John the Apostle: The First Epistle
This letter exemplifies the Apostle’s pastoral care. He writes out of a concern about false teachers, offering not a formal rebuttal of their doctrines but nonetheless intending to protect Christians from their teachings—encouraging them to live according to orthodoxy, right opinion. John evidently writes to no specific church (as Paul usually does); this is rather a circular letter, one intended to be copied and ‘sent around’ to a number of Christian congregations.
Commentators often write that the specific unorthodox, wrong opinion that concerns John is Docetism, which claimed that Jesus only appeared to have taken physical shape, that he remained a pure spirit who gave his witnesses the illusion of bodily life. This would make sense of John’s initial insistence on the physical reality of Jesus: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (I.i)—that is, God incarnate, whom we heard, saw, felt—this is the Person John invokes. “From the beginning” refers to the opening words of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God.” With Jesus Christ, that Word has “become flesh,” living among the Apostles; “the life was manifested” (I.ii).
Because the Word of life has been manifested in the living Person of Jesus, “we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father” (I.ii). “We,” John, serve as the living witness of the living Word, that which has existed from the beginning, the Archē, the origin that gave form to the heavens and the earth. It is significant that John associates two of the three ways in which he has known God with his own physical organs, but not the first way. He saw Jesus with his eyes; he felt Jesus with his hands. He does not mention that he heard Jesus with his ears, only that he heard Him. He not only heard God but he believed the Word that he spoke, which is an operation of the mind. It is the mind, which apprehends and believes that Word; the mind is more important than any sense perception. ‘Seeing is believing’ but what you see isn’t always what you get; you may be looking at a mirage. What you feel is solid, physically real, but it (pace Machiavelli) it tells you nothing. Only words can convey the Word.
This leads to a problem, however. What of the believers who never heard, saw, or felt God? How are they to believe?
“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ (I.iii.).” What I, John, have witnessed, I now witness, declare, testify to you. As Jesus passed the Word to me, so I pass it on to you. I do so in order that you may have fellowship with me, be like-minded, alike in spirit, as I had fellowship with Him, Father and Son. “And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full” (I.iv.). His written words bring assurance of the spoken Word, itself written down by the apostles who heard Him. The telos or purpose of writing these words expressing that Word is to bring your joy to fulfillment, your joy in salvation.
What is the substance of that Word? And why should it bring you joy—that is, what is He saving you from? “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I.v). The message of the Word transmitted now to you, in writing, comes first in a metaphor, in “light,” as indeed in the beginning there was not only the Word of God, as the Gospel of John says, but the light, as the Book of Genesis says. “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (I.vi). Without light you cannot see where you are walking, cannot follow the true way which the light illuminates for us. As the culmination of the acts of creation which began with the words, “Let there be light,” the good of the human being, which alone brings him joy, must follow that way of life, that regime of God, or else it will stumble and fall into misery. False words, lies, darken the mind; they contradict the words which convey the Word, which rightly guides our actions. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (I.vii). The life-blood of God is the only kind of blood that cleanses; all other kinds of blood leave a stain. But a sacrifice aims at cleansing, and that was the effect of the sacrifice Jesus made on the Cross, for those who attend to His words and walk in the way they map out for human beings, for their good and their joy in attaining it.
However, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (I.viii). If our own words, our own testimony before one another and before God, claims sinlessness for ourselves, we lack self-knowledge. The truth is not in us. But sin is. By so speaking, remaining in the sin we refuse to admit in words, we sever the bonds of true fellowship with God and with each other. We don’t ‘enlighten’ ourselves, when it comes to our sins; only God can do that, although we can turn our backs on Him and walk some other way, exile ourselves from His regime. The truth that the light illuminates is that when we deny that we sin we ‘have’ sin, whether we say we do or not. We testify against ourselves. Speech is the bond of all communities. Speak falsely and you break the bond, dissolve the community, by ruining the trust truthful words establish.
