the love of the Father, and to be on their guard against the Antichristian teachers already in the world, who were not of the Church, but of the world, against whom the true defense is, that his believing readers who have the anointing of God, should continue to abide in the Son and in the Father. (2) The second division (1Jo. 2:29-5:5) discusses the theme with which it opens, He is righteous; consequently (as in the first division), "every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him." Sonship in us involves our purifying ourselves as He is pure, even as we hope to see, and therefore to be made like our Lord when He shall appear; in this second, as in the first division, both a positive and a negative side are presented of "doing righteousness as He is righteous," involving a contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil. Hatred marks the latter; love, the former: this love gives assurance of acceptance with God for ourselves and our prayers, accompanied as they are (1Jo 3:23) with obedience to His great commandment, to "believe on Jesus, and love one another"; the seal (1Jo 3:24) of His dwelling in us and assuring our hearts, is the Spirit which He hath given us. In contrast to this (as in the first division), he warns against false spirits, the notes of which are, denial of Christ, and adherence to the world. Sonship, or birth of God, is then more fully described: its essential feature is unslavish, free love to God, because God first loved us, and gave His Son to die for us, and consequent love to the brethren, grounded on their being sons of God also like ourselves, and so victory over the world; this victory being gained only by the man who believes in Jesus as the Son of God. (3) The conclusion establishes this last central truth, on which rests our fellowship with God, Christ's having come by the water of baptism, the blood of atonement, and the witnessing Spirit, which is truth. As in the opening he rested this cardinal truth on the apostles' witness of the eye, the ear, and the touch, so now at the close he rests it on God's witness, which is accepted by the believer, in contrast with the unbeliever, who makes God a liar. Then follows his closing statement of his reason for writing (1Jo 5:13; compare the corresponding 1Jo 1:4, at the beginning), namely, that believers in Christ the Son of God may know that they have (now already) eternal life (the source of "joy," 1Jo 1:4; compare similarly his object in writing the Gospel, Joh 20:31), and so have confidence as to their prayers being answered (corresponding to 1Jo 3:22 in the second part); for instance, their intercessions for a sinning brother (unless his sin be a sin unto death). He closes with a brief summing up of the instruction of the Epistle, the high dignity, sanctity, and safety from evil of the children of God in contrast to the sinful world, and a warning against idolatry, literal and spiritual: "Keep yourselves from idols."

Though the Epistle is not directly polemical, the occasion which suggested his writing was probably the rise of Antichristian teachers; and, because he knew the spiritual character of the several classes whom he addresses, children, youths, fathers, he feels it necessary to write to confirm them in the faith and joyful fellowship of the Father and Son, and to assure them of the reality of the things they believe, that so they may have the full privileges of believing.

STYLE.--His peculiarity is fondness for aphorism and repetition. His tendency to repeat his own phrase, arises partly from the affectionate, hortatory character of the Epistle; partly, also, from its Hebraistic forms abounding in parallel clauses, as distinguished from the Grecian and more logical style of Paul; also, from his childlike simplicity of spirit, which, full of his one grand theme, repeats, and dwells on it with fond delight and enthusiasm. Moreover as ALFORD well says, the appearance of uniformity is often produced by want of deep enough exegesis to discover the real differences in passages which seem to express the same. Contemplative, rather than argumentative, he dwells more on the general, than on the particular, on the inner, than on the outer, Christian life. Certain fundamental truths he recurs to again and again, at one time enlarging on, and applying them, at another time repeating them in their condensed simplicity. The thoughts do not march onward by successive steps, as in the logical style of Paul, but rather in circle drawn round one central thought which he reiterates, ever reverting to it, and viewing it, now under its positive, now under its negative, aspect. Many terms which in the Gospel are given as Christ's, in the Epistle appear as the favorite expressions of John, naturally adopted from the Lord. Thus the contrasted terms, "flesh" and "spirit," "light" and "darkness," "life" and "death," "abide in Him": fellowship with the Father and Son, and with one another," is a favorite phrase also, not found in the Gospel, but in Acts and Paul's Epistles. In him appears the harmonious union of opposites, adapting him for his high functions in the kingdom of God, contemplative repose of character, and at the same time ardent zeal, combined with burning, all-absorbing love: less adapted for active outward work, such as Paul's, than for spiritual service. He handles Christian verities not as abstract dogmas, but as living realities, personally enjoyed in fellowship with God in Christ, and with the brethren. Simple, and at the same time profound, his writing is in consonance with his spirit, unrhetorical and undialectic, gentle, consolatory, and loving: the reflection of the Spirit of Him on whose breast he lay at the last supper, and whose beloved disciple he was. EWALD in ALFORD, speaking of the "unruffled and heavenly repose" which characterizes this Epistle, says, "It appears to be the tone, not so much of a father talking with his beloved children, as of a glorified saint addressing mankind from a higher world. Never in any writing has the doctrine of heavenly love--a love working in stillness, ever unwearied, never exhausted--so thoroughly approved itself as in this Epistle."

JOHN'S PLACE IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH.--As Peter founded and Paul propagated, so John completed the spiritual building. As the Old Testament puts prominently forward the fear of God, so John, the last writer of the New Testament, gives prominence to the love of God. Yet, as the Old Testament is not all limited to presenting the fear of God, but sets forth also His love, so John, as a representative of the New Testament, while breathing so continually the spirit of love, gives also the plainest and most awful warnings against sin, in accordance with his original character as Boanerges, "son of thunder." His mother was Salome, mother of the sons of Zebedee, probably sister to Jesus' mother (compare Joh 19:25, "His mother's sister," with Mat 27:56; Mar 15:40), so that he was cousin to our Lord; to his mother, under God, he may have owed his first serious impressions. Expecting as she did the Messianic kingdom in glory, as appears from her petition (Mat 20:20-23), she doubtless tried to fill his young and ardent mind with the same hope. NEANDER distinguishes three leading tendencies in the development of the Christian doctrine, the Pauline, the Jacobean (between which the Petrine forms an intermediate link), and the Johannean. John, in common with James, was less disposed to the intellectual and dialectic cast of thought which distinguishes Paul. He had not, like the apostle of the Gentiles, been brought to faith and peace through severe conflict; but, like James, had reached his Christian individuality through a quiet development: James, however, had passed through a moulding in Judaism previously, which, under the Spirit, caused him to present Christian truth in connection with the law, in so far as the latter in its spirit, though not letter, is permanent, and not abolished, but established under the Gospel. But John, from the first, had drawn his whole spiritual development from the personal view of Christ, the model man, and from intercourse with Him. Hence, in his writings, everything turns on one simple contrast: divine life in communion with Christ; death in separation from Him, as appears from his characteristic phrases, "life, light, truth; death, darkness, lie." "As James and Peter mark the gradual transition from spiritualized Judaism to the independent development of Christianity, and as Paul represents the independent development of Christianity in opposition to the Jewish standpoint, so the contemplative element of John reconciles the two, and forms the closing point in the training of the apostolic Church" [NEANDER].

JFB: 1 John (Outline)

• THE WRITER'S AUTHORITY AS AN EYEWITNESS TO THE GOSPEL FACTS, HAVING SEEN, HEARD, AND HANDLED HIM WHO WAS FROM THE BEGINNING: HIS OBJECT IN WRITING: HIS MESSAGE. IF WE WOULD HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM, WE MUST WALK IN LIGHT, AS HE IS LIGHT. (1Jo 1:1-10) Instead of a formal, John adopts a virtual address (compare 1Jo 1:4). To wish joy to the reader was the ancient customary address. The sentence begun in 1Jo 1:1 is broken off by the parenthetic 1Jo 1:2, and is resumed at 1Jo 1:3 with the repetition of some words from 1Jo 1:1.
• THE ADVOCACY OF CHRIST IS OUR ANTIDOTE TO SIN WHILE WALKING IN THE LIGHT; FOR TO KNOW GOD, WE MUST KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS AND LOVE THE BRETHREN, AND NOT LOVE THE WORLD, NOR GIVE HEED TO ANTICHRISTS, AGAINST WHOM OUR SAFETY IS THROUGH THE INWARD ANOINTING OF GOD TO ABIDE IN GOD: SO AT CHRIST'S COMING WE SHALL NOT BE ASHAMED. (1Jo. 2:1-29) (1Jo 5:18.)
• DISTINGUISHING MARKS OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD AND THE CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL. BROTHERLY LOVE THE ESSENCE OF TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS. (1Jo. 3:1-24)
• TESTS OF FALSE PROPHETS. LOVE, THE TEST OF BIRTH FROM GOD, AND THE NECESSARY FRUIT OF KNOWING HIS GREAT LOVE IN CHRIST TO US. (1Jo. 4:1-21)
• WHO ARE THE BRETHREN ESPECIALLY TO BE LOVED (1Jo 4:21); OBEDIENCE, THE TEST OF LOVE, EASY THROUGH FAITH, WHICH OVERCOMES THE WORLD. LAST PORTION OF THE EPISTLE. THE SPIRIT'S WITNESS TO THE BELIEVER'S SPIRITUAL LIFE. TRUTHS REPEATED AT THE CLOSE: FAREWELL WARNING. (1Jo. 5:1-21) Reason why our "brother" (1Jo 4:21) is entitled to such love, namely, because he is "born (begotten) of God": so that if we want to show our love to God, we must show it to God's visible representative.

TSK: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

1Jo 3:1, He declares the singular love of God towards us, in making us his sons; 1Jo 3:3, who therefore ought obediently to keep his commandments; 1Jo 3:11, as also to love one another as brethren.

Poole: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

JOHN CHAPTER 3

MHCC: 1 John (Book Introduction)

This epistle is a discourse upon the principles of Christianity, in doctrine and practice. The design appears to be, to refute and guard against erroneous and unholy tenets, principles, and practices, especially such as would lower the Godhead of Christ, and the reality and power of his sufferings and death, as an atoning sacrifice; and against the assertion that believers being saved by grace, are not required to obey the commandments. This epistle also stirs up all who profess to know God, to have communion with him, and to believe in him, and that they walk in holiness, not in sin, showing that a mere outward profession is nothing, without the evidence of a holy life and conduct. It also helps forward and excites real Christians to communion with God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to constancy in the true faith, and to purity of life.

MHCC: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

(1Jo 3:1, 1Jo 3:2) The apostle admires the love of God in making believers his children.

(1Jo 3:3-10) The purifying influence of the hope of seeing Christ, and the danger of pretending to this, and living in sin.

(1Jo 3:11-15) Love to the brethren is the character of real Christians.

(1Jo 3:16-21) That love described by its actings.

(1Jo 3:22-24) The advantage of faith, love, and obedience.

