Commentary on First, Second, and Third John (Commentary on the New Testament Book #18)

Robert H. Gundry

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781441237750
• eBook ISBN: 9781441237750
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Delve Deeper into God's Word

In this verse-by-verse commentary, Robert Gundry offers a fresh, literal translation and a reliable exposition of Scripture for today's readers.

In these three short letters, the apostle John seeks to strengthen the Christian's knowledge, joy, and assurance in true Christian faith over against Gnostic falsehoods. Second and Third John warn against housing false teachers and encourage showing hospitality to messengers of truth.

Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's nontechnical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations.

This selection is from Gundry's Commentary on the New Testament.

First John

Early in church history there arose a heresy called Gnosticism. According to a basic premise of Gnosticism, physical matter is inherently evil. So to avoid tarnishing Jesus Christ with evil some Gnostics taught that he was a phantom. He only seemed to have a physical body (the doctrine of docetism, so called after the Greek verb dokein, “to seem”). Other Gnostics taught that Christ, a divine spirit, differed from Jesus, a human being with a physical body, and descended on Jesus immediately after Jesus’ baptism but left him just before his death on a cross, so that the divine spirit Christ underwent neither a physical birth nor a physical resurrection, both of which would have entailed participation in the evil inherent in physicality (the doctrine of Cerinthianism, so called after a Gnostic teacher named Cerinthus). Since Gnostics didn’t consider their bodies a part of their true selves, some of them gave their bodies free rein to engage in sinful conduct. The true selves, consisting of their spirits, would bear no guilt and thus remain sinless. Or so they thought. And since they prided themselves on secret knowledge about such matters (“Gnostic” means “knower”), they disdained orthodox Christians, whom they considered ignorant, and separated from them. Over against the foregoing features of Gnosticism, 1 John emphasizes righteous conduct, love for fellow believers, and belief in the incarnation of God’s Son in the indivisible person Jesus Christ. These emphases have the purpose of encouraging the author’s audience to resist the blandishments of Gnostic teachers.

First John has no introductory address, greeting from the author, or concluding salutations. Yet numerous references to writing rule out a merely recorded oral sermon. The repeated affectionate address, “my children,” implies an audience well known to the apostle John, to whose authorship early church tradition assigns the book; and according to this tradition he lived in Ephesus during his old age. So 1 John is probably a tract for circulation among Christians in the region surrounding Ephesus (compare Paul’s circular letter called “Ephesians”). John states clearly his purposes of strengthening their knowledge, joy, and assurance in true Christian faith (1:3–4; 5:13) over against Gnostic falsehoods (2:1–29; 4:1–21).

THE EAR-, EYE-, AND HAND-WITNESSED INCARNATION OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST AS THE BASIS FOR CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
1 John 1:1–4

1:1–2: What was from [= since] the beginning, what we’ve heard, what we’ve seen with our eyes, what we observed and our hands felt—[we’re writing] about the Word of life, 2and the life was manifested [= made visible], and we’ve seen [the life] and are testifying to [the life] and announcing to you the eternal life, who as such was with the Father and was manifested to us. John writes about a “what” that was not only original and audible, but also visible, tangible, present with God the Father, and eternally alive. So the “what” is a who, none other than the Word who according to John 1:1–4 was in the beginning with God and had life in himself. But why “what” instead of “who”? Answer: Whereas “who” would have stressed the Word’s personal identity, “what” stresses the Word’s qualities of preexistence (“from the beginning . . . with the Father”), communicativeness (“the Word” as “heard”), visibility (“seen . . . observed . . . manifested . . . manifested”), tangibility (“felt”), vitality (“the life”), and eternality (“the eternal life”). “In the beginning” (John 1:1–3) stressed existence already at creation, that is, preexistence. Here, “from the beginning” stresses ongoing existence in addition to preexistence and thus prepares for an equation of the Word with “the eternal life.” The Word was “heard” in that he “explained” God (John 1:18). The Word was “seen” in that he “became flesh and tented among us” (John 1:14). Over against Gnostic denials of the incarnation, the additions of “with our eyes” and “observed” stress physical sight of a physical object (compare, for example, John 6:40); and “our hands felt” stresses physicality likewise. “Of life” describes “the Word” as both living (compare John 5:26; 11:25; 14:6) and life-giving (compare especially John 5:21, but also 3:15–16, 36; 5:24; 6:63, 68 among other passages). “The life was manifested” recalls Jesus’ manifesting himself as resurrected back to life in John 21:1, 14. For similar combinations of seeing and testifying to what was seen, note John 1:34; 3:11, 32; 19:35. Since “the eternal life . . . was with the Father” as “the Word” was “with the Father” in John 1:1, “who” fits better a reference to “the eternal life” than “which” would. And “as such” underlines the attributes of “the Word” as living, life-giving, and eternal. “With the Father” implies that “the eternal life” is none other than the Son of God, and confirms that “the eternal life” is a “who,” not a “which.” “We” and “us” refer to John and his fellow eyewitnesses, earwitnesses, and touch-witnesses of the Son of God’s incarnate ministry. Though the other foundational witnesses have probably all died by the time John writes, his including them with himself enhances the reliability of his written testimony.

