First John verse 1-2 Introduction

Okay, 1 John, the introduction. Hopefully I have that right. Amen, that's right, you got it right. Off to a good start then. Okay, so I looked into the authorship of 1 John, who wrote it, because it's always a question whenever you read these commentators and these PhDs who study this stuff, right?

And it's virtually unanimous that the Apostle John wrote it. John was one of the original 12 apostles. He's described as four times in the Gospel of John as the disciple whom Jesus loved. That's how he referred to himself. So this is the apostle writing this. this letter of first john he's the son of zebedee and the brother of james and i think jesus calls him the son of thunder so he's the third of the core apostles uh peter james and john and uh you know christ took them and he took the three of them to see him transfigured on the mount, and they're just really the inner circle for Jesus Christ here on earth.

So this is the John and the guy we're talking about. So it's good to just to pin it down to start this letter. He's the author of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, of course. We're doing some obvious stuff here to get it out of the way. And then the Book of Revelation. He wrote the Book of Revelation.

It's virtually unanimous, as I said before, as to him being the author of this letter, or I call it a circular, it's unclear. They're unclear as to whether it's a letter or it just was, maybe a homily he was going to give or a lesson he was going to go and give in person. So they're not really sure. But definitely, Second John seems very much like a letter and Third John as well. So we'll just call this an epistle as well. There's a minority of scholars who think that There is a different writer of this letter, 1 John, then of the Gospel of John, Gospel number four. I don't know why that is, but, you know, they got to earn their pay somehow and come up with new theories.

The outside verification of John being the author, is from Polycarp, he actually knew John, he was an acquaintance of John's. You probably know that name, he's early church father. And then his disciple, Irenaeus, they both refer to this first John as Irenaeus. being John the third apostle is being the author. And then many manuscripts in the year 300 to 300 AD, which I think it's the fourth century, yeah, fourth century, attribute it to John. Many early church elders said, hey, this is John's letter. when they refer to it.

The inside verification comes from John's own pen here, and Daniel Wallace says that the similarities of thought and verbal expression are too much alike between 1 John and the Gospel of John. I pulled out some phrases during the week that I thought were very similar. In the beginning, in the gospel, it's, you know, in the beginning was the word. Versus from the beginning, that phrase from the beginning is how 1 John starts out. Right into 1 John, he goes into descriptions of God as light, and there's no darkness, and he has this description, and he has that same description in the Gospel of John, Jesus being the light and the darkness does not comprehend it.

So I think those are pretty much markers that they're the same author. And then in I also kind of found, it's kind of my preference, but there's a lot of use of the word abide or abiding. And I think that's unique to John, isn't it? Abiding in Christ and abiding in the word.

He uses that in both of these, the gospel and this first letter. And then there's a very similar discussion of the commandment to love one another, just as Christ said it. I think he starts singing in John 13, the gospel of John, chapter 13, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And John, In this first John, there's a lot of discussion, just the same, almost the same language as that so.

So that's the inside stuff that makes them the same author. The writer seems to be, he speaks with authority and he's an eyewitness to Christ's life. And so he clearly, as Donald Guthrie says, expects not only to be heard by his audience, but to be obeyed. I mean, he speaks with tremendous authority in this first John. So it's gotta be our third, disciple, our third apostle, John.

When it was written, they think 90 to 96 is the majority view, but after the Gospel of John, after the fourth Gospel, and maybe right after the fourth Gospel, But then some say that it's more 65 to 69 AD, when Paul died, and when Second Peter was written, there's discussion about it being written then, and the fourth gospel being written about that time too.

There's a couple people who say that actually he wrote Revelation on the island of Patmos and then he came back to Ephesus and wrote these three letters. So, so it's all over the places too. When it was written and where it was written. And where it was written, mostly Ephesus. And perhaps because John was an important figure in the Church of Jerusalem, at Jerusalem, right after Christ's death, somehow he migrated to Ephesus with the mass migration of Jews from there after the persecution. And to whom it was written, a lot say home churches in and around Ephesus, small churches.