Matthew Henry: 1 John (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The First Epistle General of John

Though the continued tradition of the church attests that this epistle came from John the apostle, yet we may observe some other evidence that will confirm (or with some perhaps even outweigh) the certainty of that tradition. It should seem that the penman was one of the apostolical college by the sensible palpable assurance he had of the truth of the Mediator's person in his human nature: That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, 1Jo 1:1. Here he takes notice of the evidence the Lord gave to Thomas of his resurrection, by calling him to feel the prints of the nails and of the spear, which is recorded by John. And he must have been one of the disciples present when the Lord came on the same day in which he arose from the dead, and showed them his hands and his side, Joh 20:20. But, that we may be assured which apostle this was, there is scarcely a critic or competent judge of diction, or style of argument and spirit, but will adjudge this epistle to the writer of that gospel that bears the name of the apostle John. They wonderfully agree in the titles and characters of the Redeemer: The Word, the Life, the Light; his name was the Word of God. Compare 1Jo 1:1 and 1Jo 5:7 with Joh 1:1 and Rev 19:13. They agree in the commendation of God's love to us (1Jo 3:9; 1Jo 4:7; and 1Jo 5:1; Joh 3:5, Joh 3:6). Lastly (to add no more instances, which may be easily seen in comparing this epistle with that gospel), they agree in the allusion to, or application of, that passage in that gospel which relates (and which alone relates) the issuing of water and blood out of the Redeemer's opened side: This is he that came by water and blood, 1Jo 5:6. Thus the epistle plainly appears to flow from the same pen as that gospel did. Now I know not that the text, or the intrinsic history of any of the gospels, gives us such assurance of its writer or penman as that ascribed to John plainly does. There (viz. Joh 21:24) the sacred historian thus notifies himself: This is the disciple that testifieth of these things and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. Now who is this disciple, but he concerning whom Peter asked, What shall this man do? And concerning whom the Lord answered, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? (Joh 21:22). And who (Joh 21:20) is described by these three characters: - 1. That he is the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Lord's peculiar friend. 2. That he also leaned on his breast at supper. 3. That he said unto him, Lord, who is he that betrayeth thee? As sure then as it is that that disciple was John, so sure may the church be that that gospel and this epistle came from the beloved John.

The epistle is styled general, as being not inscribed to any particular church; it is, as a circular letter (or visitation charge), sent to divers churches (some say of Parthia), in order to confirm them in their stedfast adherence to the Lord Christ, and the sacred doctrines concerning his person and office, against seducers; and to instigate them to adorn that doctrine by love to God and man, and particularly to each other, as being descended from God, united by the same head, and travelling towards the same eternal life.

Matthew Henry: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

The apostle here magnifies the love of God in our adoption (1Jo 3:1, 1Jo 3:2). He thereupon argues for holiness (1Jo 3:3), and against sin (v. 4-19). He presses brotherly love (1Jo 3:11-18). How to assure our hearts before God (1Jo 3:19-22). The precept of faith (1Jo 3:23). And the good of obedience (1Jo 3:24).

Barclay: 1 John (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST LETTER OF JOHN

A Personal Letter And Its Background

First John is entitled a letter but it has no opening address nor closing greetings such as the letters of Paul have. And yet no one can read it without feeling its intensely personal character. Beyond all doubt the man who wrote it had in his mindeye a definite situation and a definite group of people. Both the form and the personal character of First John will be explained if we think of it as what someone has called "a loving and anxious sermon" written by a pastor who loved his people and sent out to the various churches over which he had charge.

Any such letter is produced by an actual situation apart from which it cannot be fully understood. If, then, we wish to understand First John we have first of all to try to reconstruct the situation which produced it, remembering that it was written in Ephesus a little after A.D. 100.

The Falling Away

By A.D. 100 certain things had almost inevitably happened within the Church, especially in a place like Ephesus.

(i) Many were now second or even third generation Christians. The thrill of the first days had, to some extent at least, passed away. Wordsworth said of one of the great moments of modern history:

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive."

In the first days of Christianity there was a glory and a splendour, but now Christianity had become a thing of habit, "traditional, half-hearted, nominal." Men had grown used to it and something of the wonder was lost. Jesus knew men and he had said: "Most menlove will grow cold" (Mat_24:12 ). John was writing at a time when, for some at least, the first thrill was gone and the flame of devotion had died to a flicker.

(ii) One result was that there were members of the Church who found the standards which Christianity demanded a burden and a weariness. They did not want to be saints in the New Testament sense of the term. The New Testament word for saint is hagios (G40), which is also commonly translated holy. Its basic meaning is different. The Temple was hagios (G39) because it was different from other buildings; the Sabbath was hagios (G40) because it was different from other days; the Jewish nation was hagios (G40) because it was different from other peoples; and the Christian was called to be hagios (G40) because he was called to be different from other men. There was always a distinct cleavage between the Christian and the world. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus says, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (Joh_15:19 ). "I have given them thy word," said Jesus in his prayer to God, "and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (Joh_17:14 ).

All this involved an ethical demand. It demanded a new standard of moral purity, a new kindness, a new service, a new forgiveness--and it was difficult. And once the first thrill and enthusiasm were gone it became harder and harder to stand out against the world and to refuse to conform to the generally accepted standards and practices of the age.

(iii) It is to be noted that First John shows no signs that the Church to which it was written was being persecuted. The peril, as it has been put, was not persecution but seduction; it came from within. That, too, Jesus had foreseen. "Many false prophets," he said, "will arise, and lead many astray" (Mat_24:11 ). This was a danger of which Paul had warned the leaders of this very Church of Ephesus when he made his farewell address to them. "I know," he said, "that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them" (Act_20:29-30 ).

The trouble which First John seeks to combat did not come from men out to destroy the Christian faith but from men who thought they were improving it. It came from men whose aim was to make Christianity intellectually respectable. They knew the intellectual tendencies and currents of the day and felt that the time had come for Christianity to come to terms with secular philosophy and contemporary thought.

The Contemporary Philosophy

What, then, was this contemporary thought and philosophy with which the false prophets and mistaken teachers wished to align the Christian faith? Throughout the Greek world there was a tendency of thought to which the general name of Gnosticism is given. The basic belief of all Gnostic thought was that only spirit was good and matter was essentially evil. The Gnostic, therefore, inevitably despised the world since it was matter. In particular he despised the body which, being matter, was necessarily evil. Imprisoned within this body was the spirit of man. That spirit was a seed of God, who was altogether good. So, then, the aim of life must be to release this heavenly seed imprisoned in the evil of the body. That could be done only by a secret knowledge and elaborate ritual which only the true Gnostic could supply. Here was a tendency of thought which was written deep into Greek thinking--and which has not even vet ceased to exist. Its basis is the conviction that all matter is evil and spirit alone is good, and that the one real aim in life is to liberate manspirit from the vile prison-house of the body.

The False Teachers

With that in our minds let us turn to First John and gather the evidence as to who these false teachers were and what they taught. They had been within the Church but they had seceded from it. "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1Jo_2:19 ). They were men of influence for they claimed to be prophets. "Many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1Jo_4:1 ). Although they had left the Church, they still tried to disseminate their teaching within it and to seduce its members from the true faith (1Jo_2:26 ).

The Denial Of Jesusessiahship

At least some of these false teachers denied that Jesus was the Messiah. "Who is a liar," demands John, "but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" (1Jo_2:22 ). It is most likely that these false teachers were not Gnostics proper, but Jews. Things had always been difficult for Jewish Christians, but the events of history made them doubly so. It was very difficult for a Jew to come to believe in a crucified Messiah. But suppose he had begun so to believe, his difficulties were by no means finished. The Christians believed that Jesus would return quickly to vindicate his people. Clearly that would be a hope that would be specially dear to the heart of the Jews. Then in A.D. 70 Jerusalem was captured by the Romans, who were so infuriated with the long intransigence and the suicidal resistance of the Jews that they tore the Holy City stone from stone and drew a plough across the midst of it. In view of that, how could any Jew easily accept the hope that Jesus would come and save his people? The Holy City was desolate; the Jews were dispersed throughout the world. In face of that how could it be true that the Messiah had come?

The Denial Of The Incarnation

There was something even more serious than that. There was false teaching which came directly from an attempt from within the Church to bring Christianity into line with Gnosticism. We must remember the Gnostic point of view that spirit alone was good and matter utterly evil. Given that point of view any real incarnation is impossible. That is exactly what centuries later Augustine was to point out. Before he became a Christian, he was skilled in the philosophies of the various schools. In the Confessions (1Jo_6:9 ) he tells us that somewhere in the heathen writers he had read in one form or another nearly all the things which Christianity says; but there was one great Christian saying which he had never found in any pagan author and which no one would ever find, and that saying was: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Joh_1:14 ). Since the heathen thinkers believed in the essential evil of matter and therefore the essential evil of the body, that was one thing they could never say.

It is clear that the false teachers against whom John was writing in this First Letter denied the reality of the incarnation and of Jesushysical body. "Every spirit," writes John, "which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God" (1Jo_4:2-3 ).

In the early Church this refusal to admit the reality of the incarnation took, broadly speaking, two forms.

(i) In its most radical and wholesale form it was called Docetism, which Goodspeed suggests might be translated Seemism. The Greek verb dokein (G1380) means to seem; and the Docetists taught that Jesus only seemed to have a body. They insisted that he was a purely spiritual being who had nothing but the appearance of having a body. One of the apocryphal books written from this point of view is the Acts of John, which dates from about A.D. 160. In it John is made to say that sometimes when he touched Jesus he seemed to meet with a material body but at other times "the substance was immaterial, as if it did not exist at all," and also that when Jesus walked he never left any footprint upon the ground. The simplest form of Docetism is the complete denial that Jesus ever had a physical body.

(ii) There was a more subtle, and perhaps more dangerous, variant of this theory connected with the name of Cerinthus. In tradition John and Cerinthus were sworn enemies. Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 4: 14.6) hands down a story which tells how John went to the public bathhouse in Ephesus to bathe. He saw Cerinthus inside and refused even to enter the building. "Let us flee," he said, "lest even the bathhouse fall, because Cerinthus the enemy of truth is within." Cerinthus drew a definite distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. He said that Jesus was a man, born in a perfectly natural way. He lived in special obedience to God, and after his baptism the Christ in the shape of a dove descended upon him, from that power which is above all powers, and then he brought to men news of the Father who had been as yet unknown. Cerinthus did not stop there. He said that at the end of Jesusife, the Christ again withdrew from him so that the Christ never suffered at all. It was the human Jesus who suffered, died and rose again.