1:3–4: What we’ve seen and heard we’re announcing even to you in order that you too may have fellowship with us; and also our fellowship [is] with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4And we’re writing these things in order that our joy may be filled up. “What we’ve seen and heard” redoubles John’s emphasis on the eye- and earwitnessed qualities of the Word of life’s historical visibility and audibility. “Even to you” and “you too” emphasize the privilege of John’s audience in sharing—through the foundational witnesses’ “announc[ment]”—the eternal life’s manifestation to those witnesses. This manifestation, in turn, constituted the foundational witnesses’ sharing the eternal life and, through him (“the eternal life”), sharing God his Father as well (compare John 14:8–11). Finally, “Jesus Christ” identifies God’s Son with an historical figure (compare the delayed identification of “the Word” with Jesus Christ in John 1:1–17). The combination of “Jesus” with “Christ” also speaks against the aforementioned Cerinthian distinction between a physically human Jesus and a spiritually divine Christ. The “fellowship” that John talks about consists in a communicative sharing of the Word of life’s incarnation. Involved in this sharing are John’s audience, John himself, other foundational witnesses, God’s Son Jesus Christ, and God the Father. The sharing brings joy, and writing about it has the purpose of filling John and his fellow foundational witnesses with the joy of sharing their testimony (compare John 3:29; 8:56; 15:11; 16:20–24; 17:13; 20:20; 2 John 12). “We’re writing” includes those witnesses besides John, as though they’re testifying along with him despite being dead. His testimony incorporates theirs too.

RIGHTEOUS CONDUCT
1 John 1:5–2:6

1:5: And this is the message that we’ve heard from him [Jesus Christ] and are announcing to you, that God is light and [that] in him there’s no darkness at all. As “the Word of Life” (1:1) Jesus Christ conveys a “message.” Appropriately to his being God’s “Son” (1:2–3), his message concerns “God.” “We’ve heard from him and are announcing to you” reinforces John’s earlier appeal to his and his colleagues’ having earwitnessed “the Word of life.” Whereas “the life was the light of human beings” in John 1:4, here “God is light” (compare Revelation 21:23; 22:5). So light now stands for the character of God in himself rather than for the manifestation of God through his Son (as in John 1:4). “In him [God] there’s no darkness at all” describes God’s character by way of a denial. Since darkness is associated with “evil deeds/works” (John 3:19–20) and light with “good deeds/works” (see John 10:32 with John 9:3–5), light describes God’s character as good; and the total absence of darkness in him describes his character as untainted by evil. These descriptions of his character prepare for moral descriptions of true Christians and false ones and for definitions of good and evil in terms of love and hate. But when did John and the other foundational witnesses hear from Jesus Christ the message that “God is light and [that] in him there’s no darkness at all”? In none of the Gospels is Jesus quoted as using these words. In John 8:46, however, he’s quoted as saying, “Who of you convicts me of sin?” and in John 10:30–32 he refers to “many good deeds/works” that he has shown “from the Father.” These statements amount to saying that God is light (in that Jesus’ good deeds derived from the Father) and that in God there’s no darkness at all (in that Jesus, who embodied God his Father, had no sin, no evil deeds, to be convicted of).

