1, 2, 3 John

J. E. McDermond

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780836195552
• eBook ISBN: 9780836198041
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Written during a time of church schism that has left Christians confused and questioning their status before God, the author of 1,2, 3 John argues that the Christian life has two fundamental markers: Acceptance of Jesus Christ’s role in God’s plan of salvation, and the need to practice love in interactions with other believers.

In his commentary, the 24th volume in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, J. E. McDermond shows that that these two crucial concepts are as relevant and important today as they were back then.

This Believers Church Bible Commentary series is a readable series of commentaries for all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today—Sunday school teachers, members of Bible study groups, students, pastors, and other seekers. The Believers Church Commentary Series is a cooperative project of Brethren in Christ Church, Brethren Church, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Brethren Church, Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada.

Introduction to 1–3 John

Relevance

Although not formally trained as a historian, I thoroughly enjoy history. My family will tell you that I have invested more time in the History Channel than is perhaps warranted. Often I find myself asking such questions as these: “What were civilians doing and experiencing during World War II? What was it like to be poor and living in Victorian London? Why did John Wesley and the early Methodists face such opposition from the English in general and the Church of England leadership in particular?”

I admit that the further back my attention attempts to focus, the more difficult the task. Thus, when I or anyone else thinks about the first century AD, I am keenly aware of a significant gap between my world and that world. The problem is that the first-century Christians’ lives, thoughts, and experiences are important for believers today. After all, they too were human beings attempting to live faithfully in their own complex and pluralistic societies. Then as now, it is not always easy to know exactly how to live faithfully. Among other things, those early Christians can be our role models.

Readers of this volume who are heirs of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement may have inherited an idealized view of the NT church. As John H. Yoder and Alan Kreider have observed, our spiritual ancestors “were not interested in simply reforming the church; they were committed to restoring it to the vigor and faithfulness of its earliest centuries” (via Dowley: 401). Some of us may confuse “vigor” and “faithfulness” with “perfection” and thus assume a flawless period when the people of God perfectly submitted to the lordship of Christ. Yet a close reading of the NT reveals a different picture. The Galatians vacillated on the issue of salvation (Gal 1:6-10; 3:1-5; 4:8-20). The Philippians, although loved by Paul, did not always seem to love each other (Phil 1:27–2:18). And the Corinthians had both internal conflicts and moral failures (1 Cor 1:10-17; 3:1-23; 5:1-13; 6:1-20). From the beginning, the Christian church has wrestled with human frailty despite its vigor and laudable attempts at faithfulness. In this respect the letters of John also reflect a church in turmoil. There are doctrinal disputes about the inherited tradition. These disputes are so intense that the church has experienced a schism. Sometimes love as the way of interacting with other believers has been abandoned, leaders are ignored and even opposed, and there is confusion regarding who and what is “correct.”

Sadly for some contemporary readers, their congregations may have “restored” the negative elements of the earliest church. Too many people have either experienced or heard horror stories of congregations in the midst of serious conflict. Some of these conflicts have resulted in church splits. I further suspect that the inherited tradition was the focus of many of these conflicts. Many congregations and denominations are asking important questions about social relevance on the one hand and faithfulness to the traditions on the other. For example, many good congregations in North America have been harmed or even divided over issues relating to musical styles in their worship services. Other congregations cannot agree on what facilities to have as they seek to minister faithfully. And what is a church to do and think in the midst of shifting moral convictions?

Change is difficult. When facing significant change, there is a real possibility that our behavior will change before our thinking does. By this I mean that we may be tempted to forget to love those with whom we disagree. We may gossip and snipe about those on the other side. In these situations it is not easy to be a congregational or denominational leader.

The letters of 1–3 John are valuable to the contemporary church. The author reminds us of the nonnegotiable centrality of following Jesus’ commandment to love one another, even if he may not have embodied that love perfectly. In this respect, he reminds us to avoid the temptation to resort to name-calling in tense situations, even if his behavior as writer is a negative reminder. At the same time, he knows there are theological issues and times when a church must draw a line in the sand and not go beyond it. In these situations he reminds us of the importance of discernment and relying on the leading of the Holy Spirit. He humbles us when he reminds us we cannot deny the power of sin in our lives, and he reassures us we are still children of God when sin is evident. Ultimately he sets out the fundamentals of the faith for us when he writes, And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another (1 John 3:23).

