1.06 - Scope And Character Of The First Epistle

Chapter 6 Scope And Character Of The First Epistle (1 John 1:3-4; 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:7-8, 1 John 2:12-14, 1 John 2:26, 1 John 5:13) The Letter a Written Homily—Addressed to Settled Christians—St John’s Ministry that of Edification—Complement of St Peter’s Ministry —Continuation of St Paul’s Ministry—Polemical Aim of the Epistle —Connection of this with its Ethical Strain—Comparison of St John’s Teaching with St Paul’s—Obligation of the latter to the former—Absence of Epistolary Formulae—“We” and “I” in the Epistle—An Epistle General—Traits of Johannine Authorship—Relation of Epistle to Gospel of John—Analysis of 1 John—Appendix: Tables of Parallels.

―—―♦——— That which we have seen and heard, we report to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us.

* * * * * * * These things we write, that our joy may be made full.

* * * * * * * My little children, these things I am writing to you, that you may not fall into sin.

* * * * * * *

Beloved, it is no new commandment that I write to you, but an old commandment ... the word which you heard. Again, a new commandment I am writing to you, which thing is true in Him and in you.

* * * * * * *

I write (have written) to you, my little children, because your sins are forgiven. ... I write (have written) to you, fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning. I write (have written) to you, young men, because you have overcome the Wicked One.

* * * * * * * These things I have written to you concerning them that would lead you astray.

* * * * * * *

These things I have written to you, that you may know that you have eternal life,—to you that believe on the name of the Son of God.

— 1 John 1:3-4; 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:7-8, 1 John 2:12-14, 1 John 2:26, 1 John 5:13    

―—―♦———

THIS is a homiletical Epistle, the address of a pastor to his flock who are widely scattered beyond the reach of his voice. The advanced age at which the Apostle John continued to minister from Ephesus to the Churchres of Asia, gradually contracted the range of his journeyings ; and the time came when he must communicate with his children “by paper and ink,” instead of “talking mouth to mouth,” as he had loved to do (2 John 1:12; 3 John 1:13-14). Substitute the word “say” for “write” in the passages heading this chapter, and one might imagine the whole discourse delivered in speech to the assembled Church. It is a specimen of Apostolic preaching to believers, a masterpiece in the art of edification.

St John’s ministry throughout life, so far as we can gather, was mainly of this nature (see pp. 47-49 above). He addresses himself “to those who believe on the name of the Son of God,” in order “that they may know that they have eternal life” (1 John 5:13), and in order to guard them from seductive error (1 John 2:26; 1 John 4:1-6). His purpose is to reassure the Christian flock in a troubled time, and to perfect the life of faith within the Church. He is not laying foundations, but crowning the edifice of Apostolic teaching already laid. The Fourth Gospel has the same intent, in a wider sense: “These things are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing ye may have life in His name” (John 20:31). The author testifies, appeals, and warns as he does, expressly because the recipients of his letter are already instructed and practised Christian believers (1 John 2:12-14). The references to St John in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 3:1-11; Acts 4:3-23, Acts 8:14, Acts 12:2) and in Galatians 2:9, made without any account of things said or done by him, indicate the peculiar regard cherished for this Apostle and the importance attached to his personality and influence (see pp. 47-49). St John was one of the three “reputed to be pillars,” although no distinct part, no formal office, is assigned to him in the Apostolic work of the early days, such as belonged to Peter and to James of Jerusalem. In Simon Peter’s company John was found on the morning of the Lord’s resurrection, after Peter’s disgraceful but bitterly repented denial of his Master, acting towards the stricken man a brother’s part; “they ran both together,” we are told, to the place of burial, “and the other disciple” (probably the younger man) “did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre” (John 20:3-10). The same two are consorting afterwards in Galilee—Peter deeply interested in his comrade’s future—during the Forty Days (John 21:1-25). “Peter and John,” again, “were going up into the temple” some time after the Pentecost, when they met the lame beggar, who was healed by Peter’s word; and they were companions in the consequent trial and imprisonment by the Sanhedrin (Acts 3:4.). The last occasion which brings them together in the narrative of the Acts (Acts 8:14-25), is the joint visit to Samaria made by them at the request of “the Apostles which were at Jerusalem,” to confirm the disciples gathered by the preaching of Philip the evangelist in that city. Here, as before, it is Peter whose words are quoted, and who combats Simon, the magician; John’s place was in the background, and his work of the retired, inconspicuous sort. The union of these two leaders, who belonged to the opposite poles in gifts and temperament, is significant for the unity of the Apostolic company and of the mother Church. St Peter was the prompt, incisive speaker and bold leader; St John the slow, deep thinker; the one as considerate as the other was impetuous, as measured in the movements of his mind as his companion was eager and demonstrative. Both were men of large and warm heart—equal in their reverent love to their Lord and in appreciation for each other.¹⁵ The co-operation of St John with St Peter surely did much to give thoroughness, staidness, and stability to the primitive evangelism. The former supplemented the work of the latter in Jerusalem and the earliest Christendom, as the “pastor and teacher,” in St Paul’s enumeration of the great gifts of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11), follows on the “prophet” and the “evangelist.”¹⁶

