20 - 1Jn 2:12-14

1Jn 2:12-14

Γράφω ὑμῖν, τεκνία, ὅτι ἀφέωνται ὑμῖν αἱ ἁμαρτίαι διὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ. Γράφω ὑμῖν, πατέρες, ὅτι ἐγνώκατε τὸν ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς. γράφω ὑμῖν, νεανίσκοι, ὅτι νενικήκατε τὸν πονηρόν. γράφω ὑμῖν, παιδία, ὅτι ἐγνώκατε τὸν πατέρα. Ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, πατέρες, ὅτι ἐγνώκατε τὸν ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς. ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, νεανίσκοι, ὅτι ἰσχυροί ἐστε, καὶ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν μένει, καὶ νενικήκατε τὸν πονηρόν. The position of the three following verses in the organism of the Epistle cannot be determined before we have examined their meaning somewhat in detail, and made it clear to our minds. The apostle addresses himself to his readers in a sixfold appeal; but the meaning of this depends in some measure on the right reading in1Jn 2:13. If the Textus Receptusin that verse is correct,γράφωὑμῖνπαιδία [“I write to you children”],it is inevitably necessary to connect thisγράφω[“I write”]with theγράφω[“I write”]of the three previous clauses; but in that case the πατέρες[“fathers”] must, in contradistinction from the πατέρες [“fathers”] and νεανίσκοι [“young men”] of the two former members, be understood of actual children, so that the apostle would be supposed to address three several classes of age. But the external evidence is very strong in favour of the other reading, ἔγραψαὑμῖνπαιδία [“I wrote to you children”].In that case the clause no longer belongs to the preceding, but to the following; and we have three denominations of the readers in parallel and contrast: on the one hand,τεκνία [“little children”], πατέρες[“fathers”], and νεανίσκοι [“young men”] bound together byγράφω[“I write”];and, on the other hand,παιδία [“children”], πατέρες[“fathers”], νεανίσκοι[“young men”] bound together by ἔγραψα [“I wrote”]. But then it is further obvious that byπαιδία [“children”] andτεκνία [“little children”] children are not meant in the sense of physical age; all the readers are thus classed together as a whole, as in1Jn 2:1. The very order seems at once to indicate this. If actual children had been intended, the apostle would certainly have arranged the terms in natural order, either advancing from the youngest to the eldest, or taking the inverted line; but to mention children first, then the fathers, and then again young men, has in it something inharmonious. To this may be added that, supposing children generally in physical age to have been meant, the antithesis to the νεανίσκοι[“young men”]would require us to think of little children; but neither were these present in the Christian assembly, for which the Epistle was primarily designed, nor can they be supposed to have been in a position to understand the apostle’s missive. Thus, then, the apostle addresses the whole church twice in the first place, and then turns to the older and younger among them with special exhortation : whether older and younger in a physical sense must be as yet left undetermined.

Then, further, the sixfold ὅτι [“that”] in the foreground requires explanation: the question being whether it gives the matter of the γράφω [“I write”], or the reason assigned for it. The latter is decidedly the right view. An emphatic assertion of the good degree, the καλόςβαθμός [“a good standing”], which the church had purchased to itself, is not the substance of the Epistle ; nor could it be such, unless the document had been meant to be a letter of consolation against undue despondency, or an epistle of commendation. But it is most manifestly neither of these. So then we must take ὅτι [“that”] as causative : precisely because the churches were in the enjoyment and in the labour of faith, the apostle writes to them the letter before us. He does not teach the elements of Christianity; but it is his design to lay the finishing touches on their perfection, and bring to maturity the πλήρωσις^[LSJ] [“fullness”] of their χαρά [“joy”].

