WWUTT 386 An Introduction to 1 John?

It's common to speak of the letter of 1 John as being a response to Gnosticism, but John likely wasn't writing in response to anything. He just wanted to celebrate and rejoice in the salvation of Christ when we understand the text.

Program Introduction and Reading 1 John 1:1-10

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Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. We begin a study of 1 John today. If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, we'll get as far as we can as long as my voice is going to hold out here.

I've got allergies hitting me right now, so a little bit lower voice, a little bit more nasal. I'm not contagious, though, so you can still come up to me and shake my hand. I'd like to be able to share my experiences at the Shepherds Conference, but because my voice isn't doing so great, I think I'll wait until Friday.

I'll just say that it was a wonderful trip. Great experience. Of course, the speakers were wonderful. That kind of goes without saying. But the trip was just added to by the Christian brotherhood that I experienced, pastors that I've talked to online, I got the chance to meet with face to face, even had some viewers of the videos and listeners who listen to the broadcast come up to me and say, hey, thanks for doing what you do.

And so I appreciate it so much. It was such a wonderful time and a great visit there in Sun Valley, California. I hope I can do it again. I'm going to do the For the Church conference coming up in September, which is in Kansas City.

And then I've already got my tickets for G3 in Atlanta at the start of 2018. So far, that's what's on my docket for upcoming conferences. And I hope to see you at one of those locations. So here we go with the study of the book of First John.

We'll read the first 10 verses here, which is the whole first chapter. And then and then we'll do some of the background related to this letter. So first, John, starting in verse one, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us.

And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

The Gospel of John and the Likely Audience of 1 John

So, what can we say about the book of 1 John? Well, it's a great cliff notes version of the gospel of John. We know that the gospel of John was written before John's epistle to the churches. Well, how do we know that?

Because John alludes to his gospel here at the very beginning and you probably picked that up. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, the life made manifest.

We have seen it. We testify to it. We proclaim to you the eternal life. So all of these are hearkening back to the gospel of John, which had already been written prior to the sending of this particular epistle.

So this is an epistle. It is a letter. Who is it going to? Well, the likelihood is that it went to the seven churches in Asia Minor, just as John addressed at the beginning of his book of Revelation, those seven churches that are addressed in chapters two and three.

Well, chapters one, two and three. So it's likely that John was writing to those same churches here with this particular letter. Now, it's interesting to note that no one actually knows for sure the order of first John, second John and third John.

Could be that first John was written last. We don't actually know. In canon, that's the way that they're laid out. So we think of them as being in that order. But there's no telling which of those letters came first.

So for the sake of the flow of things, we'll go through these in the order in which they're given first, second and third John. But we know that this letter was written after the gospel of John and more than likely came before the book of Revelation, which which could very well have been the last thing that John wrote.

But I mean, even that is up in the air. We don't really know for sure the date in which the book of Revelation was written. And as I'm sure you know, there are contesting viewpoints on that. In fact, it's been an argument in the church since like the second and third century.

When exactly did John write Revelation? Was it prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD or was it after that event? And I'll tell you, I've kind of teeter tottered on both views, but neither viewpoint has affected my eschatology.

My view of the end times is consistent, whether or not you could persuade me that John wrote his letter prior to 70 AD or after 70 AD. I've always held the view that what we read concerning the end times in the Bible, Old Testament and New, has both a micro fulfillment and a macro fulfillment.

What do I mean by that? Well, take, for example, Jesus responding to the disciples in Matthew 24 when they asked him what will be the signs of the end. What he is telling them very much has to do with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, which would be fulfilled 40 years after he had that conversation with his disciples.

What you read in Matthew 24 is the destruction of the temple 40 years later, but what you're reading in Matthew 24 is also concerning what we should be looking for at the time that Christ returns. It has an application in both events.

You take the book of Obadiah, for example. Now Obadiah is talking to the Edomites about how they should not feel safe where they're located, the city that they have high above the plains, thinking that they'll be able to spot their enemies before they come and get them and that they've made all the right friends who would be able to protect them from their enemies.

They should not feel so comfortable for the judgment will come upon them. And yet we read the book of Obadiah and know that he's also talking about things that will happen at the end concerning the end times.

So he's saying something to the Edomites concerning their destruction, but yet we also have the macro fulfillment and how those things apply to the day of the Lord when the day that Christ or the day that Christ returns.

So anyway, like I said, the dating of when revelation was written does not affect my eschatology one way or the other. And so with John's writings, this is pretty regular. I mean, there's there's all kinds of debates as to when John wrote some of his stuff.

A lot of folks want to say that the majority viewpoints anyway will say that John wrote everything that he wrote after 70 A .D. There are early church fathers that talk about John escaping Jerusalem before the Roman siege.

And so he would have been with the Jewish Christian exodus that would have departed from Jerusalem about 67 or 68 A .D. and and thus fulfilling something that Jesus said in the Olivet discourse. Those of you there are some of you who are standing here who are going to witness these things.

And John, sure enough, did. I think it's more reasonable for us to assume and at least this is this is where I'm at right now in my understanding of the dating of these things. It's more reasonable for us to assume that the late dates for John's writings.

He was the youngest apostle and he was the one that died in old age, although he died in exile. He did not get to he did not, you know, live some sort of life of luxury as an apostle just because the rest of them were martyred and he was not.

Don Carson and Douglas Moo wrote in their introduction to the New Testament. Here's what they wrote about the dating of John's gospel. And this even helps us out with understanding First John. During the past hundred and fifty years, suggestions as to the date of the fourth gospel have varied it from before 80, 70 to the final quarter of the second century.