Having been the comrade of St Peter at the beginning of the Apostolic era, St John found himself the successor of St Paul in Ephesus and the province of Asia through its closing period. His office in this field was not to plant but to nourish and build up the Churches there established, and to direct the work of the Gospel in this central region. Through the success of St John’s long-continued labours, following upon those of St Paul, Western Asia Minor became in the second century the most prosperous province of the Church. But this rich soil was rife with heresy and contention; rank weeds marred its prolific growth. St Paul had foretold to the elders of Ephesus that “after his departure grievous wolves would enter in amongst them,” and that “of their own selves men would arise speaking perverse things, so as to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30)—his Pastoral Epistles mark the beginnings of the apostasy; St John found this prediction lamentably true.¹⁷ The Letters to the Seven Churches written very probably at an earlier time than our First Epistle, are sternly admonitory. The minor Epistles of this group show that the Apostle’s charge was a difficult one (2 John 1:7-11, 3 John 1:9-10; see Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 above). “Many false prophets” and “deceivers,” “many antichrists, have gone out into the world” from the Churches that he ruled (1 John 2:18-19; 1 John 4:1); with pain and anger he writes to his flock “concerning those that seduce you” (1 John 2:26). The First Epistle is severely polemical in certain passages; it is so throughout. Through the Gospel of John the same defensive aim may be traced. The Apostle’s vindication is made, however, by positive exhibition of the truth more than by contradiction and counter-argument, by the setting forth in its living power of “the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” St John confutes by better instruction; he thrusts out error by confronting it with the reality that it denies. Light, he conceives, is its own sufficient evidence; let it be seen in its glory and felt in its quickening power, and the reign of the darkness is ended. The shadows flee at sunrise! The Epistle moves through the contrasts of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, of God and the world, Christ and Antichrist, the Spirit of God and the spirits of error. A right discrimination is what the author is striving to effect all along. He dreads confusion of thought and compromise,—the syncretism between Christianity and theosophy, the mixing of the “old leaven” with the “new lump,” of “the love of the world” with “the love of the Father,” which the Gnostic teachers would have brought about. Let the opposing forces once be clearly seen, and the Apostle’s readers will know on which side to range themselves; for they “have an anointing from the Holy One,” their spiritual instincts are sound and they “know that no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:20-27).

