A SUGGESTED OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF 1 JOHN
Theme: The tests of reality in the Christian life
Key verse: 1 John 5:13
I. Introduction (1 John 1:1–4)
II. The Tests of True Fellowship: God Is Light (1 John 1:5—2:29)
A. Obedience (1 John 1:5—2:6) (“saying” versus “doing”)
B. Love (1 John 2:7–17)
C. Truth (1 John 2:18–29)
III. The Tests of True Sonship: God Is Love (1 John 3—5)
A. Obedience (1 John 3)
B. Love (1 John 4)
C. Truth (1 John 5)
Chapter One
It’s Real!
(1 John 1:1–4)
Once upon a time …” Remember how exciting those words used to be? They were the open door into an exciting world of make-believe, a dreamworld that helped you forget all the problems of childhood.
Then—pow! You turned a corner one day, and “Once upon a time” became kid stuff. You discovered that life is a battleground, not a playground, and fairy stories were no longer meaningful. You wanted something real.
The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history. Men have looked for reality and satisfaction in wealth, thrills, conquest, power, learning, and even in religion.
There is nothing really wrong with these experiences, except that by themselves they never really satisfy. Wanting something real and finding something real are two different things. Like a child eating cotton candy at the circus, many people who expect to bite into something real end up with a mouthful of nothing. They waste priceless years on empty substitutes for reality.
This is where the apostle John’s first epistle comes in. Written centuries ago, this letter deals with a theme that is forever up-to-date: the life that is real.
John had discovered that satisfying reality is not to be found in things or thrills, but in a Person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Without wasting any time, he told us about this “living reality” in the first paragraph of his letter.
As you read 1 John 1:1–4, you learn three vital facts about the life that is real.
1. THIS LIFE IS REVEALED (1:1)
As you read John’s letter, you will discover that he enjoyed using certain words and that the word manifest is one of them. “For the life was manifested” (1 John 1:2), he said. This life was not hidden so that we have to search for it and find it. No, it was manifested—revealed openly!
If you were God, how would you go about revealing yourself to men? How could you tell them about, and give them, the kind of life you wanted them to enjoy?
God has revealed Himself in creation (Rom. 1:20), but creation alone could never tell us the story of God’s love. God has also revealed Himself much more fully in His Word, the Bible. But God’s final and most complete revelation is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Because Jesus is God’s revelation of Himself, He has a very special name: “The Word of life” (1 John 1:1).
This same title opens John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
Why does Jesus Christ have this name? Because Christ is to us what our words are to others. Our words reveal to others just what we think and how we feel. Christ reveals to us the mind and heart of God. He is the living means of communication between God and men. To know Jesus Christ is to know God!
John made no mistake in his identification of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father—the Son of God (1 John 1:3). John warned us several times in his letter not to listen to the false teachers who tell lies about Jesus Christ. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?” (2:22). “Every spirit that confessed that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (4:2–3). If a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.
For example, there are those who tell us that Jesus was a man but was not God. John had no place for such teachers! One of the last things he wrote in this letter is “We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
False teaching is so serious a matter that John wrote about it in his second letter too, warning believers not to invite false teachers into their homes (2 John 9–10). And he made it plain that to deny that Jesus is God is to follow the lies of the antichrist (1 John 2:22–23).
This leads to a basic Bible doctrine that has puzzled many people—the doctrine of the Trinity.
John mentioned in his letter the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For example, he said, “By this know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2 SCO). Here are references in one verse to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And in 1 John 4:13–15 is another statement that mentions the three Persons of the Trinity.
The word trinity is a combination of tri-, meaning “three,” and unity, meaning “one.” A “trinity,” then, is a three-in-one, or one-in-three. To be sure, the word trinity is not found in the Bible, but the truth is taught there (cf. also Matt. 28:19–20; John 14:16–17, 26; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4–6).
Christians do not believe that there are three gods. They believe that one God exists in three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor do Christians believe merely that one God reveals Himself in three different...