This again comes out in the stories of the apocryphal gospels written under the influence of this point of view. In the Gospel of Peter, written about A.D. 130, it is said that Jesus showed no pain upon the Cross and that his cry was: "My power! My power! Why hast thou forsaken me?" It was at that moment that the divine Christ left the human Jesus. The Acts of John go further. They tell how, when the human Jesus was being crucified on Calvary, John was actually talking to the divine Christ in a cave in the hillside and that the Christ said to him, "John, to the multitude down below in Jerusalem I am being crucified, and pierced with lances and with reeds, and gall and vinegar are given me to drink. But I am speaking to you, and listen to what I say.... Nothing, therefore, of the things they will say of me have I suffered" (Acts of John 97).

We may see how widespread this way of thinking was from the Letters of Ignatius. He was writing to a group of Churches in Asia Minor which must have been much the same as that to which First John was written. When Ignatius wrote he was a prisoner and was being conveyed to Rome to be martyred by being flung to the beasts in the arena. He wrote to the Trallians: "Be deaf, therefore. when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David and Mary, who was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died . . . who also was truly raised from the dead.... But if, as some affirm, who are without God that is, who are unbelievers--his suffering was only a semblance ... why am I a prisoner?" (Ignatius: To the Trallians 9 and 10). To the Christians at Smyrna he wrote: "For he suffered all these things for us that we might attain salvation, and he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself, not as some unbelievers say that his passion was merely in semblance" (To the Smyrnaeans 2). Polycarp writing to the Philippians used Johnvery words: "For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an anti-Christ" (To the Philippians chapter 7: 1).

This teaching of Cerinthus is also rebuked in First John. John writes of Jesus: "This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and the blood" (1Jo_5:6 ). The point of that verse is that the Gnostic teachers would have agreed that the divine Christ came by water, that is, at the baptism of Jesus; but they would have denied that he came by blood, that is, by the Cross, for they insisted that the divine Christ left the human Jesus before his crucifixion.

The great danger of this heresy is that it comes from what can only be called a mistaken reverence. It is afraid to ascribe to Jesus full humanity. It regards it as irreverent to think that he had a truly physical body. It is a heresy which is by no means dead but is held to this day, usually quite unconsciously, by not a few devout Christians. But it must be remembered, as John so clearly saw, that mansalvation was dependent on the full identification of Jesus Christ with him. As one of the great early fathers unforgettably put it: "He became what we are to make us what he is."

(iii) This Gnostic belief had certain practical consequences in the lives of those who held it.

(a) The Gnostic attitude to matter and to all created things produced a certain attitude to the body and the things of the body. That attitude might take any one of three different forms.

(1) It might take the form of asceticism, with fasting and celibacy and rigid control, even deliberate ill-treatment, of the body. The view that celibacy is better than marriage and that sex is sin go back to Gnostic influence and belief--and this is a view which still lingers on in certain quarters. There is no trace of that view in this letter.

(2) It might take the form of a contention that the body did not matter and that, therefore, its appetites might be gratified without limit. Since the body was in any event evil, it made no difference what a man did with it. There are echoes of this in this letter. John condemns as a liar the man who says that he knows God and vet does not keep Godcommandments; the man who says that he abides in Christ ought to walk as Christ walked (1Jo_1:6 ; 1Jo_2:4-6 ). There were clearly Gnostics in these communities who claimed special knowledge of God but whose conduct was far removed from the demand of the Christian ethic.

In certain quarters this Gnostic belief went even further. The Gnostic was the man who had gnosis (G1108), knowledge. Some held that the real Gnostic must, therefore, know the best as well as the worst and must enter into every experience of life at its highest or at its deepest level, as the case may be. It might almost be said that such men held that it was an obligation to sin. There is a reference to this kind of belief in the letter to Thyatira in the Revelation, where the Risen Christ refers to those who have known "the deep things of Satan" (Rev_2:24 ). And it may well be that John is referring to these people when he insists that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1Jo_1:5 ). These particular Gnostics would have held that there was in God not only blazing light but deep darkness and that a man must penetrate both. It is easy to see the disastrous consequences of such a belief.

(3) There was a third kind of Gnostic belief. The true Gnostic regarded himself as an altogether spiritual man, as having shed all the material things of life and released his spirit from the bondage of matter. Such Gnostics held that they were so spiritual that they were above and beyond sin and had reached spiritual perfection. It is to them that John refers when he speaks of those who deceive themselves by saying that they have no sin (1Jo_1:8-10 ).

Whichever of these three ways Gnostic belief took, its ethical consequences were perilous in the extreme; and it is clear that its last two were to be found in the society to which John wrote.

(b) Further, this Gnosticism issued in an attitude to men which was the necessary destruction of Christian fellowship. We have seen that the Gnostic aimed at the release of the spirit from the prison house of the evil body by means of an elaborate and esoteric knowledge. Clearly such a knowledge was not for every man. Ordinary people were too involved in the everyday life and work of the world ever to have time for the study and discipline necessary; and, even if they had had such time, many were intellectually incapable of grasping the involved speculations of Gnostic theosophy and philosophy so-called.

This produced an inevitable result. It divided men into two classes those who were capable of a really spiritual life and those who were not. The Gnostics had names for these two classes of men. The ancients commonly divided the being of man into three parts. There was the soma (G4983), the body, the physical part of man. There was the psuche (G5590), which we generally translate soul, but we must have a care for it does not mean what we mean by soul. To the Greeks the psuche (G5590) was the principle of physical life. Everything which had physical life had psuche (G5590). Psuche was that life principle which a man shared with all living creatures. There was the pneuma (G4151), the spirit; and it was the spirit which was possessed only by man and made him kin to God.

The aim of Gnosticism was the release of the pneuma (G4151) from the soma (G4983); but that release could be won only by long and arduous study which only the leisured intellectual could ever undertake. The Gnostics, therefore, divided men into two classes the psuchikoi (G5591), who could never advance beyond the principle of physical life and never attain to anything else than what was to all intents and purposes animal living; and the pneumatikoi (G4152), who were truly spiritual and truly akin to God.

The result was clear. The Gnostics produced a spiritual aristocracy who looked with contempt and even hatred on lesser men. The pneumatikoi (G4152) regarded the psuchikoi (G5591) as contemptible, earthbound creatures who could never know what real religion was. The consequence was obviously the annihilation of Christian fellowship. That is why John insists all over his letter that the true test of Christianity is love for the brethren. If we really are walking in the light we have fellowship with one another (1Jo_1:7 ). He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in fact in darkness (1Jo_2:9-11 ). The proof that we have passed from dark to light is that we love the brethren (1Jo_3:14-17 ). The marks of Christianity are belief in Christ and love for the brethren (1Jo_3:23 ). God is love and he who does not love does not know God at all (1Jo_4:7-8 ). Because God loved us, we ought to love each other; it is when we love each other that God dwells in us (1Jo_4:10-12 ). The commandment is that he who loves God must love his brother also, and he who says he loves God and at the same time hates his brother is branded as a liar (1Jo_4:20-21 ). The Gnostic, to put it bluntly, would have said that the mark of true religion is contempt for ordinary men; John insists in every chapter that the mark of true religion is love for every man.

Here, then, is a picture of these Gnostic heretics. They talked of being born of God, of walking in the light, of having no sin, of dwelling in God, of knowing God. These were their catch phrases. They had no idea of destroying the Church and the faith; by their way of it they were going to cleanse the Church of dead wood and make Christianity an intellectually respectable philosophy, fit to stand beside the great systems of the day. But the effect of their teaching was to deny the incarnation, to eliminate the Christian ethic and to make fellowship within the Church impossible. It is little wonder that John seeks, with such fervent pastoral devotion, to defend the churches he loved from such an insidious attack from within. This was a threat far more perilous than any heathen persecution; the very existence of the Christian faith was at stake.

The Message Of John

First John is a short letter and we cannot look within it for a systematic exposition of the Christian faith. None the less it will be of the greatest interest to examine the basic underlying beliefs with which John confronts those threatening to be the wreckers of the Christian faith.

The Object Of Writing

Johnobject in writing is two-fold yet one. He writes that the joy of his people may be complete (1Jo_1:4 ), and that they may not sin (1Jo_2:1 ). He sees clearly that, however attractive the wrong way may be, it is not in its nature to bring happiness. To bring them joy and to preserve them from sin is 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 (1Jo_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 (1Jo_4:7-10 , 1Jo_4:16 ). Johnconviction 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.

(i) Jesus is he who was from the beginning (1Jo_1:1 ; 1Jo_2:14 ). When a man is confronted with Jesus, he is confronted with the eternal.

(ii) 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 (1Jo_4:15 ; 1Jo_5:5 ). The relationship of Jesus to God is unique and in him is seen Godever-seeking and ever-forgiving heart.

(iii) Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah (1Jo_2:22 ; 1Jo_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 conserve his connection with eternity; to say that he is the Messiah, is to conserve his connection with history. It is to see his coming as the event towards which Godplan, working itself out in his chosen people, was moving.

(iv) Jesus was most truly and fully man. To deny that Jesus came in the flesh is to be moved by the spirit of Antichrist (1Jo_4:2-3 ). It is Johnwitness that Jesus was so truly man that he himself had known and touched and handled him (1Jo_1:1 , 1Jo_1:3 ). No writer in the New Testament holds with greater intensity the full reality of the incarnation. Not only did he become man, he also suffered for men. It was by water and blood that he came (1Jo_5:6 ); and he laid down his life for men (1Jo_3:16 ).

(v) The coming of Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension all combine to deal with the sin of man. Jesus was without sin (1Jo_3:5 ); and man is essentially a sinner, even though in his arrogance he may claim to be without sin (1Jo_1:8-10 ); and yet the sinless one came to take away the sin of sinning men (1Jo_3:5 ). In regard to mansin Jesus is two things.

(a) He is our advocate with the Father (1Jo_2:1 ). The word is parakletos (G3875). A parakletos is someone who is called in to help. The word could be used of a doctor; 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 under accusation. Jesus pleads our case with God; he, the sinless one, is the defender of sinning men.

(b) But Jesus is more than that. Twice John calls him the expiation for our sins (1Jo_2:2 ; 1Jo_4:10 ). When a man sins, the relationship which should exist between him and God is broken. An expiatory sacrifice is one which restores that relationship or, rather, a sacrifice in virtue of which that relationship is restored. It is an atoning sacrifice, a sacrifice which once again makes man and God at one. So, then, through what Jesus was and did the relationship between God and man, broken by sin, is restored. Jesus does not only plead the case of the sinner; he sets him at one, with God. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1Jo_1:7 ).

(vi) In consequence of all this, through Jesus Christ men who believe have life (1Jo_4:9 ; 1Jo_5:11-12 ). This is true in a double sense. They 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 indeed.