Blended with the doctrinal polemic of the First Epistle, there is found a dominant strain of ethical denunciation. While the former is distinctly in evidence in certain leading passages—1 John 2:18-27; 1 John 4:1-6; 1 John 5:5-8—the latter note is pervasive. The Apostle condemns the moral insensibility and insincerity, the disposition to conform to the world and to lower the standard of Christian purity, and above all the lack of brotherly love that appeared in some quarters amongst Christians. It is sometimes denied that there was any connection in the writer’s mind between these symptoms and the error of doctrine which he combats. But St John passes from one to the other of these forms of evil, and back again, in such a way as to show that they formed, to his thoughts, part of one and the same conflict with “the world.” He describes both the Doketic errorists and the antinomian moralists as “those who seduce you” (1 John 2:28; 1 John 3:7; 1 John 4:1; compare 2 John 1:9-11). St John relies on the same “anointing” of the Spirit to guard the understanding from false beliefs (1 John 2:27; 1 John 4:6), and to guard the heart from the corruptions of sin (1 John 3:9, 1 John 3:24); it is “faith” in the incarnate Son of God that “conquers the world,” with its lust and hate (1 John 2:14-17; 1 John 5:3-5). The two poles on which the Epistle practically turns, are seen in 1 John 3:23: “that we should believe the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us command.” Throughout the writer’s polemical and his positive teaching alike, his theology and ethics form a strict unity. The true Christian faith in Jesus Christ, and the true Christian life fashioned after Him, are vitally and eternally one. To sever this connection would be to cut through the nerve of the Epistle.¹⁸ The Epistle, doctrinally considered, is a re-assertion, in terms of antithesis to the rising Gnosticism of Asia Minor, of the established truth as to the manifestation of God in Christ, of the main principles and aims of the Christian life. The little children of the patriarch Apostle are bidden to recognize in his present communication “what they have known from the beginning”; all he desires is that the things they “heard from the beginning should abide in them” (1 John 2:7, 1 John 2:13, 1 John 2:24, etc.). The danger comes from those who “go forward, and abide not in the doctrine of Christ” (2 John 1:9-11), from men who propagate, by insidious methods and with corrupting moral effect, radical error respecting the person and Mission of Christ, and who commend their retrograde teaching under the name of progress. The agreement between the two Ephesian Apostles in thought and spirit is profound. We are comparing, it must be remembered, one doctrinal Epistle with many in correlating the writings of St John and St Paul, although the addition of the Gospel of St John, and (with less certainty) of the Apocalypse, goes to redress the balance. The first glance shows that St John’s range was limited and his modes of conception and statement comparatively simple; he had none of the fertility of idea and wealth of expression which characterize St Paul. John was intuitive in method (see also p. 52), aphoristic in style, studiously plain and homely in utterance; Paul was dialectical, imaginative, involved and periodic in the structure of his sentences, creative in his theological diction. St John’s peculiar spell lies in the intensity of his contemplative gaze, and the massiveness and transparency of his leading ideas. St Paul bears one forward in his great arguments as with the current of a mighty river, that pours now over the open plain, now through a tortuous pass or down a thundering fall; reading St John’s Gospel and Epistle, one looks into a pellucid lake, which mirrors sky and mountain from its still depths.

