Preaching to Ourselves from 1 John

A recent look at 1 John started a new train of thought concerning this little book that seems to aid in understanding and applying its contents.

Commentators well know that 1 John is hard to outline. One commentary I have lists no less than eight full outlines of the book (including the author’s own)¹ as well as referencing over thirty others. When I was in seminary, one of my professors mentioned a little book, The Tests of Life, by Robert Law, which proposed a “spiral” metaphor for the structure of 1 John. John touches on one topic which leads to another and another, then comes back to one of the earlier topics and again expands on another topic and moves on to still another topic as he wends his way around a general theme. Even this “style” is hard to describe in outline form, but it has conceptual attractions that I like.

Another unusual feature of 1 John is that it lacks the typical formal opening and closing salutations of an ancient letter, though we call it an “epistle” nonetheless. I suspect that we call it an “epistle” by tradition, partly due to its relative brevity and its placement in the NT order among the other epistles. John clearly uses the epistolary (letter) form in 2 John and 3 John,² why doesn’t he use it in 1 John? It’s hard to imagine that these parts of a canonical book could be lost.

A comment cited in Akin’s commentary leads me to consider something else. ““1 John seems the least letter-like in its lack of the identification of a sender or an address to any recipients except the nonspecific ‘little children.’ It appears to be more a treatise sent broadcast to some in the John tradition.”³ I put the word “treatise” in bold in the quote. What if 1 John isn’t a letter at all, but is exactly in the form John intended for it? Surely this is the case. If this is true, what kind of literature is it?

Features of 1 John lead me to wonder if the book isn’t the manuscript form of a sermon John preached. Of course, if that is the case, those verses where John says, “I am writing” or “I have written,” would actually have been, “I am saying” or “I have said,” in the spoken form. Nevertheless, it seems helpful to me to think of 1 John this way. I see 2 John as his “cover letter” to the church (the “elect sister”) to whom it was sent, and 3 John as an accompanying letter to its pastor, Gaius. (I realize that I am just supposing, there isn’t much data on which to rest this suggestion.)

Thinking about the message of 1 John as a sermon encourages us as we live in an environment that has similarities to the ancient world. 1 John addresses the fallout from an apostasy crisis. “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”⁴ Some people departed from the local assembly who never were part of the Christian faith. Their departure made their lack of faith plain.

However, these apostates (ones fallen away) not only didn’t believe and departed, but they also persisted in troubling the remaining believers about their own faith. “These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce [deceive] you.”((1 John 2.26)) and “Little children, let no man deceive you…”⁵ As we work through the epistle, it appears high on the list of deception was false teaching concerning Christ. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”⁶ and “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”⁷

Besides attacking the doctrine of Christ, the apostates attempted to get the believers to waver and doubt concerning their own spiritual condition. “As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”⁸ and “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.”⁹ The many references in the epistle that examine spiritual life are not meant so much to test whether the recipients have life as to reassure them that they are alive.

There is much more than I can write here about the message of 1 John, so let’s turn to our day. What does this message say to us? Well, there are many deceivers and antichrists in our world. They say all kinds of things about Jesus and his Word, the Bible. There is hardly a hare-brained idea someone has held about Christianity that isn’t readily available to everyone today via the internet. There are many deceivers out there.

It seems that the deceivers have tremendous success in our society. The media is full of anti-God and anti-Christ talking heads, not necessarily consciously so, but practically so. The public education system fills minds with false ideas that opposed the truth of God’s word. The spiritual consequences are devastating. Some of their false whispers even reach our ears.

We shouldn’t be discouraged. We should recognize the life of the Spirit in us and in our brethren. We should love one another. We should turn from the world. We should look for the coming of Christ. We should cling to the true Son of God as our only hope. We should keep ourselves from idols.

That was John’s message. Someone said to him, perhaps, “Brother John, they are having the same trouble in a church not far away, why don’t you write that message down?” And so he did … albeit my scenario is purely imaginative. Nevertheless, what a blessing to have a written “sermon” like this, that speaks to our hearts in troubled times.

Little children, abide in Him.

Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

1. Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, The New American Commentary, v. 38 (Nashville, Tenn: Broadman Press, 2001), 37–48. [↩]
2. 2 John: Salutation, vv. 1-3, Body, vv.4-11, Closing greeting, vv. 12-13. 3 John: Salutation, v. 1, Body, vv. 2-12, Closing greeting, vv. 13-15. [↩]
3. G. S. Sloyan, Walking in the Truth (Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1995), 1, quoted in Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 37. [↩]
4. 1 Jn 2.18-19 [↩]
5. 1 John 3.7a [↩]
6. 1 John 2.22 [↩]
7. 1 John 4.1-2 [↩]
8. 1 John 2.27 [↩]
9. 1 John 4.4-5 [↩]