Nevertheless, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I.ix). That is, if we do have the truth in us, if the light that is God does illuminate our minds and hearts, and if we confess, speak out, use words to speak the truth about ourselves, to say that we have sins, God will cleanse us of them. He does this because, first of all, His actions never contradict His words; he is faithful to His covenants with His people, including his guarantee to save those souls who put their trust in Him with respect to their salvation. He is also just, a fair-dealer, not one to betray the trust souls who trust Him. When it comes to wrong acts, justice can inflict punishment but it can also seek the rehabilitation of the criminal. God is just in both ways. His fidelity and His justice lead him to forgive our sins; not only has He said He would do so, He knows us to be incapable of cleansing ourselves from our sins, needing His grace, His sacrifice, on our behalf to make us worthy of fellowship with Himself and with one another. Is there a difference between “sins,” which we have, and “unrighteousness,” which can be removed? There might be, in the sense that ever-sinful human beings might still follow the light along the right way, within the regime, the Kingdom, of God. It will be the written words of God, and the fellowship with other members of God’s regime—here, one of the Apostles—that we may become more mindful of that way, winning our consent to return to it when we walk off its boundaries.
If, rather, “we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (I.x). By denying that we commit sins we accuse God, pretending that He violates His own commandment against false testimony. This reverses the right relationship of judge and those judged. We then commit injustice; we then commit infidelity to God, to one another, and to ourselves as individuals. We have lost our self-knowledge as creatures of God, rightly ruled by Him by the light that is His Word, as conveyed by His words and those Spirit-guided writers who have set it down for us to read, long after their bodies, and Jesus’ body, departed from the earth, where we can no longer hear, see, our touch them.
John calls his addressees “my little children” (II.i), recalling the theme of transmitting the Word, this time not through space but through time. He is their father inasmuch as he brings the words of the Son who followed His Father to the apostles. In commanding them “that ye sin not” (II.i), John exercises paternal authority, paternal wisdom, and paternal care. Knowing that human beings will commit sins despite the divine commands, he reminds them of divine grace; “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (II.i), a defense attorney in the divine court. As members of God’s regime, before its court, the unrighteous have a righteous defender, one on whom we can rely, one who won’t betray us even when we unrighteously betray the Father.
More than an advocate, Jesus Christ is “the propitiation for our sins”—the appeaser of the Father’s anger at us, the unrighteous. He took the penalty of God’s wrath upon Himself for us, an act by which the Father showed us His own graciousness, having sent His Son for that purpose. And not for the sins of the members of the Father’s regime, the sons in the Father’s family, did Jesus become the Christ; he did this “also for the sins of the whole world” (II.ii). All human beings are invited to become members of God’s regime and family.
“And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (II.iii). That is, we have self-knowledge but also knowledge of our fellows as members of God’s regime, His family, by obeying our acknowledged Ruler, by ‘being ruled’ in accordance with His commands. We know Him by knowing His mind, His stated intentions; to be laws, commands must not only be thought but promulgated. “He who saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (II.iv); saying must not only match doing, doing must match saying. “But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily”—truly and verifiably—is “the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (II.v).
As the saying goes, What’s love got to do with it? God issued His laws out of love, as a parent does in commanding a child ‘for your own good.’ God’s love is perfected when those He loves do what is best for them. In obeying God’s commands we prove not to Him (who knows us already) but to ourselves (prone to self-deception at least as much as deception of others) that we are “in” Him; even more firmly and intimately than as consenting subjects of a regime or obedient children in a family, we are members of His body. And like members of a body, we move with that body. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (II.vi). Jesus walked in the way of His Father, the way of life set down by the Father’s commands, including His laws, part of the righteous order of His regime, His family.