What the apostle says to the church as a whole in his first clause, 1Jn 2:12,—that he writes to them under the supposition that they were already partakers of the forgiveness of sins,—appears not to be in harmony with 1Jn 2:1-1, where he mentions this forgiveness of sins as the object of his writing. In fact, this contradiction is the same as in the eighth verse, where the apostle lays that down as an ἐντολή [“commandment”] which he in the same breath acknowledges they had already realized; no other than what pervades the whole Epistle, which everywhere presupposes Christianity in the hearers and yet teaches it. It is precisely this relation, this substructure of the whole Epistle, which explains why St. John writes nothing new, and yet writes the old as being new: his presupposition and his object are one and the same. And the forgiveness of sins¹ he presupposes more definitely as having been διάτὸὄνομααὐτοῦ [“through his name”]. That the pronoun here refers to Christ, must be taken for granted because of the διά with accusative, “on account of.” But the name might generally be explained as the revelation of His person, as the name which the Lord by His deeds has made for Himself; but it may also refer to that name of Christ of which mention had been made, and the idea inherent in which was in the apostle’s immediate memory, φῶςἀληθινόν [“true light”]. The Lord, who is light, and came to bring light into the world, has for the sake of this His name vouchsafed us forgiveness.

Ifwehave not missed the meaning of theτεκνία [“little children”],as referring, namely, to the whole church, it will be thereby firmly established that the two specific utterances in regard to the πατέρες[“fathers”]and theνεανίσκοι[“young men”]are simply deductions from the immediately preceding general clause. Now the forgiveness of sin has two aspects: on the one hand, it produces a strong warfare against sin, and that in the order of time is its first result; on the other hand, it assures a deeper knowledge of the Saviour through whom so great a benefit has been obtained and is continuously appropriated. This latter stage is not reached without some experience of the Christian life; it is the point of contest with sin, and therefore belongs rather, or belongs in a higher degree, to the later period of the Christian course. For, all knowledge of the Lord which may be supposed to spring from anything besides a warfare for the more and more perfect appropriation of the redeeming work of Christ, would be merely theoretic knowledge, and dead therefore in its relation to the true Christian life. The apostle here gives prominence to this second aspect of the matter; and the reason is that he will begin with the fathers, who naturally assumed the more important place in the Christian church and in any allusion to its members. The expressionsπατέρες[“fathers”] and νεανίσκοι[“young men”] must not be referred to merely intellectual stages of advancement: the second of the words will not allow this, as being entirely unsuitable. At the same time, it may be naturally supposed that the elders, who had of course occupied their place longer in the Christian church, and had more experience of life, were also intellectually more mature than the younger. When the apostle presupposes that the elders had knownτὸν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς [“from the beginning”],the connection requires us to understand this of our Lord Christ alone. The strongest argument is not that the first words of the Epistle,ὃἦν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, [“what was from the beginning”],as also the beginning of the Gospel, contain similar descriptions of the Son; but that the forgiveness of sins emphasized in the previous verse,διὰτὸὄνομαΧριστοῦ [“through the name of Christ”],suggests at once rather the knowledge of the Son than the knowledge of the Father. The young men, on the contrary, have overcome the wicked one; they have successfully withstood hisμεθοδείας [“schemes”] (Eph 6:11). The thought seems to enter here without any point of connection and unprepared for. Forgiveness of sins had been mentioned in the first chapter and in the beginning of the second: what, however, of theπονηρός [“the evil one’] and the victory over him? But when we come to remember that theσκοτία[“darkness”], as in antithesis to the light, was a prominent idea in the previous paragraphs, and that it is this wicked one who has theἐξουσίατοῦσκότους [“the power of darkness”],we shall not after all find the present mention of him so entirely isolated. That this victory over the enemy is described in the perfect tense, is not to be regarded as meaning that the victory was determined or finally settled and ended: it simply draws a conclusion from the already past life of the young men. With the third member of the thirteenth verse the second triad of addresses begins. The most striking difference we encounter is the changedἔγραψα [“I wrote”];which is all the more important a difference because of the general similarity in the contents of the two triads. The essentially identical substance of the two sub-sections makes it evident that the apostle’s aim is to lay down in the most emphatic way possible the general fact of the Christian life and of the Christian knowledge in the churches. Hence it seems at once obvious to take the repetition of the verb in the sense of confirmation or additional assurance, in some distant analogy with theὃγέγραφαγέγραφα [“what I have written I have written”],John 19:22: “I write unto you, and I assert it again that for these reasons I write to you;” essentially if not formally the same repetition is presented here as in Php 4:4,χαίρετε,πάλινἐρῶχαίρετε [“rejoice, again I say rejoice”].But after all, this only accounts for the simple repetition generally, and does not explain the preterite form of the verb. We do not read, as we might expect,γράφωκαὶπάλινγράφω [“I write and again I write”].It is hardly admissible to refer the preterite to the first part of the Epistle now finished, and the preceding present to the whole of the Epistle itself,—I write unto you generally for these reasons, and for them have specially written the previous words,—because, first, the perfectγέγραφα [“I have written”] would have been the more obvious form, and secondly, we should naturally expect the order to be inverted: “I have written what precedes under this presupposition, as indeed my whole Epistle proceeds from it.” Nor will it help the case to refer theἔγραψα [“I wrote”] to earlier writings of St. John, such as the Gospel; for in that case there would certainly have been some such appendage as “I write to you now, as I have written to you before.” Nothing remains, then, but that we refer as well theἔγραψα [“I wrote”] as the γράφω[“I write”] to the entire Epistle lying before us; in which case the great point is to determine why at one moment the apostle regards his writing as a matter of the present, and the next moment views itaoristically.

