1 John 2:15-17 - "Love not the World."

---

b. ii. 12-28. What Walking in the Light excludes: the Things and Persons to be avoided.

• Three-fold Statement of Reasons for Writing (ii. 12-14).
• Things to be avoided: the World and Its Ways (ii. 15-17).
• Persons to be avoided: Antichrists (B. 18-26).
• [Transitional.] The Place of Safety: Christ (ii. 27, 28).

---

15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him

15. "Love not the world." The sum of secular influences hostile to God, "the world is the order of finite being regarded as apart from God. Whatever is treated as complete without reference to God is so far a rival to God" (Westcott), instead of being the true expression of God's will under the conditions of its creation. Some exegetes harmonize this prohibition, "love not the world," with the statement, "God so loved the world" (John iii. 16), by saying, "That which man may not do, being what he is, God can do, because He looks through the surface of things by which man is misled to the very being which He created." A better harmony of these Scriptures is found in the fact that love has two meanings : (1) a love of pity, and (2) a love of complacency and delight. In the first meaning we not only may love the world, but we ought to love the world, if we are in sympathy with God, and we are under obligation to evince our pitying love by godlike self-sacrifice for the salvation of the fallen world. The more Christ-like we are the more perfectly will we fulfil this obligation. But this material world, as an object of delight in preference to its Creator, we may not love. Augustine finely illustrates this point: "If the bridegroom should make for his bride a ring and give it to her, and if she should love the ring more than her husband who made it for her, would not an adulterous disposition be detected by means of this very gift of her bridegroom, although she was loving what he gave to her?" 

1 John 2:12-14 - John's Reasons for Writing

---

b. ii. 12-28. What Walking in the Light excludes: the Things and Persons to be avoided.

•     Three-fold Statement of Reasons for Writing (ii. 12-14).

•     Things to be avoided: the World and Its Ways (ii. 15-17).

•     Persons to be avoided: Antichrists (B. 18-26).

•     [Transitional.] The Place of Safety: Christ (ii. 27, 28).

---

12 I write unto you, [my] little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake

12. "Little children." This is a title of endearment addressed to all St. John's readers, and not to children in age.

"Your sins are forgiven." The Greek perfect tense implies not repeated forgiveness up to the present hour, but rather the unbroken continuance of a conscious freedom from guilt as the result of pardon.

"His name's sake." The antecedent to "His" is Christ, the thought of whom has been present in the mind of John since the last mention of His name in verse 2, and the last reference to Him in verse 6. His name implies all that is contained in His personality, His sinless example, atoning death, glorious resurrection and mediatorial intercession at the right hand of the Father. They who believe in His name not only assent to Christian truths, but also wholly cast themselves upon His atoning merit for the assured possession of eternal life. The declaration of the purpose of the Gospel in John xx. 31 is, "that believing ye may have life through His name." This corresponds very closely with the purpose of this Epistle, "that ye also may have fellowship with us," i. e., divine fellowship implies divine life.

1 John 2:7-11 - Love of the Family of God

---

 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

---

7 Beloved, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the word which ye heard

7. "Beloved." While enforcing the commandment to love, St. John gives expression to love by this endearing epithet.

"From the beginning." He probably means from the commencement of the Christian faith of the readers. "The new commandment" of love is ever new, because it has new sanctions daily with our increasing knowledge of Christ. It was new when the disciples saw Him on the cross and heard Him pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was new when they saw Him after His resurrection, and again after the cloud received Him out of their sight. It had an especial newness when the Paraclete on the day of Pentecost came into their hearts, flooding them with love. As we have an ever-increasing ability to apprehend with fresh power the beauty of Christ's character, so the command to love Him and all who bear His image will be new. "While life advances and our spiritual life unfolds the Gospel must be always new." Hence there is no irksomeness, no theadbareness in real, hearty Christian service. To stationary Christians this commandment is always old, but to advancing believers, who have through the inner revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit, more and more perfect vision of Him, love is more and more abundantly shed abroad in their hearts.