John then addresses not “little children” but “brethren”—fellow Christians in their status as more nearly equal to himself, not as persons obligated to obey commands but as persons receiving commands. “I write no new commandment unto you,” he assures them, “but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning,” “the word which ye have heard from the beginning” (II.vii). God commands have always prohibited sinful acts. In this sense, we are under no new regime, with no new purpose, issuing no new commands. The Son faithfully obeys the laws of the Father, and so commands us to do.
However, it is also “a new commandment I write you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth” (II.viii). The Word is new in the sense of a renewal. Israel has been the light unto the nations—outside them, beckoning them. Now, the regime and family of God have been extended to the nations; it is now in them, insofar as some among ‘the Gentiles’ have consented to God’s rule and therefore to the true ‘way.’ Love rules from ‘inside’.
As the ‘spirit’ of God’s lawful commands, agapic love animates not only the relationship of God and man but the relationships among men themselves. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” (II.ix-xi). Light permits knowledge; agapic love enable the mind to direct our ‘steps’ rightly along the ‘way’ of God’s regime, whereas hatred of fellow citizens blocks the light, prevents the hater from knowing not only the way but the destination the way leads, God’s purpose in setting down His way.
John now discloses his own purpose in writing this letter. Insofar as he writes to them as “little children,” he wants them to know that their “sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake”—one’s “name” being one’s reputation, and Jesus’ name being the Christ, the Savior (II.xii). The Father forgives your sins, your violations of the laws of His regime, in faithfully upholding the purpose for which He sent the Son, a purpose announced in his “name,” his title within the Father’s regime, his reputation. Rulers depend upon their reputation, and the Father upholds his son’s reputation just as Jesus upheld the reputation of His Father. As “little children” they have “known the Father” (II.xiv), understood his intention in sending His Son to take the acts that have enabled the Father to forgive them, thanks especially to the Son’s words on the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
John writes to his correspondents as “fathers” or his equals insofar as they too have “known [God] from the beginning” (II.xiii). Some commentators identify the “little children” as new believers, particularly new Christians, and the “fathers” as the mature believers and/or perhaps as Jewish believers as distinct from Gentile converts.
Finally, he writes to “young men,” who have “overcome the wicked one,” the ‘Satan’ or ‘enemy’ of God, His regime, His commands (II.xiv). Young men have strength. Insofar as they have shown strength in overcoming the one who would subvert God’s rule, the strength to resist sin, John’s addressees deserve their own good reputation, good standing in the regime of righteousness founded by God.
In their strength or ‘youth’ the citizens need encouragement and continued right direction. “Love not the world,” John tells them, “neither the things that are in the world” (II.xv). “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (II.xv). Why not? Because “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (II.xvi). Lust is love misdirected, love directed away from the Father, the Creator of the world, toward the world He created. It is love unworthy of a human being, whom God made capable—alone among the creatures of the earth—of loving the true Ruler of the world. “The world passeth away; and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (II.xvii). The Creator-God is eternal, unlike the world He created. Love of the eternal, being godly or God-given, is also eternal, unlike the love of flesh, love of the visible, love that comes through the eyes and not through the ears. Although the apostles saw and touched Jesus, they loved Him as the Word of God, loved Him insofar as He told them things lastingly meaningful to their ‘hearts’—that is, their minds and their sentiments as perceivers of the invisible, the things that can only be heard, not seen or touched like bodies which, for all their beauty, are dumb.
Addressing his correspondents again as “little children”—as knowers of God, as sinning members of His regime who understand nonetheless that their sins are forgiven—John reminds them of something else “ye have heard,” something about the wicked one, the enemy, whom they have overcome in their capacity as “young men.” “Ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists,” many enemies of God and His regime (II.xviii). By this, “we know that it is the last time” (II.xviii).
