Epistles of John

The next claim from the opponents is that they not only claim to know God (but they do not keep his commands), they are claim to abide in him but they are not walking like Jesus walked.

In John’s Gospel, “abiding” is an important theme. The word can refer to remaining or staying (so the disciples who follow Jesus in 1:39 remain with Jesus, or Jesus remained with the Samaritans for two days, 4:40). The word has the sense of continuing to live in a particular state or place, even a permanent state (LXX Psalm 9:8, the Lord’s throne abides forever). In John 6:56 the one who eats the flesh of Jesus and drinks his blood “abides in Jesus.” In 15:4, the believer is like a branch which remains a part of the vine. In John 5:38, the one who does not believe in Jesus or the one who sent him does not abide in the word if God (and it does not abide in them).

The one who is abiding in Jesus ought to walk just as Jesus walked. In verses 7-8 John clarifies this is nothing new, but the same thing he has always taught them. It may be the case the opponents are saying John is teaching something new and different, so here he says this is the same thing he has always taught.

This is an eschatological statement, the old age is passing away and the new age is dawning. The age of the Law is ending and the age of the Kingdom is coming soon. The time in which we now live is the period between those two ages For John, we live in the “already” of the inauguration of the kingdom, but also in time when the Kingdom has not yet been established.

John can claim the opponents are not abiding in Christ because they are hating their brothers and sisters. This has significant application to modern church relationship, how do we relate to people who have left our church, and perhaps talked badly against us, or said things about the church which were not true? How do we relate to another denomination? Do we express “hate” toward them because they are not us? As Paul says in Philippians 1, if the gospel is preached praise God!

This person is not in the light at all, but they remain in the darkness. This is a self-deception, they have blinded their own eyes. The one who cannot see cannot know where they are going, not only dangerous but unlikely to reach the right goal.

The person who loves their brother remains in the light and there is “no cause for stumbling,” a common metaphor for sin. The verb “to stumble” is used fifteen times in the New Testament, “always with the meaning of causing some sort of harm to a person” (Kruse, 86). In this case, it has the sense of causing someone to sin. If you cause somebody to sin, then they will be under judgment to their harm.

If you are living a well-lit place, you see things that might make you stumble and you avoid them. Living in the dark is dangerous since you may stumble and injure yourself since you cannot see the danger right in front of you.

Imagine telling somebody that it is perfectly acceptable and healthy to eat a 6000 calorie a day diet. Objectively, this is very dangerous and if someone tries to eat that much every day they will become extremely fat and sick and die. The teaching is false, and it leads people to death (quite literally in this case). This new diet might actually be very popular, since you can eat whatever you want to do as much as you wanted to. However being popular does not make it right.

It is likely the opponents are teaching something that is very attractive: What we do it doesn’t count as sin or that God is not going to judge some behavior like as if it is sin. This is would be a very popular teaching, but it is also false and very dangerous.

What are some examples from modern church experience of “hating a brother or sister”? How does this animosity affect a community of believers? Is John right that one cannot hate a brother and really abide in Christ?

In the previous section of the letter John explained the one who knows God does what God has commanded. What about people who do claim to know God but choose to not keep his commands? The immediate application is likely to those who went out from John’s church, the opponents the apostolic teaching.

The way John expresses this statement is important. The verb is in the perfect tense, implying an action in the past which has some effect in the present of the speaker. In this case, the opponents have (already) said they know God and they are still claiming this at the time John writes. Maybe this is an over-interpretation, but imagine a person who made a public confession of faith, perhaps submitted to baptism, gave their testimony in front of the congregation, etc., and the continue to make that profession of faith by continuing to attend church and give to charity, etc.

If someone claims to know God but does not keep his commands, they are choosing to not know what God has revealed about himself and his will. They are a liar because they actually did not know God in the first place.

On the other hand, the one who does obey God‘s word, God‘s love is truly made complete in him. This is not a conditional sentence, although appears to be in the NIV. Notice that commandment and word are used in parallel here. To keep God’s word is to keep his commandment (cf., 1:8 and 1:10, see Lieu, I, II, & III John, 70). The very translated “obeying” is in the present tense, so an ongoing action. But “made complete” is in the perfect tense, so the past tense completed action.

By “the love of God” John means the love a believer has for God, so the love for God is perfect when we obey Jesus‘s command to love one another. The ESV translates the verb τελειόω as “perfected.” This may imply (in English) “made perfect.” The verb, however, has the sense of reaching the intended goal (Jobes, 1, 2, & 3 John, 86) or even reach a state of maturity. John is talking about our transformation as a child of God by means of obeying his commands, moving from immaturity to maturity.