Main Themes

Although these three documents are relatively brief, their theological breadth is significant. Perhaps what impresses readers most is 1 John’s meandering approach: scholars identify at least a dozen theological themes touched upon in these letters. These include discernment, images of God, sin and salvation, ecclesiology, assurance, eschatology, the relationship between tradition and the Spirit, eternal life, the world, abiding, truth, and hospitality. A number of these “secondary” topics will be addressed in the sections titled The Text in Biblical Context (TBC, marked in Contents as *) and The Text in the Life of the Church (TLC, marked in Contents as +). In this introduction we will explore three fundamental themes: Christology, love, and duality.

Christology

Rensenberger (36) writes, “The confession of Jesus as the divine Christ and Son of God who has come in the flesh is central to the epistles (1 John 2:22-23; 3:23–4:3; 5:1, 5-13; 2 John 3, 7, 9).” Given the particular context John faces, he asserts that Jesus is God’s messianic agent (1 John 4:15; 5:1) and this role fully involved the “human Jesus” (5:6; 4:2; 2 John 7), a theme John passes on from the tradition going back to the beginning (1 John 1:1-4). As God’s divine agent, Jesus Christ reveals God’s basic nature as love (4:7-10, 14-16) and shows who is the true God and source of eternal life (5:20). Specifically, this divine revelation through Jesus of Nazareth enables a divine/human relationship, especially through his death on the cross (1:7, 9; 2:1-2; cf. 5:6-8), which is an atoning sacrifice for our sins (2:2). Additionally, Jesus is our advocate or intercessor before God (2:1). Anyone who places her or his faith and trust in him lives through him (4:9; 5:10-13, 20). Moreover, they pass from the realm of death to that of life (3:14) through faith (2:23-25; 4:9, 13-14; cf. 5:5, 9-12).

Love

Inextricably intertwined with John’s christological agenda is his emphasis on love. These two themes are bound together at key places in John’s first letter: 3:23 and 4:7-18. Because the human Jesus revealed God as essentially a loving being (4:9-10), John logically concludes that we also ought to love one another (4:11). In fact, John’s first agenda in 1 John is to explore human sinfulness (1:5–2:2) and then explain how the teachings of Jesus, especially the love commandment, reorder our lives with a love for God and not the world (2:3-11; 2:12-14; 2:15-17). While correct christological confession and practiced love (3:18) are the two sound tests for identifying God’s children (5:1), love is a vital test for various aspects of the Christian life (Rensberger: 37). It is a test of whether one knows God (2:3-6; 4:7-8, 12, 16). To paraphrase John’s view: “Love for one another is evidence we walk in the light (1 John 2:9-11). We know we are God’s children if we love (1 John 3:10; 4:7).” A person whose life has been reordered by love in the present will have confidence on the day of judgment (4:17-18). Our author refuses to accept the notion that a person can love God while at the same time refusing to love a brother or sister in the faith (4:20). In fact, anyone claiming the former while refusing to do the later is a liar (2:3-11).

Duality

While the author of these documents does not directly say so, there is little doubt that his basic worldview is dualist in an apocalyptic and ethical sense. Scholars like Judith Lieu note that John’s perspective is fundamentally “characterized by a dualism between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death, love and hatred, … the (or this) world against that which is “not of the ‘world’ ” (2008: 18). John’s world and experience are easily and simply divided into two distinct camps. There is God, Jesus (God’s agent), the Spirit, and the children of God—and there is the camp that opposes God. Those opponents include the devil and his children (1 John 3:8), the antichrist(s) (2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7), the spirit of the antichrist (1 John 4:3), and the world that has come under the evil one’s influence. In John’s mind it is easy to determine where a person’s allegiances lie. One’s actions speak volumes, as 1 John 3:10 shows: The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.

