Inroduction to First John

As we begin this study I want to begin by stating why we are doing this study. A while back I listened to a sermon by Paige Patterson. The sermon was on preaching and what the task of the preacher or teacher should be. He used the example of Jesus in Luke 24 where it is said that Jesus opened up the scriptures to those who were with them. He explained the scriptures and enabled them to be able to read their Bible better.

When I teach I teach to enable others to be able to read the Bible better. By the time we are done with this study I would hope and would like if all of you were able to go and teach someone else the book of First John.

An important reminder here is as we learn from God’s word we learn for His glory and His glory alone.

PROTO-GNOSTICISM

Imagine this with me for a moment if you would. Imagine it is Friday night and we are all gathered together to learn from God’s word. I come in and I am really excited to teach. We eat and then we begin our lesson. I start out by saying God has taught me something wonderful this week. In fact what God has taught me is pretty revolutionary I think. In fact this will change the way we all think about Christianity. This week I learned Jesus did not come in the flesh. Jesus was not who the scriptures say he was. Jesus was just merely a man. He was not God. The INCARNATION never happened. Is this a wonderful truth or what? God is good is He not?

What would you all think? How would you feel if this really happened? And it never would. But what would you all do. Some might think he is the preacher’s son should we believe him? He goes to Bible college he is our teacher surely he knows what he is talking about. How many would be like he is crazy he has no idea. Many may think I thought he was really a Christian, what happened?

Well this scenario was all too familiar to the community of people to whom John wrote First John. There were people from their church who had adhered to a false teaching. A teaching that denied the person of Jesus Christ they had a false view of who Jesus was.

In order to better understand the book of First John we are going to do some introductory work. This may be boring to some of you, as it was to me as I first began to study First John. But this is IMPORTANT and dare I say essential in order to understand what John is saying in this book. So hang with me and feel free to ask questions if there are any. It is important to get this stuff we go through tonight before we move on to what John wrote.

As I said already there were people who had left the church and began following a false teaching. This false teaching was called PROTO-GNOSTICISM.

We cannot take a hard stance on this view that this was Gnosticism, as we know it. Gnosticism believes that salvation comes through knowledge. It comes from the Greek word, which means knowledge “that is deep and is received by experience.” This was a cult in which only the initiated could be. One could only be a part of this cult because they had this special knowledge. Gnostics claimed God gave them this knowledge. God gave them this special knowledge.

Another aspect of this worldview this false teaching was they had an aberrant and false view of who Jesus is. There view of who Jesus is, is known as Docetism, which comes from a Greek word, which simply means to seem. They believe that Jesus seemed to be the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus seemed like he was a real person but in reality he was really not. They held that the spirit is good and matter is evil. Therefore Jesus if he was the Christ could not be Jesus because Christ is divine and Jesus is flesh. The Divine God could in no way shape or form could be Jesus because Jesus was human, He was matter and therefore Jesus would be evil because he was flesh, he was matter. Some people who held to this belief also believed that the Christ came upon Jesus at his baptism and left shortly before his death.

We do not see full-blown Gnosticism or full-blown Docetism. What we see here is called Proto-Gnosticism. Full blown Gnosticism did not come around until the 2nd century AD. Gnosticism is heavily dualistic. They believed just like Docetism that matter was evil and the spirit was good. The difference is salvation came through knowledge. This knowledge that was given by God.

Gnosticism holds to many different views that are contradictory to Christianity. First if matter is evil and the spirit id good then there is no biblical doctrine of creation or the incarnation. Secondly knowledge was of utmost importance and the acquisition of knowledge was supreme. Thirdly there is a Supreme god. But this Supreme god and this god and is a different god than the one we find in the Old Testament. The God we find in the Old Testament is inferior to the Supreme god.