By way of analogy, a child can be taught “clean your room,” perhaps rewarded or punished when that does or does not happen. But eventually a child matures to the point where they understand living in their own filth is not healthy and it is better to spend a little time clearing up their room on their own without the threat of punishment or the promise of a reward. They may even begin to discover ways to keep the command “clean your room” which go beyond a child’s immature view of what the command meant. As a child matures they (should) move from shoving clothes under the bed for the appearance of neatness to shoving them into a drawer, to folding them and placing them in a drawer, etc. As a child grows towards maturity, they discover new ways to obey the original command, and often that command starts to make more sense when viewed with mature eyes.

In a similar way, as the one who is in Christ obeys the commands of God, they ought to grow more mature and find ways to apply the command to “love one another” which are less obvious or more challenging.

The last phrase concludes the section, “By this we know we are we are in him.” But how does this work out in real life? What are some real indications of growing maturity in the Christian life?

We know we know God because we keep his commands (2:3). The phrase “by this” are missing in the NIV perhaps because it is a transition between the previous point (claiming to be without sin) and the next point (knowing we know God).

Does “him” refer to God or Jesus? Father or son?  Likely this is God the Father, although 2:2 does describe Jesus as our advocate and atoning sacrifice. Perhaps this is intentionally ambiguous: in the Gospel of John knowing Father is to know the Son, and to know the son is to know the Father.

Knowledge in the Bible is more than just factual knowledge (that we are aware of the fact that God exists). In the Old Testament knowledge often has a sense of intimacy, so that it can be used as a metaphor for sexual intimacy (“Adam knew his wife”). Since John introduced the idea of fellowship in the introduction to the letter (1:3) and dealt with those who claim fellowship but continue to sin, it is important to understand knowledge in this context as intimate personal knowledge that comes from being in fellowship with God.

What does John mean by “keeping his commandments”? Is this the Law? Is this the Law of Christ? The command of Christ might be understood as the two great commandments, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. But even in that context, those are summaries of the whole law. The noun ἐντολή is in the plural here, although John’s Gospel uses both the singular and the plural for Jesus’s commandment to love. John will use this noun seventeen times in the letter.

Are “his commandments” the Ten Commandments? The whole Jewish Law?  There is “no hint elsewhere in the letter that the author is concerned about obedience to the Mosaic Law” (Kruse, The Letters of John, 78). Robert Yarbrough points out the word ἐντολή is not used in the LXX for the Ten Commandments, so it is not the case the “commandments” in 1 John 2 are the Decalogue (1-3 John, 82).

Knowing something implies responsibility for that knowledge. If you know what is right and good you are obligated to do what is right and good.  Following C. H. Dodd, Jobes thinks this knowledge was promised as part of the new covenant (1, 2, & 3 John, 81). Jeremiah 31:34 says that when God makes the new covenant, the Law will be written on the heart so that God’s people will be able to keep it.  In this case we know God and this implies our responsibility to keep his commands. But what commands? “When he uses the singular form, it always refers explicitly to Christ’s command that his followers should love one another.

Knowing God and being in fellowship with him is expressed in how we live.  It is not possessing secret knowledge only revealed to the few (Gnosticism and the mystery religions), nor is it expressed religious rituals and rites (pagan sacrifices designed to placate the gods). If we know God then we know how he wants us to live. And if we know how God wants us to live, then we ought to live that way.

In the previous section of the letter, John dealt with the claim the opponents are without sin, now he is dealing with the claim they actually know God. To return to the original question, “how do we know we (really) know God?” For John, one clear indication is a person knows what God has commanded and is trying to respond to those commands. But this is not a long list of “thou shalt not” commands, John summarizes God’s demands a “love one another.”

What are some ways we can know we really know God by demonstrating love for one another? Who is included in this “one another”? Are there any limits in 1 John on who the Christian ought to love?

The goal is “not sinning” (2:1a). In another purpose statement, John says one of the goals of the writing of this letter is that the reader will not sin. Even though we cannot “not sin,” and to claim we to “not sin” is a lie (and is therefore a sin).

But we will sin, so Jesus is our Advocate (2:1b). The world John uses here (παράκλητος) is the same used in John 14:16 to refer to the Holy Spirit. The verb can have the sense of pleading a case, as in 2 Corinthians 5:20, Paul implores his readers to be reconciled with God. The word is sometimes translated as “comforter,” someone who encourages or comforts someone in a difficult situation.

Although many preachers imagine this word to refer to Jesus functioning as a legal advocate, the use of this word for lawyer or attorney is rare (BDAG, although NIDNTEE 2:539 says it is “a personal term with legal connotations”). In Roman legal settings, a person could hire a person to speak for them, perhaps a patronus, a patron could speak on behalf of their client accused of some crime. (Some readers may hear the allusion to this practice in the Harry Potter stories, summoning a helper in the time of need, expecto patronum!)

