Book Intro › General Letters

1 John

Ἰωάννου Ἐπιστολὴ Αʹ Iōannou Epistolē, “first letter of John”. Letter or sermon. 5 chapters, 105 verses.

A pastoral message to a divided community: God is light and God is love, and those who know him walk in the light, love one another and confess that Jesus came in the flesh.

Read 1 John 1 →

Overview

The letter opens with witness to “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes” (1:1), an echo of the start of John’s Gospel. It has no greeting, no named author or readers, and no farewell. It circles through a few themes, returning to each from a new angle: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5); those who say they have no sin deceive themselves (1:8); and God’s children keep his commandments, above all the command to love one another.

Behind the letter is a split. Some have left the community, and the letter says of them, “They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us” (2:19). The letter calls them antichrists and gives tests for telling truth from error. The chief test is whether a person confesses “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (4:2). Its best-known words come in chapter 4, “God is love” (4:8) and “We love him, because he first loved us” (4:19). It ends by stating its aim, “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

Author and date

The letter does not name its author, who writes as one of a group of eyewitnesses and addresses his readers as “My little children” (2:1).

Traditional view

John the apostle · c. AD 85–100

From the 2nd century, with Irenaeus (bishop of Lyon) and others, the church credited this letter to John the apostle, the author of the Gospel of John, writing late in life at Ephesus. Its language and themes are very close to the Gospel’s: light and darkness, truth, remaining in God, love and eternal life.

Academic view

The community of John’s Gospel · c. AD 90–110

Many academic scholars assign the letter to a member of the community that produced the Gospel, but not to the Gospel’s author. He may be the same person as the writer of 2 and 3 John, who calls himself the elder. They read it as written after the Gospel, in a dispute over how the Gospel should be understood.

Both views tie the three letters of John closely to the Gospel of John, and read 1 John as a response to people who had left the community over their view of Jesus.

Audience and setting

The readers are believers the writer knows well, probably a group of house churches in one region; tradition places them in and around Ephesus. They had been shaken by the departure of members who seem to have denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh and to have claimed to be without sin. Many scholars link these teachers with an early form of Docetism, the belief that Christ only seemed to be human.

Genre, and how to read it

Read it as a sermon or circular letter more than a personal one. Its thought moves in spirals, with key words (light, love, truth, remain, know, born of God) taken up again and again. Many statements are tests, framed as “If we say” (1:8) or “By this we know” (3:24), which give readers ways to recognise genuine faith in themselves and others.

One textual note matters here. Older English Bibles such as the King James Version add words at 5:7–8 naming the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit as three witnesses in heaven. The addition, known as the Johannine Comma (comma here meaning a short phrase), is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and first appears in Latin. Modern translations leave it out, including the World English Bible used here.

By this we know

Outline

• 1:1–1:4 Prologue — What we have seen and heard
• 1:5–2:17 Walking in the light — Confessing sin, keeping his commands, not loving the world
• 2:18–2:29 Antichrists — Those who went out from us
• 3:1–3:24 Children of God — Doing right and loving one another
• 4:1–4:6 Testing the spirits — Confessing that Jesus Christ came in the flesh
• 4:7–4:21 God is love — Love that comes from God and leaves no room for fear
• 5:1–5:12 Faith that overcomes — The witness of the Spirit, the water and the blood
• 5:13–5:21 Assurance — Eternal life, prayer, and a last word about idols

Key themes

Light

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5), and fellowship with him means walking in the light.

Love

Love is the proof of knowing God, and it must be practical: “let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth” (3:18).

Truth and error

“Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God” (4:1).

Children of God

“See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God!” (3:1).

Assurance

The writer tells believers he has written “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

At a glance

4 people and 0 places named.

Most mentioned: Jesus Christ, Cain