But then the interesting thing is that Some believe that it was really directed to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Theatria, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. It went to those seven churches, and you recognize those seven churches as being the seven churches in Revelation, which kind of makes sense if John wrote this letter to go to there, those seven churches, and then in the book of Revelation, Christ reveals that he gives the message to the seven churches himself. That kind of has a good bit of parallelism to it, doesn't it? So that's an interesting take. So why it was written?

It's, and I came up with this, I think the main thing is assurance, assurance to those who are already believers, that one, Jesus Christ was God, that he was really here in the flesh, because now it's been 50 years or more since Christ died. We're now in the, we're now at least in the 60s, but possibly in the 90s, 90 AD.

And so he reminds them in the early part, the first part of the epistle, that what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our, he's being very specific there, touched with our hands concerning the word of life. So he's nailing down that he's not only an eyewitness, but a very, close associate, once removed eyewitness to Christ's life and his deity. And then three, that the believers know that they're certain that they have eternal life in his name. He brings that up a lot in this epistle.

So it's a book of assurance. And the reason he's assuring them is, because the Gnostics have come in and they're heavy evangelizers. So they're trying to pry the believers away from the objective truth of Christ with all their new fangled theories on who Christ was. So he's trying to keep them in the truth.

According to, Javon McGee, he gives five, a fivefold purpose as to why john wrote the letter. they're marked by the word that, or so that. That you may have fellowship with us, God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, in verse three. So that's one purpose, fellowship. Second purpose is that your joy may be made complete, in verse four of 1 John. The third purpose is that you may not sin, in 2.1. The fourth purpose is that you may know, and I stated that above to it's very important in this in this book, that you may know you have eternal life in his name, and jump first john 513.

And I had to kind of search around for this. You know how you listen to like Jay Vermin McGee and he gives five purposes and he kind of only gives four and you got to fish out what the fifth one is. I think this is the fifth one that you believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ in 323. So that's, J. Vernon McGee's Fivefold Purpose.

I put on one for good measure that we abide in him, because that's stated a lot in the epistle in 228 and 413, and even some more. I mean, the word abide is in there a lot. So I put on a sixth. So the underlying issue as to why this epistle was written, what necessitated it being written by, because he did such a fabulous job with the gospel. It's such a wonderful thing. Why would he have to follow it up, right?

And that's the arrival of these first century Gnostic heresies. And we're gonna take a look at that now, just a little look at these. these heresies, because this is going to really set us up for the whole study of 1 John and 2 John as well. So Gnostics means knowing ones. They held that spiritual excellence consisted not in living a holy life, but in their superior knowledge that they were given. and it enabled them to rise above the earthbound chains of matter in their apprehension of the heavenly truth that had been made known to him. This knowledge, they claimed, had been known to them through Christ as, and this is important, this phrase, had been made known to them through Christ as the messenger of the true God, thus the Gnostic Christ, was not a savior, but he was a revealer, another important part to this heresy, and that he came for the express purpose of communicating his secret gnosis or secret knowledge. So this undermined the Christian doctrine of sin and the atonement for sin that Christ provided on the cross.

And that's from this Edmund Hebert, who we've been looking at to prepare this lesson for Sean. And good stuff by Dr. Hebert. So remember that phrase that Christ was made known to them, Christ was a messenger of the true God, and that he was a revealer.

And so that sort of knocks Christ down several levels, doesn't it? His whole identity as a person of the Godhead is questioned right there by he's only a messenger and not God. That's pretty significant. Right, yeah. So this specifically, the specific Gnostic heresy that's going on that John's addressing is docetic Gnosticism. And that just says that Christ seemed to have a human body, but in fact he didn't, he was just a phantom. And I think, so that's the docetic Gnosticism. I think that the, doesn't the Jehovah's Witnesses have that view too as well? I think they do. That Christ wasn't a physical human being, but he was a spirit being, right?

The other heresy is Cyrenthian Gnosticism. And this guy, Cyrenthus, was a contemporary of John at Ephesus. So John might have known him personally or knew of him, but Cyrenthus only accepted the Gospel of Matthew as being true. So he said that Jesus was a natural-born son of Mary and Joseph, but then At Christ's baptism by John, the other John, John the Baptist, the spirit came into Christ, this entity called the Christ came into him at his baptism.