The antichrists “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” (II.xix.). That is, although they behaved like ‘missionaries,’ the antichrists had the opposite intention: subtracting from instead of adding to God’s family or regime. They are ‘expatriates’ and, worse than that traitors, pretended citizens and brethren who were never truly such. They did not partake of the spirit of God’s ecclesia or assembly. Whereas Jesus made manifest the Word of God, the antichrists make manifest the wrong word, the wrong teaching, the anti-Christian word. To put it in terms of the American regime, it is as if a legal citizen of the United States were to renounce the principles of the Declaration of Independence, maintaining that all men are not created equal with respect to their unalienable rights.
By contrast, the remaining true Christians “have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (II.xx). “Unction” means authorization; specifically, it refers to the anointing of the new monarch’s head with an oil that symbolically confers supreme authority. For Christians, this authorization by the Holy Spirit confers knowledge of “all things,” meaning all things needed for salvation from the many other ‘regimes’ that enforce anti-Christian principles. Therefore, “I have not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth” (II.xxi). If Jesus embodies the Logos and if the Holy Spirit enters into the souls of Christians, conveying that Logos and anointing them with its authority, then logos or reason, thought governed by the principle of non-contradiction, rules out lies, any ‘word’ that contradicts the truth of God.
“Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (II.xxii). This is the premise of John’s logical argument, founded on the Logos and on logos, that he who denies the Christhood of Jesus denies the truth, contradicts the truth. “He is antichrist”—against the true claim that Jesus is the Christ—who “denies the Father and the Son” (II.xxiii). And therefore “whoever denies the Son, the same has not the Father: but he that acknowledges the Son has the Father” (II.xxiii). Father and Son constitute a family; logically, there can be no father without a son (or daughter) and no son (or daughter) without a father. To deny the Son-hood, the Christhood, of Jesus is to deny his true title to rule, effectively denying the Father whose intention it was to send His Son to embody His supremely authoritative commands, His Word, to human beings.
The Holy Spirit, conveying the Word or commands of God to those who became Christians, following the Word that Jesus as Christ embodied “abides” within the souls of Christians. John commands Christians to keep “that which you have heard from the beginning,” God’s Word, the founding declaration of God’s family and regime, within themselves, within their minds and hearts (II.xxiv). Let that authoritative and authorizing Word “remain in you”; if you do, “you also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father” (II.xxiv). You will have within yourselves the Holy Spirit, the mind and heart, of God as Father, God as Son.
Why should I want the Holy Spirit within me? Because God’s commands include His covenant with us, and that covenant entails “the promise he has promised us, even eternal life” (II.xxv). All other covenants are ‘worldly,’ temporary. They can be tempting to ‘sign on’ to, but, John says, “I have written unto you concerning [these things] that seduce you,” deceive you (II.xxvi)—perhaps more precisely, things that would deceive you if you had not the Holy Spirit to remind you of the truth. “The anointing which you have received of Him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in Him” (II.xxvii). The authority-granting anointing also granted the knowledge that authorizes right rule, since it was an anointing by the Holy Spirit, who knows all that is needful for salvation, for eternal life in the best regime.
Since the Holy Spirit ‘enrolls’ members of God’s family and regime invisibly, how are we to know who is a brother, who is a fellow-citizen? Partly by the words they speak but mostly by their actions: “If you know that [God] is righteous, you know that every one that does righteousness is born of him” (II.29).
In the third chapter of his letter John discusses more precisely the character of that enrollment. We know God initially through hearing His Word. With this, we begin also to “behold”—to see—the “manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us,” the way of that love (III.i). Seeing is the use of the light of knowledge to know the way. We behold the way, the kind of love the Father’s love is, the love that makes us “sons of God” (III.i). This love is not erotic/desirous but agapic/graceful, an expression not of God’s need (He obviously has none) but of His care, His benevolence. He ‘adopts’ us into His family. As a consequence, “the world knows us not because it knew Him not” (III.i). The world did not recognize Jesus as the Christ, and therefore does not know Christians as sons of God, members of the ruling family.
“Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (III.ii). In this “last” time Jesus will appear, or reappear, this time “as He is”—knowable not only in hearing but in sight (III.ii). His transformation will cause a transformation in Christians, too; we shall, like God, “be what we shall be,” beholders of Christ as He is. A new sight, a new form of knowledge, transforms the seer, the knower. This will enable us to become more like Him, to increase our ‘family resemblance’ to Him. In the meantime, “Every man that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure” (III.iii).
A Christian purifies himself, just as any obedient son or law-abiding citizen makes himself ‘more like’ the other members of the family or the regime by steadily acting according to the rules of the family or regime. Steady acting brings habituation, ‘habits of mind and of heart’ that accord with the prescribed way of life. “Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law; for in sin is the transgressing of the laws” (III.iv). ”Commitment’ here means ‘habituation,’ steadiness of action. Such a person habituates himself to the way, the path, of some other family, some other regime.
All human beings sin, just as all members of families and countries disobey the commands of the rulers, including their rules or laws. This doesn’t mean that they are no longer members of the family or the country but it does mean something must be done about them if the family or country is to survive. Christians “know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin” (III.v). By that visible act, the sinless Ruler demonstrated Himself ready to redeem or forgive the sins of the ruled, forgive transgressions of the commands He issued to them. He will not forgive the transgressions of those who have renounced His regime altogether.
Insofar as Christians “abide in Him” they “sin not”; those who sin—sin habitually—show by their actions that they “have not seen Him, neither known Him” (III.vi). In the Gospel of John XV.iv Jesus tells His disciples, “Abide in Me and I will abide in you.” Abiding means staying; “in” suggests a very close, intimate bond between Ruler and ruled. It is a condition that points from being a family member by adoption toward being a family member by birth, being ‘born again.”
Hence John commands, “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that does righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous” (III.vii). The deceiver will induce you to go in the wrong direction, along the wrong path or way. “He that commits sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning” (III.viii); the devil rebelled against God’s regime and has sought to add to the body of those ruled by him. Because this happened, God “manifested” His Son, “that he might destroy the works of the devil,” redeem those caught in the devil’s regime. Here the metaphor of birth appears: “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for [God’s] seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God”; there is no sin in his ‘DNA,’ as it were (III.ix). The human being who abides in God and in whom God abides may think or behave in contradiction to this nature but it is still his nature. This is the strongest family bond of all, analogous to biological inheritance in being ineradicable so long as the human being exists. According to God’s covenant, that life will be eternal.
Visually perceptible acts of righteousness express invisible agapic love. “For this was the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (III.xi) as children of God and therefore brothers in Christ. Cain remains the example of brother-murder. As one who abided “in the wicked one,” Cain murdered Abel because “his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous” (III.xii). Brothers in blood, they were enemies in spirit, members of rival spiritual families. It is then no wonder that the world hates Christians, just as Cain hated Abel. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him,” having opposed the regime of eternal life, just as the member of God’s family wants life for his brother. Far from killing his brother, the Christian will imitate Christ, “who laid down his life for us” (III.xvi). Those who shut themselves off from agapic love for a brother in need cannot be said to have “the love of God” abiding, dwelling, in him (III.xvii).
The physical reality of Jesus and of His physical act of self-sacrifice are, then, decisive for knowledge of Him and of Christian conduct. “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (III.xviii). That is how “we know we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him” (III.xix). Shifting back to the regime metaphor from the family metaphor, John envisions a court in which God judges us. “For if [or “whenever”] our heart condemns us” God “is greater than our heart, and knows all things” (III.xx). By overruling our just apparently self-condemnation, God exercises His superior knowledge not only of ourselves but of the spiritual order within which we exist. Given the agapic love manifested in this judicial act, we are rightly humbled and accepting of God’s rule. Further, “if our heart condemns us not, then we have confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” (III.xxi-xxii). As Christians, our hearts have the Holy Spirit abiding in them, aiding our self-knowledge and self-judgment. If what we intend and do pleases God, the Holy Spirit will so advise us. Sight being the way to perceive actions, God will see the right things we do, consistent with the promptings of His Spirit and the Word of His Son.