1:6–7: If we say, “We’re having fellowship with him [God],” and are walking around in the darkness, we’re lying and not doing the truth. To have fellowship with God is to share with him his Son Jesus Christ. Walking around stands for conduct. So “walking around in the darkness” means doing evil deeds. Since God is light, walking around in the darkness falsifies our saying that we’re having fellowship with him. In other words, then, we don’t have a share with him in his Son. “Not doing the truth” equates with “walking around in the darkness” and shows that the truth is to be performed in good deeds, not just believed in good words (compare John 3:21). And the truth has to do with God’s character as manifest in Jesus the Word (John 1:14, 17; 14:6; 1 John 5:20). 7But if we’re walking around in the light as he himself [God] is in the light, we’re having fellowship with one another; and the blood of Jesus his Son is cleansing us from every sin. Since “God is light” (1:5), to walk around in the light is to do good deeds in him (compare John 3:21: “But the one who is doing the truth comes to the light in order that his deeds may be manifested [to the effect] that they were done in God,” which is to say that they come to the light for the express purpose of having their deeds shown to have had their genesis in God rather than in any natural human ability [see also numerous later references to having been “born out of God,” plus John 1:13; 3:3–7]). But if “God is light,” how can he be “in the light”? It’s as though his good character is the aura which surrounds him and in which, therefore, we can walk around. Moreover, God is “in the light” because he’s in his Son Jesus Christ, who is the light (John 1:4–5, 7–9; 8:12; 10:38; 14:10–11; 17:21, 23). “Fellowship with one another” means, then, sharing Jesus Christ in common with other true believers, because he’s the light in whom they too walk around. But to keep us in this light, where God is, “the blood of Jesus his Son” has to “cleans[e] us from every sin.” For sin is represented by darkness, which doesn’t exist in God “at all” (1:5). “From every sin” underscores thoroughness of cleansing and corresponds to the “at all” of the nonexistence of darkness in God. Ordinarily, blood stains. But because Jesus’ blood, though disdained by Gnostics because of its physicality, is sacrificial for the taking away of sin (John 1:29; 19:34), it acts as a cleansing agent (Revelation 7:14), perhaps even as an interior cleansing agent since—figuratively speaking in regard to faith—it has to be drunk (John 6:53–56).

1:8–10: If we say, “We don’t have sin [as Gnostics are prone to say, because they regard sinful deeds, done in their physical bodies, as detached from their true, spiritual selves],” we’re misleading ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. So truth is supposed to reside in us in order that we may do it (1:6 [compare statements in John 14:6; 15:4; 17:23 that Jesus is the truth and resides in believers; also the comments on 2:4). And the claim to sinlessness, and therefore to having no need for Jesus’ blood to cleanse us from every sin, amounts to self-deception. We do have sin from which we need to be cleansed. And such self-deception will keep us from doing what we need to do to gain the cleansing—will keep us, that is, from confessing our sins. 9If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and righteous, with the result that he forgives [our] sins for us and cleanses us from every [act of] unrighteousness. To confess our sins is to say the same thing God says about them: they’re evil and therefore need to be forgiven and forsaken. God always forgives our confessed sins (hence “faithful”) and forgives them rightly (hence “righteous”). Given Jesus’ sacrificial blood, shed to take away sin, it would be unfaithful and wrong of God not to forgive them. To forgive them is to make them go away from us, and “for us” highlights the advantage to us of their departure. “Cleanses” equates with “forgives,” and “unrighteousness” with “sins.” “Cleanses us from every [act of] unrighteousness” recalls “cleanses us from every sin” in 1:7 and reemphasizes thoroughness of cleansing. As Jesus’ blood is the agent of cleansing, God is the launderer in that he’s the forgiver. (In Revelation 7:14 the redeemed “have washed their robes . . . in the blood of the lamb,” so that there the accent shifts from divine forgiveness to human faith.) 10If we say, “We haven’t sinned,” we make him a liar, and his Word isn’t in us. Again John attacks the Gnostic claim to sinlessness. Such a claim makes God a liar in the sense of treating him as though he’s a liar in declaring us sinful by sending his Son to take away the world’s sin (John 1:29 again). “His Word” makes “the Word of life” (1:1) God’s own in the person of his Son, Jesus the Word (1:3). “In us” refers then to Jesus Christ as God’s Word indwelling us—unless we treat God as a liar by claiming a sinlessness that eliminates the need f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• First John
• Second John
• Third John
• Notes
• Back Cover