(vii) All this may be summed up by saying that Jesus is the Saviour of the world (1Jo_4:14 ). Here we have something which has to be set out in full. "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1Jo_4:14 ). We have already talked of Jesus as pleading mencase before God. If we were to leave that without addition, it might be argued that God wished to condemn men 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 was with God. It was he who sent his son to be the Saviour of men.

Within the short compass 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 him we must turn back to the Fourth Gospel. It may be said that in First John the function of the Spirit is in some sense to be the liaison between God and man. It is he who makes us conscious that there is within us the abiding presence of God through Jesus Christ (1Jo_3:24 ; 1Jo_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 the Christian lives is hostile; it is a world without God. It does not know the Christian, because it did not know Christ (1Jo_3:1 ). It hates the Christian, just as it hated Christ (1Jo_3:13 ). The false teachers are of the world and not of God, and it is because they speak its language that the world is ready to hear them and accept them (1Jo_4:4-5 ). The whole world, says John sweepingly, is in the power of the evil one (1Jo_5:19 ). It is for that reason that the Christian has to overcome it, and his weapon in his struggle with the world is faith (1Jo_5:4 ).

Hostile as the world is, it is doomed. The world and all its desires are passing away (1Jo_2:17 ). That, indeed, is why it is folly to give oneheart to the world; it is on the way to dissolution. Although the Christian lives 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 (1Jo_2:8 ). God in Christ has broken into time; the new age has come. It is not yet fully realized but the consummation is sure.

The Christian lives in an evil and a hostile world, but he possesses that by which he can overcome it and, when the destined end of the world comes, he is safe, because he already possesses that which makes him a member 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 (1Jo_1:7 ). The man who claims to walk in the light but hates his brother, is in reality walking in darkness; it is the man who loves his brother who is in the light (1Jo_2:9-11 ). The proof that a man has passed from darkness to light is the fact that he loves his brother. To hate onebrother man is in essence to be a murderer, as Cain was. If any man is able out of his fullness to help his brotherpoverty and does not do so, it is ridiculous for him to claim that the love of God dwells in him. The essence of religion is to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to love one another (1Jo_3:11-17 , 1Jo_3:23 ). God is love; and, therefore, the man who loves is kin to God. God has loved us, and that is the best reason for loving each other (1Jo_4:7-12 ). If a man says that he loves God and at the same time hates his brother, he is a liar. The command is that he who loves God must love his brother also (1Jo_4:20-21 ).

It was Johnconviction that the only way in which a man can prove that he loves God is by loving his fellow-men; and that that love must be not only a sentimental emotion but a dynamic towards practical help.

The Righteousness Of The Christian

No New Testament writer makes a stronger ethical demand than John, or more strongly condemns a so-called religion which fails to issue in ethical action. God is righteous and the life of every one who knows him must reflect his righteousness (1Jo_2:29 ). Whoever abides in Christ and is born of God, does not sin; whoever does not do right is not of God (1Jo_3:3-10 ); and the characteristic of this righteousness is that it issues in love for the brethren (1Jo_3:10-11 ). We show our love to God and to men by keeping Godcommandments (1Jo_5:2 ). Whoever is born of God does not sin (1Jo_5:18 ).

For John, knowledge of God and obedience to him must ever go hand in hand. It is by keeping his commandments that we prove that we really do know God. The man who says that he knows him and who does not keep his commandments is a liar (1Jo_2:3-5 ).

It is, in fact, this obedience which is the basis of effective prayer. We receive what we ask of God because we keep his commandments and do what is pleasing in his sight (1Jo_3:22 ).

The two marks which characterize genuine Christianity are love of the brethren and obedience to the revealed commandments of God.

The Destination Of The Letter

There are certain baffling problems in regard to the letterdestination. The letter itself gives us no clue as to where it was sent. Tradition strongly connects it with Asia Minor, and especially with Ephesus, where, according to tradition, John lived for many years. But there are certain other odd facts which somehow have to be explained.

Cassiodorus says that the First Letter of John was written Ad Parthos, To the Parthians (compare G3934); and Augustine has a series of ten tractates written on The Epistle of John ad Parthos. One Geneva manuscript still further complicates the matter by entitling the letter Ad Sparthos. There is no such word as Sparthos. There are two possible explanations of this impossible title: (i) Just possibly it is meant for Ad Sparsos, which would mean To the Christians scattered abroad; (ii) In Greek Ad Parthos would be Pros Parthous. Now in the early manuscripts there was no space between the words and they were all written in capital letters so that the title would run PROSPARTHOUS. A scribe writing to dictation could quite easily put that down as PROSSPARTHOUS, especially if he did not know what the title meant. Ad Sparthos can be eliminated as a mere mistake.

But where did To the Parthians come from? There is one possible explanation. Second John does tell us of its destination; it is written to The elect lady,, and her children (2Jo_1:1 ). Let us turn to the end of First Peter. The King James Version has: "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you" (1Pe_5:13 ). The phrase: "the church that is" is printed in the King James Version in italics which of course, means that it has no equivalent in the Greek which has, in fact, no actual mention of a church at all. This the Revised Standard Version accurately indicates: "She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen (elect), sends you greetings." As far as the Greek goes it would be perfectly possible, and indeed natural, to take that as referring not to a Church but to a lad . That is precisely what certain of the scholars in the very early Church did. Now we get the elect lady again in Second John. It was easy to identify the two elect ladies and to assume that Second John was also written to Babylon. The natural title for the inhabitants of Babylon was Parthians and hence we have the explanation of the title.

The process went even further. The Greek for the elect lady is he (G3588) elekte (G1588). We have already seen that the early manuscripts were written all in capital letters; and it would be just possible to take Elekte (G1588) not as an adjective meaning elect but as a proper name, Elekta. This is, in fact, what Clement of Alexandria may have done, for we have information that he said that the Johannine letters were written to a certain Babylonian lady, Elekta by name, and to her children.

It may well be then, that the title Ad Parthos arose from a series of misunderstandings. The elect one in First Peter is quite certainly the church, as the King James Version rightly saw. Moffatt translates: "Your sister church in Babylon, elect like yourselves, salutes you." Further, it is almost certain that in any event Babylon there stands for Rome which the early writers identified with Babylon, the great harlot, drunk with the blood of the saints (compare Rev_17:5 ). The title Ad Parthos has a most interesting history but clearly it arose from an ingenious misunderstanding.

There is one further complication. Clement of Alexandria referred to Johnletters as "written to virgins." On the face of it that is improbable, for it would not be a specially relevant title for them. How, then, could it come about? The Greek would be Pros Parthenous (compare G3933) which closely resembles Pros Parthous (G3934); and, it so happens, John was regularly called Ho Parthenos (G3933), the Virgin, because he never married and because of the purity of his life. This further title must have come from a confusion between Ad Parthos (G3934) and Ho Parthenos (G3933).

This is a case where we may take it that tradition is right and all the ingenious theories mistaken. We may take it that these letters were written in Ephesus and to the surrounding Churches in Asia Minor. When John wrote, it would certainly be to the district where his writ ran, and that was Ephesus and the surrounding territory. He is never mentioned in connection with Babylon.

In Defence Of The Faith

John wrote his great letter to meet a threatening situation and in defence of the faith. The heresies which he attacked are by no means altogether echoes of "old unhappy far off things and battles long ago." They are still beneath the surface and sometimes they even still raise their heads. To study his letter will confirm us in the true faith and enable us to have a defence against that which would seduce us from it.

FURTHER READING

John

J. N. S. Alexander, The Epistles of John (Tch; E)

A. E. Brooke, The Johannine Epistles (ICC; G)

C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles (MC; E)

Abbreviations

ICC: International Critical Commentary

MC: Moffatt Commentary

Tch: Torch Commentary

E: English Text

G: Greek Text

Barclay: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

Remember The Privileges Of The Christian Life (2Jo_3:1-2)

Remember The Possibilities Of The Christian Life (2Jo_3:1-2 Continued)

The Obligation Of Purity (2Jo_3:3-8)

The Man Who Is Born Of God (2Jo_3:9)

The Man Who Cannot Sin (2Jo_3:9 Continued)

The Marks Of The Children Of God (2Jo_3:10-18)

The World's Resentment Of The Christian Way (2Jo_3:10-18 Continued)

The Only Test (2Jo_3:19-24)

The Inseparable Commands (2Jo_3:19-24 Continued)

Constable: 1 John (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Historical Background

This epistle does not contain the name of its writer, but from its very early history the church believed the Apostle John wrote it. Several ancient writers referred to this book as John's writing.¹ Though modern critics have challenged this view they have not destroyed it.

Neither is there any reference to who the first recipients of this epistle were or where they lived other than that they were Christians (2:12-14, 21; 5:13). They may have been the leaders of churches (2:20, 27). According to early church tradition John ministered in Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia, for many years after he left Palestine. We know that he knew the churches and Christians in that Roman province well from Revelation 2 and 3. Perhaps his readers lived in that province.

The false teachers and teachings to which he alluded suggest that John wrote about conditions that existed in Asia: Judaism, Gnosticism, Docetism, the teachings of Cerinthus (a prominent Gnostic), and others.² These philosophies extended beyond Asia, but they were present there during John's lifetime.

This is one of the most difficult of all the New Testament books to date. One of the few references in the book that may help us date it is 2:19. If John meant that the false teachers had departed from among the apostles, a date in the 60s seems possible. This would place it about A.D. 60-65, before the Jewish revolts of A.D. 66-70 scattered the Jews from Judea. In this case John may have written from Jerusalem.³ However many conservative scholars believe John wrote this epistle much later. They suggest between about A.D. 85 and 97, when he evidently wrote the Gospel of John (ca. A.D. 85-95) and the Book of Revelation (ca. A.D. 95-96).⁴ I prefer a date in the 90s following the writing of John's Gospel that 1 John seems to assume.⁵ In view of the nature and the conclusion of the Book of Revelation, which seems to be God's final word to humankind, I think John probably composed his Epistles before that book. So a date for 1 John in the early 90s, A.D. 90-95, seems most probable to me.⁶

Since John ministered in and around Ephesus later in his life, that seems to be the most probable place from which he wrote this epistle.⁷

"The writer of 1 John was thus addressing a community, made up of a number of house-churches in and around Ephesus . . ., which was split in three ways. It consisted of the following: (a) Johannine Christians who were committed to the apostolic gospel of Jesus as they had received it; (b) heretically inclined members from a Jewish background; (c) heterodox followers from a Hellenistic (and/or pagan) background. The problems relating to the two heretical' groups, (b) and (c), were primarily theological and (by extension) ethical; although related difficulties concerning eschatology and pneumatology may have been present also (see on 2:18 and 4:1 . . .). . . .