Although it is common for scholars expounding John’s Gospel and epistles to use the word “dualism,” in this commentary I will use “duality” since John’s theology is not ontologically and cosmologically dualist: it does not claim that God and the devil have equal power (instead, God will win! [1 John 3:2, 5, 8]), or that the spirit world is good and the material world is evil (Platonic dualism; instead, Christ has come in the flesh [4:2]). However, John’s duality is more pervasive than simply an assumed worldview. John makes his argument by giving his readers two crucial options: they can either love or not love, and they can either adhere to a “right” or “wrong” view of Christ. I try to provide visual clues to this thematic approach in the commentary by setting out the biblical text in “competing” columns at those points where duality is present. This duality is established in the very first argumentative unit, 1 John 1:5-2:2. There John makes a case for believers to be living in a way consistent with their words and actions. Verse 6 begins with If we say … and this is then countered by but if we … in verse 7. The opening words in verse 8 are If we say … and they are countered by If we … in verse 9. Finally, verse 10 begins with If we say … and this idea is countered in 2:1b with But if anyone…. For a fuller depiction of this duality, see Preview for 1 John 1:5–2:2. Further exploration of this theme is in the essay “Duality in the Epistles.”

Coherence and Rhetoric

One apparent issue is 1 John’s structure and writing style, both of which are often confusing. This is particularly true of the structure. David Rensberger (31) speaks for many: “The structure of 1 John is every bit as hard to specify as its genre…. Some parts of it seem carefully designed, for example 1:5–2:11, and the way that 3:23-24 introduces 4:1-18. Yet there is no obvious overall outline, and efforts to find a tight structure generally prove artificial and unconvincing.” Some scholars fall back on the image of a spiral to explain the structure (Houlden: 22-24; Jackman: 18). Others, following an initial suggestion by von Dobschütz (1-8), have tried to explain the lack of structure by speculating about the author’s use of existing texts and sources. For example, Bultmann (1927: 138-58) argues that the author cobbled together pre-Christian Gnostic documents, and J. C. O’Neill (6) points to Jewish sectarian poetic admonitions reworked by our author. Not many scholars accept Bultmann’s suggestions, and even fewer find O’Neill convincing.

While we may never get a firm grip on the first letter’s structure, Colin Kruse, relying on Duane Watson’s initial idea (1993: 100-118), puts forth an interesting explanation that the document is an example of epideictic rhetoric. This type of rhetoric is primarily designed “to increase their [the readers’] adherence to the traditional truths of the community” (Kruse: 29; see 29-31 for Kruse’s entire explanation). There are five elements of ancient epideictic rhetoric: (1) attempts to increase already-held convictions regarding honorable values, (2) the main stress on the present time and actions, (3) blame and praise employed to increase the readers’ convictions, (4) prescription of the best course of action, and (5) use of amplification rather than logical proof. This final point would explain the author’s tendency to repeat his points because amplification essentially consists of repetition instead of a linear and logical argumentation. Kruse’s closing thoughts are instructive: “The upshot of all this is that we should read 1 John, not trying to discern the flow of the argument as we would in a Pauline letter…. It does not seek to prove anything; on the contrary, it seeks to increase the readers’ adherence to traditional truths of the Christian community in the face of the threat posed by the secessionists’ doctrine and ethics” (31).

When we change our focus to the letter’s writing style, we move from one baffling matter to another. Even eminent scholars like Raymond Brown, in his comments on “walking in truth” (3 John 4), takes this puzzling Greek phrase to be a sign of common authorship of the three letters. Not hiding his frustration with the letters’ often confusing writing style, Brown comments: “If the authors are not thought to be the same, at least one must admit that they have similar pastoral roles vis-à-vis their addressees. And as becomes apparent in vv. 5-6, they have much the same vocabulary and lack of concern about syntax” (1982: 683n11). It is not uncommon for scholars to admit that the wording of the Johannine letters is obscure at places. Often a range of possible meanings are offered, and their relative merits are weighed.

How do we account for a conclusion such as “his style is far removed from that usual in Greek or Hellenistic literature” (Schnackenburg 1992: 8) and bordering on the “deficient and somewhat simplistic” (9)? Schnackenburg sees evidence of “Semitisms,” with the author using Greek but having underlying thought patterns that are more Hebraic in nature. For example, John uses the Greek word for and (kai) as Hebrew speakers use the more versatile Hebrew word wěto express a variety of conjunctions. Participles become substantives and personal pronouns are often placed beside verbs. Additionally, he uses expressions known to be used by rabbis, such as do the truth (1 John 1:6, cf. KJV), believe in the name (3:23), and shut up his bowels (3:17, cf. KJV; refuses help, NRSV). Schnackenburg attributes the problematic syntax to “an author of Jewish birth, with Aramaic as his mother tongue, who has acquired flawless Koine Greek but has otherwise retained a Semitic feel for language” (1992: 9). While Schnackenburg may be overconfident with regard to details, we can at least conclude that our author’s first language was probably Hebrew or Aramaic and not Greek, which he used to write these letters.

