Introduction to 1 John

Hello,

I've decided to focus on 1st John next, because I've already gone through 2nd and 3rd John. As a reminder, I'm using an NIV study bible and doing a plain reading of the text. If a god wanted everyone to understand the bible as his word, it should be easily interpreted by the common person, right? I do a lot of paraphrasing, but I put direct quotes in quotation marks. All opinions and thoughts are my own, unless stated otherwise. I provide links or name of a reference when I get information from another site. However, no one forms opinions in a vacuum and I have acquired some  personal knowledge to draw on. My style is gently sarcastic at times. If you enjoy reading my posts, please share my site with a friend.

Now let's look at 1 John. The author is traditionally assumed to be the same author of the gospel of John and the 2nd and 3rd epistles of John. There are some similarities and some differences, as noted in the Wikipedia article.  To be clear, no authorship is claimed by name in any of those bible books.

1 John does not begin as a typical letter with an introduction, it leaps right into theology. The author refers to Jesus as "the word of life." He appears to claim he has seen Jesus with his eyes and touched him with his hands, and that he was actually alive, but the language is very poetic and uses the collective pronoun "we," indicating others with him. Neither the author or the others are named. The author is proclaiming what the collective has seen and heard to the readers, so that they can have fellowship with this unknown group. The group's fellowship is with god the father and his son, Jesus.

Next, the author claims to have heard a message from Jesus, and this is it : "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." Jesus is not recorded as saying that in any of the gospel accounts, nor is that exact phrase found anywhere else in the rest of the bible. The author continues on to say that anyone who "walks in darkness" yet claims to have fellowship with god, is a liar. (He does not say what walking in darkness consists of.) If anyone walks in light with god (again, what does that mean?), those people have fellowship with the mystery group, and the blood of Jesus cleans all the sin off all of them.

They mustn't claim to be without sin. They wouldn't be telling the truth. They just need to confess their sins, then Jesus will forgive them and purify them. If they say they do not sin, they are calling Jesus a liar. Lesson: No Matter what, you won't be believed if you say you haven't sinned. Sin makes you dirty. You can only be made clean if you tell what your sins are. Hmm. What constitutes sin? Who do you confess to?How could that go wrong?

Till next time.