Lecture 30: The Letters of John: Truth, Love, and the Assurance of Eternal Life

The lecture, section by section

1. John at Ephesus

   Early church tradition places John, after the Roman armies entered Palestine between 67 and 70, in Ephesus, where for more than twenty years, through the seventies into the nineties, he exercised spiritual oversight over the churches of the Roman province of Asia, following Paul and then Timothy as the spiritual leader there. The three letters emerge from that ministry: the last living apostle writing to churches he shepherded.

2. The schism

   The key text is First John 2:19: they went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. Antichrists, many of them, had arisen from within the churches, professed the faith for a time, and departed, and from outside they kept pressing their influence back in: test the spirits, John writes, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. Second John warns a household against the deceivers who have gone out; Third John shows one congregation where a leader, Diotrephes, who loves to be first, still inside, rejects John's authority outright. A schism breeds a particular wound in those who remain: if two parties both claim the truth of God, do we truly have it? That doubt is the pastoral target of all three letters.

3. What the schismatics taught

   John's emphases mirror their errors. They denied that Jesus is the Christ: who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist. They denied the Christ come in the flesh: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, wording that suits an early docetic scheme in which the Spirit descended on the man Jesus at baptism and departed before the cross, so that no true incarnation and no atoning death of the God-man occurred. They denied their own sinfulness, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and so denied any need of the propitiation. They denied that truth must show in conduct, claiming fellowship with God while walking in darkness, and denied brotherly love, hating the brothers while claiming the light. And they denied John's apostolic authority, as Diotrephes' refusal makes explicit. Their profession, like the teachers of Second Peter, was phenomenological: spoken for a season, exposed by departure.

4. The date

   The letters know internal crisis but no imperial persecution: nothing of the pressures under Domitian that stand behind Revelation, where the same Asian churches face both false teaching and outward assault. So the letters fall between the schism's accomplishment and the persecution's outbreak, most likely the decade of the eighties, before the Revelation.

5. The Father, the Son, and the children

   John's first theme is God the Father and his relationship to Jesus his Son: God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him; whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him. And from the Son flows the family: see how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God, and such we are. Throughout John's writings Jesus alone is the Son; believers are the children, born of God, and the birth shows: everyone who practices righteousness is born of him, everyone who loves is born of God, the one who does good is of God. Family likeness is the letters' persistent test.

6. Love, obedience, and abiding

   God is love, and the love was displayed in sending the Son as the propitiation for our sins; therefore, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another, and the one who says he loves God while hating his brother is a liar. Love keeps commandments: by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments, the old commandment held from the beginning, echoing the farewell discourse John himself recorded; and the foundational commandment binds belief and love into one: that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another. Around it all stands the farewell discourse's other word, abide: the one who keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in him, and we know he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given; abide in the truth, in the love of God, in the teaching of Christ, for the one who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching does not have God.

7. First John: purpose and prologue

   John states his purpose outright: these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. The audience is believers; the aim is assurance, exactly what a schism steals. The prologue grounds the assurance in eyewitness authority: what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life, an apostle who touched the incarnate Christ, proclaiming what he saw so that his readers may have fellowship with the apostles, and through them with the Father and with his Son, and, these things we write, that our joy may be made complete. No name appears; in the eighties, no name was needed.

8. The shape of First John

   Uniquely in the New Testament, First John has neither an epistolary opening nor an epistolary close, which has suggested to some a circular letter for the Asian churches, perhaps traveling with the more conventional Second and Third John, a theory that can be neither proved nor disproved. Its structure resists outlining because John circles, pressing the same assurances from new angles. The movement Essex traces: God is light, so fellowship walks in the light, confessing sin and finding cleansing in the blood; God is truth, so the children of God and the children of the devil divide over truth and its practice; God is love, so the born of God love; and the Spirit bears witness with the water and the blood. The conclusion gathers the certainties: assurance of salvation, confidence in prayer, and the closing charge, little children, guard yourselves from idols, from every god of human making that would pull a believer from the God revealed in Christ.

9. Second John: the elder and the chosen lady

   The writer signs himself the elder, with the article: the preeminent, well-known elder of the Asian churches, an apostle wearing the shepherd's title as Peter did among the elders of First Peter 5, his office his signature. He writes to the chosen lady and her children, rejoicing to have found some of her children walking in truth, appealing for the old commandment, that we love one another, and love is this, that we walk according to his commandments, and warning: many deceivers have gone out into the world. The letter's edge is verses 10 and 11: if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. Traveling teachers depended on believers' hospitality, the inns being what they were; to lodge and speed a deceiver is to partner in the deception. The rest can wait, says the epilogue, until face to face; this could not.

10. Third John: Gaius, Diotrephes, and Demetrius

    The elder writes to the beloved Gaius, praying that his health prosper as his soul prospers, and commending him: he acts faithfully toward the brethren, and strangers at that, the traveling teachers who went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles; to support such men is to be fellow workers with the truth. Against that stands Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, who does not accept what we say, rejecting John's letter and authority and casting out those who would receive the brethren. So the charge: beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good; and the commendation of Demetrius, whose testimony is true, whom Gaius is to receive though Diotrephes will not. The epilogue again defers the rest to a face-to-face visit; what could not wait was the collision between a true teacher arriving and a proud leader refusing.

11. The sin leading to death

    First John 5:14 to 17 sets prayer confidence, ask according to his will and he hears, then the caveat: if anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life; there is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make request for this. Hodges and the Bible Knowledge Commentary read physical death, a sin or pattern God ends by taking the sinner home. But life and death in First John have run spiritual throughout, so most commentators, Essex with them, read spiritual death, and not a single named transgression, the proposals from blasphemy to particular vices find nothing in the context, but the sin the whole letter has been about: apostasy, the settled rejection of Jesus as the Christ by those who went out, the same terminal sin Hebrews and Second Peter set beyond renewal. For a brother's ordinary sin, pray, and God gives life; for the antichrist's denial, John does not command prayer, for the letter itself testifies that the deniers were never of us.

12. The chosen lady, the home, and the shelf

    Who is the chosen lady? The majority of contemporary exegetes read a church personified, her children its members, her chosen sister a sister congregation; Hiebert and Dr. MacArthur answer that nowhere in the New Testament is the church called a lady, the bride imagery notwithstanding, and take her as an actual Christian woman and her family. The application of verses 10 and 11 stands either way, and Essex presses both: the local church must give no platform to false teachers, contending as Jude commands; and the believing family must give no welcome, no aid, no greeting-on-the-way to error at its own door, a duty that now reaches what a household admits by screen and page as much as by the front door. The shelf: Hiebert first, Smalley's WBC for the exegetical discussion, Marshall's influential NICNT, Stott's expository Tyndale volume, and Burge's NIVAC. And the closing charge: in churches and a culture ravaged by false teachers, inside and outside the confessing church, the message of these three letters still needs preaching.

1. First John was written so that believers may know they have eternal life. Which of John's tests, the confession of Christ, the practice of righteousness, love for the brothers, most strengthens your assurance, and which most searches you?

2. Second John forbids speeding a deceiver on his way, and Essex extends the principle to what a household admits by screen and page. How should a believing family practice discernment at its own door without becoming fearful or unloving?

3. Diotrephes loved to be first; Gaius served traveling strangers for the sake of the Name. What habits distinguish a leader who guards the truth from one who guards his position, and how can a congregation tell the difference early?