Now there is certainly a good reason for this, if the writer’s purpose is to reassert what he had said in theγράφω[“I write”]for the sake or in the service of some particular application. This distinctive application must then be sought in what immediately follows. The meaning would be: “I write to you on the ground of your Christian estate; as first said, I have been induced to write for this reason, and hence the strong injunction which I must address to you, μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον [“do not love the world”],” 1Jn 2:15.That, in fact, those following words of injunction did rest upon the presupposition of their Christian character needs no proof; for1Jn 2:15ff. themselves assert the conclusion that the love of the world and the love of God cannot co-exist or tolerate each other. It might be objected that this “and hence,” which we have supplied in1Jn 2:15, stands not in the text. But when we find in three consecutive sentences the reasons given so emphatically forμὴ ἀγαπᾶν τὸν κόσμον [“to not love the world”],there seems no strict necessity to express formally the causal relation. After1Jn 2:14 we have thus to insert a colon; before1Jn 2:13cnot only a point, but a period, the close of a sub-section. “I have written or wrote unto you, as I have said, only on the supposition of your fellowship with the light, of your victory over the darkness:” love not the world, for otherwise(1Jn 2:15b)you discredit and shame my supposition.” In the presentγράφω[“I write”] the apostle has in view the passing act in which he is engaged; in theaorist ἔγραψα [“I wrote”] the Epistle is in his mind represented as finished; he speaks historically of the intellectual conception of the Epistle which preceded the actual performance of the writing. Because the conception of it was perfected, and in fact its realization half accomplished, the apostle could speak of his letter as of an historical fact; that he actually does so speak has this for its reason, that his writing rests upon the presupposition that his readers will follow his exhortation, μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον [“do not love the world”]. Because his letter was produced by these express presuppositions, the churches must on that very account answer to them. To sum up all: the preterite form has for its reason this, that the following injunction is presented as the necessary result of the expectationsand presuppositions which lie at the basis of the Epistle. In this way the course of thought pursued in the portion of that Epistle now closed reaches the conclusion which the unity of its structure would lead us to expect.1Jn 1:6-10 corresponds most exactly in its construction with1Jn 2:3-11; but for1Jn 2:1-2 we find no parallel member remaining. From quite a different point of view, we have come to the conviction that this parallel member is to be found here: it in fact consists of1Jn 2:12-13b. The most important difference between these two parallels is this, that1Jn 2:1-2 recapitulates only one half of its theme in the arrangement; while, on the other hand,1Jn 2:6, 1Jn 2:12-13b not only brings in the other half, but also winds up the two previous sections, though its form is specifically determined by the second of them. With this parallel relation of the two periods theγράφω[“I write”] beginning each of them,1Jn 2:1 and1Jn 2:12, and the address to the church in τεκνία [“little children”] common to the two, agree. Both recapitulations or resumptions give prominence to the forgiveness of sins, but in a different way: the former makes it an end to be attained, the latter makes it the basis or reason of the apostle’s writing. We have already seen that the difference is only an apparent one; but that the form in1Jn 2:12 is determined and occasioned by the thought expressed in1Jn 2:8. The two clauses which enter into detail,1Jn 2:13aand 1Jn 2:13b, answer admirably to the resuming purpose of the period. The γνῶσίς [“knowledge”] is in1Jn 2:3 the first fundamental thought of the second sub-section; hence it is taken up again, not, however, as the knowledge of the Father, as in1Jn 2:3, but as that of the Son, for throughout1Jn 2:6ff.the knowledge of God has been specifically defined as the knowledge of Christ. And the idea of the victory over the wicked one is contained,1Jn 2:8, in the clauseἡ σκοτία παράγεται καὶ τὸ φῶς ἤδη φαίνει [“the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining”],which, to those who know the Gospel of St. John, includes the notion of a contest between light and darkness, God and Satan.