It may be that John has in mind the Jewish view that angelic beings stand before God as advocates. Like Archangel Michael in Second Temple Judaism, Jesus stands before the throne of God advocating on our behalf.

What does the word propitiation mean? The word the ESV translates as “propitiation” is another allusion to the Old Testament. The NIV and NRSV translates ἱλασμός as “atoning sacrifice,” which better communicates to modern readers what this word means.The word has the sense of “appeasement necessitated by sin, expiation” (BDAG). A god has been offended, so the offender must sacrifice in the right way to turn aside the god’s  wrath. In the Law, the word is used for a sacrifice of restitution, Numbers 5:8.

In the Greco-Roman world, a god might be calmed by human or animal sacrifice, but other rites of purification or prayers were also common. Less familiar to modern readers, sometimes ritual dances and games dedicated to the god turned aside wrath (F. Büchsel, TDNT 3:311-12).

In the Old Testament the word and its cognates almost always refer to appeasing the wrath of God (Lev 1:4, for example; see NIDNTEE “ἱλάσκομαι,” 2:531.).

John finishes the first section of this letter with a clear declaration God has in fact forgiven our sin, but sin remains a serious problem for the believer. We can have confidence in the faithfulness of God to forgive our sin and complete reliance on Jesus as our atoning sacrifice and advocate. But there is a need to take seriously the effect of sin on the life of the believer and on the community of believers.

After stating the blood of Jesus cleanses the believer from all unrighteousness, he twice declares anyone who denies they have sin is a liar (1:8, 10). Why would anyone claim to “not sin”? It is possible someone thinks they are completely righteous, they actually do not sin. This might be the result of a defective view of sin (only literally breaking the Ten Commandments counts, not our thoughts).

Another possibility is someone thought the behaviors which are sin for some people are not sins for them. Paul deals with a similar problem in Romans 14-15, for some eating meat (presumably sacrificed to idols) was a sin, for others it was not a sin. The church at Corinth struggled with eating food sacrificed to idols, although the situation was complex.

Is this a description of the opponents, those who have left the church? For many commentators n 1 John this is a hint of the beliefs of John’s opponents. Although this is teased this out over the whole book, the “ones who have gone out” from John’s community seem to claim they do not sin. At this point it is impossible to know if this means they do not sin ever, or some particular practice John’s group claims is sin is not really a sin at all. By way of analogy: some Christians think drinking alcohol is a sin, others do not.

But this analogy does not do justice to the problem because John uses very strong language to describe this person: they are a liar and God’s word is not them. That God’s word is not in them may refer to John’s own eyewitness report of the Gospel and the revelation from God he has given to his churches. This type of person is self-deluded and never understood what John had taught them in the first place. Perhaps they read passages like John 3:20-21 and misinterpreted it, thinking John meant if they were in the light whatever they did no longer counted as sin.

“God’s word” can also refer to Jesus in John’s Gospel. If the ones who went out from John’s community claim to have no sin, then they do not have Jesus! This is a self-deception, the one who denies they sin (for whatever reason) knows they do in fact sin and are suppressing that truth so they can continue in that sin. They are telling themselves lies.

John therefore stresses the importance of confessing our sin (1:9). The opposite of denying we sin is to confess our sin (Jobes, 1, 2, & 3 John, 71). This verse can be problematic for several reasons. If we have been declared righteous (as in Pauline Theology, good reformed theology), then God has already completely forgiven all our sin, past present and future. Why should we continue to confess our sin? Does this verse actually command Body of Christ believers to confess their sin in order to be forgiven?

Although he gives no details on how this ought to be done, John does not have in mind here anything at all like the Catholic sacrament of confession. For many modern readers, their only conception of “confess sin” comes through their experience in a Catholic church. Even if it was based on this text, Catholic practice developed over centuries and cannot be what John had in mind.

Equally problematic are unfortunate attempts by evangelical Christian churches to require someone caught in a spectacular sin to make some sort of public confession of their sin to the whole community in order to stay in fellowship with that church. There are many sides to that discussion (theological, practical and legal), but we need to set aside that modern church practice in order to understand John’s point here.

The Jewish practice of confession of sin is an important for understanding this verse. Just as purification is required for fellowship with God on the Temple Mount, so too confession of sin is an important element of worship in the Old Testament.

If we confess our sins we can be assured God will forgive us because he is faithful and just. God’s faithfulness and justice and foundational elements of Old Testament theology, both are part of God’s self-revelation in Exodus 34:6-7. God is faithful to his promises, in this case he has promised forgiveness as part of the new covenant. Since Jesus’s blood has enacted the New Covenant, God promises to forgive our sin.