The Interpretation of
The Epistles of St. Peter, St John
and St. Jude
By
R. C. H. Lenski
Augsburg Publishing House
Minneapolis, Minnesota, EUA
1996
V. 11
INDICE
INTRODUÇÃO (Aspectos Isagógicos).........................................................................03
CAPITULO 1.................................................................................................................05
CAPITULO 2.................................................................................................................16
CAPITULO 3.................................................................................................................38
CAPITULO 4.................................................................................................................51
CAPITULO 5.................................................................................................................65
1 JOHN
INTRODUCTION
The fact that the First Epistle of John was written by the Apostle John and by no one else is beyond serious question. This letter is an encyclical that is intended for the congregations that were under John's special care; it was occasioned by the antichristian teachings of Cerinthus and of his following. It is usually supposed that this letter was written only to the congregations in the province of Asia; but when Peter wrote in the year 64 he addressed all those in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and we think that now, about twenty-five or thirty years later, John would address even a greater number in this extensive territory. The same pen that wrote this letter wrote the Fourth Gospel. Before the year 66 John and other apostles were forced to leave Jerusalem because of the war that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. John made Ephesus his headquarters and worked from this as a center until he died at an advanced age about the year 100. He was buried at Ephesus. He writes as an old man. He does not indicate that he is the founder of the congregations addressed in his letter but that he has been known to them for many years and that a tender bond of affection exists between him and all his many readers. Seven times he calls them reicvia, "little children," twice he addresses them as vaiS(a, six times as "beloved." This is the voice of a father. Cerinthus was active in Ephesus during this time. He taught that Jesus was the physical son of Joseph; that the "eon Christ" was united with Jesus at his baptism but left Jesus before his passion and his death. He rejected all the Gospels, all of Paul's letters, and accepted only parts of Matthew and of Mark. He was a former Jew from Egypt and combined Jewish ideas with what we may call the beginnings of Gnosticism and sought to produce a spiritualized Mosaism, which was to be a universal religion. He retained circumcision and the Sabbath. The Jewish conception of the millennium was attributed to him by the Alogi; hence those church fathers who opposed chiliasm and thought that Revelation taught this doctrine ascribed Revelation to Cerinthus and thus rejected this writing. This heretic left no writings, but Irenseus (Adv. Haer. 1, 26; 3, 3, 4; etc.) and others supply a reliable account of him and of his teaching. According to Eusebius, Irenseus quotes Polycarp, his teacher and a pupil of the Apostle John: "That John, the disciple of the Lord, having gone to take a bath in Ephesus and having seen Cerinthus inside, left the baths, refusing to bathe, and said: 'Let us flee lest also the baths fall in since Cerinthus is inside, the enemy of the truth." It is safe to date the composition of John's letter at Ephesus some time after the year 80. It should not be called "catholic," for it is not addressed to all churches that were then in existence but only to all those whom John can call "my little children." This letter is plainly polemical. Dangerous heresy called it forth. In this letter the writer emphasizes the deity of Christ and pronounces a severe verdict on those who deny the deity. Three times John uses the frank word "liar." He also refers to "the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:7; 5:5, 6), which is directed at Cerinthus. A second denunciation, resting on the first, deals with the hatred against those who are born of God as his sons and children, who are repeatedly urged to love God. This thought is likewise stressed throughout the letter and is directed at Cerinthus and his separatist following. Other points of a similar nature are mentioned, these two stand out as supreme. The question is discussed as to whether this letter was written before or after John's Gospel. It is immaterial what answer is given to this question. We think that the letter was written before the Gospel. Since there were copies of this letter in so many churches late in the first century, the authorship and the authority of this letter were at the very beginning placed beyond question. Quotations and allusions to passages go back to the earliest times; tradition on this point is unanimously in favor of Johannine authorship. There is a direct line of evidence from John through his pupils Polycarp and Papias to Irenseus. Zahn, Introduction, III, 180, 184, 191. This letter was thus at once and without hesitation placed into the ew Testament canon. Modern efforts to cast a doubt on its canonicity are unavailing. A curious circumstance regarding the letter is the fact that it seems to have no divisions. Commentators ivide it in one way or in another and state their reasons for such a division; but when one reads the letter, the proposed divisions do not satisfy. They are pset by the series of repetitions and reiterations that occur throughout the letter. That fact leads some interpreters to complain about the lack of logic; but this letter has no formal parts such as we commonly use and expect. It is constructed according to a different and a higher method. Observe that "light" and "darkness" (1:5, 6) are repeated, also "truth" as light. Forgiveness of sin is mentioned several times. The truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is the golden thread of the entire pattern. Connected with him is his blood (1:7; 4:6), the propitiation for our sins and for the world's sins (2:4). "Liar" is used three times. "His commandments" (plural and singular) is found in 2:3-8; 3:23; 4:2, 3. Pivotal is "love." As the letter moves along, new threads are woven into it, some that disappear, others that reappear. Yet the whole is but one pattern. The heretics are introduced at 2:18 and reappear in 4:1, etc., and in 5:18, 19. Sons of God, children of God, being born of God begin at 2:29 and continue throughout the letter. Believing on the name of his Son Jesus Christ is introduced at 3:25 and is found also in 4:16; 5:1, 5, 13. Bearing witness appears toward the end (5:6-11). At the very end we have "idols," which seems strange to many. This inventory is not exhaustive. What do these data mean? John rises above formal divisions and parts. This letter is built like an inverted pyramid or cone. The basic apex is laid down in 1:1-4; then the upward broadening begins. Starting with 1:5-10, the base rises and expands and continues in ever-widening circles as one nev/ pertinent thought joins the preceding thought. One block is not laid beside the other so that joints are made. There are really no joints, not even where the new thoughts are introduced. The line of thought simply spirals in rising, widening circles until all is complete. Keeping from idols (5:21) is only the brief, final touch. This is an unusual structure in writing but for that very reason is superior to the common types of composition. There are others in Scripture that are equally unusual. One is Isa. 40 to 66 which is built of triads within greater triads, these again being within still greater triads, and each of the little triads is a block, a little individual poem by itself.
I have never found the like in all literature. No poetical composition approaches this in structure. Ecclesiastes and parts of Proverbs are also unique in structure. In the latter each little piece is a perfect verbal and thought gem by itself; it is like a diamond in which not one facet could be changed. Each gem, perfect in itself, can be admired by itself yet is set into a perfect pattern with a few others and with them forms a unit that is to be admired as such. Then these patterns are combined into still greater designs. In the Biblical books there are grander buildings of thought than even our best secular writers have conceived. Inspiration has produced some marvelous, incomparable results. Let some competent student display them for us as they deserve to be displayed. John'8 first Epistle is built like this:
CAPITULO 1
John´s Pivotal Statement,
Centering on God's Son Jesus Christ,
1:1.4
I) When the structure of this epistle is understood, as we attempt to sketch it in the last part of our introduction, we no longer expect the common ancient form of a letter which has the name of the writer, a designation of the readers, and a greeting. Such a beginning would be incongruous. We also do not say that the heading of the letter was lost, or that John wrote these four verses as a substitute for it. Preamble, exordium, preface, and the like are also terms that do not fit these four verses. They constitute no less than John's basic, pivotal statement on which he builds the thoughts of the epistle in ever-widening circles. Verses 1-4 are the first, the essential, the concentrated piece of the whole.
That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that •which we have seen with our eyes, that which we did behold and our hands did handle concerning the Logos of the Life — and the Life was manifested, and we have seen and are bearing testimony and are declaring to you the Life, the eternal one, who as such was with the Father and was manifested to us — that which we have seen and have heard we are declaring also to you in order that you, too, may have fellowship with us, and this fellowship, moreover, of ours is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ; and these things we on our part are writing in order that our joy may be as having been filled full. All this is thetical, positive: the deity of Jesus Christ, the Logos who was with the Father before time began, he being the Life who was manifested in time; him the apostles heard, saw, beheld, touched with their hands, they were the direct witnesses who testify, declare, write all this in order to have also John's present readers in the fellowship with them, this fellowship with the Father and his Son, to the joy of John and the other witnesses. Yet a cutting edge against a terrible negation underlies every word. Cerinthus and his supporters are not witnesses, have heard, seen, beheld, touched nothing; deny the deity of Jesus, the Life eternal; destroy the fellowship of the believers with the Father and his Son; contradict what the apostles testify, declare, write, and attempt to turn their joy into grief. Read historically with the eyes of the first readers, the full significance of every line appears. Every repetition is freighted with power. All the clauses combine in a mighty basic unit that is impressive, convincing, uplifting, encouraging the readers to stand solid in the divine fellowship against any little antichrist who may have appeared (2:18). The voice is that of John; it is the same voice that testifies in the Fourth Gospel. The simplest words convey the deepest, the loftiest thoughts. Kai' is the great, simple connective. This prologue involuntarily recalls the greater one found in the Gospel. Why the five neuters (the fifth occurs in v. 3): o, "that which"? Besser has given the correct answer: That which was from the beginning was He, the Logos of the Life, God's Son Jesus Christ; that which we have heard, seen, beheld, handled was He. The neuter conveys more than the masculine would, namely in addition to the person all that this person was and is and ever will be for us. Throughout these neuter relative clauses speak of the person plus the grace, the power, the salvation, etc., that are conveyed to us by this person. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from what he was and is for us. Both belong together like the sun and its glorious light. The theme of this letter is the same as that of the Gospel: the eternal Son incarnate for our life and salvation to the confounding of all antichrists. Like scores of such phrases in the Greek cur' ap^tj-s needs no article. This is the same "beginning" as that mentioned in Gen. 1:1 and John 1:1. In Gen. 1:1 "in the beginning" marks the moment when time began for the acts of creation that followed; in John 1:1 "in the beginning" marks the same moment but in order to tell us that already at that time the Logos was. "From the beginning" looks forward from that moment to all time that follows; but the verb ^r (it is not "became," eyevero, and not "has been") leaves all eternity open to "that which" already then "was." John looks forward from the beginning because he would call attention to the point that the Logos of the Life existed long, long before his manifestation in the fulness of time. The four neuter relatives are identical: "that which was in the beginning" is "that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we did behold and our hands handled." All four are made plain by the added phrase vept rov Aoyov Tri<s Zwrjv and the parenthetical, elucidative statement that follows. John does not use the simple accusative rov Aoyov ttj's Zonys, for this could mean "the Word of life" or the gospel as preached and taught. He uses wept, "concerning," which excludes such a meaning, no one preaches concerning the Scripture Word but preaches that Word itself. What the apostles heard, saw, beheld, handled was the personal Word, the person who is "the Logos of the Life." How they were able to do this verse 2 tells us twice: He was manifested, he was incarnated, the Logos became flesh and tented among us, and so we beheld his glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Thus we object to the introduction of various objects: we have heard the words of Christ; we have seen with our eyes the miracles of Christ; we have beheld the glory of Christ; our hands handled the resurrection body of Christ. John's verbs have one object: "that which," and they do not divide this. This object is made clear by the phrase "concerning the Logos of the Life." We do not reduce this to mean the gospel or anything less than the Logos himself in his whole manifestation. The genitive in "the Logos of the Life" is appositional. "In him was life," John 1:4. "This is the true God and eternal life," I John 5:20. "I am ... the life," John 14:6; "the resurrection and the life," 11:25. Absolutely and in himself he is "the Logos of the Life" (John 5:26). This "Life" is not a mere idea, an abstraction such as we get by induction or deduction when we study living creatures. It is the divine essence itself in its personality and its activity. Yet "the Logos became flesh" (John 1:14), "the life was manifested," in the fulness of time the Son was born of a woman (Gal. 4:4, 5). The Logos of the Life became "the Bread of life" so that those who receive him shall not hunger, those who believe on him shall not thirst (John 6:35) ; it likewise became "the Light of life," that whosoever follows him shall not walk in darkness (John 8:12). "Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live through him" (4:9). "The Life" is repeated three times: 'o Aoyos rfjv Zco^? — ^ Zwi'i — njv Zw^v r^v Alwvwv, emphasizing the term, re-emphasizing it; for he who is "the Life" eternal and in eternity was manifested as the Bearer of life to us who were dead in our sins. John alone uses the term Logos; he uses it here, later in his Gospel, and in Rev. 19:13. This is the second person of the Godhead who is called "the Word" because he is the complete and final Revelator of the will and the thought of God. Rev. 19:11: "Faithful and true," v. 13: "and his name is called The Logos of God." He is the "Amen, the faithful and true Witness" in Rev. 3:14. See further on John 1:1 and note that John did not borrow "Logos" from Philo, that the idea expressed by this name is found throughout the Old Testament. Like other titles of the Savior, the instructed church has always understood this one, for she is taught about the Savior. The four asyndetic clauses with which John begins are most impressive. Four is the number of common rhetorical completeness. This is complete testimony; testimony that offers the completest assurance for the readers; testimony that stands for the truth and against any and all contradiction of that truth. The plurals "we" refer to the apostles; they are not editorial plurals that refer to John alone. The witness of one man is not accepted in court; there must be at least two, preferably three witnesses (Matt. 18:16; Deut. 17:6; 19:15; John 18:17, 18). Jesus himself follows this principle; in John 5:31-39 he appeals to two other witnesses besides himself. II Cor. 13:1; Heb. 10:28; Matt. 26:60. John here appeals to at least twelve witnesses. In I Cor. 15:5-8 Paul appeals to more than five hundred to establish the resurrection of Jesus. The facts are incontrovertible. The four statements are cumulative, the evidence is piled up mountain-high. Each added verb says more than the one that precedes it; the four progress, form a climax. To see is more than to hear; to behold more than to see; to handle more than to behold. Four direct contacts constitute these witnesses as true and competent witnesses. Any one of these contacts would be sufficient to make one a witness; the four contacts are exhaustive. Ears, eyes, hands, all were employed. John has two perfects and two aorists. The perfects convey the thought that what "we have heard," what"we have seen," has its continuous effect on us. John's Gospel uses a number of such significant perfects. Beside them John places two decisive aorists of fact: "we did actually behold," "we did actually handle." As the perfects stress the continuing effect, so the aorists stress the actuality. John wants both just as he uses four clauses. The second and the fourth verb have additions. "We have seen with our eyes," i. e., with our own eyes; "our hands did handle," i. e., our own hands actually did so. These additions are placed chiastically. Seeing and beholding are not the same. What these witnesses saw they examined with all care at close range in order to see fully so that their eyes should in no way deceive them; thus they actually beheld. Their eyes were not enough, they used their hands to substantiate the experience of their ears and their eyes; they actually touched and handled. In John 1:14 all this is summed up: "we beheld his glory," etc. Among other passages that deserve notice are John 2:11; 6:68; 20:27, 29; Luke 24:39; Acts 10:41. Can Cerinthus or can any of the antichrists (2:18) offer counterwitness? What have they heard, seen, beheld, handled? Nothing. They have absolutely nothing to offer but their own imaginations and delusions. That is true to this day with regard to all who deny the deity of Jesus, the efficacy of his blood for our sins, etc. The case is plain even for people who have only common sense and ordinary judgment: on the one side, competent witnesses in solid array — on the other, no witnesses at all, nothing but perverted men who with brazen boldness contradict the completest testimony. John gives them the right name in 2:22 as he does in 2:10 and 4:20.
2) John adds a parenthesis that is introduced by icai; he might have used a subordinate clause with yap. John chooses to coordinate, it is his method of expressing his thought, which is at once simple and direct. "And" makes the statement an independent statement, which is the more effective: "and the Life was manifested," the aorist states the past fact. "The Life" is "the Logos of the Life" who is now named more briefly as he is in John 1:4b and in 14:6. The verb includes the whole manifestation from the incarnation to the ascension but especially from the baptism until the ascension, the time when the apostles beheld his glory (John 1:14).
For the second time John says "and we have seen" and lets this one verb suffice; he uses the perfect to indicate the extent of their seeing the manifestation. But John now adds "and we are testifying and declaring to you the Life, the eternal one." The object is to be construed with all three "we" verbs. Not for themselves alone have they seen, but they have seen as witnesses who are ever to testify and to declare what they have seen. "You shall be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth," Acts 1:8. We do not know whether any of the other apostles were still living when John wrote this letter; but like Abel, though dead, they still testify (Heb. 11:4) ; they do so to this day. In v. 4 John adds "we write these things" and shows in what form his readers have the apostolic testimony and declaration. For the third time John names the Logos, and now he designates him as "the Life, the eternal one." It is true that elsewhere C«4 awvuxs means "the life eternal," either the life which we now have (John 3:15, 16, but minus the article) or the glorious life which we shall have (Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30). Here both "the Life" and "the Life, the eternal one," have the article of previous reference which refers back to "the Logos of the Life." Still more decisive is the relative clause "who as such was with the Father," yis is qualitative. The feminine gender is only grammatical; the predication is that of a person, and hence we translate "who." John names the Son once more; he adds "eternal" because he wants us to understand that Christ the Life was a person whose distinctive quality it is that he was with the Father even in all eternity. We have vpov tov TIdTepa; in John 1:1 it is irpos tov Oeov. Our English "with" conveys the idea of irpo-s rather inadequately. R. 623 calls it the "face-to-face" preposition and in 625 adds that it is employed for living relationship, intimate converse. We take this in the highest sense. It is not predicable of angels or of saints but of deity, of the Son alone. In all eternity the Son asarkos, who was to be manifested and was manifested in the fulness of time ensarkos, was with his Father, was with God. In both the Epistle and the Gospel John puts this infinite fact into the simplest words. Only an inspired mind could do this. Speculative minds attempt to say more but fail and say less and thus what to that extent is not true. John says once more: "And he was manifested to us," the apostles. But the full light now falls upon the simple statement: he who was with the Father, in interpersonal communion with the Father in all eternity, he "the Life," "the Life, the eternal one," was manifested to us, became flesh, tented among us, allowed us to behold his divine glory (John 1:14). John again has the simple xai', which indicates only the juxtaposition of the two statements, but for this reason they are clear as crystal. Like Cerinthus, all deniera of the full deity of Jesus will reject what John declares.