Just so we all understand exactly what Proto-Gnosticism is teaching lets summarize. They believed matter was evil it was bad there was nothing good to be found in it. Matter was evil and the spirit was good. God is spirit. Therefore Jesus could not be God because he was human therefore God could not indwell a human. Jesus was human, he was matter, and therefore he was evil. The incarnation could never happen. These people who were teaching this doctrine denied the person of Jesus. They denied who Jesus really was. They denied what John said about Jesus in his gospel. They denied what Jesus said about himself. They held to a false view of Jesus.

There false view of Jesus is not important to them though because they believe salvation came through the acquisition of this special knowledge. This knowledge was the only way of salvation. Jesus therefore was not essential. They do not need Jesus because salvation comes through knowledge and knowledge alone. Since knowledge is all that matters the was one lives does not matter either. Ethics were not essential. You could live any way you wanted.


THEME OF FIRST JOHN

So why all this talk about Gnosticism and what they believe and how exactly does this relate to the book of First John? Here is the reason. People began to attack the people, the church or community, to whom John was writing. John writes with one purpose: ASSURANCE. The believers were thrown into disarray by what these people were saying.

The theme of the whole book of First John is Assurance. You get this from chapter 5:13. John says I write these things that you may know that you have eternal life. The believers were confused. They did not know whom to believe. Was John wrong all of this time? Were these new teachers right? Did they know who Jesus really was? Was knowledge really the way to salvation? Did they know how you were supposed to live? Were they too be pursuing righteousness and holiness or were they to live as these false teachers?

For a moment lets talk about assurance. What is assurance from where does a Christian get assurance? First assurance is a certainty. Assurance then is being certain ore sure that one is a Christian, a believer in Christ.

So assurance is being sure that we are Christians, which is why John wrote this letter, so the believers may know they have eternal life. So where can a believer find assurance of salvation. I believe there are a few ways.

• First we can know we are believers in Christ, we are Christians, because the Holy Spirit that abides in us, 3:24.
• A second and most crucial thing is the word of God, 2:3-5
• A third source of assurance is OBEDIENCE, 3:7-10. Those who are believers will obey what God says in His word.

One last thing about assurance before we move on. An important question is whether assurance is objective or is it subjective? If assurance is objective then there is something tangible, something we can see if you will that will assure us. If it is subjective then something just seems to happen and we know we are believers. John presents assurance as being objective. We have assurance by being obedient to what the Bible teaches, what the will of God is. Look at it this way. As believers there is going to be times when we will not feel like we are believers. There will be little assurance in our lives. But when we as believers are obedient to what the Bible teaches then we have assurance. Assurance comes from being obedient to what the Bible teaches. Assurance will not just happen. We will not be sitting in our house one night and all of the sudden we will be like oh I have it now I am a believer, I am a Christian. Assurance comes from being obedient to the will of God, what the Bible says, only through this will we have assurance.

The theme of this First John is assurance. He wrote to assure those in this church that they were believers. John wanted believers to know they were really the believers and these people who tempted them to leave the faith were not actual believers but were deceivers and liars.

ONE NOTE ABOUT JOHN’S STYLE OF WRITING

John has a very unique style of writing in this letter. A good way to look at it is concentric circles. Chapter one is a small circle and the chapter two and so forth…
This is key because John may write on one topic in chapter two and maybe later in chapter four he will touch the subject again but will go deeper in chapter four than he went in chapter two. This is important to remember because First John can be confusing because of this. He is being repetitive but there is a point to all of this.

THE BIG THREE

John gives his readers three tests by which to judge whether they or another person are a Christian at all.

The first test is the doctrinal test. It is a test about Jesus. What does a person believe about Jesus? Do they believe the biblical Jesus? Or do they make some Jesus up in their head? In John’s day the Gnostics believed wrongly about who Jesus was. The Gnostics denied that He was God in the flesh. With these tests we must remember that if you fail one you are done. If you fail one you have failed them all. D.A. Carson says about these tests says that, “One must pass all three tests to be a true Christian.” The Gnostics of John’s day have already failed because they believed wrongly about Jesus. For John what a person believed always boiled down to what that person believed about Jesus. If there belief about Jesus is off then everything else will be off as well. You see in chapter four verse two who we can trust by what they believe about who Jesus is. We can test the spirits because what the spirit is confessing about Jesus. If a person’s view of Jesus is off the everything is off.