How far the one Apostle was debtor to the other, it is impossible to say; probably the obligation lay upon both sides. The posthumous Apostle of Christ, “born out of due time,” may well have learned from “the disciple whom Jesus loved” the Master’s intimate teaching related in the Fourth Gospel, concerning the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the union of the heavenly Vine with His branches, which is at the heart of Pauline doctrine. That the two men had met, we know, and that St John had endorsed St Paul’s gospel at an early stage (Galatians 2:9). The communication of St John’s knowledge and his personal views was not delayed to the end of the century, when his written narrative appeared (see p. 48)—his gospel, along with Peter’s, had been making its way through the Church orally from the outset; and St Paul, with his keen appreciation and sympathetic spirit, is not the man to have been insensitive to the attraction of a nature like St John’s or to have neglected the opportunity of gathering what the favoured disciple was able to impart. When the former writes in Galatians 2:6, “Those of reputation” at Jerusalem “added nothing unto me,” he does not intimate, as some have inferred, that he learned nothing of the tradition of Jesus from the first-hand witnesses and profited in no respect by intercourse with the three honoured leaders whom he names—to have assumed such independence would have been a senseless pride. What he does intend to say is that the chiefs of the Jerusalem Church gave him no new commission, no higher authority than he had before; “they added nothing to” his powers as Christ’s messenger to the Gentiles and the steward of “the gospel of the uncircumcision” (see 1 John 1:7-8). On the other hand, the Apostle John, surviving Paul and becoming heir to his great work amongst the Churches in Asia, was bound to reckon with his predecessor’s doctrine, and this Epistle (like the Apocalypse) is in conscious accord with Paulinism. On several leading points, it might seem that St John has given another form, at once concentrated and simplified, to the theology of St Paul.¹⁹ The auline “justification” and “sanctification” reappear in the “forgiving of sins” and “cleansing from all unrighteousness” of 1 John 1:7 and 1 John 1:9; “faith, hope, and love,” with the last for the greatest, become the “perfect love” which “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and the glorious hymn on charity of 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 is crowned by the sentence of 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in him”; the simple declaration of 1 John 3:6, “He that abideth in Him (Christ) sinneth not,” contains the answer to the prayer of 1 Thessalonians 5:23, that “the God of peace would sanctify” Christian men “to full perfection,” that their “spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity may be preserved” until the Lord’s coming. In other places, as partly in the passages above cited, the later writer deepens the idea or principle expressed by the earlier, as when the “mediator” of 1 Timothy 2:5 becomes the “advocate” of 1 John or the Pauline “adoption” (Romans 8:15; Ephesians 1:5), is represented as a being “begotten of God”; those who receive “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ” (Ephesians 1:17-18) are described as having “an unction (chrism) from the Holy One” which “abideth in” them, so that they “know” the truth and the lie, and “have no need that anyone should teach” them (1 John 2:27); and St Paul’s extended proofs of his Apostolic authority are reduced by St John, on his own behalf, to the brief assertion, “We are of God; he that knoweth God heareth us” (1 John 4:6).

In both Apostles there is the same awful sense of the guilt and universality of sin, distinguished in Paul by a conspicuous vein of personal experience and psychological analysis, in John by the realization of the magnitude of sin as a world-mischief and its mysterious origin in powers of evil outside of humanity (1 John 2:2, 1 John 2:16; 1 John 3:8, 1 John 4:14, 1 John 5:17-19). Both therefore treat the fact of atonement through “the blood of Jesus, God’s Son,” as fundamental to Christian thought and life (see 1 John 1:7, 1 John 1:9); the word “propitiation” used in this connection (ἱλαστήριον, Romans 3:25; ἱλασμός, 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10; compare also Hebrews 2:17), is common property. For the Apostle Paul it was necessary to show how Christ’s atoning sacrifice stood to “the law” of Moses, and how it bore upon the case of Jew and Gentile respectively; St John has only to assert that the propitiation availing for penitent and believing Christians, is valid “for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). It is remarkable that while Paul insists almost solely upon faith as the subjective condition of justification, John lays stress upon the confession of sin, since he had to deal with antinomian evasions of the guilt of sin, where the former was confronted with a legal, self-justifying righteousness of works; instead of “faith” we read in 1 John 2:23, and 1 John 4:3, of “confessing Jesus” as “Son of God”—assenting to His claims (compare Romans 10:9-10). St John points oftener to the ethical pattern afforded by Christ’s earthly course (1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:6, 1 John 3:3, 1 John 3:5-8, 1 John 4:17), and employs the name of “Jesus” much more frequently—a thing to be expected of the Lord’s companion of old days. He appears to think less than St Paul about the parousia and the last judgement and the future glory of the redeemed (but see pp. 233-235), in his strong consciousness of “eternal life” as the believer’s present possession (see 1 John 2:28; 1 John 3:3, 1 John 4:17, on the one hand: on the other, 1 John 1:2; 1 John 2:17, 1 John 3:15, 1 John 4:15, 1 John 5:13, 1 John 5:20). The elder Apostle distressingly felt the imperfection and burden of the present state; the younger dwells on the realities subsisting beneath it—the satisfying knowledge of God, the “perfecting of the love of God” in faithful men, and their unchanging fellowship with Christ—till temporal conditions are forgotten; for him, the world is already “overcome,” and “we have passed from death into life” (1 John 1:3; 1 John 3:14, 1 John 5:4-5). “According to St John’s view, the world exists indeed, but more as a semblance than a reality” (Westcott).