3) Fault should not be found with John's construction. The parenthetical statement (v. 2) is essential and is also lucid; John even continues as he began in verse 1: "that which we have seen and have heard," the continuity being smooth and unbroken. But this relative clause is not a mere repetition of the clauses of verse 1 for the sake of emphasis. The repetition is now illuminated by all that verse 2 adds. All that verse 1 conveys is thus revealed in verse 3. Seeing is here placed before hearing because the two verbs "was made manifest" match seeing more directiy-.than they do hearing; even such things do not escape John. Hearing is mentioned for the third time, for it refers to the words and the teachings of Jesus which are supreme in his entire manifestation. John says once more, "We are declaring," but he now adds not merely "to you" but "also to you." This might mean that the apostles declare their entire testimony to many others and thus also to the many readers for whom this letter is intended, which fact is entirely true. Yet from the next clause: "in order that you, too, may have fellowship with us," we see that John is not thinking of his readers and of other Christians but of his readers in relation to the apostles. "Also to you" means that you may have what we apostles have. "We are declaring" should be left as comprehensive as it is; it includes this letter as well as all oral preaching. This does not mean that all of the twelve apostles in person now or at any previous time preached the Logos of the Life to the readers of John's letter. "To declare," a-irayye\\m == melden (G. K. 65) and in verse 2 is paired with witnessing. How the testimony of the apostles reached and reaches John's readers, whether by actually hearing one or more of them, by reading their written testimony, or by having it told them as apostolic testimony by other men, is entirely immaterial. It is unwarranted to say that the testimony was one although its form was now Pauline, now Petrine, now Johannine. John does not say "in order that you, too, may know what we apostles know"; he advances at once to the blessed effect of the testimony: "in order that you may have fellowship with us" (John loves /tera). The present subjunctive "may have" is as comprehensive as is "we are declaring." Whenever and wherever the apostolic testimony is properly declared, its purpose is always fellowship with the apostles. This is also true with regard to all of John's readers. John adds at once: "and this fellowship, moreover, of ours is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ"; Kal adds this, 8e marks it as being another point. The article with "fellowship" is that of previous reference; its repetition with the possessive adjective makes it appositional and emphatic (R. 776), the adjective •fip,ercpa is stronger than a pronoun in the genitive would be: "this fellowship (of which I am speaking), the one that is our own," i. e., that of us apostles. John does not say that the fellowship of the apostles "may be" with the Father, etc., but that it is. Since the copula is omitted, the assertion is made more terse. Why does John not say at once 'that you, too, may be having fellowship with the Father and his Son"? Why does he insert the apostles and say with whom their fellowship is to be enjoyed? Because of the antichrists, Cerinthus and his separatist following. In the first advanced circle of thought (v. 5-10), in v. 6, 7 the true fellowship is set over against the false claim of fellowship with God. Cerinthus repudiated the testimony of the apostles regarding the Logos and the efficacy of his blood and thus scorned fellowship with John and with any of the apostles. Cerinthus claimed fellowship with God without the cleansing blood of Jesus, in his estimation only a man died on the cross. That is why John introduces the fellowship already here. Our own fellowship as witnesses of the Logos incarnate is most emphatically "with the Bather," that father with whom the Life, the eternal one, was in all eternity, "and with his Son Jesus Christ," pointedly calling "Jesus Christ" the Father's Son, he being the one manifested here on earth to the apostle witnesses. The fellowship of the apostles is not with God alone but with both the Father and the Son. There is no other fellowship; all claim to the contrary is false. Apart from Jesus Christ no man is in fellowship with God. Thus only those who have fellowship with the apostles have fellowship with God and with his Son, and that Son is "Jesus Christ" in his whole manifestation, also on the cross, in his cleansing blood (v. 7), in his expiation for sins (2:2), in his coming in connection with blood (5:5). Throughout the past centuries even as today those who reject the testimony of the apostles have no fellowship with them, have no fellowship with the Father and with his Son, who is none other than Jesus Christ. Although they may preach God and fellowship with God as much as they please they are antichrists (4:3) and deny the Father as well as the Son. "Everyone denying the Son, neither has the Father" (2:23), may he claim what he will. "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God" (4:15), which alone is fellowship with God. All this is basic for the entire epistle and thus appears in John's basic statement (v. 1-4).
4) Kai' adds the last thought: "and these things we on our part are writing in order that our joy may be as having been filled full." Misunderstanding scribes altered the text. They thought that John should say: "These things we are writing to you in order that your joy may be full" (A. V.). Grammars like B.-D. 280 and R. 406, 678 support this thought by asserting that ypd(f>oiJxv is the literary plural. This has "we are writing" == "I am writing" in 2:1. It has John speak of what he is writing right now; some say that he has in mind only these four verses. In one sentence there are no less than eleven "we" verbs, to say nothing of the "we" and "our" pronouns, and now one of these "we" forms is to be regarded as editorial for "I." This does not seem likely.
"These things we are writing," Zahn rightly says, includes the entire New Testament literature, especially that which was written directly by the apostolic witnesses but also that which is based on their witness, the literature to which John is now contributing this letter and will contribute his Gospel and his Revelation. "We are writing these things" expounds "we are testifying and declaring to you"; for the readers of John much of this testimony of the apostles is in the form of writing. How many apostles they heard orally is immaterial. It was the calling of the Twelve "to disciple all nations," and that included also the nations of all future ages. The promise made in Matt. 28:20 extends far, far beyond the lifetime of the Twelve. They are discipling the nations now by these writings. We who now believe their testimony and their writings are in their fellowship, which is the fellowship with God and with his Son Jesus Christ. The purpose the apostles have in doing this writing is "that our joy may be as having been filled full." The perfect passive participle is not a part of a periphrastic tense but the predicate of the copula (it is used like an adjective). In the case of John this is the same joy that he speaks about in III John 4: Greater joy I do not have than these things, that I keep hearing my own children walking in the truth." So Jesus said: "My food is that I do the will of him that did send me, and that I finish his work," John 4:34. Paul exclaims: "Woe is to me if I do not evangelize!" I Cor. 9:16. The writing of the apostles, like their oral speaking, could not be in vain. The cup of their joy is, indeed, "as having been filled full" to the brim, all antichristian opposition notwithstanding.
The First Circle of Facts,
Centering on the Fellowship with God,
1:5-2:2
5) On the structure of John's letter see the introduction. From the basic statement (v. 1-4) John advances to the fellowship as his first expansion. The sum and substance of true religion is fellowship with God. Hence any number of men claim to have such fellowship, in particular the heretics who deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that his blood alone places us into and maintains us in fellowship with God. That is true to this day. John's encyclical rightly lays the circle of facts centering on fellowship with God upon the great fact that Jesus Christ is the Logos of the Life, the Son of God, to which fact the apostles are witnesses. The presentation is simple, clear as crystal, complete as a unit. John ranges the facts that are pertinent to fellowship with God together so that the readers may at once see that they are truly in this essential fellowship and may also note who is and who is not in it. The presentation of this group of facts is an assurance to the readers and at the same time strikes at the liars who deny the deity of Jesus and the power of his blood. And this is the report which we have heard from him and are reporting back to you, that God is light, and in him there is not a single (bit) of darkness. Jesus Christ, God's Son, revealed God to the apostles. Here belong John 1:18, and Heb. 1:1-3. In the Old Testament, God revealed himself through the prophets; but the fullest, completest revelation came through his own Son. The feature of this revelation that is pertinent to John's present purpose is the truth that God is light without even a trace of darkness. This is the great fact with reference to God which must be noted when fellowship between sinners like ourselves and God is considered. This fact regarding God is revealed already in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in its finality by God's own Son who "was with the Father" (v. 2), "who is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18). The most terrible delusion results when this fact regarding God is in any way ignored when we consider our fellowship, our Kowwvia or communion with God. To think that we can remain in darkness and yet be in fellowship with him, in whom there is no darkness whatever, is the height of delusion, the saddest contradiction. It is elementary, axiomatic: "What communion has light with darkness?" II Cor. 6:14; John 3:19-21. John connects this statement with the preceding one by means of a simple "and." We consider at the same time the two dwayyeAAa) used in v. 2, 3 and the dvayye^Ato and dyyeXi'a occurring in this verse. The second verb occurs also in John 16:14, 15. Add ayyeAos to this group. G. K. would also add euayyeA.ior, which is, however, a specific term for "good report or message." We may translate the noun "report" or "message." The first verb, which is compounded with diro', indicates that the reporting comes "from" the reporters (who are witnesses, v. 2, 3); the verb that is compounded with dm states that they report "back" to others what they have received (C.-K. 25). John uses the perfect "we have heard" for the third time, and the tense again indicates the lasting effect. "From him" must mean from his Son Jesus Christ (v. 3). This would be in accordance with the verbs that are used in verse 1 and with the two other "we have heard." "From him" presents the final and the absolute source of all information. The present "we are reporting back to you" is identical with the present tenses used in v. 2, 3, plus "we are writing" in v. 4, and refers to all the reporting of all the apostles throughout their apostleship. "This is the report which," etc., emphasizes the specific fact mentioned in the appositional clause "that God is light, and darkness in him there is not one," i. e., not a single bit; the double negative is very strong in the Greek. The anarthrous predicate "light" is qualitative. Some reduce its meaning to "warmth, health, sight," or to the fact that God can be known; others call it ethical light. Light, life, love, etc., are attributes of God; and every attribute of God is only the very being and essence of God viewed from one angle because our finite minds cannot take in the whole of God with one mental grasp. The scriptures condescend to our weak ability and speak now of one, now of another side of God's infinite being, yet they never divide him. Nevertheless, every attribute is infinite and incomprehensible to finite conception. Try as we may to understand even a single revelation of God's being, the reality towers above our comprehension. We can but bow in the dust, worship, and adore. Aspiring minds strive to know more but do so vainly and with great danger to themselves. The very works of God such as creation and providence and the giving of his only-begotten Son are incomprehensible; how much more God himself! A God that is not infinitely above finite comprehension is not God. To reduce God to the range of finite thought is to produce a mental idol. The very being of God is absolute light. This is one of God's transitive attributes like his omnipotence and his love, which ever reach out from God and do not merely rest quiescently in him. Neither "light" nor "darkness" are figurative; all physical light and darkness are trivial compared with what is here said about God. John does not define "light" when he attributes it to God; nor can we furnish an adequate definition. Christ is called "the light of the world," which means the saving light that delivers us from the darkness. We are to be light and the children of light, to love and to walk in the light, to hate and to keep from the darkness. From these effects in us and from the terms which John uses with reference to us we may grope upward a little in order partially to understand what God is as light. In v. 6 and 8 John uses "truth," aA^eia, reality. Compare John 3:21. We have also the opposite word "liar" (v. 10). God is true. God is truth; and this helps us a little to grasp the thought that he is light. John says in v. 9 that God is "faithful and righteous." When he is speaking of us John uses "unrighteousness" in v. 9. Light in God, we thus venture to add, is righteousness, holiness in the absolute sense. The whole revelation of God in the Word, in particular all that his Son has revealed of him, show him as light in the sense of truth, righteousness (holiness). The placing of the negative statement beside the positive always emphasizes. It does so here in the strongest way, especially by adding ovScp.ia in the emphatic position at the end; there is absolutely no darkness in God, not even one small shadow that might dim his truth, righteousness, and holiness.
6) Since this matter about the very being of God was revealed to the apostles by the Son of God himself, and since this was conveyed to us by these witnesses, it follows inevitably in regard to communion with God: If we say that we are having fellowship with him and are walking in the darkness we are lying and are not doing the truth; but if we are walking in the light as he is in the light we do have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. John has six cav clauses, three of them with the aorist uvwfuw'. "if we actually say." The "we" is now broader than it was in v. 1-5 where there is a contrast between the apostles and John's readers: "we — you." In v. 6-10 "we" == John's readers plus himself or any apostle; he no longer has a contrasting "you." John might have said "if anyone," indefinite and general (he does this in 2:1); by saying "we" he becomes definite and general only as far as true Christians are concerned; he would not include the antichristians (2:18) in this "we." If John had used ei with the indicative he would have stated a reality and would have left a wrong impression; by the use of edv in both the negative and the positive statements the conditional clauses are made vivid. In the apodoses John uses present tenses and not futures (as is done in common cases of expectancy). John is not speaking abstractly and theoretically when he says; "If we say that we are having fellowship with him (who is absolute light) and are walking in the darkness," for, although no apostle and none of John's readers make such a preposterous, self-contradictory claim, Cerinthus and his following did claim this very thing. This is often regarded as a reference to ethics, walking in all manner of sins, but the apodosis says: then "we are lying and are not doing the truth."
"Are not doing the truth" is more than an emphasis on "we are lying." Not to do the truth is not to have it, for no one does it without having it in his heart; and not doing it is evidence that the heart is without the truth because of blank ignorance or because of hostility such as that of Cerinthus and his followers. Both "the darkness" and "the truth" are definite. In v. 5 and again in 2:8-11 (five times) John has aKoria', we note that this is in opposition to "light" (v. 5, 8). In v. 6 John uses o-icoros as an opposition to "truth." We may call this a slight difference, the point that remains is the fact that ro owmx; is often used as though "the darkness" is a power ("your hour and the power of the darkness"), the devil's power of error, deceit, lie. To walk in this darkness is to believe and to hold to the lie, to reject and to fight the saving truth, to hate this light (John 3:20), to make God, the light, a liar (v. 10). The walk or conduct shows this clinging to the lie just as does not doing the truth, i. e., what the saving gospel truth tells us. Ethics are included, but John has in mind first of all doctrine and faith, here false doctrine as opposed to the true. The whole claim to fellowship with God is a lying. John minces no words. Our modern considerateness toward heresies and heretics is unscriptural and dangerous. 7) On the other hand (Se), if we keep walking in the light (believing and doing the gospel truth) as he is in the light (God who is light in his very being) then we do have fellowship with one another, namely in our mutual fellowship with God. This is more than the simple opposite of verse 6. This is no mere claim to fellowship. This is more than a claim, this is fact: "we do have fellowship." Those who have no fellowship with God are the ones who are most apt to set up he claim to have it; those who have the divine fellowship need not make a claim to it. This is not: "We do have fellowship with him," but more: "We do have fellowship with one another." John adds the condition "if we are walking in the light"; the notation "as he (God) is in the light" thus places God and us in the light, which is certainly the true fellowship with him. John does not forget that in verse 3 he speaks of the fellowship which his readers have with us, the apostles, who are the chosen witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus, the Son of the Father, and of all that he is.
He now adds to this: all who are walking in the light as God is in the light (and are thus in fact having fellowship with God) by that very fact have fellowship with one another; their fellowship with God makes them one body, the Una, Sancta, "the communion of saints" (Apostolic Creed). "In the light" is the bond of union between God and us. To call this merely ethical overlooks the fact that "the light" is more; it is certainly "the truth." To walk in the light is above all to believe the light, the truth, and then also to obey it in word and in deed. What is in the soul will become manifest in the conduct; this is not a mere claim that contradicts open evidence. When John says in verse 5: "God is light," and now: "He is in the light," there is perfect harmony
between these two statements. For light shines forth. Whoever is light is eo ipso in that light. The sun is light and is in light. Jesus says of his disciples: "You are the light of the world," Matt. 5:14. It is the same light, the essence and the very attribute of God who shined in our hearts for enlightenment of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, II Cor. 4:6. Here we again have the strongest exclusion: none who are in the darkness, who only lie by claiming fellowship with God, are in the fellowship with us; they are without. John makes this so strong that he says we ourselves would be outside, mere liars, if we did not walk in the light. We observe that in the New Testament the word Kowwia is used only in a good or sacred sense and is not used with reference to evil and to those outside. John does not speak of a "communion" of those who walk in darkness, who lie and do not the truth. But are all of us not sinners; do our sins not separate us from God? What about this fact with reference to all that John says about our being in the light and having fellowship or communion with God? Here there lies the great gulf that separates us from all these liars. "And the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin!" It is John's way of writing to state his great truth with "and." This is the very truth that those earliest Gnostics denied. In their speculation the Logos did not become flesh; the Spirit or Logos ("the eon Christ" as they worded it) who descended upon Jesus left him before his passion; the "Christ" ("the eon Christ") was impassibilis, could not suffer, which was a sort of Docetism. This heresy claimed a fellowship or communion without the sacrificial and cleansing blood of "Jesus, his (God's) Son." This is the claim of all those who today scorn "the old blood theology."
"The blood" is more specific than "the death" would be, for "the blood" denotes sacrifice. It is always the blood that is shed. The Lamb of God shed his blood in expiation. He is the expiation for our sins, moreover not for ours only, but also for the whole world (2:2). It is the blood "of Jesus, his Son," of Jesus as a man who had the human nature and thus also blood but who is "his Son" (v. 2, 3), the Logos of the Life (v. 1), the second person of the Deity, who became flesh (John 1:14), whose blood, when shed, has the power to cleanse us from all sin. It is said that na.Oapit.w does not have the same force as aif>i£vai which is used in verse 9, which is partially correct. The Son's blood "cleanses us from all sin" because all sin is filth. Rev. 1:5: he "washed us from our sins in his blood"; compare Acts 15:9; Eph. 5:26; Titus 2:14 on this cleansing. "To send away the sins" (v. 9) has reference to their guilt, to removing the sins with all their guilt as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12; Isa. 43:25; 44:22; Micah 7:19). Both acts are the same in substance. They denote the sinner's justification; but "from all sin" ("all" and "every" amount to the same thing with abstract nouns, R. 772) indicates that constant justification is referred to, including the fact that our sins are daily and richly pardoned. Some would make this cleansing the sanctifying which prevents our sinning; others want this included. If our fellowship with God must wait until we are no longer sinners, then John himself was still outside of the fellowship according to his own confession (v. 8). The blood of God's Son does sanctify us and counteract our sinning, but it establishes and maintains our fellowship with the all-holy God of light by removing all our filthy, abominable, damnable guilt. The holy and precious blood of Christ alone brings us poor sinners into fellowship with God and keeps us there. Here belong all those passages that speak of "the blood," which deserve a fuller treatment by some competent hand.