And then it stayed with him throughout his life and ministry, and it empowered Christ during his ministry. But then at his death, right before he died, this the Christ, in air quotes, left him and moved on to other venues. So that's Corinthianism. And this Christ is a spiritual entity or power that steps into time-space history on earth and then removes himself from time to time. So that totally blows to the Christ, his incarnation, and it nullifies his atoning work on the cross, doesn't it? So these two things are the important Gnostic heresies that John is dealing with. Um, one more just Andrew. Yeah.

So, new age stuff was, they had that back then. Oh yeah yeah this is, this is the beginning of it, or actually I think even been around it was just sort of reformulating itself around Jesus Christ, or they're just making alternative theories. I think that all goes back to Babel, right? There's a lot of new religions started at Babel, but yeah. But it's new age stuff. And we'll take a brief look at that as well. Or old age. Yeah, right, right.

The third thing that isn't necessarily at play here is, but I wanted to cover it, because then we're gonna be experts at Gnosticism, is Montanism, named after a priest way after John in 156 AD. He lived in Phrygia. His name is Montanus. And Tertullian, and I recognize that a lot of you probably recognize that word too, he was a chief proponent of Montanism. And the essential principle of Montanism was that it was around the Holy Spirit as Pericle.

So he'd come and dwell you and you'd speak in tongues and you'd you'd kind of have, you'd be frenzied and ecstatic, you know, like a TV, like you see on TV with people filled with his Holy Spirit, that sort of thing. And he had two prophetesses, Precia and Maximilla, that he went around with.

And that comes later, but that's the third major Gnostic heresy that was going on. I put this sentence in the last part of it, because I was thinking of you, Roger, and it's a direct violation of Paul's treatise on speaking in tongues and utterances that you covered in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, which is very clear that you've got to be orderly and sober and all that stuff, right? And silent when you're supposed to be silent. So that's really cool, but that came about later. So, you know, that's a heresy and actually people were were pushing back against Montanism, just because of what Paul wrote. So his words had a lot of effect on the early churches. They said, hey, this, you're not, this isn't what Paul said to do.

So that's kind of neat. So the solution to all this was for John to vigorously defend the true gospel of Jesus Christ, his incarnation, and his atoning work. And They're really illustrated by a couple passages. The first one is 1 John 4, 1 through 2, dear friends.

Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Christ Jesus has come in the flesh is from God. So you really see that direct statement in at fighting this Gnosticism. It's very clear, isn't it? And then in 2 John 1, 7, our next book we'll take a look at, I say to you, I say this because many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist.

And then one more I put in here is these things I've written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you from 1st John 2.26. So you can see that he's really fighting this and really trying to assure these believers that they have the true gospel.

Oh, here we go. And to Kathy's point, here's a little of this stuff in today's world, the modern world, docetism and Corinthianism. And you can see this is a little statement by Alice Bailey of who the Christ is, okay? And she's the founder of the Lucius Trust in the 1920s. So she said, and this is it, this is very popular today.

The Christ has been around for 2000 years as the supreme head of the church, the church invisible. The spiritual hierarchy composed of disciples of all faiths, you see that all faiths, that's pretty new agey. He recognizes and loves those who are not Christian, but who retain their allegiance to the founders, the Buddha and Muhammad and the others. He cares not what the faith is, if the objective is love of God and humanity. If men look for, air quotes, the Christ who left his disciples century ago, they will fail to recognize the Christ who is in the process of returning. The Christ has no religious barriers in his consciousness.

That's new agey. It matters not to him what faith a man may call himself. The son of God is on his way. And he comes not alone. His advance guard is already here and the plan which must follow him is already made clear. Let recognition be the aim. So not let objective truth be the aim, but let recognition of all this stuff be the aim. He is the great being whom the Christian calls the Christ. And notice how she never mentions the name of Jesus in any of this.