But these are differences of emphasis and tone, due partly to temperament, partly to situation and hortatory purpose; no real discrepancy or dogmatic dissent is implied in them. The fall of Jerusalem, and with this, the disappearance of national Judaism and of the Judaistic controversies of the first generation have placed a gulf between the writings of Paul and those of John; in the Apocalypse alone the earlier situation has left its traces. By this time a new theological world, another phase of the kingdom of God has appeared. In the substance of revealed truth these two master thinkers of the New Testament were at one —in their apprehension of God as “the Father” (whose “grace” shines more in Paul, His “love” in John), of Jesus Christ as the perfect man and head of humanity, eternally one with God (called more often “the Son of God” by John, “the Lord” by Paul), of the Holy Spirit as the Witnesser of God, the gift of the Father through Christ, the Divine inhabitant of the soul and the Church, and the inspirer of all good in man’s regenerate nature. By both the Christian life is realized as essentially a life of faith on the Son of God, which effects an inward union with the Redeemer and consequent fellowship with God, possession by His Spirit, and occupation in the service of His love. Their mysticism is the same; and their universalism is the same, for both conceive the sacrifice of the cross and the message of the Gospel as designed for the whole world—only that for St John the distinction between Jew and Gentile has sunk below the horizon.

The Epistle has no epistolary formulae, either at the beginning (compare Hebrews) or at the end (compare James); writer and readers are well acquainted—they are his “little children” (1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:12, 1 John 2:18, etc.), his “beloved” (1 John 2:7; 1 John 3:21; 1 John 4:1, 1 John 4:7)—he will waste no word on the introduction of himself to them. His attitude is that of an aged father in Christ speaking to his sons—once only does he address the readers as “brethren” (1 John 3:13); some are older, some younger amongst them, but all are as “children” in relation to himself (1 John 2:12-14). It never occurs to him to give himself any title in the First Epistle (in the Second and Third, he is just “the Elder,”) or to vindicate or insist upon his authority; this he assumes as matter of course, to be questioned by no one. Yet the author nowhere implies that he was founder of the Churches concerned, or the first bearer to them of the Gospel; he writes of “that which ye had from the beginning,” “the word which ye heard” (1 John 2:7, 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:24; compare 2 John 1:6); we could imagine him “testifying,” as St Peter did (1 Peter 5:12) to Christians of Asia Minor who had received the Gospel chiefly through Pauline ministrations, “that this is the true grace of God,” in which they must “stand fast.” The faith of these communities is of no recent date—the letter continually entreats them to “abide” in that which they “had heard from the beginning.” The errors combated are such as belonged to a developed Christianity (see pp. 318-319); they have sprung up in settled Churches and are perversions of the established truths of the Apostolic confession (1 John 2:18-19, 1 John 4:1, 2 John 1:7-9).