Dates in the second century are pretty well ruled out by manuscript discoveries. But apart from this limitation, none of the arguments is entirely convincing. And almost any date between 55 and 95 is possible.

John 21, 23 suggests it was probably nearer to the end of that period than the beginning. And John 21, 23 is where it says that a saying had spread among the brothers that John was the disciple who was not going to die.

And so that's why it seems more plausible that a late dating of the gospel of John is more acceptable. And when we say that John was the disciple that was not going to die, this is not according to the Mormons who believe that John is still alive on planet Earth somewhere.

This just simply means that he was the disciple who was not going to be martyred. And all of the disciples likely had been martyred at the time that John had written his gospel. So Carson and Moo go on.

Some dates seem implausibly early. Probably the inference to be drawn from 2119 is that Peter had by his death glorified God when chapter 21 was composed, because Jesus tells Peter how Peter is going to die.

Peter died in AD 64 or 65. Dates earlier than that for the composition of the fourth gospel seem unlikely. Those who hold to a date before 70 point to details of Palestine presented as if Jerusalem and its temple complex were still standing.

For example, the evangelist writes, now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate, a pool, which is John 5 to the silence of the fourth gospel on the destruction of the temple is considered powerful evidence for a pre 70 date by some authors.

Arguments from silence, however, are tricky things. If he wrote in, say, 80 AD, he may have taken the destruction of the temple as a given and let this fact make its own contribution to his theological argument.

So anyway, that's from Carson and Moo in their introduction to the New Testament. And I think that they present substantial evidence there for a late dating of the Gospel of John. And so therefore, we can accept a late dating of these three letters for second and third John and also the Book of Revelation.

At least that's where I stand at the present. And as I said before, doesn't really affect my eschatology. So, so what was the occasion that John was writing for? Well, when you read 1st John and when you listen to most scholars, it's very popular to say that John was writing in response to Gnosticism.

But the problem with that, though, was Gnosticism didn't really reach its heyday until the second century. It would have been fresh on the scene at the time that John was writing if he was responding to Gnosticism.

Now, that still could be the case. Doesn't necessarily mean that Gnosticism was something that was unknown to John. He still could have been writing something in response to that. But it seems more likely that his writing to this letter was not in response to anything.

It was in celebration of the redemption that we have in Christ. So if he is responding to something like any Gnostic thought, this idea that they were all children of light and we just need to embrace that light in order to embrace our eternal destiny, not recognizing that we're sinful, depraved creatures, which is the way John presents it, and we need to repent before God and follow Christ in order to receive that salvation.

The Gnostics were all about inner light, but John is pointing out, no, we all have an inner darkness that we are cleansed from and saved from by the light who is Jesus Christ. So it's possible that John would have been responding to Gnosticism, but it would not have been his objective in writing this letter.

He wanted to talk about redemption and he wanted to celebrate with the churches this faith that we have in Jesus Christ. So he has a very optimistic reason for writing. This is not a polemic. This is a cause for rejoicing and the common hope and faith that we have.

Eyewitness Testimony and the Spread of the Gospel

He begins the letter that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

This is not too unlike when we started our study of second Peter, trying to get there, but my pages are sticking together at the, at the start of second Peter. He said something similar. Verse 16 of chapter one, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty for when he received honor and glory from God, the father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory.

This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain and John saying something very similar here at the start of his letter.

We have seen it. We testified to it. We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and has made manifest to us. We've seen it. We've touched it. We've heard it. We were there. And so John presenting himself as a credible source for this evidence of the gospel that has gone throughout all the world.

And surely if we accept that late dating of the writing of this letter, the gospel had gone far and wide. In fact, the, uh, the apostle Thomas would have made it all the way to India and had shared the gospel there, uh, in, in the Eastern world.

The apostle Paul having made it as far West as Spain and then was coming back through and he was arrested again in Rome. And that is where he was martyred. And so from the West to the East, the gospel had spread far and wide.

And John is continuing to rejoice in the triumph of this gospel message and still proclaiming to the churches that he is one who was there, who witnessed these things and continues to testify of the gospel, which has been proclaimed.

The fact that men had died, that there were apostles that had been martyred for this faith did not hinder or stifle John from celebrating all the more this salvation that has been given to us in Christ our Lord.

And so we continue to praise our God for the salvation that has been given through the cross of Christ, his shed blood for our sins, being buried in a tomb, but rising again from the grave so that we are baptized with him in his death and raised with him to new life.

And we rejoice together in this salvation that we have a salvation that does not come from ourselves, does not come from any work that we have done, but it is the gift of God. By grace, you are saved through faith.

Prayer, Benediction, and Ministry Sign-Off

And that is where we'll stop today. I think I'll conserve my voice for the rest of the time and we'll pick up in our study of first John tomorrow, our wonderful God and savior. We thank you for the salvation that you have given to us in your son, Jesus Christ.

And I pray that this gospel would be affirmed in us all the more that we go out and do the things that Jesus told us to do. For if we say we have no sin, we are, we are lying when we confess that we believe in Christ, we make God out to be a liar who said to us in your word that we are sinners and fallen from your glory.

We need somebody who would restore us back to that place of having fellowship with God. And it comes through the sacrifice of Christ. So we thank you for this salvation and pray that we live out the love of Christ with all that we encounter as we go throughout our day and pray these things in Jesus name, amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching and we thank you for including us in your Bible learning.

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