That's a good point. Yeah, he is known as, in the Orient, as the Botisatva, or as Lord Maitreya, and is the one looked for by the devout Islamist, Mohammedan, under the name of Inman Mahdi. He is it who presided over the destinies of life since about 600 BC, and it is he who has come out among men He has come out before among men and who is to be looked for again. He is the great Lord of love and the master of masters and the instructor of angels and And to him is committed the guidance of spiritual destinies of men and the development of the realization within each human being that he is a child of God and a son of, so everyone's a son of the most high.

That's just like, wow. So you can see how she says this Christ comes to the earth sometimes and goes out from the earth sometimes. And, In fact, she calls him an avatar. And an avatar is like in Hinduism, an avatar is their god Vishnu, I think his name is, is an elephant, right? But the elephant is an avatar. Or it's a representation, but it's a kind of a model of The, but it's not actually a thing it's a, it's an avatar. So you can see from Alice Bailey who published the Lucius trust which she had to rename used to be called the Lucifer trust. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it was renamed because it was a little unpopular.

But this is still a trust today. So, yeah, it's and it's and it's heavily the United Nations and this Lucius Trust are arm and arm. Because this is what the United Nations wants. It's this sort of one world religion things. And they use this sort of this theosophy for that. So here it is, Gnosticism, today's world. And it's, yeah, it's Nui Ege.

So here's a good outline of 1 John, and it's very simple, and that's why I like it from Ironside. So we're gonna look at the fact that God is light in chapter one, and then living in God's light, he follows that up with in chapter two. Chapter three is God is love, is the subject. And then chapter four, living in God's love. And then fifth and final is God is life, in chapter five, one through 21. And you can see some of the details there of what Ironside says is the main points under that five point outline there.

I looked at this other, and I took it out, it was Daniel Wallace's outline, which was about a page and a half long. So it's a huge outline. So, but this is very simple. And I like this one. So it's good from iron side. So I'm gonna just read the first four verses here. First John, just to send us away. And then one thing from Stoney, and then we'll be done. So 1 John 1, 1 through 4 is, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands. And you can see how he's, Alice Bailey's little two paragraphs there, how it's directly in contrast or the diametrically opposed to what she's saying in what John's saying here.

We have touched with our hands concerning the word of life and that the life was manifested and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was in the father and was manifested to us. Verse three, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write so that your joy may be made complete. And then Stoney has a few words about just those verses. He says, it is not merely that we live forever, but that in eternal life, our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

We belong to the divine circle. We are translated from the human circle to the divine one. Here on the earth, we are cared for like children in the nursery or a school room. But it is new and pleasing to children when they are brought from the nursery into the company of their parents, into their circle. No one could have an idea of the divine circle until one had been in it. Fellowship with the father and with his son is the crown and climax of all blessing.

It is no such measure, it is no such the measure of your apprehension as the simple fact that you are there. In his life, you cross over Jordan. You are then in the sphere of his life. You know him as your head. And next you are in fellowship with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Now you know union with Christ and your joy is full. And he says, that's most blessed. So there's the final thought. And that's, we'll see a lot of that in this study here of 1 John. Any thoughts or complaints? We're gonna take it slow. basically two verses at a time to start. So we'll be spending some time, those four verses we'll spend two weeks on.

Yeah. And those are, yeah, it's all good. They're wonderful verses because you look at that first part, you know, and I remember it's like, it might be perfect tense, but the, you know, we have heard and it's like, and it's still, we still hear Christ's voice in our ears. We have seen, and we still see him. Oh, right.

Oh, pretty amazing for I know it's an eyewitness account. We're getting from from John of. He saw and he touched him and he's, he's saying that in words, which is just amazing. Yeah, and I, I plan to a lot of times. really refer back to the gospel of John 2 and pull from there when they're parallel like that. It's really good stuff. Okay, so I'll close in prayer here.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity and the freedom we have in this country to study your word and to meet freely and to worship your son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins. and and he is our atonement and with him we'll have eternal life and we just thank you for that and be with us this week and be with us in this study and in the next hour in Jesus name amen