8) To claim fellowship, saving connection, with God without the cleansing of the blod of his Son is possible only when sin is abolished and there is no need of this blood of the Son. From what Irenseus (I, 6, 20) says about Cerinthus and the early Gnostics one may gather that by reason of a so-called "spiritual sense" in them, a special superior "spiritual knowledge" (gnosis), they claimed to do as they pleased without being contaminated by sin. Some went so far as to extol persons like Cain, Korah, and Judas and to regard them as being gifted with superior freedom of thought and with intrepidity of action. They also claimed that, since the soul attains perfection only by "knowledge" (gnosis), it was actually requisite to do all manner of evil so as to attain perfection. Since John's time sin has been abolished also in various other ways. The sinfulness of sin is denied. It is regarded as a natural, transitional stage in human development and is thus really not sin. Or man is really good, and what is called sin is a slight, negligible thing in the sight of God. At most, sin needs no expiation, the wrath of God is called a fiction. The idea of sin is reduced to a mistake of the mortal mind, and it should be recognized as a mere mistake on our part. Finally, the perfectionists and holiness people lay aside the Lord's Prayer with its petition: "Forgive us our trespasses." They claim that they have no sins to be cleansed away. Thus John adds this second statement as a parallel to v. 6: If we say that we do not have sin we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. The force of the tenses is the same as it was in verse 6: the aorist denotes the actual claim, the present indicates what we are doing to ourselves and what is not in us. The claim is "that we do not have sin." We see little difference between this and verse 10: "that we have not been sinning." This latter statement reaches back from the present into the past and denotes the sinning while verse 8 speaks of sin. The claim that we do not have "sin" means "such a thing as sin," and not having such a thing means that nothing of the nature of sin clings to us to stain us as filth or to blacken us as guilt so that we need cleansing or removal. It is debated as to whether John includes original sin or speaks only of actual sin as though actual sins were ever committed by us except as outgrowths of the depravity that is inherent in us. In verse 6 John says: "We are lying and are not doing the truth"; he now states it in stronger terms: "We are deceiving our own selves," i. e., are making our own selves the victims of our lying, are not only not doing the truth but are wholly devoid of it, "the truth is not in us." This is the same a\ij6eia that was mentioned in v. 6, the saving gospel truth or reality,
the light that delivers from the darkness. When "the truth" is not in us, we are not by any means empty but are full of fictions, fables, myths, self-made fancies, notions that are not so. Already those early heretics called these things gnosis, already in First Corinthians Paul opposed such gnosis which paraded as "wisdom." No advance has been made, today the word that is used is merely a Latin instead of a Greek word: "science," "scientific religion." Professing to be wise, they became fools. The greatest fools are those who deceive their own selves. Note that the "we" used in v. 8-10 includes John himself. This great apostle here confesses himself a sinner, says that his sins are remitted by God, cleansed away by the blood of Jesus, the Son of God. Perfectionism receives its mortal blow here. Paul delivers another blow in Phil. 3:12-14; James 3:la does the same.
9) If we keep confessing our sins, faithful is he and righteous to remit to us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is what "doing the truth" when "the truth is in us" means: we shall ever confess our sins, admit, acknowledge them to God. Note the present, iterative subjunctive. John does not say how, when, where we do this confessing. To restrict it to private confession or, on the other hand,
to public confession in the servics of the congregation is unwarranted. John now uses the plural "our sins," which only spreads out the details that are included in the preceding singular. "Our sins" are not restricted to our conscious sins. Ps. 19:12; 90:8. True Christians want and obtain remission of all their sin and of all their sins.
"Faithful is he and righteous" refers to God. John has just mentioned "his Son" and the fellowship effected by the blood of his Son and the fact that the remission of our sins is fellowship with God. "Faithful" means true to his promise, and this is placed first; "and righteous" with its forensic sense as it is here added to "faithful" and its connotation of promise states that, when he acquits us according to his promise, God, our Judge, is and remains "righteous." John expresses the same truth that Paul writes about in Rom. 3:26. The God who is light acts as a faithful and righteous Judge when he acquits us and remits our sins for the sake of Christ. Our acquittal is not an act of partiality and favoritism for which God can be charged with injustice. He is as righteous and just when he is acquitting the confessing believer for the sake of Christ's blood as when he is damning the nonconfessing rejector of Christ's blood. In every verdict of God on men there is involved a verdict on God himself. How Catholics can make "faithful" refer to peccata mortalia and "righteous" to pecoata venalia is difficult for us to understand. The charge of injustice is frequently raised when God damns some sinners and acquits other sinners. The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, (Rom. 3:24, 25, the ransoming of Christ and our faith in Christ's blood) nullifies this charge and makes it recoil upon the heads of those who bring it. When they at last face this Judge they and the entire universe will be compelled to glorify all his acquittals as being absolutely righteous and just. John states this truth for the sake of the fullest assurance of his readers against all false argumentation of the liars who scorn the blood of God's Son.
Our versions are more correct in translating the Iva clause with a dependent infinitive than is R. 961, 998 who regards it as a clause of result. In the Koine wo. crowded out many infinitives. We translate "faithful and righteous to remit to us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" by this remission. The aorists indicate actuality; we may call them effective. In verse 7 we have only "cleanses"; "righteous" adds the idea of the Judge, and thus "to remit" is added to the cleansing and explains that the remission effects the cleansing. We have already explained o^ieroi in connection with "cleanses" in verse 7. This is the o^eow which shines forth so gloriously in all of Scripture. Our English "to forgive" and "forgiveness" are inadequate translations. The sins "are sent away" as far as the east is from the west—do you know where the one begins and the other ends ? To the depth of the sea there are still unmeasured depths. Sent away as a cloud is dissolved, never to appear again. When the sinner thus has his sins sent away from him he is, indeed, cleansed from all unrighteousness, from even the least shadow of it. "All unrighteousness" is the correct term, for the least "unrighteousness" would compel the "righteous" God to pronounce the verdict of damnation upon us. But forget not the blood of Jesus, God's Son, nor the fact that we confess our sins, trust in that blood, and in this trust lay all our sins before the Judge.
To "all sin" (the mass) and "our sins" (the multitude) there is now added "all unrighteousness" as characterizing sin and sins: anything contradicting the divine norm of right; the abstract noun is not to be restricted to actual sins. To be cleansed so com- pletely of all unrighteousness is to be declared righteous by the righteous Judge, is to be admitted to fellowship with God who is light. No man who is not so cleansed is in this fellowship, may he claim what he will.
10) As v. 9 amplifies v. 6, 7, so v. 10 amplifies V. 8: If we say that we have not been sinning, a liar are we making him, and his Word is not in us. The claim "not to have sin" is the same as the claim "not to have been sinning." The difference in the form of the verbs is in accord with the difference between the idea of mass in "sin" and the idea of multitude in "our sins." The perfect fiiJi.apTrJKaiicv looks back over the past life that continued up to the present moment and with its negative forms the claim: "We have not been sinning." It thus says in another way: "We do not have sin" (verse 8). The main point lies in the apodosis: "a liar are we making him, and his Word is not in us." The emphasis is on the predicative "a liar" which is placed forward in the sentence. We are doing more than Just lying (v. 6), more than deceiving our own selves by our lying (v. 8). These two statements are incomplete. The worst that we are doing by our false claim is really blasphemous: we are making God a liar! Some interpreters do not seem to feel the terrific impact of this word. If you and I philosophize or theologize our sins away and think that they do not need the blood of Jesus, God's Son, we are making God himself a liar! No less. Let us face this fact! Let it frighten us away from such claims! John continues with "and" although the clause explains: "and his Word is not in us." This Word is called "the truth" in v. 6 and 8 (John 17:17), "the light" in v. 7. This truth and this light are the contents of "his Word," and they come to us in "his Word." We do not reduce this word to a reference to the gospel, to only the Old Testament, or to those parts of the New Testament that John's readers had. The whole Word of God declares that we are sinners. It says so in a large number of places. From beginning to end it deals with us as with sinners. Its history, its law, its gospel present sinners, sinners: lost sinners, ransomed sinners, saved sinners, damned sinners, glorified sinners. To have God's Word "in us" is to have received it in the heart, to hold it in faith, to be governed by it and by all it says to us sinners. It is not in us when we close our hearts to it and believe, hold, follow something else. This is making God a liar. There is a formal acceptance of the Word, but this alone does not place his Word "in us," the truth "in us" (v. 8). What John says about God's Word as such applies to any part of it when this is rejected. To that degree it is not "in us," to that degree we make God a liar. God will be the Judge as to whether this is done in ignorance (vincible or invincible ignorance), from wrong motives (well or ill-meant motives), or wilfully, wickedly. Our generation condones a rejection of parts of the Word (the truth); it needs John to tell it what this really means so that none may deceive their own selves (verse 8) and others.
CAPITULO 2
2:1) Because John has the address, "my little children," our versions and others think that a new line of thought begins at this point; the new line of thought begins with verse 3. My little children, these things I am writing to you so that you may not sin. The endearing address (only in this verse does it have the additional "my") seems natural when John tells his readers that he is writing these things about sin to them so that they may not sin. Jesus used reicvia,"little children" (diminutive) in John 13:33; John uses it seven times, but it is an address that is befitting his great age and his long attachment to his readers, to whom he has ever been a kindly father. "These things" are not the ones that follow but those that precede as the purpose clause, "that you may not sin," shows. The fact that "I am writing" is not the same as the "we are writing" occurring in 1:4 we have explained in our interpretation of 1:4. Two false deductions might be made from 1:8-10:1) since no Christian can ever say that he no longer sins he might think that there is no use to strive against sin (sloth, indifference, carelessness) since remission is so easy, let God remit a few more sins to us (presumption, false security in sin). Either conclusion or both would be a sorry mistake. The readers must not disregard 1:5-7, the fact that we have fellowship wifh God who is light when we walk in the light even as he is in the light, and that then alone the blood of Jesus, God's Son, keeps cleansing us from sin, God ever remits these sins. All that John writes has as its purpose that we may not sin. The aorist is summary and effective. To find any type of perfectionism in the tense runs counter to all that John has already said in 1:7-10 as well as to what he now writes. And if anyone sins (second aorist subjunctive, actually does sin), we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ, Righteous; and he is expiation regarding our sins; moreover, not regarding ours only, but also regarding the whole world. John does not say "if we sin," but "if anyone sins," for this act is done by the individual. Yet he continues with the plural; "a Paraclete have we," for "anyone" only individualizes. Anyone of us may sin, none is exempt, wholly immune, and whenever anyone does actually sin, there is ready for all of us this great Paraclete of ours who takes care of all of us in this respect. The best English word for "Paraclete" is probably "Advocate." This word has both a forensic and a common use. Demosthenes uses it to designate the friends of the accused who voluntarily step in and personally urge the judge to decide in his favor. That is the sense of this word here because "with the Father" as well as 1:9 refer to God as the Judge in the case. In John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7, where the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, we have a different case, for the term is there used in the nonforensic, the wider sense of one who comes to our aid. This term does not occur very often in literature; M.-M. 485 finds little in the papyri; Deissmann, Light, etc., 339, etc., finds only the meaning "advocate." Yet the term must have been frequently used in common speech, for the Jews had it in transliteration in both the Hebrew and the Aramaic; Jesus employed it in the latter language. Tlapa.K\rjTo<s is a verbal adjective in form and is used as a noun: "one called to another's side in order to aid him." It is derived from the perfect passive TrapaiceK\ijcr(la.i and not from the present active vapaKaXw and thus does not o irapanaKwv, C. K. 572, etc. In his translation of John's Gospel Luther has rendered this word Troester, which loses the passive sense and conveys only the general idea; here Luther has translated this word Fuersprecher, one who speaks in another's behalf, and it is again nonpassive. On irpos compare 1:2. "Father" is used also there. The case of any sinning Christian lies in the hands of the Father who sent his Son Jesus Christ to save us, and this same Jesus Christ is "face to face with," in the very presence of the Father when our sinning is judged. Jesus spoke of the Spirit as being "another Paraclete" and thereby called himself a paraclete, but he was this in the general sense of the word. Now, since he is with the Father, he acts in the Father's court. It is "Jesus," he who at one time dwelt on earth in lowliness, and "Christ" adds all his official work. Ai'Koior is added qualitatively. See this designation of Christ in Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14 and note that it is also predicated of the Father in 1:9. Both the Judge and the Advocate are "righteous" and thus deal with any sinning Christian's case. "Righteous" or "Righteous One," as here applied to "Jesus Christ," does not refer to his deity but to Jesus as our Savior and Substitute: "a Righteous One suffered in place of unrighteous ones" (I Pet. 3:18). Not because he is merely in and for himself "a Righteous One" does Jesus act as our Advocate; then the fact of God's own being righteous would certainly suffice. Jesus is and can be our Advocate with the righteous Father only because he is "the Righteous One" who was slain for us (Acts 7:52; 3:14), because he "became for us from God righteousness" (I Cor. 1:30).
2) For that reason John adds "and he is expiation regarding our sins," etc., he as the "Righteous One" in the sense just indicated, as having suffered for unrighteous ones. Note "from all unrighteousness" in 1:9. 'l\aa[wi (found only here and in 4:10) means Suehnung, Versuehnung, for which we prefer the translation "expiation" to "propitiation." The abstract is more significant than the concrete iAaonyp, "expiator" ("propitiator"), would be, since, when it is applied o a person, it combines the person with his act and the effect of the act of expiating (C.-K. 521). We prefer "expiation" because of 4:10: in his love God commissioned his Son as expiation regarding our sins. The thought is not that this expiation propitiated, placated God, for he was full of infinite love when he sent his Son; we needed expiation, needed it "regarding our sins," need it regarding them every day when we still sin. The fact that this expiation was brought about by "the blood of Jesus, God's Son," we know from 1:7.
John says that it is effective, "not regarding our sins only, but also regarding the whole world." Because John does not say "regarding the sins of the whole world," the grammarians say that he uses oratio variata (R. 441). John advances the thought from
sins to the whole world of sinners. Christ made expiation for our sins and thereby for all sinners. We understand Koojuos in the light of John 3:16 and think that it includes all men, us among them, and not only all unsaved men. John does not add this "but also" as a matter of information for us regarding other people but as assuring us that, because Christ is expiation (qualitative, without the article; like Sixaior) "in regard to the whole world," we are included. Augustine and the Venerable Bede offer the interpretation that "the whole world" = ecclesia, electorum per totum mundum dispersa, which Calvin seconds: sub "omnibus" reprobos non comprehendit, sed eos designed, qui simul credituri erant et qui per varias mundi plagas dispersi erant. But see II Pet. 2:1: the Lord bought even those who go to hell. "The whole world" includes all men who ever lived or will live. Christ's saving righteousness and expiation are the basis for his action as our Advocate. We have him as an Advocate (one called to our side). John does not say that the whole world has him in this capacity. As our Advocate Christ, our expiation, acts for the remission of our sins (1:9). John does not use the word "intercede" or "intercession" (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). See these passages regarding the intercession.
The Second Circle of Facts,
Centering on the Commandment,
With Two Pertinent Samples,
2:3.17
3) We have explained the exceptional and superior structure of this letter in the introduction. On the basic section that centers in the Logos of the Life, God's Son (1:1-4), John lays the facts that pertain to our fellowship with God through the blood of the Son (1:5-2:2). On this he lays another tier of facts, all of them pertaining to the "commandment" as this is found in the Word (v. 3-8) and expands this by adding illustrative examples, love for the brother in the faith (v. 9-11) and avoidance of love for the world (v. 12-17). This letter is not arranged in blocks that are laid side by side but is built like an inverted cone. John's facts circle upward and outward in a natural inner sequence. Every new circular sweep has its plainly marked center so that every statement is closely integrated. The weave unfolds itself in a perfect paltern and design. Six times "commandment" marks the new expansion in v. 3-9, it is twice used in the plural, to which "his Word" is added in v. 5. The "commandment" is not dismissed at the close of the circle; it is mentioned again in 3:23, 24; in 4:21; and in 5:2, 3. It is a help for understanding the structure to underscore the key words as they are repeated in each circle of facts. From the true fellowship with God', which is mediated to us sinners by the blood of God's Son (1:7) and in spite of our still sinning is preserved to us by our Advocate Christ and his expiation for all our sins, John takes us into the Word,, to the evro\^, "the behest" or commandment which governs our entire fellowship or communion with God and thus also our fellowship with each other (1:7), so that each loves his spiritual brother, and all of us no longer love the world. The light, the truth (1:6-8), which means "his Word" (1:10), must be "in us" (1:8, 10) so that we "do" it (1:6). All this is now expanded. "His commandment" is the new term that is added, but "his Word" which occurs in 2:5 repeats this term from 1:10 as "the light" in opposition to "the darkness" in 2:9-11 repeats this same opposition from 1:5-7. In moving on and up these repetitions tell us that we are only rising and broadening, and that we must remember all that has been presented.
