1 John, Chapter 1: An Old Man's Warnings

By the time John wrote this letter he would have been an old man and probably the last of the apostles to still be alive. His audience, unlike the Pauline letters, was not one specific church, but rather has a much more open feel, and is therefore aimed at a group, if not all the churches.

When John came to write this letter, the church had changed much since the early days that we read about in Acts. It was no longer the small intimate group that had developed in the immediate aftermath of Christ’s ascension, but through the work of Paul and the other apostles, the church had grown to become an international movement of thousands. Paul’s letters alone are written to believers in Turkey, Greece and Rome.
Over that time the nature of the people who made up the church had also evolved from being mainly eyewitnesses and people who were converted by eyewitnesses to a church which had many second, even third generation members. The life of Christ was no longer something which had happened within the lifetime of many in the church. In fact by this point it is believed that John would have been at least in his 80’s.

With the growth of the Christian church, both numerically and geographically, it came more and more into contact with other groups and ideas and was in turn challenged on both theological and philosophical grounds. When Paul preaches to the men in Athens, there is a sense that they are all interested in this new and fresh idea. He is even invited by the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers to go to the Areopagus to present his ideas.

And this in itself begs the question of us; with whom do we engage in debate. Where are those people that we can really engage with in our lives and as a church? One of the main problems I find in being a Christian is that people are not interested. It is not that they try to dissuade you of your beliefs but rather that they do not care what you believe.

Unfortunately with the growth of the church and its geographical spread, it came into contact with other ideas which began to have an impact upon it.
Foremost among these, and the one which John is really focusing on in 1 John is Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was a very complex mixture of different beliefs and philosophies; I am going to attempt a briefly explanation.

It thought that a lesser God created the earth and that as a result the material world was evil. This led to a belief system in which the spirit was seen as entirely good and the body entirely bad. Therefore, it was believed that since matter – rather than the breaking of God’s law – was evil, breaking God’s law was of no spiritual consequence. This way of thinking could in turn give way to an immoral lifestyle in which one’s actions were not important. You could sleep around, steal, fight and treat others as you like because it did not matter.
Another result of this way of looking at the world was the belief that Christ could not have been truly human and therefore part of the physical world since that world was seen as evil. Instead he only appeared human. However this runs contrary to our belief that Christ was both human and God.

And maybe as an aside to this, we should ask ourselves how strongly we actually believe that Jesus was God. Do we really believe that God broke bread with the disciples, or that God was crucified on a rubbish tip outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago?
How much do we believe it?

It was the infiltration of beliefs such as these that we see John reacting aginst in this letter.

Therefore a very old and probably very worried John sat down, pen in hand, and began to write…

John’s introduction begins like a philosophical flying kick in the direction of his opponents. He does not gradually build his argument from a carefully laid introduction. He begins with an attack on the heart of the Gnostic idea of Christ with a very similar introduction to that with which he began the gospel he wrote some years earlier.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the word of life”.

Or as the Message puts it a verse later,

“The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen!”

John is beginning by affirming his authority in writing about Jesus by stating that he is an eyewitness. But also on a more subtle level, by declaring that he had experienced the physical Jesus with his senses. He has seen him, heard him, and touched him. This was no ghostly figure or apparition as some had come to believe. This was God in flesh and blood. The idea that Jesus might not have been truly a human being is being dispelled by one of the last people on earth to have physically known Jesus whilst he was on earth. There was no higher authority on the matter than John. This was what being an apostle was all about!

He is making a statement about someone who is real. He is so insistent on getting this message across that he tells the reader three times that he has seen Jesus during the first 4 verses. This is John on a mission; he has a point to make and he doesn’t mince his words. He goes right to the heart of the matter and in doing so lays the foundations for the rest of the letter.

The Message says,

“And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us”.

In verse three he goes on to add,

“We saw it, we heard it and now we are telling you so that you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ”.

John just does not let up. Having first stated that he has seen Jesus and experienced him, he then moves into basic Christian teaching by arguing that although Christ is not physically with us now, we can still experience him.