1 John 2:1-6 - Imitation of Christ

---

 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

---

Thus far John has treated sin as a reality, and has exposed the fallacies by which its repugnance to the character of God is concealed, and its significance is vainly done away by a false philosophy. He now proceeds to show that the purpose of this Epistle is the prevention and the cure of sin.

1. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous

1. "That ye may not sin." This implies that sin is not a necessity, that under the dispensation of grace the believer may be always victorious over temptation. We know that he is addressing those who profess to be Christians by the endearing style of address, "My little children" and also by the fact that God is spoken of as Father, which is in the New Testament a relationship purely spiritual and belonging only to those who have been born of the Spirit. It is as evident as the cloudless midday sun that John does not regard sin as a normal element of the Christian life. In aiming to produce complete and constant victory over sin he was not endeavoring to set forth an abnormal character. An un-sinning Christian was in his estimation neither an impossibility nor an anomaly. John was not visionary but sober in his endeavor to edify and purify the church. He plainly asserts that sinlessness is the aim of his teaching, and that this is not gained by efforts on the plane of natural ability, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus who sends the Paraclete to "cleanse from all unrighteousness." We call attention to the aorist tense, "may not sin," — that ye may not commit a single sin. Says Bishop Westcott, "The thought is of the single act, not of the state (present tense). The tense is decisive against the idea that the apostle is simply warning his disciples not to draw encouragement for license from the doctrine of forgiveness. His aim is to produce the completeness of the Christ-like life. (Verse 6.)" Says Alford, "That ye may not sin (at all) implies the absence not only of the habit, but of any single acts of sin. The aorist tense alone refutes the supposition that John is exhorting the unconverted."

Themes in 1 John 1 (5): Does John Contradict Himself?

"The law of non-contradiction." 

This is one of the fixed and cardinal rules of interpretation. The words of an author must be so explained as not to make him contradict himself in the same letter, the same page, the same paragraph. Some understand John to say that every Christian has sin in the sense of guilt in verse 8. But this contradicts: 

(1.) The preceding sentence, the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth from all sin. If he has sin he is not cleansed from it. If he is cleansed from sin and gives Christ the glory by declaring his deliverance he deceives himself and the truth is not in him. An infallible cure for pulmonary disease is advertised. If the healed consumptive testifies to his cure, do not believe him for he is a liar. This is a jumble of contradictions into which this erroneous interpretation leads.

Themes in 1 John 1 (4): Gnosticism

"Gnosticism." 

It's name is Grecian (gnosis), but its origin is Asiatic. It is difficult to define this heresy. It is a conglomerate. Arising in the East, it rolled westward, incorporating into itself both Hebrew and Grecian elements. 

It is not a proper philosophy, a patient collection and study of facts. It ignores facts when, after the manner of all the Greek philosophies, it assumes a theory by an effort of the imagination and in a priori style arrives at fanciful conclusions, instead of patiently accumulating and studying facts and reasoning backward a posteriori to the fundamental principles.

Themes in 1 John 1 (3): Self-Deception

"Self-deception." 

Says Haupt: The word 'deceive' used by John in verse 8 occurs in no other document of the New Testament so often as in the Apocalypse. But in all the passages it is employed with a very definitely stamped meaning, never for mere error with express limitations as such, but always for fundamental departure from the truth. It occurs concerning the artifices of Satan, of antichrist, of the beast, and once of the false teachers in Thyatira (Rev. ii. 20), whose work, however, is expressly marked by its signs as fundamental deception. It is employed in the same sense when the natural, unregenerate man declares, under the hallucination of Gnostic error, that he has no sin to be washed away and no need of the atonement in the blood of the Son of God.

Haupt calls attention to the correspondence of verse 8 with verse 6 and verse 9 with verse 7. If the cleansing from sin is an essential of our walking in light, so the denial of its necessity is a token of being in darkness. Dark and desperate, indeed, must be the condition of that hardened sinner who, under the delusion of false philosophy, can declare that he has no consciousness of sin.