What does God want us to do? “This is His commandment,” first, “that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ” and, second, that we should “love one another” (III.xxiii). “And he that keeps His commandments dwells in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.” (III.xxiv). This teaching may be compared and contrasted with Aristotle’s definition of politics, which he finds first of all in the relationship of a husband and a wife. Husbands and wives rule and are ruled, in turn. This reciprocity in ruling is the model of the political life, in contrast with kingship (rule for the good of the ruled) and tyranny (rule for the good of the ruler). John understands God’s rule as a kingship, rule for the good of the ruled, but it is a kingship whose bond is remarkably ‘tight’ or intimate, inasmuch as God’s subject abide in Him, and He in them; more, God’s agapic rule secures the good of the ruled by knowing the defects, the sinfulness, of the ruled and by forgiving them, so long as they abide in Him, within His regime, unlike the ‘apostates’ or ‘traitors’ who reject God’s regime and enroll in the regime of the devil.
At the beginning of the fourth section of his letter, John addresses a problem crucial to his argument, the problem of how to distinguish Christians from “antichrists.” After all, those who separate themselves from God’s assembly often claim that the assembly has gone wrong, that they are the true Church. We are leaving, come with us. “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (IV.1). But how are we to test persons animated by a spirit that is invisible and, even if it were visible, hidden within their minds and hearts? The Signers of the American Declaration of Independence acknowledged that only God can judge “the rectitude of our intentions,” yet in some proximate sense human beings must ‘judge’ or assess the motives of those we encounter.
Here, John writes, is how to “know…the Spirit of God” (IV.2). First, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God,” while those who deny this are animated by “the spirit of antichrist,” which “even now already is…in the world” (IV.3). You will know them by their words. Knowing them, you overcome them, you are not deceived by them, because Spirit of God is “greater” than “he that is in the world” (IV.4). The more you hear from them, they easier they are to recognize. “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world hears them” (IV.5). The world wants to hear about itself, about its concerns, and the antichrists want the world to hear them. Christians, however “are of God: he that knows God hears us; he that is not of God hears not us” (IV.6). We can distinguish “the spirit of truth” from “the spirit of error” not only by the substance of the words we hear but by their effect, by noticing who it is that listens to what we say and who it is that listens to what they say.
Beyond words, Christians can tell fellow Christians from antichrists by observing actions. “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one that loves is born and God, and knows God” (IV.7). Conversely, “he that loves not knows not God; for God is love” (IV.8). To know God is to know that He is love (which is not to say that love is God). A child shares the nature of his father; Christians are children of God; Christians share (some) of the nature of God (in modern terms, they will have love in their ‘DNA’). Such love is manifest to the Christian by looking within himself but, when considering others, into whose souls we cannot see, we see love or the lack of love in actions. This supreme example of this is God Himself, into whose mind and heart no one can see, but whose love “toward us” was “manifested,” made visible, “because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (IV.9). “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (IV.10). What kind of God do those who renounce the Church uphold?
Logical arguments concerning practice or action typically contain ‘if/then’ clauses. If x, then y: y follows logically, necessarily, from x; there is no contradiction. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (IV.11). Since “no man has seen God at any time” insofar has he abides or dwells within us, our acts of love toward one another give evidence of that abiding, that indwelling (IV.12). Further “his love is perfected in us” (IV.12); that is, it reaches its telos, its purpose and culmination. Loving one another, and doing so increasingly, manifests by action the intentions of Christians, against which the intentions of antichrists can be measured. This is how we “know” and not merely guess that “we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (IV.13).