And in connection with this we know that we have known him: if we are keeping his commandments. As in 1:5 k(u introduces us into the first upward circle, so nal again introduces us to the next circle. 'Ev Tovry == "in connection with this"; ev is to be understood in its original sense. This is not instrumental ev (R. 591, etc.). This phrase is not resumptive as R. 700 thinks, does not resume what lies in the preceding; it signifies "in connection with this: if we are keeping," etc. John has this same construction in 5:3; compare also 5:2 which begins with 5ra.v, "when" (B.-D. 394). The "if" clause is an epexegetical apposition. We do not have ol8a, the verb that denotes mere intellectual knowing without effect and affect in the soul of him who thus knows, but ywwvKw which has this effect and affect. "We know that we have known him" (perfect tense: ever since the gospel revealed God to us and thus also now) is a beautiful, telling statement with its repetition Of knowing: yiruxTKO/xev . . . eyvwicafnev. How can we be so certain that we do know God, have known him, are not deceiving our own selves (1:8), are not lying (1:6) when we say that we have known (and do know) God? How do we know that we know I Do others not make the same claim (next verse) with the same positiveness, the same assurance? Have we a better certainty than they? To know God (yivwaKw) is to have true fellowship with him (1:6, 7). See this force of the verb as it is used by Jesus in John 10:14, 15; and the negation in Matt. 7:23; compare John 17:7, 8 where the object is the pri^ara or words of Jesus and what these reveal about the Father and about Jesus. John takes up the question that troubles the mind of so many young people. Is our certainty better than the certainty of men in other religions? Are we Christians merely because we are born into Christian families? If we had been born Jews or Mohammedans would we not feel just as certain and be just as right in feeling that we truly know God? Or is the certainty of the skeptic not as good as the one we claim? Is the whole of religion not a mere subjective matter, unproved, unprovable, especially to a real thinking, scientific mind? Here is the answer. God has revealed himself, has made himself known. Those have known and know him, those know that they have known him, who are keeping his commandments. Read John 17:7, 8. Also Matt. 28:20: "to keep all things whatsoever I did command you" to keep. Tiypeir to keep and to preserve inviolate in the heart so that no one shall take away, alter, falsify, so that what we keep governs us completely. The en-oA.ou are the things that we are bidden to keep. Second Peter 2:21: "to know (emyivwaKw) the Way of the righteousness." Because John uses the word e.vro\ai, some think only of moral commandments such as we have in the Mosaic law. This view leads to uncertainty regarding fellowship with God (true religion). Men claim that without a "blood theology" (1:7), without an expiation (IXaaiwv, :2) they know God, have fellowship with him. Jesus is only a noble example to them. John quotes wroXai and en-oX^ from Jesus' own lips (notably from John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 15:10; Matt. 28:20) ; and just as Jesus does in John 14:23, 24, he identifies these "commandments" with rov Xoyov iwv, with row \6yovs fiov. In v. 5 John says "keep his Word" and in 1:10 "his Word in you." Those who do this, Jesus says, have him and the Father dwelling in them; John says that they have fellowship with God (1:6, 7) and here that they know God. These "commandments" ("words") or the singular this "commandment" ("Word") are "the truth," "the light" mentioned in 1:6-8. See how in John 17:6-8 God's giving, Christ's giving, the disciples' receiving, their knowing, and their keeping "the Word" go together. The substance of this truth, light. Word, words, commandment, commandments consists of all the divine verities regarding God, and they produce actual fellowship with him in which we know him and know that we have known and know him. These verities, which are revealed and then received (John 17:8) by us and kept by us in heart and in life, give us the ultimate certainty so that we know that we have, indeed, known by the light. Only when we leave this light and go back into the darkness will doubt revive and self-deception and lying set in again. The light, the truth, the Word, the commandment (singular or plural) are termed doctrine (II John 9,10) and doctrines when we think of the divine facts revealed to us and are called ethical, moral when we think of the conduct and the life produced in us. They always go together, the one is never without the other; both produce a living certainty in us which grows as strong as our keeping and our clinging to these verities become. All true certainty must have a divine objective bcisis which remains what it is whether any man subjectively rests upon it or not. This basis is what we have: the Word, the light, the truth (or eternal reality, a^Oem), the commandments, etc. Those who lack this divine objective basis have, in whatever they substitute in place of it, only a sham basis, an illusion. Although they cling to it with all their powers, their certainty is also a mere illusion, a nut without a kernel. God brings the divine basis of certainty, his Word, etc., (use all the synonymous terms) to us, and its very nature as aX-qOna or reality produces the knowledge with effect and affect (yivwcricw, cviyvwavi) which constitutes certainty and ever realizes itself as what it is. It is subjective, for it fills the heart, yet it is never to be confounded with other subjective certainties, for its basis is objectively divine, and it ever attests itself as no less, is realized as no less: thus "we know (yivwaKopxv) that we have known (eyvwKaiw)."
4) Since John crushes the first beginnings of Gnosticism (Cerinthus and his following), of those who made a specialty of yvwai's as men today in a different way boast of their "science," their knowing, he adds the issue regarding ywwmew, knowing. The one saying: I have known him! and not keeping his commandments is a liar, and in this one the truth is not; but he whoever keeps his Word, truly in this one the love of God has been brought to its goal. In connection with this we know that we are in him. John varies his expressions. In 1:6, 8, 10 he has written "if we say" (aorist subjunctive) to designate false claims; in 2:1 "if anyone sins." To indicate another false claim he now uses the substantivized participles (present, descriptive) : "the one saying and not keeping" (one article with both participles). The man who claims: "I have known God!" (the action of the perfect continues to the present as it does in v. 3) and does not keep God's commandments is nothing but a plain liar, not merely because his claim and his conduct disagree and contradict each other, his conduct giving the lie to his claim, nor because he just fails to see this and is thus only a sadly mistaken liar—no, far worse, he is a deliberate liar: "in this one the truth is not." This does not mean that he lacks "truthfulness," which would be a mere tautology since every liar lacks truthfulness. The divine truth, light, Word, etc., are not "in this man"; he kept them out of his heart. This truth = God's "commandments," which we have explained in v. 3. He is keeping them in neither his heart nor his life. Through this truth alone we know God truly and thus have fellowship with God. This individual is an awful liar because he claims to know and to be in fellowship with God when his own repudiation of the commandments of God proclaims the fact that the divine truth and Word is not in him, the one and only means of truly knowing and having fellowship with God. We do not reduce the force of this by referring it only to moral commandments, to the law of Moses. We apply what John states not only to those who reject the whole Word of God—Cerinthus accepted certain parts of it, so did the later heretics — but also to those who reject any part of its truth. To the extent of their rejection they are liars, to that extent the truth is not in them. In the words of 1:10: to that extent they make God a liar, and to that extent his Word is not in them. Those portions of the Word, of the truth, which they refuse to accept and to keep they call false, a lie, and thus lyingly they make God a liar. Is this language too severe for modern delicate ears? It is John's language which he learned from Jesus who had it from God.
5) On the other hand (8e), he whoever keeps his Word, Ss aw (a still different formulation), in this one the love of God has truly been brought to its goal. How so? By his love God has brought him truly to know his God, truly to have fellowship with his God. The perfect tense is the same as that found in v. 3 and 4. The fact that John uses the word "whoever" does not imply that the perfect used in this verse is gnomic (R. 897). TeAetoo) = to bring to a goal. We know what that goal is: knowledge of God, fellowship with God. C.-K. 1049 is inadequate: the love is completely in him, es fehit ihr nichts. This perfect is a passive which has God as the agent: "the love of God has been brought to its goal by God"; it is scarcely a middle: "has attained its goal for itself." Some think that "the love of God" has the objective genitive: our love for God has been brought to its goal. They find the same type of genitive in 2:15; 3:17; 4:12 (where the same verb is used) ; 5:3. But only in 5:3 does the context require the sense our love for God; in all the other passages (notably in 4:12) God's love for us is clearly referred to. This is not clear when the verb is misunderstood. Luther has translated it ist vollendet; our versions, "is — has been — perfected." The exponents of this view have difficulty with the thought that our love for God has attained or has
been brought to perfection. They are not clear as to whether this love has been brought to a perfect stage or to some lesser stage. We are also told that John is speaking abstractly: if a man guards God's word perfectly, that man loves God perfectly. From 1:5 onward the discussion has centered about fellowship and communion with God; it is advanced to the thought of truly knowing him and knowing that we know him and are in union with him. All of this has been developed over against the false Gnostic claims of knowing and of being in union with God. In these Gnostics God has not been able to accomplish contact by his love; he could not get his truth (1:8; 2:4), his Word (1:10) into their hearts nor reach his goal: fellowship with him by true knowledge of him. In our case, John says, God did, indeed, reach this goal: •we have the fellowship (1:7), we have known him and know that we have.
John has told us where the fault lies: these heretics deny the Logos in Jesus, his deity, the efficacy of his blood (1:7), the expiation for our sins (2:2). Here is all the love of God, for God so loved the world, etc., John 3:16. The light, the truth, the Word, the commandments of God radiate this infinite love which reaches out to cleanse sinners and to embrace them in fellowship. But here are sinners who falsely say that they do not have sins and that they have not sinned (1:8, 10). Despite all that God says about sin in his Word, sin and sins are as nothing to them; although they are uncleansed and full of the darkness they claim that they have fellowship with the God of light (1:5, 6), claim to know him intimately, and set themselves up as the ones that have real gnosis (Gnostics). These are the things that John is saying about God's love; he will speak about our love presently. On ayaini See 4:7, 8. In verse 3 John says: "In connection with this we know that we have known (and know) God." He now says again, but in an advanced manner: "In connection with this (that he has just said) we know that we are in him." The advance of thought lies in this that, instead of "we have known him," John writes "we are in him." As to be "in him" is "to know him," so both = "to have fellowship with him" (1:7). Each expression illuminates the other. God's love has brought us to this union with God, and we certainly know that it has attained this goal in us, know that we are in living connection ("fellowship") with God. For a discussion of "in him" we refer the reader to Rom. 6:1. We are "in connection with" (er) God when his light, his truth, his Word, his commandments are "in us." The Word is always the medium for this w of the unw mystica; without this Word there is no connection with God despite all claims to the contrary. Only one divine means (the Word, etc.) reaches down from God to us sinners, cleanses us, and puts us in fellowship with God; there is no other means. To repudiate the means is to lose the result, the fellowship, the goal which God's love would attain. This unio is spiritual; it is not properly expressed to say that it is like that of living creatures "in" the air, of fish "in" the water, of plants "in" the earth; man living and breathing "in" the air, and the air also being "in" him. God does not resemble air, water, earth. He is person.
6) John reverts to v. la, to the fact of his writing this in order that we may not sin, and now restates it in this form: The one saying he is remaining in him is under obligation even as that One walked himself also to be walking. This is the opposite of verse 4 where o \ey<ov = the one making a false claim. John says that the one making the true claim of union with God 6(f)ei\ei, is under obligation because of this claim, because of this abiding union with God, ever himself to walk just as "that One" did walk when he was here on earth. John learned this word /zero) from Jesus who uses it six times in John 15:4-7 when he is speaking of remaining in him, of not remaining in him, and of his words remaining in us. John uses it here when he is speaking of remaining (abiding) in God. Remaining in Christ is, of course, the same as remaining in God. The demonstrative eicaiw appears in 3:3, 5, 7, 16; 4:17, as a reference to Jesus; "that One" is at once recognized by what is predicated of him. The aorist "even as that One walked" is historical. The walk or conduct of Jesus is the model for everyone who claims that he is in union and fellowship with God. He will follow in Jesus' steps. He has this obligation and recognizes, obeys it. It is a spiritual obligation that is due to the inward spiritual connection with God and his abiding in this connection.
7) Fellowship with God is the essential. Heretics claim it, but their claim is a lie as John proves decisively. He and his readers have it; John proves that statement and even shows how they know beyond a doubt that they have it. But having fellowship with God means also that John and his readers have fellowship "with one another." In 1:7 this fact is stated without elaboration. The elaboration now follows. This mutual fellowship is a second vital point for John and for his readers. The heretics, Cerinthus and his followers, were seeking to break up this fellowship. They were trying to make apostates of John's readers so that they should hate the brethren whom they had loved, hate the true fellowship in which they had been. This is the historical background for v. 7-11. Verses 7, 8 form the preamble to v. 9-11. We shall see that v. 12-14 likewise form the preamble to v. 15-17. The substitution of a fictitious fellowship with God always has as its correlate the sundering of fellowship with those who are in the true fellowship with God, who hold to the blood of Jesus, God's Son (1:7), to his expiation for constant cleansing from sins (2:1); it always entails a separation from those who hold to the Word, the truth, etc., and walk as Jesus walked.
Beloved, not a new commandment am I writing to you but an old commandment •which you had from the beginning. The commandment, this old one, is the Word which you did hear. Again, a new commandment am I writing to you, the thing that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passingaway, and the light, the genuine one, is already shining.
John's love for his readers prompts the address "beloved"; and he now asks them to remain in 'the fellowship of mutual love. What he is writing is not a new commandment, Kaivrj, that is to take the place of an old one which has directed them to this time; no, it is an old one, the one they had had from the start, when they were first brought into fellowship with God and into fellowship with each other by means of the gospel, the blood of the Son, etc. The phrase av dpyp always gets its meaning from the context which is here not the same as it was in 1:1. Here the imperfect eiders shows that the beginning referred to is that which began the having of the commandment on the part of John's readers. We are pleased to note that John himself now defines just what he means by "the commandment"; it is the ^.oyos or Word which his readers did hear, which they heard in the beginning when by it they came into fellowship with God, etc. John has already so defined it in 1:10 where he calls the light and the truth God's Word. In 2:3, 4 he uses the plural "commandments," individual parts of the one Word; he now writes the singular "commandment" and looks at the parts as a unit. Jesus uses both Aoyos and Aoyoi, the Word and its parts, the words, in the same way. It is important to note that by "commandment" John means "the Word which you heard," the Word that is "in you" by faith, that is not in those who contradict it and make God himself a liar (1:10). It is called a commandment or commandments because we are bidden to receive, to believe, to keep, to follow it. It is full of these blessed imperatives; note those mentioned in Acts 2:38 when the gospel won 3,000; in Acts 16:31; 17:30; and in many other passages. Obeying the Word so often means believing it; disobeying it is unbelief. John is not speaking of a moral commandment, of the law that demands love, or of this law as it is used in the gospel. 8) Tld\w == wiederum and means that, looking at it once more, what John is writing can, nevertheless, be called "a new commandment." We regard o with its added causal clause as an apposition to wroAy Kaiv^v: what John is writing, old as it is to his readers, is, nevertheless, a new commandment, new as being "the thing that is true (neuter) in him (Christ) and in you," true and thus new in connection with Christ and John's readers "because the darkness is passing away and the light, the genuine one, is already shining." At one time the darkness of paganism enshrouded the readers, now the genuine light is in them. Christ and the gospel have come into their hearts. More and more pagans are being brought from the darkness to the light; indeed, the darkness is thus passing away, the genuine light is shining (two progressive present tenses). John is not assuring the readers that what he is writing is true and not empty fiction; he is telling them how this is a new commandment despite its oldness to the readers, new as being true (d^es, real) in Christ and in them, real because of what happened before the Word came to them and they got to hear it. Compared with the long, unbroken night of paganism, this thing that is now so real in connection with Christ and in connection with themselves, this disappearing of the darkness, this shining of the light, the genuine one (aXifQwov, not sham), is certainly newness. John says well: "The thing that is true in him and in you," and places "in him" first. His deity, his cleansing blood, his expiation, all that is connected with him are true, real. Let the heretics lie and call them untrue! All that is "in you," connected with you, your cleansing through the Son's blood, your remission of sins (1:9), your walking as he walked, are true things, are real. Let the heretics lie and call them untrue, unreal! Their supposed gnosis is selfdelusion (1:8) ; the light they claim to have is not genuine, it leaves them in the old darkness. Any newness that they may claim is nothing of the kind. We read these verses in the light of their historical background and not abstractly. Old—most certainly; it is the same Word, faith, life that Paul and Barnabas first brought; John is writing nothing different. Yet it is wondrously new, as new as when on their first missionary tour Paul and Barnabas made the darkness flee by letting the genuine light shine and shine. This little preamble lifts the hearts of the readers to praise God for this genuine light, to repudiate the heretics who seek to quench this light, to hold to the fellowship with the God who is light and in the light (1:5, 7), to go on walking in the light (1:7), to follow Jesus alone (2: 6). Note that "the light" and "the darkness" are repeated from 1:5-7.
9) Precious, then, is our mutual fellowship in the light (1:7). John now develops this thought. The one claiming he is in the light and hating his brother is in the darkness still. The one loving his brother remains In the light, and entrapment is not in him. Here we have one who makes a false claim such as those mentioned in 1:6, 8, 10, and in 2:4. One article governs both participles. John is thinking of a church member who has been deluded by the heretics. He has adopted their light which is not the genuine light (v. 8). His claim to be in the light is false, is evidenced as false by the fact of his hating his brother. This man is in the darkness w oEprt, "up till now." The phrase suggests that John hopes that he will yet return to the genuine light and to the true love of the brethren and to fellowship with them.
10) Just what John means is shown by the opposite. The one loving his brother remains in the light and is free from the darkness, and his love is the clear evidence for this fact. The addition reveals John's meaning: "and entrapment is not in him." We should understand axavSaAov correctly. It does not mean "occasion of stumbling" our versions), it has but little connection with stumbling. One may stumble and yet remain on one's feet, may stumble and actually fall and yet arise again. A skandolon is the crooked trigger stick of a trap to which the bait is affixed and by which the trap is sprung. The verb CTKovSaA.i^eiv means to catch in such a trap. The noun and the verb denote only the fatal, deadly entrapment of the victim. M.-M. 576; R. 174. When this word is used metaphorically it means bringing spiritual death.
The one who loves his brother and remains in the light has nothing in him that will be a trigger stick in a trap to kill any of his brethren spiritually. The other who is not in the light — what does he care for the spiritual life of any brother in the church? He
hates, has no use for such brother hood in the light, will set his traps of lying and deceit to catch and to kill Christians and to throw them into the darkness again.
John introduces terms that echo through this epistle: remain — love, and hate — brother, and what brother means, namely a child born of God. Read on and mark the terms as John expands them. This is much more than quarreling with a brother member of the church, more than the hatred that thus ensues; for by this hate the worst damage is done to the sinner himself and not to the church member sinned against.