Themes in 1 John 1 (2): The Blood of Jesus Christ

"The blood of Jesus Christ..." 

"brings about that real sinlessness which is essential to union with God" (Bishop Westcott), who also says "the question is not of justification, but of sanctification." 

As ritual purity was required of all who would approach to God under the old covenant, so moral cleanness of conscience through the blood of Christ is required of all who would serve the living God in New Testament times. (Eph. v. 26, 27; Tit.ii. 14; Heb. ix. 13, 14, 22-24.)

Themes in 1 John 1 (1): The Fatherhood of God

The Fatherhood of God and the Sonship of men. 

In verse 2 God is spoken of as "the Father." 

(1.) The Old Testament conception of Fatherhood is national. "Israel is my son, even my first born." (Ex. iv. 22, 23.) The relationship is still national, not personal, when God addresses the Hebrew king, the representative head of the nation, thus: "Thou art my son, this day (of solemn consecration) I have begotten thee." (Ps. ii. 7.) The individual Israelite did not dare to call himself a son of God. The Jews were shocked at what they deemed blasphemy when Jesus called himself the Son of God, and they took up stones to stone him.

1 John1:5-10 - God is Light

---

 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

---

 

5 And this is the message which we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all

5. "This is the message." The revelation of God's moral character; which must be known before we can be assimilated to its beauty and purity. Harmony must rest on a mutual knowledge and a moral likeness and sympathy. This constitutes true spiritual fellowship. The incarnation brings God to the knowledge of men. The work of the Spirit in the believer conforms him to the image of God revealed in Christ.

1 John 1:1-4 - The Word of Life

•     The subject-matter of the Gospel employed in the Epistle (i. 1-3).

•     The purpose of the Epistle (i. 4).

  ---

1 That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life

1. "From the beginning." As in John i. 1, before the world was. But in ii. 7, 13, 14, iii. 11, it signifies from the commencement of preaching the Gospel.

The first verse of the Epistle declares the reality of Christ's body, as attested by all the special senses which in the nature of the case can be applied. Taste and smell are not related to this demonstration. But the eyes, the ears and the hands are summoned as witnesses in proof that the important witness is emphasized by the use of two verbs, that which we have seen with our eyes and continuously, calmly and intently "contemplated" or surveyed. The phrase "with our eyes" is not redundant, for it accentuates the direct, outward experience of a matter so marvelous in itself and in its basal relation to vital Christian truths. It was no mere trance or vision of the soul alone. "Your eyes have seen" is the formula for assured certitude in Deut. iii. 21, xi. 7, xxi. 7.

A Note on 1 John 1 - Against Dualism

The words which open this First Epistle of St. John — an appeal to three of the five senses in proof of the reality of Christ's body — show that it turns upon the Person of the Son of God incarnate. But why was the reality of Christ's humanity so stoutly denied? It was necessary in order to meet the demands of the false philosophy which some Christians had adopted in order to harmonize that doctrine with the sinlessness of the man Jesus Christ.

Introduction to the Epistles of John (7): Style and Abiding Value

RHETORICAL STYLE.

The most marked feature of the style is the constant occurrence of moral and spiritual antitheses, each thought has its opposite, each affirmative its negative; light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, truth and falsehood, children of God and children of the devil, sin unto death and sin not unto death, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, love of the Father and love of the world. 

THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL VALUE.

The Epistle is not a designed compendium of systematic theology or handbook of Christian doctrine for catechetical training, being written not for the instruction of the ignorant, but expressly for those who "know the truth." Yet "in no other book in the Bible are so many cardinal doctrines touched with so firm a hand." No other book gives a formal definition of sin, and none so often alludes to the atonement in the blood of Christ presented in its various phases, no other so magnifies love and identifies it with the divine essence, and no other so distinctly teaches Christian perfection attainable by all believers who here and now claim their full heritage in Christ, perfect love shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. John writes as if conscious that he is writing the last statement of Christian truth in epistolary form, just as he had written the last of the Gospels.