Although we cannot see the work of God’s Spirit within anyone other than ourselves as individuals, but can only listen for it in their words and look for it in their intentions as these manifest themselves in loving actions, John himself has in fact “seen and do[es] testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (IV.14), as stated in v. 9. In the face of that world, which doesn’t know it wants to be saved and consequently does not listen to Christians, “whosoever shall confess”—say out loud and act in a manner that follows logically from what we say—that “Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (IV.15). This saying expresses what is inside us, that “we have known and believed the love that God has to us,” that the God who is love dwells or abides in us (IV.16).
It is that abiding or indwelling that perfects “our love,” so that “we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world” (IV.17). Human nature has its telos, the perfection of its natural powers of body and soul, and especially of its reason, which distinguishes our nature from that of other living species or ‘kinds’. Adam could be ‘tasked’ with naming the other species in Eden precisely because he could recognize differences among those ‘kinds,’ through his capacity to think according to the principle of non-contradiction, of reason. This capacity doesn’t save us from sinning, however, and therefore does not save us from the consequences of sin. For that, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling alone suffice. Only through that sacrifice and that Spirit can we achieve our true telos, which is living with God under His regime in his ‘state’ or kingdom, which is Heaven.
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. We rightly fear God for the punishments He can inflict upon us if we depart from His regime, His way. But fear is not the end, the purpose, the telos, the perfection of wisdom. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love.” (IV.18). We did not initiate this love; He did. Christians have only responded to that love, with ours, but ‘only’ is nonetheless all-important when it comes to salvation from the punishments we would otherwise rightly fear.
Returning then to the problem of testing, “If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (IV.20). The test of genuine fidelity to God, the visible and audible test, is love of brother, love of neighbor. That is the part of agapic love Christians can witness in others, as distinct from the part of agapic love they can witness in themselves and witness or confess to others. Loving one’s brother—the audible, visible, touchable human being in front of me—is the command that follows, and logically follows from, the command to love God. “And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God love his brother also” (IV.21). God speaks to us in order to say what we must do, and God’s words themselves are also actions, as seen in the act of Creation, speaking the world into existence, and the act of Crucifixion, saving that part of the world that sees and listens to Jesus Christ from the ruin inherent in the regime of God’s enemy and that enemy’s allies, the antichrists.
That is how can I can test others. How can I test myself? In that, I have a resource unavailable when I consider others: introspection. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten by him” (V.1); if you love the Father, you love His Son. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “the great writers of antiquity,” being “part of an aristocracy of masters,” had difficulty conceiving of human equality. “It was necessary that Jesus Christ come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal.” [1] Christianity makes the idea of human beings’ equality before God ‘thinkable.’
The consequence of this is to extend our love of the Son of God to all the sons of God. “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments” (V.ii). Christians believe Jesus is the Christ, born of God; that belief is the foundation of their knowledge of our love of neighbor, a love commanded (as we know from His words) by Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God. The command we know, obeying because we believe the One who commanded it is who and what He said He is, is “not grievous” or heavy (V.3); we therefore have no excuse to disobey it. We find obedience to the command to be a light burden because whoever “is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, our faith” (V.4). The world, unloving and unfaithful, finds obedience to Jesus’ commands to love God and neighbor to be unbearable; strengthened by Holy Spirit, Christians do not find it so. “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (V.5).
Jesus overcame the world for whomever believes in his Savior as the Son of God. “This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood” (V.6). Commentators dispute the meaning of “water,” many associating it with baptism and recalling that water and blood both flowed from Jesus side when a centurion pierced it with a spear as He hung on the Cross. Jesus also “came” by water when He walked on it, and he proved His mastery over water by calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. These images recall water as the condition of the cosmos before God ordered it—fluid, chaotic. If blood symbolizes life, the giving of blood sacrificing life, water may mean the setting-apart of the one who is baptized with it, citizenship in God’s kingdom as holy or separate from the kingdoms of this world; insofar as water also symbolizes chaos, rule over it symbolizes the triumph of the Son of God, and through His grace the children of His household and kingdom, over the worldly kingdoms. John the Baptist was entitled to perform the ceremony of separation but only the Christ can both separate His children from the world and sacrifice His life in order to save their lives.