Notwithstanding the omission of names and personal references, the First Epistle is properly a letter. For it runs in the first person singular throughout (1 John 2:1, 1 John 1:7, 1 John 4:12-14, 1 John 5:13; once “I say,” instead of “I write” or “have written,” in 1 John 5:16). When therefore in 1 John 1:4 of the preface St John has it, “these things we write (γράφομενἡμεῖς), that our joy may be made full”²⁰ he is surely thinking of his companions in the testimony of Jesus, the body of the original “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word,” not a few of whom had by this time, with their own hand or by the pen of others, put their witness upon record and perpetuated the spoken by the written testimony (see p. 73). When he says, moreover, “we report to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us,” it is because a multitude of others have by this date heard the good-news and share its blessings with the first believers, so that it is spreading into all the world (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:14; compare Romans 1:15, Colossians 1:6). In the triple “we know” (οἴδαμεν) of 1 John 5:18-20, the Apostle speaks for his readers along with himself, indeed for the whole Church of God. Personal references are wanting upon both sides—with respect to the receivers as much as to the sender of the letter; no allusions are made to local circumstances or events, to specific doings or needs or requests of the readers. In this vagueness of horizon 1 John resembles the Epistle of James, or of Paul to the Ephesians. The editorial title, “Catholic Epistle of John,” is therefore to some extent justified; the letter is “general” in the sense that it was not directed to anyone particular Church. It is in striking contrast with the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (Revelation 2:3.): there each community wears a distinct physiognomy, and praise or blame is meted out with strict discrimination; here everything is general and comprehensive, addressed to classes of men and features and qualities of character. The dangers indicated, the admonitions given, are such as concerned Christians everywhere, surrounded by the “world” (1 John 2:14-16) and exposed to the attractions of idolatry (1 John 5:21); or such as arose from the heresies infesting all Churches in Western Asia Minor at the end of the first century; see 1 John 2:18-27; 1 John 4:1-6, 2 John 1:7-11; Chapter 10, Chapter 14, Chapter 19).²¹ For the rest, St John expatiates on the things that lay nearest to his heart, the simplest and deepest realities of the Christian life—faith in the incarnate Son of God, cleansing from sin by His blood, union with Him in His Spirit, the brotherly love in which character is perfected after His example, the purifying hope of life eternal. The historical and the transcendental Christ are unified in the writer’s mind, without effort or speculative difficulty. St John remembers how “He walked” in the spotless beauty of His human life (1 John 2:6; 1 John 3:3, 1 John 3:5, 1 John 4:17), while he recognizes Jesus as “the Son of God,” “the Only-begotten,” and declares that in Him we have, “manifested to us, the eternal life which was with the Father,” the “Advocate with the Father,” whose “blood” makes “propitiation for the whole world” (1 John 1:2-3, 1 John 1:7, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:9-10, 1 John 4:14). He exhibits the naïve faith of the first disciples in combination with the theological reflection brought about by contact with Greek thought and conflict with oriental theosophy under the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ whom He promised to guide them into all the truth. The experience of the youthful companion of Jesus has grown in John, without any breach of continuity, into that of the veteran Church leader, the deeply versed pastor and theologian.

Everything in this Epistle accords with the witness of tradition, that it was a circular letter and pastoral charge addressed by St John the Apostle and Evangelist to the wide circuit of Western Asian Churches over which he presided in the last period of his life, and that it was composed between the years 90 and 100 of our Lord. The forms of Gnostic and Doketic error to which in various passages the writer refers, originated, as many indications go to show, in the Churches of this province, and had become rife at the close of the first century, while St John still “tarried” in the flesh.²²

The Epistle rests upon the Gospel history; it presupposes the knowledge of Jesus Christ which was the common property of the Church, as this was affected by the specific Johannine tradition and point of view (see particularly 1 John 1:1-2, 1 John 1:5; 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:6-7, 1 John 2:13-14, 1 John 2:24; 1 John 3:1, 1 John 3:3, 1 John 3:5, 1 John 3:11, 1 John 3:13, 1 John 3:15-16, 1 John 3:23-24; 1 John 4:4-5, 1 John 4:9-14, 1 John 5:6-12, 1 John 5:14, 1 John 5:18, 1 John 5:20). Some have thought the Epistle written on purpose to accompany St John’s Gospel, in order to serve as a commendation and application thereof.²³ The two are associated by so many identical or kindred expressions and turns of thought; their atmosphere and horizon are so much the same, that hardly anyone doubts them to have been the product of the same mind,—indeed of the same state and stage of mind in the one author. The Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John were separated by no great interval of time, and designed for similar constituencies. But in addressing his “little children” and dwelling upon what they know so well of Christ and “the truth,” the Apostle is referring, we may be sure, to no written book; he recalls the teaching received from his lips and printed ineffaceably upon their hearts. To this familiar witness of the old Apostle—a witness which he embodied about this time in his written Gospel for those whom his spoken word might not reach—the opening sentences of the letter relate; at the same time they include in their reference (“we write”) the testimony of fellow-witnesses, who by voice and book had spread in other regions the knowledge of Jesus. The preface to the Epistle is in effect a summary of the Gospel according to John, which had been for sixty years an oral Gospel and was at last put into written shape—a correspondence that is obvious when one compares 1 John 1:1-4 with John 1:1-18, and John 20:30-31, the opening and closing words of the Evangelist. The revelation of God in His Son Jesus Christ—a revelation taking place within the sphere of sight and sense—is the matter which the writer has to communicate. That manifestation, made in the first place to a circle of beholders of whom he was one, brings an eternal life for men, a life of fellowship with God and Christ, the possessors of which desire to make all men sharers with themselves therein. This is the basis of the Epistle (1 John 1:1-3)—a basis at once historical and transcendental—and it is the resumption of the Gospel. “The Gospel gives the historic revelation; the Epistle shows the revelation as it has been apprehended in the life of the Society and of the believer” (Westcott). On the whole, it seems probable that the Epistle was the earlier work of the two.