Although some of John’s wording may be obscure, his views on love and who is to be the object of that love are crystal clear. They are also challenging for many contemporary readers. On the one hand, we are reading documents that strike us as both simple and profound, as in 1 John 4:8: Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. We appreciate the author’s view that genuine Christian love is more than emotion. It involves tangible actions in the real world, as seen in 3:18: Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action (cf. 3:10, 16-17; 4:20-21; 2 John 5-6). People in believers church traditions are inspired by and resonate with John’s conviction that God and Jesus’ love are models to be imitated (1 John 3:1-3, 16; 4:10-12).

Yet when we read the letters closely, we realize there is another, less appealing side to John’s love. This love is primarily, if not exclusively, to be expressed to those who “belong” to the community of faith that faithfully holds to the tradition passed down as expressed in the opening four verses. Believers are repeatedly encouraged to love one another (1 John 3:14, 23; 4:7, 12, 19; 5:2). The world, however, is beyond the community of faith and is not to receive love from the faithful (2:15). Even harsher words are reserved for the secessionists who have left the church and gone out into the world (2:19; 2 John 7). They deceive themselves regarding sin (1 John 2:8) and make Jesus a liar in their denials that they have sinned (2:10). In fact, John says they are (the) liars (2:4, 22). They are blind and in darkness, as is evidenced by their refusal to love fellow community members (2:11). Additionally, they are described as deceivers (2 John 7) and antichrists (1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John 7; cf. 1 John 4:3). Finally, they are nothing more than children of the devil (3:8, 10). While the content of the letters clearly contains theological reflection and conviction, we need to keep in mind that John also employs widely accepted ancient rhetorical forms in his attempt to delineate the two sides in this conflict. These forms were often harsh (see the “antitheses” in 1:6–2:1 and 2:4-11) and relied on generalizations (see 2:23, 29; 3:3-10 and 15; cf. Rensberger: 31).

Many, including myself, believe it is essentially unwise to depict anyone and everyone outside the church in such a strident fashion. At this level, the author’s views thus differ from our contemporary convictions. We must, however, seek to understand a key factor that contributed to his attitude: persecution. There is reliable evidence that from near the church’s beginning, the followers of the Johannine tradition faced conflict and persecution. The Gospel of John is, in one respect, a dialogue with Judaism regarding the “true” nature of Judaism. Obviously John advocated a form of messianic Judaism where Jesus is central to Jewish self-understanding. His viewpoint, however, was not accepted by most Jews, as is evidenced by John 9:22; 12:42; and 16:2. In fact, many scholars view John 9 as a story reflecting the intense struggles between the early Jewish Christians and Pharisaical Judaism for control of Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Ultimately the “Christian” minority within Judaism was searched out and expelled from the synagogues.

Having experienced that initial conflict and loss, the bearers of the Johannine tradition face a second theological conflict from within. It is possible, or perhaps probable, that those who remained faithful to the tradition were in the minority. One can certainly read 1 John in such a way as to conclude that those who left were less than gracious and loving in their interactions with the followers of the traditional view. While the author’s strident polemic may not be advisable for the modern readers’ approach to those outside the faith or those claiming to be “inside” while holding to ideas that depart from the mainstream, the modern reader is well advised to be understanding of John’s context.

Literary Form and Content

Most scholars see these documents as forming a distinctive group within the NT letters. They share a similar form, and this is especially true of 2 and 3 John. As David Rensberger (17) argues, they have overlapping features, such a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Abbreviations
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction to 1–3 John
• 1 John
• 2 John
• 3 John
• Outline of 1, 2, 3 John
• Essays
• Map of the New Testament World
• Bibliography
• Selected Resources
• Index of Ancient Sources
• The Author