Baptism and sacrifice are acts. How can we know what they signify? Only by the mind, the capacity for understanding both deeds and words. But human minds can err. What guarantees the truth of their interpretation? A superior mind: “It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (V.6). A body can baptize; a body can bleed; only a mind can witness. “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one” (V.7). The Word is Jesus, the Logos made flesh. In a court of law, it is better to have three witnesses to testify to the truth of actions than it is to have only one. The Trinity, the three ‘persons’ or personae of God, are three in one: God as Father/Lawgiver; God as Son/Savior (from the stern verdict based upon the Law); God as Holy “Ghost” or Spirit, as the One who enters the minds of Christians and guides them respecting the substance of their belief. The Spirit is the link between heaven and earth. “There are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (V.8). That is, baptism and sacrifice are outward evidences of Christian belief, whereas the Holy Spirit witnesses the minds of Christians, leading them to those right actions of separation from the world and sacrifice for the sake of ‘worldlings’ or subjects to the worldly regimes. In denying that Jesus came in the form of a physical body, Docetists could affirm baptism but denied the blood, the sacrifice, the Cross.
Other men will see what we do, hear what we say, but “if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater” (V.9); indeed, “he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself,” in the form of the Holy Spirit (V.10). To deny that witness is to make God “a liar,” inasmuch as God gave us his Word, the “record” of “his Son” (V.10). That record clearly states that God’s Son’s sacrifice of His life on earth gave us “eternal life” so far as we trust in Him at his word—Himself embodying as well as speaking that Word, a Word of God the Father and from God the Father. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (V.12).
In conclusion, John tells his correspondents that he has written to them as fellow Christians to reaffirm the knowledge of their salvation, knowledge founded on their belief “the name of the Son of God” (V.13). The name of the Son of God is Jesus, meaning ‘deliverer’ or ‘rescuer.’ To believe in His name is to believe that He is what His name indicates that He is. “This is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (V.14). Hearing us, He will heed our requests, but especially our requests to “deliver us from evil,” as the Psalmist writes. For example, “If any man see his brother,” his fellow Christian, “sin a sin which is not unto death, he [the petitioning Christian] shall ask, and he [Jesus, the Christ] shall give him life” (V.16). Not so, the one who commits “a sin unto death: I do not say that he [the petitioning Christian] shall pray for it” (V.16]. If “all unrighteousness is sin,” what is the specific form of unrighteousness that is a sin unto death, a deadly sin? (V.16). There are, famously, seven deadly sins, but all who commit them may be redeemed. It may be that the sin unto death simply means a sin that a sinning brother Christian continues to commit until death; or John might be saying, even more simply, that prayers to redeem a sinner will not avail after his death.
Or is the sin unto death idolatry, disbelief in God? John lists three things Christians know, based on our belief in Jesus as Son of God and as the Christ. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not” at least insofar as he remains cognizant of the water and the blood of his rescuer; the “wicked one,” Satan, “toucheth him not,” cannot claim him for his regime of ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’ (V.18). We also “know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (V.19). In actions, then, and also in ‘family’ or in ‘regime’ Christians are distinct from and opposed to the ‘family’ or ‘regime’ of Satan. They are safe, ‘saved,’ because Jesus overcame, conquered ‘the world’ by the water and the blood of the Cross. Finally, “we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ” (V.20). This third thing Christians know is itself threefold: we know the Messiah, the Rescuer has come; we know He has given us “an understanding”—not only a set of facts but the meaning of those facts—and we are “in him,” within His Spirit, a spirit who is true in the sense of being real and true in the sense of being trustworthy. “This is the true God, and eternal life” (V.20). Therefore, “little children, keep yourself from idols,” from the untrue—gods who are false and untrustworthy, agents of the evil one whose name means ‘enemy.’
Note
- Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America. II.i.3.
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