The First Epistle is so much of an epistle, so unstudied and spontaneous in movement, that it lends itself ill to formal analysis. In this want of structure it is in signal contrast to the Apocalypse and the Gospel of St John. Up to 1 John 2:27 a fairly close connection may be traced.

I. The preface (1 John 1:1-4) announces that the writer purposes, by declaring more fully what he knows of “the eternal life” in Christ, to bring those to whom he writes into a more complete “fellowship” with God. He lays down therefore, first, the ground of this fellowship in the nature of God, the obstacle to it lying in personal sin, and the way in which sin is dealt with and removed (1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-2). He goes on to state the condition upon which union with God is maintained—viz. obedience to His word after the fashion of Jesus, above all to the great commandment of brotherly love (1 John 2:3-11). He congratulates his readers, old and young, upon their past fidelity (1 John 2:12-14); while he warns them against friendship with the world (1 John 2:15-17), and bids them especially beware of teaching that would destroy their faith in Jesus as the Son of God, and in consequence would rob them of communion both with the Son and with the Father (1 John 2:18-27). Here the letter might suitably have terminated, with the exhortation “Abide in Him”; it appears already to have fulfilled the purpose announced at the beginning.

II. A new train of thought is started in 1 John 2:28, arising out of the fundamental idea of fellowship in the eternal life (1 John 1:1-4), which can be traced, though with uncertain connection here and there, as far as 1 John 5:5. As fellowship supplied the key-note of the first section, so sonship—the filial and brotherly character of Christian believers, maintained in face of the world’s hatred—is the conception which binds together the paragraphs of this extended central section. In 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-27 we contemplate “the eternal life manifested” as affording the ground of union between God and men; in 1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-24, 1 John 4:1-21, 1 John 5:1-5 we look upon it as manifested in the sons of God confronting an evil and hostile world. The second movement starts at the climax of the first: at Christ’s “coming” His people will shine forth as the manifest “children of God”—which they are in fact already, but hiddenly and in preparation for their full estate (1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-3). Sin is therefore alien to them,—nay, impossible in the light of their Divine birth and proper character (1 John 3:4-9); sinners, haters of their brethren, are “children of the Devil” and brothers of Cain; the world’s hatred of the Church springs from the ancient seed of death; Jesus, not Cain, is the first-born of the new stock (1 John 3:10-16). Christian love must be shown in true deeds, not empty words (1 John 3:17-18); such deeds give the heart an assurance of God’s favour wanting otherwise; they confirm our faith in Christ by proving our possession of His Spirit (1 John 3:19-24). With this Spirit of truth the spirits inspiring the false prophets abroad in the world are at war; their test lies in the confession of Jesus as the Son of God; the Church has overcome them by the power of God within it; the Apostolic word condemns them (1 John 4:1-6). Love, after all, is the seal of truth, and the mark of sonship from God—the love displayed in the redeeming mission of the Son of God, which binds us to love our brethren (1 John 4:7-11) in the love of Christ the invisible God is seen, and the love of Christian souls is the impartation of God’s nature to them (1 John 4:12-16); its perfecting brings deliverance from all fear, enabling the Christian man to live, like his Master, a life of simple truth and loyalty (1 John 4:17-21). Thus faith in Jesus the Son of God makes sons of God, who love God’s children along with Himself, who keep