11) John uses singulars throughout, which generalize and yet make his statements concrete. "The light," "the darkness" (here vicono.) are most definite. The former denotes the truth, the Word, the commandment as explained above, the other the opposite. Now the one hating his brother is in the darkness and is walking in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness did blind his eyes. Ae is not "but" (adversative) ; it adds a fuller explanation. This is not the hating which is loveless "envy, suspicion, want of sympathy, harshness of judgment, pride" or such other manifestations of the old Adam in Christians. This individual is one of the haters who has turned heretic and hates the brethren that are true to the Word and refuse to give it up at his bidding. He is bent on being a skandalon, on dragging others into the night of spiritual death, into the same night in which he is, in which he walks, which has made his own eyes blind. He is a missionary of the devil, of "the darkness," among the true Christians whom he hates because of the light that is in them. Their fellowship with each other he aims to destroy. There are many in our day who hate like this. Here belong Matt. 18:6, 7. These haters love to trap the little ones, to ruin the faith of children, of young people, of immature Christians. They double their damnation. They are the ones who claim that they have the light (v. 9), the gnosis, the science, and thus catch their pitiful prey. But they are in the darkness (in its fearful power), do nothing but walk in this darkness, do not see where (in the Greek as in common English -irov means "where" and not "whither") they are going (Luther: "to hell"). Although they boast that they alone see, the darkness has blinded their eyes. Jesus utters the same truth in John 12:35.
12) Once again, as in v. 7, 8, John has a preamble regarding his writing (v. 12-15), and it is preparatory to something else that would destroy fellowship with God and our spiritual fellowship with each other (1:7), namely the love of the world. So much of heresy is baited with the things that are in the world by offering its adherents liberal enjoyment of those things which the light tells them are freighted with dangers to them. I am writing to you, little children, because there have been remitted for you the sins for the sake of his name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you have known him (who is) from the beginning. I am writing to you, youths, because you have conquered the wicked one. Compare "I am writing — I am writing" in v. 7, 9. As in 2:1, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21, "little children" includes all the readers. It is an address that is befitting the aged apostle's fatherly concern. See verse 1. They will take to heart what their most venerable father is writing to them.
"On is causal. John states the reason that he is writing to them. The reason is a fact which makes them the "little children" that they are to John: "because there have been remitted for you (sent away from you) the sins for the sake of his name." The perfect (in form a Doric, Arcadian, Ionic perfect passive, R. 315, from a<^/u) means that from the time of their conversion onward to the present moment God has remitted their sins. On this remission see the exposition of 1:9. It is this remission that has placed them in fellowship with God and thus in fellowship with each other (1:7), this remission which the heretics would destroy for them by enticing them with the lusts of the world. This is the point of the "because" clause, this is the reason for John's writing. In 1:7 John mentions "the blood of Jesus, God's Son," and in 2:1 his "expiation for our sins," the causa meritoria for this remission; he now names the causa instrumentalis, Sm, to waym, avrov, "for the sake of his (Christ's) name." One should correlate and study the many phrases with wo/ia, beginning with Matt. 28:19;
Acts 2:38. The name is the revelation. By the name alone Christ comes to us with his blood and expiation; by his name alone can we approach him (faith). He and all saving power is in his name. Thus "because of, by reason of, for the sake of (810 with the accusative) his name God ever remits our sins."
13) John divides all of his readers into two classes: old and young, "fathers — youths," the masculines include the other sex. Some have thought that John speaks of three classes; but roma is John's regular address for all the readers, and the order "little children — fathers — youths" would be abnormal, it should read "fathers — youths — little children" or the reverse. Nor would the causal clause be fitting if it referred only to little folks. John has the refrain "I am writing to you" and even repeats it with the aorist. John's reason for writing to the fathers, the older church members, is a double one; the second one pertains to them in particular. Due to their age and their extended opportunity in life they "have known the One (who is) from the beginning," the article rov substantivizes the phrase. This phrase is to be understood in the sense it has in 1:1 and not in the sense it has in 2:7. As this phrase is applied to Jesus, it designates him in his deity. Ever since the venerable members of the churches first heard the gospel they have known Jesus in his deity, have known that this makes him the Savior indeed (4:14). During all these years they have rested their faith in him because he is from the beginning. Now these heretics are denying the deity of Jesus, are claiming that he is the natural son of Joseph, that his blood is not that of "the Son of God" (see 1:7; also 1:1, "the Logos of the Life," and 1:3, "his Son Jesus Christ"), "You have known" is to be understood in the same sense as it was in v. 3, to know with spiritual affect and effect. All of the older members will thus know what is at stake far better than the youth. They are able to tell the youth what John means by writing as he does so that they, too, may see the full danger. Thus John states as his special reason for writing to the fathers: I am writing to you "because you have known the One from the beginning." John cannot offer the same reason for writing to the youth. Ne<wo-Koi are young persons, and the word refers to natural age. We should not spiritualize it and refer the word to immature Christians, whether these are old or young in years; the term for such Christians is yiprioi. Matt. 11:25; Luke 10:21; Rom. 2:20; I Cor. 3:1; Heb. 5:13; etc. Yet John has the noblest kind of reason for writing this letter also to the young people: "because you have conquered the wicked one," 6 •irovrjpo's, the devil, Matt. 13:19, 38; John 17:15; Eph. 6:16; I John 3:12; 5:18, 19, the archenemy. The perfect "you have conquered" is to be understood in the same sense as the preceding perfects: a past victory that endures until the present. Tlovripoy actively, viciously wicked. This is not a reference only to young men, to their strength, their delight for conflict, etc. John's letter is not addressed to the male membership alone, it is intended also for the venerable mothers and the young maidens. In the case of the older members John mentions their extended knowledge of the Eternal Son; in the case of the younger their victory over Satan. Their extensive knowledge is full of rich, garnered treasure; the victorious stand against the enemy is the beginning of the true Christian life, the first full consciousness of youthful hearts that they stand in the army of Christ with Satan overthrown, that it is theirs to retain the victory and the triumph under Christ and during all of their life to reap the glorious fruits.
14) John repeats: I have written to you, lads, because you have known the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you have known the One (who is) from the beginning. I have written to you, youths, because you are strong, and the Word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the wicked cue.
We use the English perfect to translate John's three aorists "I did write." We ask why John writes these aorists after the three presents "I am writing." Various explanations are offered. The more important believe that John refers to his Gospel with these aorists. It is assumed that the readers have already received John's Gospel, or that this letter is sent to them together with the Gospel. Another explanation is to the effect that with "I am writing" John refers to the lines he is now penning and with "I did write" to the lines already written in this letter (up to 2:11). Few will accept this latter explanation. The three m clauses exclude a reference to John's Gospel. The three reasons here stated cannot be regarded as the reasons that John wrote his Gospel. In John 20:31 (cf., 19:35) John states the purpose for which he wrote his Gospel. He wrote the Gospel at the solicitation of the Ephesian elders. While it is a minor matter as to whether the Gospel antedates this epistle or not, we believe that the Gospel was written later than the epistle. The relative date of the two documents cannot be determined by the tenses used here.
These are epistolary aorists. The three ypa^w, "I am writing," are plainly rhetorical repetition. When he doubled this repetition John could not use three more ypa^xo; but the Greek afforded him its epistolary aorist. R. 845 is right, John continues his rhetorical repetition. "One has merely to change his point of view and look back at the writer." This is a common idiom. When John says, "I am writing," he thinks of himself as now writing this letter; when he says, "I did write," he thinks of the time when his readers will peruse what he has written in this letter. The reasons stated by the six 5ri clauses, as well as the sixfold use of the verb "to write," refer to this letter and not to two documents. llatSt'o. is only a variant for reicvia and designates all the readers. These neuter diminutives are endearing. Our versions translate both "little children" but do so only because the English has no other good word for the latter. We render "lads" (we might say "laddies") but do so only in order to show that a word that js different from tekma is used in the Greek. The reason for writing to all his dear ones, as stated in v. 12 and now in a different form, "because you have known the Father," is really one and the same. Only those know the Father whose sins have been remitted for the sake of Christ's name. He, the Father of the Son, (see 1:2, 3, 7; 2:1, where "the Father" and "his Son" have been used) has been their Father through Jesus Christ, his Son, ever since he remitted their sins. John begins to touch the relation of childhood on which he intends to say much more. Our fellowship with God (1:7) is that of Father and children, no less. This we "know" in the way explained in 2:3; see 3:1. What the heretics claim to know about their fellowship with God without a reference to sins, to Christ, God's Son, and to his cleansing blood, is a lying claim (1:5-10). These men are trying to get their lying claim to take the place of the knowledge in the hearts of the readers. John writes because of the knowledge of his readers, to preserve and to fortify this knowledge. Yet both Twia and va&ia denote only the relation of the readers to John, the venerable apostle, who loves them as his little ones, and the terms should not be extended beyond this. As far as the fathers are concerned, John leaves the reason for writing to them unchanged. This is not a paucity of thought on John's part. The repetition emphasizes the knowledge of the deity of the Son. In predicating knowledge of the fathers in v. 13 and now again in v. 14 John amplifies by predicating knowledge of all his dear readers. "This is life eternal, that they know thee as the only real God, and him whom thou didst commission, Jesus as Christ," John 17:3.
Si Christum bene scis, satis est, si cetera nescis;
Si Christum nescis, nil est, si cetera discis.
Bugenhagen.
The reason for writing to the younger members is also the same as that stated in verse 13, but John now inserts two explanatory clauses. "You are strong" with true spiritual strength; with this strength "you have conquered the wicked one" and now stand as victors. This is, however, not strength of your own: "the Word of God remains in you" as the fountain of your strength, the source of all true knowledge and power. "Remain thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus," II Tim. 3:14, 15. This strength which is drawn from the Word is to go on conquering all the allurements of the world which the devil will employ. Fathers and mothers, pastors and teachers must make the young strong in the Word of God. There is no more blessed work. Then they will conquer and remain conquerors, and the devil will not capture them with love for the world.
15) Those who find three groups referred to in v. 12-24 apply the following only to the third group, namely to the young people. All that follows, as well as all that is written in this letter, is intended for all. John's preamble (v. 12-14) prefaces v. 15, etc. In v. 18 vaiSia is used with the same force as it is in v. 12. Many of the allurements of the world are especially captivating for youth, but let us not forget that John mentions also those that are especially captivating for older persons.
Do not love the world nor the things in the world! If anyone loves the world, there is not the love of the Father in him. It is useless to urge those who are still of the world not to love the world. We can never hope to pluck figs from thistles or grapes from thorns. Only when people have overcome the wicked one, know the Father, know the Son, have the remission of sins, can we admonish them as John does here. John uses ayavw, the love that indicates direction of the will and intelligent, purposeful choice, and not ^tXeiv, which is used to denote natural, friendly affection. John might have used the latter. James 4:4 reads: "The friendship (<t>i\ia, friendly affection) for the world is enmity against God; whoever then intends to be a friend (<^A.os) of the world establishes himself an enemy of God." What James inserts by means of the "intends to be" lies in the verb that John uses, namely intention, purpose, choice, will. Kocr/<,os (originally: ornament, order) has a variety of meanings in the New Testament: the universe, the earth, the whole human race, the ungodly that are far from God, finally, in the ethical sense, all that is opposed to Christ on earth. John refers to this last, not to the world as God made it but as the wicked one corrupted all that is in it so that it now lies in the wicked one (5:19), is ruled by him as the prince of the world, as a kingdom that is opposed to the Father and the kingdom in which Christ rules with grace. As children of God we have been delivered from the world in this sense, have conquered the wicked one; the world, in the sense of corrupt, ungodly men, hates us, knowing that we do not belong to their number, John 15:18, 19. Luther: "To be in the world, to see the world, to feel the world, is a different thing from loving the world; just as to have and to feel sin is a different thing from loving sin." John might have used the decisive aorist imperative which is used in so many New Testament admonitions. He uses the present imperative which forbids a course of action. This matches the idea of the verb, for loving is continuous. "Nor the things of the world" points to the individual deceptive treasures, pleasures, honors of the world, its wealth, its power, its wisdom, etc. We are not forbidden to admire, appreciate, use aright the natural things of this earth such as relatives, friends, fatherland, the beauties and the grandeur of nature, home, occupation, and the thousands of useful, attractive, valuable things which God has put all around us. But whatever in its connection, tendency, and influence is hostile to God, to Christ, and to his kingdom, however alluring or attractive it may otherwise appear, is "a thing of the world," to which we must be hostile since we belong to God, to Christ, and to his kingdom. Leo the Great: "Man, who cannot be without love, is either a lover of God or of the world." He can never be both. Besser: "Where the love of God has entered a heart it intends to be the sole queen." "Ye adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship for the world is enmity against God?" James 4:4. It is significant that John does not say only in a general way that we are not to love the world but also in particular that we are not to love "the things of the world," for we love the sinful world by loving some special sinful thing or some things of the world. Every sinful tie must be sundered so that we truly belong to God.
John cites a specific case: "If anyone loves the world, there is not the love of the Father in him." This is a simple, indisputable fact. This is often taken to mean that if a person loves the world he does not love the Father. This is, of course, true, but it does not go far enough. Already in verse 5 we have met this genitive "the love of God," and we found that genitive to be subjective because of the context. It is so here, the wording itself indicates as much: "there is not the Father's love in him." This says much more than the objective genitive would. In John 14:23 Jesus says: "If anyone loves me, my word will he guard; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and will make abode with him for ourselves." John says now that anyone who loves the world prevents the Father from loving him and coming into that man's heart to make an abode there. To be sure, this man does not love the Father, which is, however, only the reason that the Father's love for him can find no place in him. That place is already occupied, the Father's love is kept out.
16) The reason that the Father's love cannot be found in such a person's heart is because everything that (is) in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pretension regarding the course of life is not out of the Father but is out of the world; and the world is passing away, also its lust, but the one doing the will of God remains forever. This is the reason the Father's love with all its gifts cannot enter into this person's heart; and not the reason this person does not love the Father. We may translate (either "all" or "everything" that is in the world; we prefer the latter because we have "the things in the world" and then specifications of these things, "the lust of the flesh," etc. This is the sinful desire springing from the flesh or depraved nature which seeks sinful gratification. When John adds "the lust of the eyes" he includes the lust that reaches out beyond what a person can actually get a hold of in his sinning. The lustful eyes rove afar for sinful pleasure. On the lusts of the flesh compare passages such as Phil. 3:19; I Cor. 15:32; 6:18, and all the lists of vices. The world talks about "pleasant, merry companionships," "innocent amusements," "having a good time," etc., which are but euphonious phrases to hide vileness. The lust of the eyes recalls Matt. 5:28. The older exegetes think also of the glitter of gold. When the devil has properly trained the eye, what will it not see to keep the furnace of ungodly emotions and imaginations aglow? The world, shouts "artistic," "beautifully realistic," freighted with "beautiful moral lessons," etc., and thus gilds vileness. John might have added "the lust of the ears" since these also reach out far for vile gratification. Add this yourself; John only suggests. 'AXa^oveia == hollow, vainglorious pretense. It is followed by the objective genitive rov piov, the vita qziam mvvm.us as distinct from C"'?, the vita qua, vivimus. This pretense does not ask regarding the Father's will but acts as though it had the sovereign direction of its course of life; see James 4:16, and G. K. 227. The translations "the pride of life" (A. V.), "the vainglory of life" (R. V.) convey a wrong idea; John has in mind that hollow arrogance which presumes that it can decide and direct the course of life without God, determine what it will do, gain, achieve, enjoy. All that is "in the world" "is not out of the Father but is out of the world," elmi oc expresses source. The Father is the source of light, life, blessing, holiness, salvation; the world is the source of sin, lust, ruin, death. How can a Christian give up union and fellowship (1:7) with God and go back to union and fellowship with the world? "What I love, to that my soul clings. What I love is what I live, what I delight in, and this becomes part of my unconscious life, of my meditation, my dreaming. What I love becomes more and more part of my very self. He who loves the world becomes worldly, a man filled with the world." Dryander.
17) If this is the source, what about the result? "And the world is passing away, also its lust." It is now in the act of passing away. It is its very nature not to last. Its doom is overtaking it. Its glory is fading, its flowers are withering, its promises are failing, its hopes are crumbling. Isa. 14:11. A thousand wrecks lie strewn along its path, and soon it shall be altogether wreck and ruin. This is also true regarding "the lust for it." What this implies for the lovers of the world John lets us conclude for ourselves. They will be left naked, wretched, shattered, doomed. All their treasures and pleasures will, like water, have slipped through their fingers, their castles will be in ashes, their crowns a curse. Luke 16:23. Their souls, burnt and blasted by the lusts for the world, will have nothing left but endless remorse and penalty. Does the siren voice of the world tickle your ears? Hear the word of truth: "The world is passing away!" The bank is breaking, it was never solvent — will you deposit in it? The foundation is tottering, it was never solid but only sham — will you build on it? The mountain is rumbling, quaking, it was never anything but volcanic, ready to blow off its head at any time — will you build your city there? With a sudden, striking contrast John adds: "but the one doing the will of God remains forever." What God wills (OeXrjpa, a term expressing a result) is contained in his Word (1:7, 10; 2:4, 5, 7, 10: the light, the truth, the Word, the commandment). This is his good and gracious will. To do it is to believe and to be saved (John 6:40). That is what it means "to remain for the eon," i. e., forever.
The Third Circle of Facts
The Antichrists,
Centering on the Word Remain
2:18-28
18) Six times John writes inivew, "to remain," in v. 24-28 just as he six times writes "commandment" in v. 3-8. These antichrists did not remain; they "went out from us." The governing idea is thus still the fellowship, the Kowwvia, with God, which is also the koinonia. we have with one another (1:6, 7). To remain is salvation, to go out is damnation. The antichrists went out and seek to induce us to go out. John's elaboration circles on and up in a wider sweep. New pertinent concepts and facts are woven in as he proceeds. Lads, it is final hour. And even as you heard that Antichrist is coming, also now antichrists many have come to be; whence we know that it is final hour. On vaiSla. see v. 13; John addresses all of his readers. 'Eoym; 5pa is not "the last hour." The linguistic remark that the article is omitted in the predicate is incorrect, for it is not omitted when the subject and the predicate are identical and interchangeable (R. 768). Here, in fact, "last hour" is the subject and can be called the predicate only formally when am is considered impersonal. So also the remark is not applicable that well-known concepts and concepts of which only one specimen exists may appear without the article. "Last hour" appears only here in this verse and is not used otherwise. The term is plainly qualitative. Moreover, the Greek word "hour" is here used in the wider sense as it is in John 4:21 where the whole New Testament Period is referred to, likewise in John 5:25. Compare also John 16:2, 25, 26; in the latter verses hour and day have the same meaning. We may add Matt. 24 :36, "that day and hour," i. e., that date (narrow) and general time (wide). In some of these passages "hour" is quite properly rendered "time" by our versions. So also B.-P. 1427 has "letzte Zeit" in dieser Weltperiode as a translation of our passage. The English does not seek to conserve the qualitative sense as the Greek does and does not say "it is last hour," "final hour," but inserts the article, which then loses the Greek qualitative idea.