"To complete the picture, it should be noted that the life of the Johannine community was marked by the presence of a fourth group of people: the secessionists. Whereas the members of the first three groups could be found within John's circle, the anti-Christian secessionists had begun to break away from it. These were heretically inclined adherents of the Johannine community. In some cases they may have been genuine, if uninformed, believers. But in other instances they perhaps never properly belonged to John's church (although they thought they did), because they never really belonged to God (see on 1 John 2:18-19; cf. also 2:22-23)."⁸

Message⁹

If I were to boil down the message of this epistle into one sentence it would be this. Fellowship with God is the essence of eternal life.

Both the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John deal with eternal life. John wrote his Gospel so his readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing they might have life through His name (John 20:31). John wrote this epistle to Christians so we might enter into the fullness of the eternal life that we possess (1 John 1:3; John 10:10). However the subject of this letter is not eternal life but fellowship with God. Fellowship with God is the essence of eternal life (1:3-4; John 17:3).

John evidently wrote this epistle about 90-95 A.D. from Ephesus.

This epistle grew out of Jesus' Upper Room Discourse (John 14-17). Similarly James' epistle grew out of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and the Book of Revelation grew out of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24-25). In the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus explained to the apostles their relationship to God as it would exist after He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in them (John 14:16-17). John expounded that revelation in this letter.

There are several terms in this epistle that John used as synonyms: fellowship with God, knowing God, and abiding in God. These terms all describe the experience of Christians. They all describe our relationship with God as more or less intimate.

Our relationships with people vary. They are more or less intimate.

Fellowship with God is also a matter of greater or lesser intimacy. When we speak of being "in fellowship" or "out of fellowship," we are oversimplifying our relationship to God.

John's purpose in writing was to motivate his readers to cultivate greater intimacy with God. The greater the intimacy, the greater our "fellowship," the better we "know" God experientially, and the closer we "abide" in Him (cf. John 14:21-24). The greater our intimacy with God the more we will experience the life that is eternal. All Christians possess eternal life, but all do not experience that life as God intended us to enjoy it (John 10:10). Similarly all living human beings have life, but not all live an abundant life.

This letter reveals two things about the life of fellowship.

First, it reveals the resources of this life. There are two resources.

The first is objective. God has provided a pattern for the life of fellowship. The pattern is Jesus Christ. In Christ we have personified two qualities that are characteristics of God that should also characterize us as the children of God.

The first of these is light. Jesus Christ constantly walked in the light of God's holiness (1:5-6; 2:6). He never hid from God. He also conformed to the light of God's will perfectly. He was submissive, sinless, clean, and consecrated.

The second of these resources is love. Jesus also constantly manifested the love of God (4:10). In His attitudes and activities He always demonstrated perfect love. His words and His deeds were a revelation of God's love. Jesus put others before Himself. He was selfless as well as holy.

The second resource of the life of fellowship is subjective. God has not only provided a pattern for the life of fellowship, He has also provided the power. Jesus Christ is not only an external pattern for us to imitate. More helpfully He is an internal power whom God has placed within us who is at work in our lives. With eternal life we get Jesus (5:11-12). With Him come two things.

First, we get light. We see spiritual things that we never saw before (2:20). We see how we ought to walk (2:27). We become sensitive to sin.

Second, we get love. We see the need of other people who are groping in darkness, and we desire to reach out to them in service and to bring them into the light (4:7). As soon as we share God's life we begin to love with God's love. We can quench love, but every person who has eternal life has love in him or her.

To review, this letter reveals two things about the life of fellowship: first the resources of this life, which are an external pattern and internal power. Both of these come from Jesus Christ.

Second, this letter reveals the values of the realization of this life. These are two also.

First, there is value for us. This value is that we realize life as God intended people to live it. We can experience life as God meant it to be when He first made man. We achieve our potential as human beings to the degree to which we walk in fellowship with God (i.e., abide in Him). Our intimacy with God perfects our personalities.

Second, there is also value for God. God enjoys fellowship with man. God's purpose in creation and redemption was to have fellowship with man. God finds in every person who walks with Him in fellowship a person through whom He can manifest Himself, an instrument through whom He can accomplish His purposes. The abiding believer reveals God to those around him or her.

John also called his readers to fulfill our responsibilities in the life of fellowship.

Regarding the light we have two responsibilities.

First, we must obey the light (1:7). That means responding positively to the knowledge of God's will that we gain. We can become callused to the truth. This is a special danger in seminary. Cultivate your relationship with God daily. We all need to keep weeding the gardens of our spiritual lives.

Second, we must seek the light (1:9). We need to forsake the darkness of sin and keep walking in the light. The circle of God's light may move. We may gain new understanding of His will. When that happens, we need to move into that light in obedience.

Regarding love we also have two responsibilities.

First, we must yield to its impulse. We can destroy our capacity to love by not expressing love when God moves us to do so. We can lose our passion for the lost by resisting the Holy Spirit's promptings to reach out in love. We need to be ready to sacrifice rather than to put self first. However if we yield ourselves to the impulse of love to serve others, our love will deepen and intensify. Do not quench the Spirit if He is prompting you to reach out in love.

Second, we must also guard love's purity. We need to watch out for false charity. True love never sacrifices principle. God never loved at the expense of light. Love never justifies sin.

In conclusion, notice two applications of the message of this epistle, one to the individual and one to the church.

First, let me make one application to the individual. We can test whether we are living in fellowship with God easily. Check the light and the love in our lives. Is the light of holiness shining clearly, or are we walking in darkness? Is our love still burning brightly, or has our life deteriorated to the level of only learning? Learning is only one means to the end of living, living in intimate fellowship with God. What do you want people to remember you for, your knowledge or your love?

Second, let me make one application to the church. We need to keep our priorities in line with God's. Intimacy is His goal for us. God desires a few committed disciples rather than a multitude of compromising disciples. A pure church is more important than a large church. Do not draw back from urging people to walk in the light and to walk in love to increase the size of your congregation. Make as broad an appeal as possible without pulling your punches in ministry. I'm referring here to the church's ministry of equipping the saints. In presenting the gospel, we should make as broad an appeal as possible.

Constable: 1 John (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction: the purpose of the epistle 1:1-4

II. Living in the light 1:5-2:29

A. God as light 1:5-7

B. Conditions for living in the light 1:8-2:29

1. Renouncing sin 1:8-2:2

2. Obeying God 2:3-11

3. Rejecting worldliness 2:12-17

4. Keeping the faith 2:18-29

III. Living as children of God 3:1-5:13

A. God as Father 3:1-3

B. Conditions for living as God's children 3:4-5:13

1. Renouncing sin reaffirmed 3:4-9

2. Obeying God reaffirmed 3:10-24

3. Rejecting worldliness reaffirmed 4:1-6

4. Practicing love 4:7-5:4

5. Keeping the faith reaffirmed 5:5-13

IV. Conclusion: Christian confidence 5:14-21

A. Confidence in action: prayer 5:14-17

B. Certainty of knowledge: assurance 5:18-20

C. A final warning: idolatry 5:21

Another outline that captures the cyclical pattern of John's thought is the following.¹⁰

I. Prologue 1:1-4

II. First cycle 1:5-2:28

A. Righteousness 1:5-2:6

B. Love 2:7-17

C. Belief 2:18-28

III. Second cycle 2:29-4:6

A. Righteousness 2:29-3:10a

B. Love 3:10b-24a

C. Belief 3:24b-4:6

IV. Third cycle 4:7-5:12

A. Love 4:7-21

B. Righteousness 5:1-5

C. Belief 5:6-21

Scholars have struggled to determine the structure of this epistle and have suggested many diverse outlines of the book.¹¹

Constable: 1 John

1 John

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_____. "The First Epistle of John." In The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, pp. 1463-78. Edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison. Chicago: Moody Press, 1962.

Smalley, Stephen S. 1, 2, 3 John. Word Biblical Commentary series. Waco: Word Books, 1984.

Spurgeon, Charles H. 12 Sermons on the Second Coming of Christ. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976.

Stanton, Gerald B. Kept from the Hour. Fourth ed. Miami Springs, Fla.: Schoettle Publishing Co., 1991.

Storms, C. Samuel. Reaching God's Ear. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1988.

Stott, John R. W. The Epistles of John. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries series. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1964.

Thiessen, Henry Clarence. Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962.

Westcott, Brooke Foss. The Epistles of St. John. 1883. Reprint ed. England: Marcham Manor Press, 1966.

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Real. BE Books series. Wheaton: Scripture Press Publications, Victor Books, 1978.

Wilkin, Robert N. "Assurance: That You May Know' (1 John 5:11-13a)." Grace Evangelical Society News 5:12 (December 1990):2, 4.

_____. "Do Born Again People Sin? 1 John 3:9." Grace Evangelical Society News 5:3 (March 1990):2-3.

_____. "Knowing God By Our Works?" Grace Evangelical Society News 3:10 (October-November 1988):3-4.

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: 1 John (Book Introduction)

THE

FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN,

THE APOSTLE.

INTRODUCTION.

This epistle was always acknowledged for canonical, and written by St. John, the apostle and evangelist. At what time and place, is uncertain. It is sometimes called the Epistle to the Parthians, or Persians. The chief design is to set forth the mystery of Christ's incarnation against Cerinthus, who denied Christ's divinity, and against Basilides, who denied that Christ had a true body; with zealous exhortations to love God and our neighbour. (Witham) --- The vein of divine love and charity towards our neighbour which runs throughout the gospel written by the beloved disciple and evangelist, St. John, is found also in his epistles. He confirms the two principal mysteries of our faith: the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The sublimity and excellence of the evangelical doctrine he declares: "And this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God love also his brother;" (Chap. iv. 21.) and again, "For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not heavy." (Chap. v. 3.) He shews how to distinguish the children of God from those of the devil; marks out those who should be called antichrists; describes the turpitude and gravity of sin. Finally, he shews how the sinner may hope for pardon. It was written, according to Baronius's account, sixty-six years after our Lord's ascension. (Challoner) --- The effect of all is to prove the certainty of the Catholic faith, and to renounce all heretics and schismatics, who entice persons from the true saving faith.