God’s commands and conquer the world (1 John 5:1-5). The second division of the Epistle closes, like the first, on the note of victory (compare John 16:33, Revelation 19:1-21, Revelation 20:1-15, Revelation 21:1-27, Revelation 22:1-21). The two divisions are parallel rather than consecutive; the same thoughts recur in both: the incompatibility of sin with a Christian profession (1 John 1:6-10; 1 John 3:5-9); commandment-keeping the proof of love (1 John 2:3-5; 1 John 5:3-4); Jesus the pattern of the new life (1 John 2:6; 1 John 3:3, 1 John 3:16); brotherly love the fruit of knowledge of God (1 John 2:9-11; 1 John 3:14, 1 John 4:7-21); the enmity of the world toward God (1 John 2:15-16, 1 John 3:13); the seducers of the Church, and the test of their teaching in the confession of the Godhead of Jesus (1 John 2:18-27; 1 John 4:1-6). The office of the Holy Spirit, and the nature and extent of Christian sanctity, are topics conspicuous in the second division, where the sonship of believers is set forth, while the forgiveness of sin and the keeping of God’s commands figure chiefly in the two first chapters, which dwell on the theme of fellowship with God. The rest of the Epistle has quite a supplementary character. 1 John 5:6-12 places a kind of seal²⁴ on the letter as it draws to a close, by adducing “the Spirit” as “the witnesser”—first, in association with “the water and blood,” to the truth of God’s message concerning His Son, which the Apostle has now delivered (1 John 5:6-9; compare 1 John 1:2: “We have seen and do bear witness”), then as an internal testimony lodged in the believer’s soul (1 John 5:10-13). The paragraph upon Prayer and the Sin unto Death (1 John 5:14-17) stands detached, and seems to be an afterthought, which might naturally have occurred in the passage about confidence toward God and availing prayer, in 1 John 3:21-22. We may call this the postscript to the Epistle. It leads up to the concluding section.

1 John 5:18-21, with their threefold emphatic “We know,” are asummary of the writer’s message and testimony, 1 John 5:18-19 covering the ground of its second chief division (1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-24, 1 John 4:1-21, 1 John 5:1-5: concerning sonship), and 1 John 5:20-21, of its first division (1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-27: concerning fellowship). The disposition we have made of the contents of the Epistle agrees in outline with that adopted by Haupt in his Commentary.²⁵ The third of his divisions (concerning witness) is so short, and holds a position so much subordinate in comparison with the other two, that one prefers to reduce Haupt’s threefold to a twofold principle of analysis, and to regard the paragraphs following 1 John 5:5 as supplementing the main purport of the letter. The closing paragraphs (1 John 5:13-20) furnish a kind of Epilogue, as 1 John 1:1-1 was the Prologue. And the last sentence, “Little children, keep yourselves from the idols,” takes the place of the Farewell in an ordinary letter.

In the printing of the text we attempt to represent the Hebraistic parallelism which breaks through St John’s sentences, and gives to his Greek prose style its peculiar cast. This is most strongly marked in the First Epistle.

APPENDIX The comparison of parallel passages in the Epistles of Peter and John throws into relief the detachment of the Johannine writings. The Book of Revelation, despite its singularities, has much more in common with the Gospel and Epistles—and this in fundamental ideas and idiosyncrasies of mind—than with any other writing of the New Testament. The following parallels are worth observing:—

But the above are slight and incidental correspondences. There are more definite signs of communion of thought between St James and St John in their Epistles:—

St John’s Epistles and Hebrews, in view of their common theological complexion, supply fewer parallels than one might expect:—

The list for the Epistles of John and the Apocalypse is very different:—