"Final hour" does not include the whole New Testament era from the first coming of Christ to the second. Although this would not be far wrong, we should note that John states how we may know that what is final hour is setting in, namely by the appearing of antichrists. Their increase in number is the sign. So we say that "final hour" extends from the appearing of such antichrists until the Parousia; note the latter in verse 28. Nor need one go to the Old Testament for the meaning of "last hour." To be sure, the Old and the New Testaments agree. But John had both the added revelation of Jesus and the further revelation which Jesus promised the apostles (John 16:13).
The "last hour" should not be referred to the short period that immediately precedes the Parousia, and on the basis of this the charge be raised that John (Paul, too) was mistaken. Then these apostles were false prophets! None of the apostles knew the day or the hour of the Parousia (Matt. 24:36) or ever pretended to know this. It might, like a thief, arrive at any time. John is not determining the duration of the "final hour," he is pointing his readers to the sign which indicates its beginning, the appearance of many antichrists: "whence we know (γινώσκω, with concern to ourselves) that it is (indeed) final hour." John saw the first group of antichrists. He distinguishes these from "Antichrist," of whom he does not say that he has already come to be but only that "he is coming." We of the present day see how the antichrists have multiplied, how "Antichrist" himself is here (II Thess. 2), and thus how imminent is the Parousia. Yet even we do not know the date of the Parousia.
Even as you did hear that Antichrist is coming" refers to the apostolic prophecies about "Antichrist," which especially Paul has left us in II Thess. 2. John is writing to many churches that were founded by Paul and by his assistants; their number had greatly increased by this time. In I Pet. 1:1 we catch a glimpse of their increase from the beginning to the year 64; by the time John writes this letter many more churches had been added to this group.
From the beginning Paul had told his churches about "Antichrist." In II Thess. 2:5 he says that he did so when he first preached in Thessalonica. Paul was not the sole possessor of this revelation; all the apostles had it. All the churches were informed "that Antichrist is coming." John says that "even as" his readers had heard that prophecy, one that was not yet fulfilled at the time when John writes this letter, they see the fact that "also now antichrists many have come to be" (perfect tense: and are now here). The implication is that these many antichrists are forerunners of the coming Antichrist. "Even as — also now" denotes a correspondence. "Antichrist" and "antichrists many" does the same, it only elevates the coming one above those that are already here.
John alone has this term: here, in v. 22, and in II John 7. Paul furnishes the full description of the coming Antichrist (II Thess. 2), but he does not use this term. Those are certainly right who find John's coming Antichrist in Paul's prophecy. In fact, Paul's ό αντικείμενο·: (II Thess. 2:4), "the one opposing himself," and John's αντίχριστο* are practically synonymous. The student will find all that we have to say on "the great Antichrist" who is aptly so termed in distinction from the others, "the little antichrists," in our interpretation of II Thess. 2. The great Antichrist is the papacy.
John uses both "Antichrist" and "many antichrists" qualitatively, without the article. Neither term is individual so that "Antichrist" is a single man, "antichrists" a number of single men. Paul's description of the former is that of a single opposition that is headed by a succession, all opposing in the same way and continuing to the Parousia itself. On the other hand, the "many antichrists" are varied oppositions, each being started by one man and his following, perhaps having a succession of leaders and continuing for a longer or a shorter period as the case may be, each opposition and its leadership running its course. Thus Cerinthus started a Gnostic opposition. This developed, and other Gnostic leaders arose. This anti-christian opposition ran its course and eventually died out.
The way in which John writes "antichrists many" appears to mean that other leaders of his type besides Cerinthus had already come to be. In the following ages new kinds of antichristian leaders arose. Church history describes them and the extent and the duration of the various movements. We are acquainted with those of recent times: Dowie, Russell, Mrs. Eddy, modernism, etc. As they have multiplied, many of the old antichristian falsehoods have been taken up anew, have been dressed up in new verbiage and have paraded as new discoveries. Thus Cerinthus made Jesus the son of Joseph, which is only the modernists' rejection of the Virgin birth. He denied that the blood of Jesus is the blood of the Son of God with power to cleanse from sin (1:7; 2:2), which the modernists likewise deny.
Αντί in αντίχριστο* denotes opposition: Widerchrist, opponent of Christ; not substitution, not a man who claims to be Christ, to be in the place of Jesus Christ. C.-K. 1134; Trench, Synonyms; others. There have been both kinds, and the latter ("false Christs," Matt. 24:24) are certainly also opponents of Christ. John's "Antichrist" and "antichrists" convey only opposition. We have John's own statement to this effect in v. 22, 23; compare II John 7.
19) From us they went out; yea, they were not of us. For if they were of us they would have remained with us; but that they may be (definitely) made manifest because not are these all of us. One mark of the antichrists is the fact that they originate in the church. In II Thess. 2:4 Paul makes this clear regarding the great Antichrist who sits in the very temple of God. However hostile to Christ and to Christianity paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Masonry, and political powers and movements may be, none of these is an "antichrist." "From us they went out" these many antichrists of John's time. They broke the koinonia, the fellowship with us (1:7). The conservation of this spiritual fellowship is John's basic concern as we have already indicated.
"Went out from us" means inward and also outward separation. Hence John adds: "yea, they were not of us," ίξ ημών is now to be understood in the deeper sense: in their hearts they were not of us, were not really derived from us. We regard αλλά as confirmatory and climacteric and not as adversative (R. 1185, etc.). It is, indeed, no wonder that they left our churches and set up opposition camps; they did not inwardly belong to us. They were either false from the start or became so and then left.
"For" explains: "if they were (inwardly) of us they would have remained (outwardly) with us," μ*/Ρ in our company." John begins to use the verb"remain" which he repeats six times in v. 24-28; it is the verb of fellowship (1:7). He has a condition of unreality, the apodosis has the past perfect and «v (the only New Testament instance), whereas the aorist is usually employed (R. 906; 1015). Is the protasis a present or is it, too, a past unreality? Is Ipav, the imperfect, doing duty for itself (present unreality), or is it doing duty for the unusual aorist (past unreality) ? B.-D. 360, 3. Either is correct. "If they were still of us they would have remained with us." Such a mixed condition is often written. We think that this is such a mixed condition. Others prefer: "If they had been of us (as John has said that they were not) they would have," etc.
"But that they might be manifest" is elliptical. Some would supply nothing, but it is best to supply: "but they went out from us in order that they might (definitely, aorist) be made manifest as not being of us." We regard Sri as equal to "because" (not "that"). We keep the Greek word order: "because not are these all of us," i. e., all who are in our churches are not inwardly of us, some are false. This has become manifest in regard to the antichristians: we see that they have actually left us. Others think that the sense is that all the antichristians are not of us (R. V.), which has, however, already been said. The A. V. makes the impression that "not all" but that some of the antichristians were and are not of us. True, the Greek often places οί with the verb whereas we place the negative with the subject; but when "all" is used in the sentence, one must watch the sense and see whether ου is to be construed with "all": "not all" (only some), or with the verb: "are not" (all of them).
20) Beside what John says about antichrists he places what he says about his readers as true Christians (hence και), yet he does not do this for the sake of a strong contrast but as a preamble to what he further says about antichrists. John's readers are fully able to know what antichristianity is, John does not need to teach them that at this late date.
And you on your part have anointment from the Holy One, and you all know. I did not write to you because you do not know the truth but because you know it, and because every lie is not of the truth.
Χρίσμα, & term expressing result, is not the act of anointing but the anointment received by such an act; in v. 27 we have: "you received anointment from the Holy One." To refer it to the oil itself is incongruous in these two passages. Since it is without the article, "anointment" is qualitative.
"You have it from the Holy One" indicates that the anointment referred to is something that is of a permanent nature. The Holy One = Christ (John 6: 69; Acts 3:14; 4:27; etc.). The readers received anointment in baptism: Χριστός, the Anointed, bestowed as a gift from himself the χρίσμα, anointment, the Holy Spirit, and thereby made them χριστοί, anointed ones, χριστιανοί, Christians, who are now opposed by αντίχριστοι, antichristians. John calls the bestowal of the Spirit a χρίσμα because he speaks of the antichristians. These derivatives come from χρίω, the sacred act of anointing, and not from αλύφω, "to oil" in ordinary ways. Hence we have the term for "Christ": "the Holy One." There is no reference to the ecclesiastical ceremony of anointing with oil at baptism; this was a later custom that was based on John's passages.
The thought involved is the fact that by the gift of the Spirit in baptism the Holy One united these anointed ones with himself (fellowship in 1:6, 7); yet this is only involved as is separation from all antichristians. The next clause: "and you all know," states what Christ's anointing bestows on true Christians, namely the enlightenment of knowledge. John uses "to know" with the mind and intellect This is correct, for in v. 21-23 the object of this knowing is the mark of an antichrist, and how to recognize one. Mere recognition is expressed by this verb. Some texts have -πάντα: "you know all things" (our versions). Interpreters say that "all things" is limited by "the truth." Even so, this says too much and says it unnecessarily. A Christian does not need to know everything in order to know who is an antichristian liar. Instruction in the catechism is enough. We prefer the well-attested reading τάντκ: "you all know," i. e., all of you have knowledge enough for what I, John, am now writing about.
21) So John says: "I did not write to you because you do not know the truth," i. e., do not know enough of it to know who is an antichrist, "but because you know it, and because every lie is not of the truth" and thus is easily known as a lie by all who know the truth. The aorist "I did write" is epistolary like those used in v. 13, 14 and refers to this entire letter, the whole of which is directed against "antichrists." When the readers get this letter they are not to read it as though John wrote in order to teach them the ABC of Christianity; he wrote it, they are to tell themselves, in order to have them use all the knowledge of the truth that they already have in order to detect as a lie all that is not of the truth but is of the devil. John 8:44.
22) John now puts the question: Who is the liar if not the one denying that Jesus is not the Christ? And he then adds emphatically: This one is the antichrist, the one denying the Father and the Son! Everyone denying the Son neither has the Father; the one confessing the Son also has the Father.
Both of our versions are correct: "Who is a liar?" (the English idiom) ; "Who is the liar?" (Greek) because the Greek article is generic. So again: "He is
antichrist" — "He is the antichrist." Any Christian who is in possession of the Spirit and thus of the truth can easily tell that he is certainly a flagrant liar who denies that Jesus is the Christ; yea, this man is one of the antichrists whether he is a leader or a follower since by his denying Jesus to be the Christ he denies the Father as well as the Son.
The Jews declared that Jesus was not the Christ, not the Son of God, and Jesus proved to them that they neither knew the Father nor had him as their Father, John 8:42, etc., but were of the devil, the liar from the beginning, the father of lies. While John denounces the early Gnostics, Cerinthus and his following, his words certainly recall the words Jesus addressed to the Jews although the latter were not antichrists in the sense of having developed in the Christian Church.
Cerinthus dreamed of a heavenly Eon Χριστό?, a fictional being whom he substituted for the Son who is of one essence with the Father; this Eon Christ was not Jesus who was merely Joseph's natural son. This Eon Christos descended upon Jesus at the time of his baptism but left Jesus before his passion so that only Joseph's physical son Jesus died on the cross. Thus this Gnosticism abolished the Son and the efficacy of the Son's blood (1:7). Without the Son there is no Father of the Son (compare 1:2, 3, "with the Father" — "the Father and his Son Jesus Christ"; 1:7, "Jesus, his Son"). What Cerinthus and all of his ilk had left has aptly been called an idol. Their great claim of fellowship with God was a lie (1:6) ; it was fellowship with the idol of their imagination. The modern types of such liars are Unitarians, modernists, anti-Trinitarian sects.
"Liar" harks back to 1:6, 10; compare 4:20. The o in "Jesus is not the Christ" is not redundant (R. 1164); Demosthenes has it (B.-D. 429). Its use is due to the fact that the clause is conceived as indirect discourse. These liars said in so many words: "Jesus is not the Christ." John quotes them.
23) John's deduction is true: "Everyone denying the Son neither has the Father," i. e., fellowship with the Father. Not only is John 14:6b true, but those who have no Son of God eo ipso also have no Father however much they may use the term "Father" (in the Unitarian sense = Creator). For the third time John uses ό αρνούμενος, "the one denying," the denier.
Over against the denier he places the true confessor the more sharply because he does not use a 8e': "The one confessing the Son also has the Father" i. e., has fellowship with the Father through the Son's blood (1:7) and expiation (2:2). To confess is the opposite of to deny. Both are open, public statements. The confession voices faith and states what is in the heart; the denial voices unbelief, hostility, and reveals that these are in the heart. There is no avenue to the Father for any sinner save through the Son and through his expiating blood.
24) Verses 22 and 23 present the facts which the readers know and which they need not be taught. John states them in a brief, clean-cut way. These facts call for the admonition You, what you heard from the beginning — let it continue to remain in you!
We regard ϋ/«« as a vocative: "You!" We disregard R. 437. B.-D. 466,1 is better regarding both this "you" and the one used in v. 27; they find a para Uelisrmts membrorum in both sentences:
"You, what you heard from the beginning, Let it continue to remain in you."
"And you, the anointment you received from him. It continues to remain in you."
The verb is not enough; "in you" must be added so that V«s is n°t a prolepsis of the subject. We accept this but add that "you" is an address, a vocative.
The verb "remain" is six times dinned into the hearts of the readers. This is not monotony; "to remain" is the essential thing. To receive in the beginning and not let what we received remain in us is fatal. John learned this verb from Jesus who used it six times in John 15:3, 4, 6, 7. John uses it again, note 2:6, 14, 17, 19; 3:9. "In you" and "not in you" imply remaining in you and not remaining in you — see the phrases as far back as 1:8, 10; and then in 2:4, 5, 8, 15, 16; etc. "To be in" is the correlate of "to remain in" and is likewise used by John again and again. These recurring expressions should be well noted in order to understand John's full meaning.
"What you heard from the beginning" = the "old commandment which you had from the beginning" (v. 7) ; the phrase "from the beginning" is identical. "You heard" states how they received what they are to let remain in them. This is the light, the truth, the Word, the commandment already named so often. The apostles report it to you, also write it to you (1:3, 4) ; it comes by way of teaching as John will add (v. 27). The great thing is: "Let it ever remain in you!"
If there remains (effectively, definitely, aorist) in you what from the beginning you heard, you, too, in the Son and in the Father -will continue to remain (durative future tense). The light, truth, Word, commandment, teaching heard by the readers are the divine means for uniting them with the Father and the Son, and the continuance of this union depends on the fact that what they have heard ever continues to remain in them. In 1:3 John began by saying that the great purpose of the whole apostolic preaching is that you may have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ; not an empty claim of fellowship like that of the heretics (1:5, etc.) but actual fellowship with our sins confessed, remitted, cleansed away by the Son's blood. See how from the very first paragraph onward John widens the circle upward step by step on this pivot of fellowship until he arrives where he now is: our continuing to remain in the Son and in the Father, in true union and communion with them. In the following John circles on and up still higher, and all of this is presented in an unbroken line.
True religion is this and this alone that we poor sinners are again joined to God. False religion is to imagine that we are joined to God (1:6). John has unfolded the facts that are involved in the true union and has shown how we may know that we are, indeed, in this union; in addition to these facts John has shown the lies by which men deceive themselves (1:8) in the delusion that without the Son's blood, without the truth and Word, by denying and ignoring their sins they are in union with God. With crystal clarity we are made to see all. Here we have the true revelation in sentence after sentence that is inspired of God; this is eternally true. This is religion! All that denies it is false religion.
Note that John repeats "what from the beginning you heard," and that the phrase is now placed emphatically forward. All that lying men have told you since that time, are telling you now, by drawing you away from what you heard aims to separate you from the Father and the Son in the delusion that, like these liars, you can be in union with God without a Son of God, etc.
25) And this is the promise which he himself promised to us, the life, the eternal one. "The promise" = "what you heard from the beginning." Christ himself promised this to us. Its sum and substance is "the life, the eternal one"; the adjective is added with a second article and is like an apposition and has an emphasis (R. 776). Hear how this promise is uttered again and again by Jesus. Begin with John 3:15, 16; 5:24; 8:51 — but it fills the entire Gospel. The mention of "life" reverts to "Life" and "the Life, the Eternal One" (Christ), occurring in 1:2; note also 5:11. The apostles were (and still are) Christ's intermediaries for conveying his promise.
To be in union with God and with his Son is to have "the life, the eternal one." Without the Son there is no life. John 17:3. It is true religion to have this life; it is false religion to imagine that one has it.
26) These things I wrote to you in regard to those trying to deceive you. "I wrote," epistolary aorist = you will see that I wrote when you get and read this letter. "These things" are all those that were especially written against the antichristian deceivers who are now busy among you. By designating them with a present participle John describes them in their activity; but this participle is also conative: "those trying to deceive you," "them that would lead you astray" (A. V.). John is writing his letter in order to aid the readers in meeting these attempts of deceivers who are even deceiving their own selves (1:8).
get possession of the Spirit in an immediate way without the Word (note that the Word is the power in the sacrament).