====================

Gill: 1 John (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO 1 JOHN

The author of this epistle was John, the son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved: he was the youngest of the apostles, and survived them all. He does not indeed put his name to this epistle, as the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, and Jude do to theirs; and it is easy to observe, that when this disciple, in his writings, had any occasion to speak of himself, it was usually by such a circumlocution, as the disciple whom Jesus loved, or the other disciple, studiously concealing his name: so that his not putting his name to this epistle need not create any scruple about his being the author of it, which everywhere breathes the temper and spirit of this great apostle; and whoever compares this epistle, and the Gospel written by him, together, will easily conclude it to be his, both from the style and subject matter of it: besides, as Eusebius asserts ^a, this epistle was generally received without scruple, both by ancient and modern writers. It is called "general", because it was not written and sent to any particular church, or person, and not because it was for the general use of the churches, for so are all the particular epistles but because it was written to the Christians in general, or to the believing Jews in general wherever they were; for that it was written to the Jews seems evident from 1Jo 2:2. It was called, by some of the ancients, the epistle of John to the Parthians ^b; by whom must be meant not the natives of Parthia but the Jews professing to believe in Christ, who dwelt in that empire. We read of Parthian Jews a the feast of Pentecost, Act 2:9, who at that time might be converted, and, upon their return to their own country, lay the foundation of a Gospel church state there Dr. Lightfoot ^c conjectures from a passage in 3Jo 1:9 that this epistle was written to the Corinthians; but there does not seem to be any sufficient reason for it. As for the time when, and place where, this epistle was written, it is not easy to say: some think it was written at Patmos, whither the apostle was banished in the reign of Domitian, and where he wrote the book of the Revelations; see Rev 1:9; and here some say he wrote his Gospel, and this epistle, and that a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, and which he calls the last time or hour; and that his design in writing it was to exhort the believing Jews, either in Parthia, or scattered about in other countries, to brotherly love, and to warn them against false Christs and false prophets, which were now gone forth into the world to deceive men; see 1Jo 2:18. Others think that it was written by him, when a very old man, after his return from his exile to Ephesus, where he resided during his life, and where he died, and was buried. It is called his "first" epistle general, not that it is the first general epistle, for the other two are written to particular persons, but is the first he wrote, and which is general: the occasion, and manifest design of it, is to promote brotherly love, which he enforces upon the best principles, and with the strongest arguments, taken from the love of God and Christ, from the commandment of Christ, and its being an evidence of regeneration, and the truth and glory of a profession of religion: and also to oppose and stop the growth of licentious principles, and practices, and heretical doctrines. The licentious principles and practices he condemns are these, that believers had no sin in them, or need not be concerned about it, nor about their outward conversation, so be they had but knowledge; and these men boasted of their communion with God, notwithstanding their impieties; and which were the sentiments and practices of the Nicolaitans, Gnostics, and Carpocratians. The heresies he sets himself against, and refutes, are such as regard the doctrine of the Trinity, and the person and office of Christ. There were some who denied a distinction, of persons in the Trinity, and asserted there was but one person; that the Father was not distinct from the Son, nor the Son from the Father; and, by confounding both, tacitly denied there was either, as Simon Magus, and his followers; regard is had to these in 1Jo 2:22 and others, as the unbelieving Jews, denied that Jesus was the Messiah, or that Christ was come in the flesh; these are taken notice of in 1Jo 2:22. Others, that professed to believe in Jesus Christ, denied his proper deity, and asserted he was a mere man, and did not exist before he took flesh, of the virgin, as Ebion and Cerinthus; these are opposed in 1Jo 1:1. And others denied his real humanity, and affirmed that he was a mere phantom; that he only had the appearance of a man, and assumed human nature, and suffered, and died, and rose again in show only, and not in reality; of which sort were the followers of Saturninus and Basilides, and which are confuted in 1Jo 1:1. This epistle is, by Clemens Alexandrinus ^d, called his "greater" or "larger epistle", it being so in comparison of the other two that follow.

Gill: 1 John 3 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO 1 JOHN 3

In this chapter the apostle exhorts to a holy life and conversation in general, and to the exercise of brotherly love in particular. The former of these is urged from the consideration of the great blessing of adoption, which springs from the free love and favour of God, is unknown to the men of the world, and indeed, in the present state of things, does not appear to the saints themselves in all its fulness and advantages, as it will do in the future state, when the children of God will be like to Christ, and see him as he is; the hope of which should engage them to purity of life and conversation, 1Jo 3:1, and this is further enforced from the nature of sin, which is a transgression of the law, 1Jo 3:4, from the end of Christ's manifestation in the flesh, which was to take away sin, and who was without it, 1Jo 3:5, from communion with Christ, expressed by abiding in him, seeing and knowing him, which such must be strangers to that live a sinful course of life, 1Jo 3:6, from this, that only such that do righteousness are righteous persons, and these are righteous as Christ is, 1Jo 3:7, and from a man's being of the devil, that is, of a vicious conversation, who was a sinner from the beginning, and whose works Christ was manifested in the flesh to destroy, 1Jo 3:8, and from the nature of the new man, or that which is born of God, which is not to sin, nor can it, 1Jo 3:9, and from the distinction there is between the children of God and the children of the devil, those not being of God who do not righteousness, nor love their brethren, 1Jo 3:10, from hence the apostle passes to brotherly love, and excites and engages to that, from its being a message which had been heard from the beginning, 1Jo 3:11, which is illustrated by its contrary in the instance of Cain, who by the instigation of Satan slew his brother, because his works were righteous, and his own were evil, 1Jo 3:12, wherefore, it is no wonder that good men should be hated by the world, who, as Cain, are of the same wicked one, 1Jo 3:13, brotherly love is further urged unto, from its being an evidence of passing from death to life, or of regeneration; whereas he that hates his brother openly continues in a state of death, is a murderer, and so has not eternal life abiding in him, 1Jo 3:14, and from the great instance of Christ's love, in laying down his life for his people, the saints are incited to lay down their lives for one another; to such a pitch does the apostle carry brotherly love, 1Jo 3:16, wherefore, he that is rich, and is uncompassionate to his brother in distress, cannot be thought to have the love of God dwelling in him, 1Jo 3:17, hence he presses the exhortation to brotherly love, that it be not in profession only, but true, real, and cordial, 1Jo 3:18, and that by observing the advantages of it, as that hereby men know they are of the truth, and can assure their hearts before God; and which is illustrated by the contrary, the condemnation of the heart, 1Jo 3:19, the advantages of non-condemnation of the heart are confidence before God, and receiving whatsoever we ask of him; the reason of which is, because his commandments are kept, and things done which are pleasing to him, 1Jo 3:21, the commandments are explained of faith in Christ, and love to one another, 1Jo 3:23, and the happiness of them that do them is, that Christ dwells in them, and they in him, the evidence of which is, the Spirit that is given unto them, 1Jo 3:24.

College: 1 John (Book Introduction)

FOREWORD

It has been my pleasure to have been associated with Professor Morris Womack since the middle 1960s when we both accepted positions in the Los Angeles area with what was then Pepperdine College (now University). I have observed his growth as he developed into a distinguished and popular teacher, an accomplished author, diligent scholar, successful minister, and respected bishop of the church. He did these things while he maintained close, loving and productive ties with his family, friendship with his students, and exemplified a servant's attitude to those with whom he came in contact. Having demonstrated himself to be a man whose life in many ways illustrates that love which Christ said would identify his followers, I find it fitting that he should add this commentary on the three epistles of the "Apostle of Love" to his accomplishments.

As one peruses the pages of this work, it will be evident that the author has been able to balance his extensive theological training with his determination that this be a useful and practical work. While he shows mastery of the original language, the historical-cultural setting, the mechanics of biblical interpretation, and a profound acquaintance with the biblical text; he does so with an eye to clear exposition and insightful application of the basic issues portrayed by the Apostle John.

In his commentary on the biblical text, Professor Womack gives special attention to the developing problem of the gnostic heresy. The representatives of this aberrant religious group were dedicated to a view of Christ which in a very real sense robbed him of both his humanity and his divinity. In much the spirit of Athens, their prideful intellect displaced God and relegated to the trash heap of foolishness and naivete those who sought to follow his word. Considering themselves to be above sin, they heralded the virtues of thought and intellectual enterprise while belittling the ignorant folk who believed that following Christ meant obeying his teachings.

Dr. Womack points out that although John said these false teachers were no longer to be considered part of the fellowship (2:19), they considered the church to be their mission field (2:26, 3:7). It therefore is incumbent on church leaders to "mark heresy promoters and not allow them to bring division in the body." It was obviously not the position of the Apostle John that "I'm O.K. and you're O.K." regardless of religious belief. Eusebius claimed that Polycarp, a disciple of John, reported to Irenaeus that on one occasion when the apostle entered the baths at Ephesus and saw the gnostic leader, Cerinthus inside, he immediately left the baths saying, "Let us flee, lest also the baths fall in, since Cerinthus is inside, the enemy of the truth." It is those who obey Christ that by so doing prove that they know him, while those who claim to know him without submitting to his will only prove themselves to be liars (2:3-6).

However, it is especially in this emphasis upon John's insistence that Christians who claim to love God must also love one another that Professor Womack challenges the hypocrisy of a self-centered and legalistic spirit. The refinement of this "son of thunder" into the "Apostle of Love" is presented as both a challenge and a hope for all of us. Jerome reports that when in old age John had to be carried to the place of assembly, he always greeted the church with the words, "little children, love one another." When, perhaps somewhat impatiently, he was asked why he always said the same thing, he responded, "Because this is the Lord's command, and enough is done when this is done."

I am honored to have the opportunity of recommending to you this faithful, and objective aid to your study and understanding of the words of the Holy Spirit as they were revealed through the Apostle John.

Carl Mitchell, Ph.D.

Professor of Bible & Religion

College of Bible & Religion

Harding University

Searcy, Arkansas

I would like to thank John Hunter, Dan Rees, and Saundra Tippett for their creative help. In the writing of 2 and 3 John, C. Michael Moss of Lipscomb University was gracious in allowing the editorial team to use material from a forthcoming book on John's epistles. A special thanks to Steve Cable and Chris DeWelt who have been a source of encouragement in the project.

I appreciate very much the kind words of Dr. Carl Mitchell of Harding University and for his support for the commentary that I have written. He is a friend and loyal brother.

Morris M. Womack

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

INTRODUCTION

John's writings have been my favorite books of the Bible. This does not mean that they are more important than any others, but I like the spirit and tone as well as the content of his writings. They show how one can develop from a "son of thunder," as John was called by Jesus (Mark 3:17) to become the great apostle of love. His teachings on love are the deepest and most precious in the Bible. It was said early in church history (Jerome) that when John would come to the assembly of Christians, he would be carried to the door of the place of meeting where he would pat the Christians on the head, saying, "my little children, love one another."

The greatest memory I have about John comes from my freshman year in college when I began studying Greek. First John was the first place we began reading and translating. I remember it as a simple, clear, and challenging book. It was written in simple, unencumbered Greek, and this impression has stayed with me.