So the question begs to be answered who then does John say Jesus is. In chapter 4 verses 2-3 we see that Jesus came in the flesh. Jesus came from somewhere, but from where exactly did he come. In the opening verses of the book John says Jesus, the eternal life was with the father and was made manifest to us. Jesus not only came in the flesh, but something even more important which John write towards the end of this book in chapter 5:21 is that Jesus is the true God and eternal life. Jesus is God, no other view of Jesus is sufficient. No other view will do. Jesus is eternal life. In the Gospel of John in chapter 17:3 Jesus says that eternal life is knowing him. No one can have eternal life no one can be saved apart from Jesus because of who he is. This is the Jesus who John was with and saw and listened to while Jesus was on this earth. What someone believes about Jesus is ultimate. It is of number ONE importance. Everything else is off is someone’s view of Jesus is off.

The next test flows right off of this one, Barry Joslin says here that, “What one believes about Jesus
(DOCTRINE) has a connection with the way one lives (ETHICS).” The second test is the test of obedience.

The test of obedience asks the question do we live righteously. Look at chapter 3 verses 7 through 10. Johns says that we know whom a true believer is by the way that one lives. The Greek word here for practice is πσιέω, which means literally do in the continuous sense. It signifies a habitual practice. It is an active verb and in Greek an active verb signifies a person does something. Believers will actively obey and practice righteousness. A true believer will habitually practice righteousness, and a person who is an unbeliever will habitually practice a life of sinning. James Montgomery Boice is worth quoting here: “It does not mean that a Christian must be without sin… but is does mean that he must be progressing in righteousness so that his profession is increasingly matched by his conduct.”

The last and final test is the test of love. A true believer will have a love for God and that love for God will turn into love for other believers. In chapter 3:16-18 John shows us that a Christians love is to be active. We are not to just love with our tongue we are to love with out actions. In fact the Greek word for love in verse 18 is a verb. When we love we are to be actively loving. Look at it this way. Let’s use the love of God here as an analogy for a moment. What if God were to love in this way? God is in heaven and He looks down on human kind and sees the sick and twisted condition we are in. We are in a state of sin and there is nothing we can do to be made right with God. What if God were to just look at us and say I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, but God never acts. His love or so-called love here is only lip service. There is no real love because He is the only one who can right this situation. But God does not love that way does He? No He does not He loved us and out of that love He sent Jesus Christ to die for us so we could be His children (4:9-10). In Chapter 4:20-21 John says that it is a commandment from God that we love fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and in the last test, the test of obedience, we learned that a true believer will obey God. So a true believer will love because they obey God. If anyone claims to love God, but hates his brother, they have failed this test and according to John they are not true believers.

REVIEW

Lets review since we have covered a lot.

John wrote this letter in order to confront a false teaching which we are going to call Proto-Gnosticism. This teaching believed that salvation came through some secret and higher knowledge that was given to the initiated by God. Only special people could have this knowledge.

The theme or purpose of this letter is ASSURANCE, which is found in 5:13. John wrote so these people would know the have eternal life. They can be sure they are of the truth and John expounds why as he writes this letter.

There are three tests found in the book by which believers can judge themselves and judge the claims of others.

• The Doctrinal Test, what does a person believe about Jesus? Everything comes down to what a person believes about Jesus. This and only this matters.

• The test of Obedience, those who have a correct view of Jesus those who are followers of Jesus will obey the words of Jesus. They will seek to live and be like Jesus.

• And lastly the test of Love. Those who are true Christians will love. They will love God they will love other Christians and the will love those who do not know Jesus. Their love is to be active. They are to show there love by what they do as God showed his love in what He did to save people and bring them to himself.