The anointment thus remains in you. It was not a transient experience. John is thinking of the Spirit's permanent indwelling by means of his enlightening Word, which appears from his thrice repeated "to teach." With the permanent possession which you have "you have no need for anyone to be teaching you" (note the durative present tense). You are not a group of ignoramuses that need to be taught over and over again by apostles and by Christian teachers. This is not intended as praise for John's readers; it is the statement of a simple fact which is to be noted as such. When people were received into the church in John's time they were evidently first well taught, they received a real anointment with the Spirit by the Word and by baptism. Today many preachers and many churches receive people without this anointment. No wonder the results are according.
"On the contrary (αλλά), as his anointment continues to teach you concerning everything, it is true and is not a lie," i. e., what it teaches you. John uses the singular άληθκ to match the other predicate "not a lie." Note that neither of these predicates could fit "his anointment." If the first were intended for "his anointment" it should be άλ-ηθινόν, "genuine" and not sham (see v. 8 for the distinction). Least of all can it be said that "the anointment is not a lie." Both predicates fit what is taught by the anointment. Yet note that this continues to teach (again the durative present tense). John's readers received continuous teaching after they had been brought into the church. This ought to be the case everywhere. All of this teaching is sound, "true" (John has repeatedly called it "the truth"), "not a lie" like that of the liars (1:6; 2:22) and deceivers in whom there is not the truth (1:8). This is again the fact, and it is again to be noted as such.
Now the admonition: "and just as it (i. e., this anointment) taught you (by this past teaching down to the present), continue to remain in him!" In v. 24 we have the condition on which the readers "shall remain (iitvaTf) in the Father and the Son," namely the effective remaining in them of what from the beginning they heard; now we have the admonition: "continue to remain in him" (Christ, the Son) just as his anointment did, in fact, teach you.
The construction and the meaning are simple. Both become involved and troublesome when they are translated as they are in our versions. John does not range subordinate clauses together in the way in which our versions seem to think that he does. Besides other points, as cannot be continued by και καθώς; the latter stands by itself: "and just as."
28) John repeats the imperative he has used in v. 27 (this form cannot well be the indicative) And now, little children, continue to remain in him in order that, if he is made manifest, we may have boldness and may not be shamed away from him at his Parousia. Continue to remain in living spiritual connection with him so that at his wondrous Parousia you may joyfully meet him and may not be driven away from him forever in shame. "Little children" is used as it was in verse 1, and "remain" is the important feature: now fellowship and then eternal glorious fellowship.
Εάν at times approaches όταν in force (B.-P. 327) so that the A. V. is not wrong when it translates "when" instead of "if he is made manifest." This manifestation is the glorious one that shall occur at the time of the Parousia (on Parousia see II Pet. 1:16). When it occurs (aorist, as it shall with suddenness), then to have (effective aorist) boldness to face him is the
27) And you, the anointment which you received from him, it remains in you; and you have no need for anyone to be teaching you. On the contrary, as his anointment continues to teach you concerning everything, it (what it teaches) is also true and is not a lie, and just as it did teach you, continue to remain in him!
"And you!" is a vocative (see v. 24). "The anointment you have from the Holy One" (Christ), mentioned in v. 20, is now called "the anointment which you received from him." This, John says, "remains in you." By "the anointment" John refers to the Holy Spirit as he is bestowed upon us (see v. 20) by sacrament and by Word. Fanatics imagine that they can essential thing for us. Here and in Hebrews = the undismayed confidence of faith, "the feeling of freedom and joyfulness over against another person, especially of a judge" (C.-K. 451) ; compare 4:17. The opposite is "to be shamed away from him." This verb is a passive, and απ' αυτοί fits it well; so we do not translate "be ashamed before him." Those who only claim fellowship with God, who see in Jesus only a man, a natural son of Joseph, who deny his deity, the blood of Jesus, God's Son (1:7) —add all the other negations that John has introduced — will be covered with shame and will shrink "away from him" when he appears all-glorious, the final Judge, with a verdict that damns them. Note Dan. 12:2; Mark 8:38. Remain in Christ and escape such a fate.
The Fourth Circle of Facts,
Centering on Being Born of God as His Children
2:29-3:24
The New Birth and Our Relation to God 2:29-8:10a,
29) The symphony glides into a new variation of the great basic theme. Many of the notes that have been ringing in the chords continue on in richer harmony. All that has been written about fellowship with God and with Christ (1:3-6) with all that centers in this union, as it is unfolded down to v. 28, our remaining, remaining, remaining with boldness at the Par-ousia, means that we are children of God, born of him, and so all that has been said before unfolds still farther in a new harmony and a still greater richness. This is John's wonderful way of writing.
If you know that he is righteous you realize that also everyone doing the righteousness has been born from him.
John has called both God (1:9) and Jesus Christ (2:1) righteous. It is debated as to which of the two he refers to here. Inasmuch as to be born "from him" certainly means "from God" (3:1, 9; 4:7; 5:18), and inasmuch as the Scriptures never say that we are born from Christ, we refer both clauses to God although John, has spoken about Christ in the preceding verses. When Christ is called "Righteous One" in 2:1, this refers to him in his soteriological work, and that passage should not be introduced here. John refers to 1:5, 6: God is light, we walk in the light even as he is in the light, which is evidence that we have fellowship with him. For "light" and "the light" John now substitutes "righteous" and "the righteousness"; for "walking in the light" he uses "doing the righteousness"; for "fellowship" he writes "have been born from him." All the other thoughts that are suggested by 1:5, etc., reappear in the advanced connection save that they are stated so as to match this connection: the taking away of our sins, our purifying ourselves, also our loving our brethren (compare 2:9-11).
"If you know" is the verb olSa which means to direct the mind to its object, here to the great fact that God is righteous. In the apodosis John writes γινωσκω: "you realize that everyone . . . has been born from him"; this verb means that the mind receives an affect and an effect from the object (C.-K. 388). One knows and admits that God is righteous; one knows and is profoundly affected by the deduction that everyone doing the righteousness has been born from God. There is no exception to this. Hence, if I do not the righteousness, it is evident that I am not born from God; but if I do it, there is evidence that I am so born.
There is no reason for making γινώσκετε an imperative. John's readers know and realize what he says; he does not need to admonish them to do the latter any more than to do the former. The fact that v. 28 has an imperative and 3:1 an exclamatory imperative is not a reason for the use of an imperative in the intervening conditional sentence. John impresses two facts, the second being dependent on the first, on the minds of his readers (ei&jre) in order to show them all that lies in these facts as they affect themselves (γινώσκίτί).
God is righteous; righteousness is one of his energetic attributes. He is righteous in all his ways: in his laws, his promises, his verdicts, or a single act of his. In their blindness men may call him unjust, but they will be compelled to see and will then have
to say that he did justly, righteously. John could say that everyone that is born from him, every child of his, is also righteous; but he reverses this and says much more. Our being righteous proves that we are bora from him, and our doing the righteousness is the perceptible evidence of our birth. By it we can judge in regard to the mysterious and the intangible fact that a spiritual birth has occurred in us. By this tangible, visible evidence we can to a safe degree judge also our fellow Christians and the non-Christians. "Everyone doing the righteousness has been born from God," and no one else.
Many acquit themselves and pronounce themselves "righteous." Jesus told the Pharisees: "You are the ones declaring yourselves righteous (acquitting yourselves) before men" (Luke 16:15) and imagine that your claim makes you what you claim. Among the 95 Theses which he drew up for the anniversary of the Reformation, Claus Harms has a thesis that says: people used to pay for the forgiveness of their sins, but they have now advanced — every sinner just forgives his own sins. Doing the righteousness necessarily includes having the righteousness, which is the same as being righteous. God is righteous; therefore all that he does is righteous. Only a fool expects to do righteousness (to have what he does pronounced righteous) while he is not righteous at all. Doing the righteousness is the same as "doing the truth," 1:6. Both are definite: "the truth" = what God's Word says; "the righteousness" = what God and his Word pronounce righteous. The words Succuos and δικαιοσύνη are always forensic.
This "doing," ever doing, is not what the world calls "living a moral life." A man can live such a life without having been born anew. Natural morality is not "the righteousness" which is declared such by God. John has already written 1:9 and 2:1-3. "Everyone doing" means everyone whose sins God has remitted and cleansed away, everyone who through the Advocate, Jesus Christ the Righteous One, has constant remission of sins, who thus heeds the admonition not to sin (2:1), who keeps God's commandments, i. e., remains true to God's Word.
This is the man who has the plain, visible evidence that he "has been born from God," (perfect tense: is in that condition, continues in it). He is a new creature. He has been regenerated (John 3:3, 5). He has been made a good tree, his good fruit being the decisive evidence for this fact.
Socinus and the rationalists imagine that man gives himself the new birth when he strives Dei similem esse, tries to do good. Acts 10:35 is understood to mean that even every earnest pagan, Jew, Mohammedan, rationalist, though he be without Christ and the Son's blood (1:7), is accepted by God as his child. Others imagine that by doing what is right we attain the new birth, i. e., that the fruit produces the tree. Still others in a pantheistic way see in the new birth a process by which a person is absorbed into God or absorbs God in himself.
John is elucidating the κοινωνία or fellowship with God (1:3-7). This is produced by the new birth when a new, spiritual life is kindled in us through Christ, the Life, the Eternal One (1:2). This makes us the children of God who is righteous, and the evidence of our childhood is our doing the righteousness which his judgment ever approves 3:1) John begins to unfold what lies in the astounding fact that we, who by nature are nothing but poor sinners (1:8), have been born from God who is righteous. In the first place, this makes us "God's children." See what great love the Father has given to us that we are called God's children! And we are!
The aorist imperative is punctiliar: "Just take a look at this love!" "iSere is plural, and hence it is not an interjection (A. V.) but governs an object clause. τίοταπην aya-πην = "what manner of love" with the idea of both quality and quantity: "what glorious, sublime love," Luther. To see it aright is to sink down in adoration before it. It is beyond all comprehension.
Αγάπη is the love of comprehension and full understanding coupled with adequate purpose. As such it knows and in this knowledge moves toward its purpose. It is a pure gift; those are right who see that nothing in us called forth this love. "Has given" matches the perfect used in 2:29, "has been begotten"; this gift remains. The subject and the verb are transposed in order to emphasize both, the force of which is lost in the English: "what love has given to us the Father." "To us" is not emphatic. "The Father" is the same father that was mentioned in 1:2, 3; 2:1, the Father of the Son but in Jesus Christ also our Father (Matt. 6:9). These two relations are kept distinct (John 20: 17) although they are joined.
The 'ίνα clause is appositional and not final. It does not mean "that we should be called" but expresses a fact: "so that we are called," the aorist meaning "actually called," the passive indicating that this was done by the Father himself. He, from whom we have been born in infinite love, acknowledges us as his children; all his love and all the gifts that it is able to bestow upon us are ours. John adds emphatically: "And we are" God's children. We cannot be called his children by him without actually being his children.
Here we have a definition of fellowship with God (1;6, 7) ; it is the fellowship of the Father and his children. There are other fellowships. There are some m which one gives as much as another gives, like friend and friend, husband and wife. In this fellowship all is one-sided: God gives, we only receive in gratitude. Here the only true religion is denned; it is actual fellowship with God and not merely fellowship claimed, imagined (1:6) ; it is α birth from God, being actual children of God. This is Christianity; all other religions are false. Only those who receive Christ by faith are "God's children" (John 1:12).
For this reason the world does not know us because it did not know him. Δια. τούτο makes the previous statement the reason that the world does not know us, and ότι substantiates by pointing to something additional that the world does not know. The verb olSa could not be used here; γινώσκω is the proper verb (John 1:10; 16:3; 17:25). The world sees that we are here and thus knows us (οίδα) ; but as "God's children" we are utterly foreign to the world because even our Father is utterly foreign to the world. The world has no conception of what we are as those who are born from God and thus God's actual children, and the deepest reason for this ignorance is the fact that it has no conception of our Father. I Cor. 2:14; II Cor. 6:9a.
The world is proud of its knowledge, but the real things worth knowing it does not know. The mystery of regeneration is foolishness in its eyes; those who are children of God in Christ it considers deluded. Its own idea of a universal fatherhood of men without redemption and regeneration it regards as the height of wisdom. Let no true spiritual child of God count on recognition from the world. It simply does not know (γινώσκω). The names of God's greatest saints are not engraved on the tablets of the world's temple of fame. This cannot be otherwise; if it were, the world would not be the world, and we should not be God's children. Grieve not that the world does not know you; this is one proof that you are God's child. If the world knows you, you should grieve, for then there is proof that you are not God's child.
The aorist "did not know him" states the fact historically; since it never knew him it does not now know you. There is no need to modify the sense of the verb into "does not accept you as its own" or into "hates you"; to know in actual realization is enough. The world has only fictional, false conceptions regarding our Father and regarding us, his children. "The world" includes all unregenerate men; it is a collective and is not to be changed into an abstract such as "ungodliness."
CAPITULO 3
2) The greatness of God's love in making us his children appears fully in view of the future that awaits us. Beloved (see 2:7), now are we God's children, and not yet was it made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if it is made manifest, similar to him shall we be because we shall see him as he is.
As one of God's children John addresses other such children in the love that binds them together as he now lifts their eyes to the glory that awaits them. "Now are we God's children" repeats this fact for the third time; but "now" fixes attention on the present time. We look very much like other people; the world does not comprehend that we are really anything higher and laughs at such an idea. wrestle with the flesh; in a sinful world and with a mortal nature wn plod on wearily. A child of God is here and now, indeed, like a diamond that is crystal white within but is still uncut and shows no brilliant flashes from reflecting facets.
This shall be changed completely. "We know (οϊδαμχν, know the fact) that, if it is made manifest (as it certainly will be), similar to him we shall be because we shall see him as he (actually) is." Here again (2:28) and with the same verb John uses lav almost as though it were όταν, "when, whenever"; it is the "if" of strongest expectancy. One may hesitate as to whether ίαν φανερωθή has the same meaning here that it had in 2:18 and that «eivo? ίφανεράθ-η has in 3:5, thus: "when he (Christ) shall be made manifest" (as in our versions). But here the impersonal "it was made manifest" precedes so closely that both surely have the same meaning. Thus: "when what we shall be is made manifest" we know "that similar to him (placed forward for the sake of emphasis) we shall be because we shall be even as he is."
The question arises as to whether John refers to the Father or to Christ with these pronouns. One cannot argue that God is invisible (I Tim. 6:16), for we shall, indeed, see God (Ps. 17:15; Matt. 5:8); this is the visio Dei. So we shall also be similar to God in the imago Dei of perfect righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:25) including the glorificatio. Yet v. 5 speaks of Christ (although of his being made manifest in the flesh) as all agree; it is also best to refer v. 3 to Christ. So we do the same with the pronouns occurring in v. 2b. We have seen that in 2:28, 29 John turns from Christ to God; now from v. 1 and 2a he in 2b turns from God to Christ. The observation is thus correct that, as far as John is concerned, God and Christ need but a slight verbal distinction. When this is referred to Christ, we may cite passages such as Phil. 3:20, 21 which includes the glorification of also our body as made similar to Christ's glorious body, and all those passages which describe the visible φανε'ρωσ« ("manifestation, appearance") of Christ at his Parousia (2: 28) such as Acts 1:11; I Thess. 4:16.
There is no stage of existence beyond being "children of God" to which we shall be raised by God at the time of Christ's coming. "Ομοιο? expresses similarity. Ν on erimus idem, quod- Deus, sed similes erimus Dei (Luther, who interprets this as a similarity to God). Non dantur gradus ΰιόττ/το? (Calov) but only stages in our condition as children. Here on earth we are in a humiliation that is similar to that of Christ, eventually we shall be in a glory that is also similar to that of Christ. Hence the verb which is used, the passive of which at times has the sense of the middle: "to appear" (so in the A. V.). The aorist subjunctive "if it is made manifest" refers to the one great final manifestation. Ah, how all the children of the world will then look at us whom they now disregard, despise, and at times persecute!
3) John now develops the "everyone doing the righteousness" which he wrote in 2:29. We are children of God and know that at the last God will make us glorious, similar to Christ. In John's simple way of writing the καί unfolds what this means regarding our conduct. We read the whole of v. 3-10a together as one continued series of incontrovertible facts and in the formulation note five successive πά? ό, four with the present, the fifth with the perfect participle, and two ό with present participles. This is continued in 10b where John specifies the essentials of brother love.
And everyone having this hope (set) on him continues to purify himself even as that One is pure.
There is no exception. He who stops purifying himself has dropped this hope from his heart. The present tense is important. If this were perfectionism, an "And not yet was it made manifest (in the English idiom we use the perfect when we point backward; the Greek is content with its aorist) what we shall be"; not yet has God made a public display of the glory that belongs to his children, of the inheritance incorruptible, unstained, unfading, reserved for us in heaven (I Pet. 1:4). Not yet do we wear the white robes of heaven; not yet does the crown of glory sparkle on our brow. The robe of Christ's righteousness, our crown of hope, the diamond of faith, the pearls of love, are invisible to physical eyes. We still aorist would be required: "did purify himself." We have a plain mark by which to judge ourselves. To claim that we are God's children, who have been born of him, to claim the hope of heaven and glory and yet to stop self-purification is to be lying (1:6).
"Everyone having this hope" objectivizes the hope in the heart like having faith, having love, etc. Ευ αντω = set or resting "on him" as the One who will fulfill this hope for us. The world is full of men who have a certain kind of hope, but see on what it rests — not on Christ, on his blood and expiation (1:7; 2:2), on his promise (2:25). They invent their own foundation for the hope they have. It is sand, is swept away When the great flood comes (Matt. 7:24-27).
"Even as that One is pure," Christ in his whole earthly life. John does not say "even as that One was purifying, did purify himself." Jesus never had even a trace of sin. "Is pure" = purity is his inherent quality. "Is" does not equal "was," nor does "is" refer only to Christ's present state in heaven. It is like the "God is righteous" occurring in 2:29 as far as time is concerned: was — is — will be, this is immaterial. There is no incongruity between the clauses because our constant purifying is an action Christ's a state of purity. To keep striving after a perfect model is perfectly congruous.