AUTHORSHIP

These three epistles we are studying are referred to as "general epistles." They were not written to specific churches, as were the letters by the apostle Paul. While Jesus was on earth, he selected three of his twelve disciples to be a sort of "inner circle." In his treatise on the life of Jesus, John referred to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 21:7). There are several indications of John's special relation to Jesus. He was one of the select three (Peter, James, and John) with Jesus at the transfiguration. He shared a lonely night in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to Jesus' trial and crucifixion, and he leaned on Jesus' breast and enjoyed a close encounter with Jesus at the last supper.

Some commentators prefer to separate the introductions to 1 John from one for 2 and 3 John. Given their differences, it is understandable to treat them accordingly. We will consider an overview of the three epistles together for this commentary. Traditionally, John the apostle has been accepted as the author of all three books but not without controversy over the centuries. First John is not structured like the typical first century letters and has not been called an epistle in the same light as both 2 and 3 John, which are very typical of early letter form and style. One of the greatest evidences for the books is that all three are found in the earliest Greek manuscripts. Irenaeus attributed authorship to John ( Against Heresies III, 16, 5, and 8).

Internal evidence for the three letters point to the same author as that of the Gospel of John most credibly because of the claim of being an eye witness (1 John 1:1-3). Language, key words, thought, scope and style are similar. A.E. Brooke in his commentary used the comparative work of John's first epistle with his Gospel by Holtzmann who wrote in 1882. The comparison of phrases and terminology provide sufficient evidence to convince the honest seeker of John's authorship of the first epistle. If the commonality of the first epistle with the other two can be shown, the authorship problem is settled on John the apostle. (For example, 1 John 2:7 compares with 2 John 5 and John 13:34-35. Second John 12 compares with 1 John 1:4 and John 15:11; 16:24. The use of "my children" in 3 John compares with 1 John 2:1, etc.)

DATE AND OCCASION

All three letters can be safely dated at the end of the Apostle John's life. If this is accurate, it explains the brevity of 2 and 3 John especially since they would have been written by an old man. We are at a loss to discover from the letters themselves when and from where they were written. John had been exiled to the Isle of Patmos, as is stated in the book of Revelation. Whether John wrote these while he was on the Isle of Patmos, we do now know. It is most commonly thought that John wrote from Ephesus in the last decade (the middle of the 90s) of the first century where John spent his last days.

One reason to handle all three books in one introduction is the fact that they share a common occasion with similar circumstances. Three major problems existed during this time: the spread of persecution by the Roman Empire, the development of false teachings of various kinds in the Christian community, and the rise and growth of Gnosticism. False prophets or false teachers were attacking the church and that prompted the need for an authoritative response (see the section below, Gnosticism, Docetism ). John, as perhaps the last living apostle at the time of writing, could speak with apostolic authority from the Lord. Deceivers and antichrists were calling to the sheep and the Lord sent John to shepherd God's flock. All three situations were faced with the need to strengthen fellowship among the true believers in order to recognize the counterfeit gospel being preached. The heretics were unsettling the firm moorings of the gospel causing some to doubt the first commands of Christ. Were they still loved by God? What is truth? Who are the children of God? Can I have one foot in heaven and also have one on earth? Did Jesus become a man? How could he be divine too? Who is my neighbor and how do I treat him? What if I do not feel saved? What if you have a problem with a "ruling elder?" Diotrephes in 3 John was wanting more authority. It is my view that this could well be the beginning of a striving for power. Ignatius, in the early second century, tells us of a bishop, elders, and deacons in some early churches. The bishop seems to begin to take power within the local church with the elders and deacons working "under" him. These questions challenge the letter writer for solid, inspired answers. John delivers!

Some commentators, such as Lenski and Marshall, have suggested that 2 and 3 John may have been written first and then 1 John. I simply mention this possibility and direct you to these commentators for further discussion.

Why did John write these short letters? First John 1John 5:13 specifically states the author's purpose in writing, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." The theme of 2 John may be expressed in verse 9, "Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son." John summarizes the content of 3 John in verse 11, "Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God." Commentators vary in their opinions as to the epistles' key words and verses, but these will serve as one-verse representatives of their respective themes.

RECIPIENTS

It has been suggested that 1 John was a circular or an encyclical letter much like Paul's letter to the Ephesians. This is partially reasoned from the lack of an addressee. If both of these books were connected to Ephesus, they may have shared a similar tradition. If 2 and 3 John were also encyclical, they were intended to be passed around to various churches and individuals for all to read. All three of John's letters are sent to Christians. Other than that we do not know who they were or where they lived. Area churches in Asia Minor (now Turkey) have been the most commonly proposed recipients. This opinion is based on the place of composition being Ephesus and that strikingly similar heresies are addressed, albeit incipient, in the earlier writings of the apostle Paul. John must have given much tender care and love to many of these churches in his last years around Ephesus. Based on Jesus' charging John to care for Mary at the time of the crucifixion, it is believed that Mary went home with John and spent her life at Ephesus. There is a traditional tomb of Mary in the ancient ruins of Ephesus today. John may have played an actual role in the founding and fostering of the church there.

GNOSTICISM, DOCETISM

What we face today in humanistic and New Age teachings we can identify as merely a refashioning of the old gnostic falsehoods. There is indeed nothing new under the sun! To understand the noxious weeds we fight today, we must turn back the pages of time to expose their beginning roots.

Whatever part John played in the birth and development of the Ephesian congregation, he was certainly involved in protecting them from the encroaching dangers of Gnosticism in the final years of the first century and following. As a witness to all of Jesus' personal ministry, John was quite capable of bearing witness to the historical Jesus and could certainly testify of the dual human/divine nature of Jesus Christ.

The rise and development of Gnosticism had a tremendous impact on the Christian movement. Around the middle of the first century, a monster in the form of Gnosticism arose that threatened the very roots of the Christian religion. The apostle Paul used the term (pseudônymou gnôseôs, "falsely-named knowledge") to identify this threat, Gnosticism (1 Tim 6:20). It presented a new worldview on the relationship between God and humanity which threatened Christianity at the time of its burgeoning growth.

Gnosticism, in my view, was a combination of three major strains of thought: Zoroastrianism, Platonism, and Christianity. Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia, contributed at least two major elements: dualism (the worship of two gods) and the light-darkness views of Gnosticism (referred to in both John's Gospel and the Epistles of John). The dualism - the presence of two gods (a god of the Old Testament who created all things including evil and materialism and a god of the New Testament for the Gnostics whom they believed was the God of Jesus Christ) was expressed by Zoroastrianism by their two gods - Ahura Mazda (god of light) and Ahura Mainyu (god of darkness). The Jewish nation, having been exposed to the Persian religion during the Babylonian Captivity, were certainly influenced by this ideology.

Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy contributed to the Gnostic theories through the concept of Plato's "world of ideas," which suggested that nothing exists except in an unseen world of ideas. The gods could not be approached or seen, said the Gnostic. God was at a distance from humankind, the Gnostics argued. In gnostic thought, humans could approach God through a series of "aeons" or "angelic" types of beings.

Some of the elements of Christianity found a welcome home among the Gnostics. The goodness of the God of the New Testament and the importance of knowing about God were some of these elements. The followers of the gnostic religion created a higher level of Christians, the gnostic Christians whom they regarded as the ultimate essence of their spiritual life.

John was not called one of the "sons of thunder" for nothing! Over the course of his lifetime he learned to direct his anger, or euphemistically called "righteous indignation," toward heretical causes aimed at the Christ. One of John's crucial reasons for writing was to answer the attacks by the false teachers faced by the recipients of all three letters.

Christians saw Gnosticism as a threat to the church as early as the last half of the first century. We can find some elements in some of Paul's writings and certainly in John's first epistle. When many biblical critics, especially the critics of the Tübingen school and others in America, began their critical analyses of the New Testament, they generally agreed that many of the New Testament books could not have been written in the first century because they reflected and even opposed the Gnostics, which they argued did not exist until the second century. At that time, many scholars argued that Gnosticism was a second-century phenomenon. I argued in the late 1950s that it originated much earlier. In fact, I wrote that "Until fairly recent times, scholars did not realize the vast span of history that Gnosticsim had. Though it was not called such, it can be traced to pre-Christian times." This claim was questioned by some, but later research by more eminent scholars than I have supported this theory. William F. Albright, eminent paleontologist, had espoused the late authorship of several canonical books of the New Testament. However, near the end of his life he wrote, "all the New Testament books were probably written during the late forties and the early eighties of the first century A.D., possibly even between A.D. 50 and A.D. 75."

The gnostic movement was a prominent influence on first century thought, very strong by the end of the century. That Gnosticism was prominent by the middle of the first century is further evidenced by the presence of the Nag Hammadi Manuscripts, gnostic documents discovered in the late 1940s. They are believed by some to have been nearly as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are gnostic in character and must have been known by many of the period. Gnosticism was a dualistic religion (arguing for the existence of two opposing gods) and taught that Jesus was not really human but that Jesus was probably adopted by God at the time of his baptism (often referred to as the "Adoptionist Theory"). It was a divisive religion and was causing many problems in the early church.

Incipient Gnosticism had been introduced in Colossians and somewhat in Corinthians. John in his letters continues the battle he addressed in his Gospel, the battle most likely directed against "archheretic Cerinthus" and his docetic followers. One of the major concepts of the Christian gnostic movement was that Jesus was not born of human flesh, but that he only seemed to be human, hence the docetic philosophy. John had answered the docetic teaching that Jesus only "seemed" to be in the flesh with his poetic Gospel opening. Later in 19:16-37, he explicitly describes the reality of Jesus' crucifixion.

The opening verses of 1 John clearly answered some of the heresy by giving an eyewitness account of knowing Jesus. As the popular saying goes, "been there, done that." John could say, "I have been there and seen Jesus do that." John also addressed the false belief "we have no sin" because they treated sin with indifference. And, there was no "special knowledge" or "special illumination" to be obtained by a few! Contrary to the false teachings, Jesus did come in the flesh and suffered and rose from the dead to give us life. John and those with him knew Jesus intimately. Jesus, Son of God, Creator of life, appointed John as an apostle with all the rights and authority given by God. Any commands are to come from God and not from man.

STRUCTURE AND STYLE

Alexander Ross organizes the main part of 1 John, apart from the preface and conclusion, under two main points: I. God Is Light (1 John 1:5-2:29), and II. God Is Love (1 John 3:1-5:12). Robert Law outlined 1 John according to cycles of tests for truth and righteous living. Regarding 2 and 3 John, virtually all commentators provide a simple outline for their brief contents.

J.W. Roberts offers a unique analysis of John's letters in relationship to his peculiar style. Among the ones Roberts describes are John's use of "Antithetic Parallelism" (Hebrew device of contrasting two thoughts), "Genuine Antithesis" (or reverse of the same statement, as in 1 John 3:7-10), "Recapitulation" (as in 1 John 3:4a, repeating a word like "sin," "love," or "truth" and discussing it), "Word Parenthesis" ("inclusion of a thought unit between the first and last use of the same word" as in 1 John 5:16), and "Anaphora" (beginning with the same phrase like "If we say").