 "Each point is laid before us with the awe-inspiring solemnity of one who writes under the profound conviction that 'it is the last hour.' None but an apostle, perhaps none but the last surviving apostle, could have such magisterial authority in the utterance of Christian truth. Every sentence seems to tell of the conscious authority and resistless, though unexerted, strength of one who has 'seen, and heard, and handled the Eternal Word, and who knows that his witness is true."'

Introduction to the Epistles of John (6): Outline of 1 John

 

OUTLINE OF THE EPISTLE.

It is exceedingly difficult to analyze the Epistle and discover the author's plan. Some scholars think that he had no clear and systematic arrangement of his ideas when he began to write. They assert that it is "an unmethodized effusion of the pious sentiments and reflections of a prattling old man." Even so keen an intellect as Calvin's found it impossible to find any distinct lines of cleavage in what he regarded as a confused compound of doctrine and exhortation. But modern scholars, deeming this opinion derogatory to this great apostle, have set about the work of discovering the subtle links of thought which constitute divisions into orderly parts. They do not announce the result of their labors with much confidence, but admit that the transitions from one section of the subject to another, even in the main divisions, are very gradual, "like the changes in dissolving views." Few writers have been perfectly satisfied with the plan (of the Epistle) which they profess to have discovered; and still fewer have satisfied their readers. It is like finding exact boundaries between the constellations. But most students will agree that it is better to read the Epistle with some scheme which is tolerably correct than without the guidance of any.

Introduction to the Epistles of John (5): Purpose and Historical Setting

 

PURPOSE AND HISTORICAL SETTING.

In the estimation of deeply spiritual minds the First Epistle of John holds the highest place in that series of inspired writings which constitute the Bible. In the order of divine revelations it is probably the last. It may very properly be regarded as the interpreter of the whole series. It not only awakens the highest hopes of the believer, but it also confirms and satisfies them by showing our privilege of fellowship with the choicest spirits on the earth and our cloudless and continuous communion with the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit given to all who here and now unwaveringly trust in our risen Savior and Lord. The Epistle furnishes a lofty ideal of that Christian society or brotherhood called the Church, and it insists that its present realization is a glorious possibility. If the love of God and man which flames throughout this book were burning brightly — not smoldering — in the heart of every professor of faith in Christ, all secular sodalities would lose their attraction, disintegrate and disappear before the superior magnetism of the Bride of Christ the Church.

Introduction to the Epistles of John (4): The Relation of the Gospel to the First Epistle of John

 

THE RELATION OF THE EPISTLES TO THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

The relation of the First Epistle to the Fourth Gospel is that of an application to a sermon, Or that of a comment to a history. The Epistle presupposes that the persons addressed possessed knowledge of the Gospel communicated either by John's voice or his pen. The Gospel is a summary of his sermons to audiences ignorant of the facts and truths of Christianity. The First Epistle is a summary of his exhortations to believers to practice the precepts of Christ stated in such a way as to guard them against the evils of religious error. 

There are numerous and manifest resemblances, both in the thought and the form, between this Epistle and the Gospel of John. There are also striking differences. The theme of the Gospel, clearly and concisely stated in the first verse is the supreme divinity (doxa) of the Logos, who "was with God," hence distinct in personality, and who "was God," being identical with Him in nature. The burden of the Epistle is the real and perfect humanity (sarx) of Jesus Christ announced in its opening sentence, which appeals to three of the five senses, in proof that he was not a phantom, but a man composed of flesh, blood and bones, — a veritable man, the God-man. It has been well said that the proposition demonstrated in the evangel is "Jesus is the Christ," and that proved in the Letter is "the Christ is Jesus." In the latter case the apostle presents his argument from the divine to the human, from the spiritual and ideal to the historical, the natural position of an evangelist and historian; in the former the writer argues from the human to the divine, from the historical to the ideal and spiritual, which is the natural position of the preacher.