In fact the very reason for writing is so that his audience is not mislead by other teachings but that “you also may have fellowship with us”. John does not want people to be led astray into wrong thinking that might mean that they no longer experience fellowship with God. Instead he wants them to share his experience of knowing Christ.

Following this blistering introduction he begins to move into the message that Christ brought with him and to tackle another Gnostic untruth. Having presented his personal life experience as evidence that Christ was a physical human being he moves on to argue that living a godly life is a central part of being a Christian. One cannot just accept Christ and then live one’s life however one wants to.

The Message:

“This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him. If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the darkness we’re obviously lying through our teeth – we’re not living what we claim”.

This is a hard-hitting message. Clearly certain elements within the church had adopted the view that they could both have a relationship with God and also completely disregard his moral commands. ‘Stop fooling yourselves’ is his basic message. God is good and therefore for us to believe that it does not matter how we behave is to put our faith on the line and to walk on very thin ice. Latter on in verse 8 he argues that,

“If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand if we admit our sins…He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing”.

Amidst this focus on sin comes a reminder of how wonderful and full of grace God is. Sin does not have the last word if we are prepared to confess our sins to him.

This is an encouragement to those who may have fallen away as a result of this kind of thinking. He is calling them back with the promise that if they repent Christ will forgive them.

In this first chapter of 1 John, we have seen that John was responding to a particular ideology, which was beginning to appear within the church and to threaten the truth of the gospel. It claimed that Christ was not truly a real person and that it did not matter how one lived one’s life. John has responded in his introduction by stating that he himself knew Jesus as a real human being and that his continuing relationship with him almost 50 years later was evidence of the truth of the Christian gospel.

So, how is this letter, which was written to confront a specific problem at a specific time relevant to us today?

I think that there are a number of both warnings and encouragements within this letter.

Warnings!!!

The early church was in danger because it began to take on the ideas of other groups within its society. This had led to the development of a heresy within some parts of the church. And we, both on a personal and universal level need to be very careful of the influence that we allow wider society and its ideas to have on our lives. Just as we heard last week, what influences do we allow within our own lives? Personally we need to be careful of the websites we visit, the TV programmes we watch and the places that we go. This is not a call to withdraw from society, but a warning that in engaging with society we must be on our guard. Christ himself warned us in Matthew 10: 16.

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves”.

Walking the line of being a Christian in society is a very difficult one.

And in going back to my introduction in which I talked about the dangers of the church becoming an international organisation, what are the dangers of the newly global church. In the last 100 years the church has reached virtually every corner of the globe, which presents its own challenges and dangers. We need to be aware of those and try to confront them.

Also, on a much smaller level, what are the groups within my life that are challenging me? What issues and ideas within our society are challenging us as Christians?

And on the flip side of the influence that society has on us is how we influence those around us. In 1 John, the Christians had been influenced by non-Christian ideas and had begun to live immoral lives. The outside world influences our own ideas and feelings about life. We must be weary that it does not influence our morals as well. For if we compromise the way we live our lives then the most powerful witness that we can have (that of our actions and how we treat others) will be lost.
In my own life I have found that it is the way we live our lives rather than any clever argument that I can come up with that is the most powerful witness to those around me.


Encouragements!!!

In spite of the warnings there are numerous encouragements that can be drawn from this chapter. The first and most important I think is the reminder that our faith is not built on interesting ideas or philosophical concepts, but on real people, on eyewitness accounts of real events. We do not cling to an idea but to a person, Jesus the Christ. As John encouraged those of his own generation with a reminder that he had personally witnessed the events recorded in the gospels, so we too should remember that fact. And John’s words that he had a personal relationship with God through Christ, echo down the past two thousand years and are mirrored in our own experiences.
Secondly we have the encouragement that God is always willing to welcome us back. As the NIV version puts it

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness”.

But that that forgiveness rests on our acceptance of our own sinfulness and faith that God will forgive us.

Ø If John were alive today and knew us individually, as a church , what would his reaction be?
Ø Would he be encouraged by the church, which he saw before him?
Ø Would he smile to himself, and be pleased with the way the church was going?

Or with a worried look on his face, would he reach for the nearest pen and paper and start writing?