John's three letters have endeared themselves to the church since they were written in the first century. The original writer and the original audience have a much clearer view of things than we do. Were John's words heeded by his recipients? Obviously some did because the gospel message has continued through the preservation of the letters. As long as they are taught and preached, they will continue to instruct, warn, and encourage their readers. God bless you as you nobly search the Scriptures with the Lord Jesus.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arndt, William F. and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Barclay, William. The Letters of John . Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.

Barker, Kenneth, Ed. The NIV Study Bible . Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.

Brooke, A.E. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Johannine Epistles . The International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1971.

Bruce, F.F. The Epistles of John: Introduction, Exposition and Notes . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

Burdick, Donald W. The Epistles of John . Chicago: Moody, 1970.

Burge, G.M. "John, Letters of." Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Development , pp. 587-599 . Edited by Ralph P. Martin & Peter H. Davids. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997.

Dodd, C.H. The Johannine Epistles . New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946.

Fiensy, David. New Testament Introduction . The College Press NIV Commentary. Joplin, MO: College Press, 1994. Revised 1997.

Harrison, Everett F. Introduction to the New Testament . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Law, Robert. The Tests of Life: A Study of the First Epistle of St. John . 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968.

Lenski, R.C.H. The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude . Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1996.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Epistles of John . The New International Commentary of the New Testament. Edited by Ned B. Stonehouse, F.F. Bruce and Gordon D. Fee. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

McDowell, Edward A. Hebrews-Revelation . The Broadman Bible Commentary. Vol. 12. Nashville: Broadman, 1972.

Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament . 3rd ed. New York: United Bible Societies, 1971.

Roberts, J.W. The Letters of John. The Living Word Commentary. Edited by Everett Ferguson. Vol. 18. 2nd printing. Austin, TX: Sweet, 1969.

Robinson, John A. T. Redating the New Testament . Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.

Ross, Alexander. Commentary on the Epistles of James and John . The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

Schaff, Phillip. History of the Christian Church . 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950.

Smith, David. The Expositor's Greek Testament . Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll. 5 vols. New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922.

Smith, J.B. Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament . Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1955.

Staton, Knofel. Thirteen Lessons on First, Second, and Third John . Joplin: College Press, 1980.

Stott, John R.W. The Letters of John: Introduction and Commentary . Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. 1988. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Trench, Richard. Synonyms of the New Testament . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953.

Watson, D.F. "Rhetoric, Rhetorical Criticism," Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Development , pp. 1041-1051. Edited by Ralph P. Martin & Peter H. Davids. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997.

Westcott, Brooke Foss. The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays . London: Macmillan, 1883.

Wilkins, M.J. "Pastoral Theology," Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Development , pp. 876-882. Edited by Ralph P. Martin & Peter H. Davids. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997.

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-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

ABBREVIATIONS

DLNT Dictionary of the Later New Testament

KJV King James Version

NEB New English Bible

NIV New International Version

RSV Revised Standard Version

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

College: 1 John (Outline)

OUTLINE

I. THE WORD OF LIFE - 1:1-4

II. LIFE WITH GOD AND THE WORLD - 1:5-2:27

A. The Way of Light and Darkness - 1:5-7

B. Admitting Our Sin - 1:8-10

C. The Atoning Sacrifice - 2:1-2

D. Keeping God's Commandments - 2:3-6

E. A New Commandment - 2:7-8

F. In the Light or in the Darkness - 2:9-11

G. John's Reasons for Writing - 2:12-14

H. Christians and the World - 2:15-17

I. Warnings against Antichrists - 2:18-27

III. GOD'S LOVE FOR US/OUR LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER - 2:28-3:24

A. Children of God - 2:28-29

B. God's Love for His Children - 3:1-3

C. Warnings against Sin - 3:4-10

D. Love One Another - 3:11-24

IV. TESTING THE SPIRITS/TRUSTING GOD - 4:1-5:12

A. Testing the Spirits - 4:1-6

B. God's Love and Our Love - 4:7-21

C. Faith in the Son of God - 5:1-5

D. The Three Witnesses - 5:6-12

V. CONCLUDING REMARKS - 5:13-21

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

Lapide: 1 John (Book Introduction)

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF S. JOHN.

——o——

I mention three things by way of preface. First, concerning the authority of the Epistle. Second,  concerning the author. Third, concerning the argument.

1. It is of faith that this Epistle is canonical Scripture. This is the general belief of the whole Church, expressed both elsewhere and in the Council of Trent ( sess. 4). Here observe that the canonical books of Holy Scripture are of two kinds. The first are called proto-canonical , because they have been accounted canonical in all ages by all Christians, so that of their authority none of the orthodox have ever been in doubt.

The second kind are called deutero-canonical , because at one time the Church or the Fathers doubted of their authority, but they were subsequently received into the canon by all men. Such are the books of Esther, Baruch, part of Daniel, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, two books of the Maccabees, certain portions of the Gospels of S. Mark, S. Luke, or S. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, the Epistle of Jude, and the Apocalypse. All the rest are proto-canonical. Among them, therefore, is this Epistle of S. John, with the exception of one verse, concerning which in its place. This is what Eusebius says of this Epistle ( H. E. 3. 24), "Among those things which John wrote after his Gospel, his first Epistle is also received both by the ancients and the moderns without any hesitation." Moreover, it is equally received by ancient and modern heretics. And S. Augustine says ( Tract . 7, in Epis. 1 Joan .), "That Epistle is canonical which is read by all nations, is accepted by the authority of the whole world, which itself has edified the whole world." And Dionysius of Alexandria, says, "The Gospel and the first Epistle of John are not only without fault, but are written with the utmost elegancy of style, the greatest weight of their sentiments and with perfect diction."

2. The orthodox are all agreed that the author of this Epistle is S. John the Apostle, as the inscription gives it. The same is indicated by the style of the Epistle in all things agreeable to S. John's Gospel, so beautiful, and flowing with the honey of charity, plainly indicating its source, the fair and loving breast of S. John. Add to this that he inculcates the same things in this Epistle which he does in his Gospel, as Eusebius well observes ( H. E. 7. 25), "He who reads carefully will find frequently in both, the words 'life,' 'light,' 'departure from darkness,' 'the truth,' 'grace,' 'joy,' 'the flesh and blood of the Lord,' 'judgment,' 'the remission of sins,' 'the love of God towards us,' 'the command to love one another,' 'the rebuke of the world, the devil, and antichrist,' 'the promise of the Holy Ghost;' he will find everywhere 'the Father and the Son.' And if the character of both writings be observed in all things, there will be found altogether the same sense and form of expression in both the Gospel and the Epistle."

3. The object of the Epistle is, first, to teach the true faith, hope, and charity: the faith both concerning the Holy Trinity and the Incarnate Word, of which assuredly no one has treated more fruitfully than S. John both in his Gospel and in this Epistle. And for this reason he is called by S. Dionysius, Athanasius, Cyril, Chrysostom, Epiphanius and others generally, John the Theologian.

Moreover, this is a Catholic Epistle, that is circular and general, written to all Christians throughout the world, like the Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. Jude. Some, however, of the ancients say that this Epistle of John was written expressly to the Parthians. So Pope Hyginus ( Epist. 1), Pope John II. ( Epist. ad Valer .), S . Augustine ( Lib . 2 quæst. Evang. c. 39), Idacius ( Lib. de Trin .) and others. Our Serarius suspects that Patmos ought here to be read instead of Parthos. For John being banished by Domitian to the Isle of Patmos, converted its inhabitants to Christ. Junius, a Calvinist, against Bellarmine ( Lib. 2 de Verbo Dei, cap. 15 num. 22), understands by Parthians, not the inhabitants of Parthia, but pious exiles distant from their native land. For in the Scythian language exiles were formerly called Parthi , from the Hebrew word pur , i.e., to divide. To the Parthians , then, would mean the same thing as to the tribes which are in the dispersion, as S. James says in his Epistle, and "to the elect strangers of the dispersion," as S. Peter says, in the beginning of his Epistle. But exiles, impious as well as pious, were called Parthi by the Scythians, not by the Greeks or Hebrews, such as was St. John. For otherwise S. Peter and S. James, who write to the dispersed, would have written to the Parthians. Properly, therefore, I understand Parthians here to mean those whose name and empire were at that time widely extended, and embraced several nations, the Persians among them. Now there are in Parthia many Jews as well as Christians, both of Jewish and Gentile extraction, to all of whom S. John here writes.

S. John then wrote to the Parthians, either because he had formerly been amongst them and taught them the faith of Christ, as Baronius and others think, or else because many of the Ephesians and other natives of Asia Minor, to whom S. John had preached, and who had been converted to Christ, had migrated into the nearer regions of Parthia and Persia.

All writers agree that this Epistle was written in Greek. There is no reason for wonder that S. John does not give his name at the beginning of the Epistle. Neither did S. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The same is the case with many modern writers who do not prefix their names to the beginning of their letters, but subscribe them at the end. Besides, the Holy Spirit was the Author of this Epistle rather than S. John. As S. Gregory says ( Præfat. in Job c. i.), "It is altogether vain to ask for the Author of this Epistle, since it is faithfully believed to have been the Holy Ghost. He then wrote these words who commanded them to be written. If we should receive a letter from any great man, we should look upon it as a ridiculous question to ask with what pen it had been written."

S. John appears to have been an old man, and altogether forgetful of earthly things, and panting after Christ, both when he wrote this Epistle and also his Gospel. He was so absorbed in the greatness of the mystery that he omitted both his name and the salutation, and by so doing carries the reader with him in such a manner as to intimate that he was the writer of the Epistle as well as the Gospel. So Thomas Anglicus. The same thing is sufficiently indicated by the words of the first Epistle, by which one is made wonderfully full of sweetness and delight with Christ Incarnate. Lastly, it is plain that S. John wrote these words in extreme old age, from the words themselves in which he calls himself the Elder, and the faithful his little children. The precise date when he wrote is uncertain: but it seems to have been about the same time that he wrote the Gospel, for there is a great agreement between the Epistles and the Gospel. This has led Baronius to assign the same date to both, namely, A.D. 99, which was the seventh year of Pope S. Clement, and the first of the Emperor Nerva.

S. Gregory concludes with the following golden words ( Hom. 15 in Ezech .): "Do we seek to have our hearts inflamed with the fire of love? Then let us ponder over the words of S. John, for everything that he says is filled with the fire of love." He breathes, repeats and enforces nothing else but the love of God, of Christ, and of our neighbour. He is like old men and lovers, who think and speak of nothing else but what they love and have loved all their lives.