Thus with the ἔγραψα [“I wrote”] of 1Jn 2:13c there begins an altogether new section of the Epistle, which first of all resumes the presuppositions of the apostle uttered at the close of the first part, in order to carry them onwards to further uses. But, after the Johannaean manner, this resumption takes place not in exactly the same words. In the place of the forgiveness of sins, which was attributed to the church as a whole in 1Jn 2:12, comes in here the knowledge of the Father. When we mark that in the section commenced with these words the χρῖσμα [“anointing”] from God, and the knowledge of the truth thus guaranteed, forms the conclusive particular in the apostle’s argumentation, that the whole subject is the separation from the antichrists, and the marks by which they are to be known, it is very evident why the apostle describes fellow ship with God under the precise aspect of the knowledge of the Father. This knowledge of the Father falls in 1Jn 2:14 again into two elements: the knowledge of the Son, and victory over the evil one. Like the forgiveness of sins, the knowledge of God also has two sides, one more theoretic and the other more practical; yet so that the former is the foundation or presupposal of the latter. The latter is the conflict against sin resting upon the knowledge of the good and holy will of God; and it is pre-eminently ascribed to the young men. They are, in virtue of their knowledge of God, or, more strictly, in virtue of their living insight into His nature as light, ἰσχυροί [“strong ones”]: the knowledge that they stand not alone, but that the strength of the light works in them, and on them, and for them, makes them strong; further, the λόγοςτοῦθεοῦ [“word of God”] abides in them, the living and effectual message of Jesus Christ and about Jesus Christ, the concrete substance of the γνῶσίςτοῦπατρὸς [“knowledge of the Father”], has found a place in them; and, finally, through this divine power, which lies in the divine word, they have maintained a victorious contest against the darkness and its prince. On the other hand, the γνῶσίςτοῦπατρὸς [“knowledge of the Father”] has also a more theoretical side; the repose of age and the experience of the Christian life have matured this in the fathers. They have known τὸνἀπ᾿ἀρχῆς [“the one from the beginning”], that is, according to the explanation already given, the Son of God. The general fellowship with God, with the light, is specialized into fellowship with the Saviour; he who knoweth God knoweth Him in His Son, who has said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”

Footnote

¹The form ἀφέωνται [“have been forgiven”] is grammatically difficult. But in Suidas, Etym. ex Herodiano, gram. Bekk. 470, 15, there is for ἀφεῖκα [“I have forgiven”], a Doric and even Attic form vouched, from which ἀφεώκαμεν [“we have forgiven”] and ἀφεωκέναι [“they have forgiven”] have sprung; similarly, the Pass, in inscript. Arcad. in the imperative form ἀφεώσθω [“forgive”]. All this leads to the assumption of an extended form ἑόω (heoō) instead of the common ἕω (heō), against the formation of which nothing can be grammatically urged. Compare on the passages quoted, Steph. Thes. I. p. 2662.