The way in which the pronouns ά> αΰ™ and «eivos are used in 2:6, the one referring to God, the other to Christ, leads some to regard them in the same way here and thus also to refer the pronouns used in v. 2 to God. This is a real question. In trying to answer it one should not forget that oceivos also refers to what immediately precedes and thus only resumes it even without emphasis (B.-P. 272, Ib). We have a plain case in v. 7, which it is well to consider since it follows so closely and is not remote as 2:6 is.
4) Everyone doing the sin is also doing the lawlessness; and the sin is the lawlessness. This is a fact, and there are no exceptions. "Everyone doing" is the same as it was in 2:29 where we have "doing the righteousness." Doing the righteousness — doing the gm — doing the lawlessness means being given to do; the participle and the verb are durative. The governing habitus is referred to as this is operative and apparent in action, in doing. The articulated nouns make the abstracts definite, which the ordinary English does not note. The righteousness, the sin, the lawlessness are not these manifestations in general but the righteousness that God declares to be such, the sin that misses the mark set by God, the lawlessness that violates God's law. We introduce no qualifiers such as mortal sin, willful, conscious transgressions of law, sin against conscience, or the limitation to deeds of sin.
We have the opposite of v. 3 and also of 2:29: the one keeps purifying himself, ever by the grace of God sweeping sin out of himself, ever giving himself to the righteousness (in thought, word, and deed) that has God's approval. The other gives himself over to the sin, the lawlessness despite God who abhors both. The one is a child of God; the other is a child of the devil (v. lOa).
It is John's habit to place simple facts side by side and to let them speak for themselves as they certainly do. We may express their relation to each other by logical particles, but when we do, the logic lies in the facts as facts even without the use of particles. So John says regarding the sin: "and the sin is the lawlessness." The two are identical, interchangeable, which is the force of the articulated predicate (R. 769, note his explanation on page 768). We often define by using interchangeable or even only synonymous terms; hence it should not be denied that this is that type of a definition. It serves to bring out that side of "the sin," namely "the lawlessness" (opposition to and disregard of God's law), which makes "the sin" the very opposite of "the righteousness." Both "the righteousness" and "the lawlessness" are strong forensic terms: as the righteous Judge God declares what is righteous (2:29) and what violates his law.
No one who is given to doing the lawlessness can possibly have fellowship with the God of light (1:5, 6) and of righteousness (2:29), be his child to enjoy his fatherly love, to have the hope of glory.
5) Beside the two statements: Everyone with the great hope purifying himself even as Christ is pure, and: Everyone doing the sin, thereby also doing the lawlessness in direct opposition to God and Christ — beside these John places the statement: And you know that that One was made manifest in order to take away the sins, and sin in him there is not. The readers themselves know these facts as well as John knows them, and they may now apply them to the other facts that he has just stated in v. 3, 4.
The one is the fact that Jesus Christ was made manifest (became flesh, lived, suffered, died, rose again) in order to take away the sins. Compare "he was made manifest to us" (the apostles). He who existed from all eternity asarkos was made manifest in time ensarkos as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. John 1:14, 29. This was his great mission, and he carried it out.
AipEtv has three meanings: to lift up from the ground; to lift up in order to bear; to carry or take away. The third meaning is to be preferred here. "The evangelist thought of the expiatory power of the death of Jesus so that we must translate (John 1:29) : 'Behold, this is God's Lamb, the one taking away (by the expiatory power of his blood, I John 1:7) the sin of the world' " (G. K. 185). There is thus no reason in connection with John 1:29 or our passage for being uncertain whether to translate "take away" or "bear" as the R. V. and its margin seem to be uncertain. Isa. 53:4-12. On αϊρειν, "to take away," in other connections see John 11:48; 17:15; 19:31, 38. Άφίημι and άψεσκ, "to remit, send away," "remission," are regularly used with reference to the acts which God (Christ) performs in personal absolution (justification) and not to Christ's universal expiation. We should not confuse the two.
In John 1:29 we have "the sin of the world," here "the sins," which spreads them out in their multiplicity whereas in v. 4 "the sin" is the abstract made definite. Since Christ came for the very purpose of taking away the sins, it is plain that he who is given to do the sin, the lawlessness, scorns Christ's expiation or imagines that he can abuse it and thus demonstrates that he has prevented Christ's blood from putting him into fellowship with God (1:7) as a child of God and an heir of heaven (2:29-3:3).
"And sin in him there is not" is similar to v. 3: "even as that One is pure"; it also uses the present tense "is" in the same way. The anarthrous αμαρτία, anything of the nature of sin, is correct. As the absolutely Sinless One Christ was, indeed, able to be the sacrifice to take away the sins of others. John states the fact on this account, but also in connection with Christ's taking away the sins on account of his readers, who cannot be God's children through Christ's blood and expiation (1:7; 2:2) if they are still given to doing the sin. As Christ is pure, and sin is not in him, they must ever be purifying themselves, and when they find themselves sinning must flee to their Advocate with his expiation for such sins (2:1, 2).
6) Thus John advances to the facts: Everyone remaining in him does not go on sinning; everyone sinning has not seen him, nor has he known him.
Both facts are true without exception. John introduces "remaining," on which he rings the changes in 2:19, 24-28. Every person that is joined to Christ by faith and by faith remains in Christ simply does not go on sinning. These two facts exclude each other. The durative present "does not go on sinning" is vital for John's meaning; it has the same force that it had in v. 4, "everyone doing the sin," given to doing it. Not to go on sinning implies a decisive break with sinning. Remaining in Christ, the expiator of sins, the Sinless One, means faith in him and in his expiation and thus a steady fight against sinning, a constant self-purification by his grace and his help. It cannot mean anything else.
Perfectionists misunderstood this statement and think that it refers to total sanctification: has stopped sinning altogether. They disregard the tense. They ignore 1:8-10; 2:1, 2; 3:3. In 1:8, 9 John makes confession also of his own sins: "If we keep confessing our sins." So in Rom. 7:14-25 Paul deplores the fact of his still sinning, of the sin power trying to make him its war captive (v. 23). Phil. 3:12, 13. Perfectionism takes John's statement out of its connection and disregards the tense which John uses.
John states the opposite but again with an advance in thought: Everyone continuing to sin (going on with sinning) has not seen him, nor has he known him. If he says: "I have known him," he is a liar (2:4). John uses "seeing him" as Jesus uses θεωρεΐν, "behold," (in John 6:40) because he speaks positively: "everyone beholding the Son and believing on him." The true believer ever keeps his eyes on Jesus. John says that the one going on in sinning "has not seen Christ," has never as much as caught a glimpse of him. The eyes of his understanding (Eph. 1:18) have remained blinded by the darkness (2:11), have never been opened or have become closed again.
The fact that this refers to spiritual seeing is made plain by the addition: "neither has he known him," which introduces the true, inward, spiritual knowing that was mentioned in 2:3-6. John regularly builds up his thought by interlocking and interweaving, by repeating and, when repeating, by adding new angles of view. Here γινώσκω is the fitting verb. This is not a mere intellectual comprehension but one that produces its spiritual affect and effect in him who knows. This sinner may talk about Christ, but his soul has not come to know him, has not made true contact with him. His gnosis, if he is a Gnostic, is false.
7) John turns to admonition. Little children (see 2:1), let no one try to deceive you! The one doing the righteousness is righteous even as that One is righteous. The one doing the sin is from the devil because from the (very) beginning the devil keeps sinning. For this there was made manifest the Son of God, to destroy the works of the devil.
The admonition shows why John is writing this. There are antichristian deceivers (2:18, 19) who were seeking to deceive or lead astray (πλανάω, 1:8) the readers. What they claimed about not having sin 1:8 indicates. Their entire doctrine on this subject has not been preserved. Yet from 1:6 plus 2:29 and now 3:7 we safely conclude that they thought that they were righteous without doing the righteousness. The aorist imperative would mean: "Let no one succeed in deceiving you!" The present: "Let no one engage in it, i. e., even try it!" Obsta principiis! It is a mistake to think that the fact of being a Christian is proof against cunning deceivers. The young, the inexperienced, the unfortified are not proof of this.
Here is the simple fact: "The one doing the righteousness (see 2:29) is righteous." Apply it to yourself, apply it to all around you. There is no appreciable difference between ό ποών and the preceding mxs ό τόπων In neither case is an exception permitted; after twice using the latter John is now content with the former. John is, of course, speaking about conduct, but as conduct is the result of what a person is. What one is, his conduct shows, and vice versa. "Is righteous" and "is from the devil" are the opposites.
Δί/catos is, as always, forensic. Yet ik God (2:29), ik the devil, and "having been born" (2:29; 3:9), and "God's children" let us think of regeneration. This does not, however, exclude justification. These two occur in the same instant. In the instant of the divine birth the divine verdict is ours; in the instant of its pronouncement we are reborn. Gal. 3:26-29. While John dwells on the birth and the new nature with its plain results that are evidenced in the conduct he does not ignore the righteous Judge (2:29) and his verdict On the δίκαιοι.
"Even as that One is righteous" refers to Christ (2:1; "pure" in 3:3). In 2:29 this refers to God, now it is referred to Christ. Here we have a plain case where αυτό? and «etVos denote the same person, which must be considered when we are studying v. 3 and the preceding pronouns. God's verdict of approval ever rested upon Jesus. Only the righteous remain in him, in the Righteous One, and the fact that they are righteous is evidenced by their doing the righteousness. Jesus is our model, yet he is more than our model because of our union with him (1:3), our remaining in him, from which comes all that we are.
8) "The one doing the sin" betrays his origin, "he is from the devil." This man is described already in v. 4: "everyone doing the sin." John does not say "is or has been born from the devil." Such a verb would not be apt because "to be born" implies life, and all that comes from the devil is death. Yet the devil is the father of those doing the sin (John 8:44), they are "the children of the devil" (v. 10). This is not a fatherhood of begetting like the high fatherhood of our Father but a fatherhood that is due to the derivation of our sins from the devil's sinning: "because from the (very) beginning the devil sins" (II Pet. 2:4), sins and sins (progressive present, gathering up the past and the present in one phrase, Moulton; R. 879, etc.). Those who follow him by steadily doing the sin are εκ, "from him," are his "children" in this way.
Let no one try to deceive you in regard to this! The gulf is as wide as that between heaven and hell. They are liars who tell you that they have bridged it. Either you are with God in righteousness, under his acquitting verdict, or you are in the devil's family. Tertium non datur.
Not only are those persons who are mentioned in v. 7, 8 so far apart, the one being with Christ, the other with the devil, but also another fact must be stated: "For this there was made manifest (see v. 5) the Son of God, that he destroy the works of the devil," aorist, actually destroy. Christ came to destroy effectively the works of the devil, the havoc which he wrought among men with his sinning. A pronoun will not do as a reference to Christ; John uses "the Son of God" (1:3, 7) and names him according to his deity. It is incorrect to say that his greatness, his power, and his majesty in contrast with those of the devil are not expressed. But he does not destroy the devil's works by means of his omnipotence: "he was made manifest," he came in his human nature in order by this to destroy the devil himself and his power of death, Heb. 3:11.
"The works of the devil" are all that he has wrought. Some restrict the thought to the sins that he has produced (v. 5), but John expands. Consider Luke 11:21. Why exclude the consequences of sin on the plea that these are the judgments of God? The effects accompany their cause, the Son destroys both and even him who is the personal cause of them (Heb. 3:11). This destruction began decisively when the Son came to earth; it goes forward inexorably now; it will be consummated at the Son's Parousia. Woe to those who are the devil's children! Εί« τοϋτο makes the ap-positional accusative Ινα clause (R. 699) emphatic.
9) Linking back into 2:29 ("born from God") and into 3:5 ("doing the sin"), John unfolds the thought still farther: Everyone that has been born from God does not go on doing sin because his seed remains in him; and he is not able to go on sinning because he has been born from God.
To this extent the Son of God has already destroyed the devil's works in everyone that has been born of God, that by regeneration has been born into a new life, has become a child of God, has God as his Father. Everyone who is so born "does not go on sinning." The present durative ποια is as vital for John's meaning here as it was in v. 6. Ούχ άμαρτάνει (ν. 6) = άμαρτίαν ου ποιεί: "does not go on sinning" — "does not go on doing sin" (anarthrous: what is of the nature of sin). He keeps purifying himself (v. 3), is constantly busy sweeping out sin.
The cause of this great change lies in the fact of his "having been born from God." John explains more fully: "because his seed continues to remain in him," and once more he introduces this significant verb "remain." What is meant by this person's seed and this seed's remaining in him, exerting such a power in him that he does not, in fact, cannot go on in his old way, sinning and sinning? The answer that this seed is the Holy Spirit is accepted by some, but they feel that calling the Holy Spirit "the seed" of the Christian will not do. So they say that the person of the Spirit is not referred to; but when they then state what is referred to they offer abstractions such as das Goettliche, "a gift from him and his nature."
This "seed" is the Word of God (1:10; 2:5, which he guards; 2:14), the light (1:6, 7), the truth (1:8; 2:4); the commandment (2:7, etc.). Here belong I Pet. 1:23 and James 1:18. It makes no difference whether we say that the word remains in us, or that we remain in the Word, the truth, etc. "Seed" is figurative, but the figure extends only to the fact that a seed has life in it. The Word of God is a living power (I Pet. 1:23). It is not necessary to extend this figure, to talk about vegetable seed and human seed, life germ, and to seek for analogies in natural life, seed growth, etc. Jesus and the holy writers dominate their figures and are not dominated by them. Does this interpretation of the "seed" as the Word lose the Holy Spirit? Indeed not! The great means by which the Spirit Quickens, kindles tife, keeps life alive, is the Word, in which he is, by which he works.
When he has the living Word in his reborn heart no one is able to go on sinning simply "because he has been born from God." The matter is axiomatic. All that can be done by way of explanation is to insert that the Word of God remains in the person and thus to shift the emphasis in the subject: "everyone born of God" does not, cannot go on sinning because of this seed, in him, and to emphasize in the predicate that "from, God this person is born." Note the position of oe του ®ΐοϋ; it occurs first alter the participle and then before the verb.
10) John closes the whole discussion: In connection with this manifest are the children of God and the children of the devil, so manifest that only the blind do not see who is who and the liars, the self-deceived, who make God a liar (1:6, 8, 10). On "children of God" see verse 1. Here we at last have "the children of the devil." There are none who are half and half; there is only an either-or. John has presented the manifest, plain, even visible difference. Every cloud that the antichristiahs (2:18) may have raised for his readers is swept completely away.
The New Birth and Our Relation to the Brethren 10b-24
lOb) The division into verses and also the R. V.'s paragraphing seem to be faulty at this point. John now begins the development of the truth that those who have been born from God and are his children are by the fact of that birth brothers and love each other as brothers, and — what is most important in John's presentation — that through this love each brother furnishes evidence that he is a brother, a member of God's family. By its hatred of us the world shows that it does not belong to the divine family.
At this point John develops the thought expressed in 1:3: "you have fellowship with us," the apostles, those who first gathered around Jesus, the Son, and were made his witnesses to all other men; in addition the thought expressed in 1:7: "we have fellowship with each other" as being cleansed by the blood of Jesus, God's Son. The first additional circle of thought, a small one, which shows that this means love between brother and brother appears in 2:9-ll, where it is in strong opposition to hate, for the antichristians are not of us but went out from us (2:18, 19) and hate us who are in the light because they prefer the darkness. In this smaller circle John uses "the light" and "the darkness" and reverts to 1:5-7. John now advances this thought in accord with what he has added about our relation to God. We now see what "brother" really means. He is one of "the children of God," one born into God's family. We see how all such brothers naturally love, must love each other, how this love is the evidence of the fact of being a brother.
Into this wider circle (3:10b-24) John weaves in much more that he has already said: "remaining" (2:24-28 and elsewhere), "the commandment" (2:3-8 and elsewhere), "knowing" (2:3-6 and elsewhere), "the world" (2:15), "boldness" (2:28) ; especially also Christ's sacrifice (1:7; 2:2; 3:16). Finally, John combines faith and love in verse. 23. Then he reaches out still farther in his development (4:1, etc.) yet, as he has done before, retains all that he has said.
Unless this is clearly seen and appreciated we shall not understand the structure of John's letter and shall fail to note that it starts from its basic facts in 1 :l-4 and spirals upward in gradually widening circles and retains all that precedes in every advance. The whole is one weave in one pattern with new colors introduced that reappear again and again. It is a perfectly designed, rich Oriental rug.
John begins as he did in 2:29b but now writes negatively: Everyone not doing righteousness is not from God, is not born of God, is not one of God's children (3:1), is, in fact, one of "the children of the devil" (v. lOa). All that is said in 2:29-3:10a is again brought to mind in this summary statement of fact. On what "doing righteousness" and "to be from God" means see 2:29.
And the one not loving his brother introduces the additional fact that is now to be unfolded, that our relation to God at once involves our relation to each other. It is introduced negatively because in 2:29b the positive has already been presented; the negative is its complement. At the same time, by saying that "the one not loving his brother" is not of God, John draws a decisive circle about "the children of God" and presents them as being separated from "the children of the devil." They are separated at the very source, their respective fathers; the one is the heavenly Father, God, the other the devil (John 8:44). This origin and source is itself secret and invisible, but the tangible, visible evidence is plain: love and the absence of love.
The reason John says "not loving his brother" in-stead of "not loving God" he will tell us in 4:20; his pattern will be completed in due time. Love for the brother is a part of "doing the righteousness." It is, we might say, a good example, and exempla decent. Yet this love and its absence mean more to John; they are so much evidence that is easily to be seen. Twice (v. 19 and 25) John says: "in connection with this we know'' (γινωσκω). We know also in connection with other facts and other evidence; read again 2:3, 5b, 13, 14. To know that we know (2:3), i. e., know with full effect upon ourselves, is essential. Hence true evidence that is fully understood by what it reveals is so important, and John points it out to his readers. The evidence furnished by love is both clear and unmistakable. John is as much the apostle of knowledge as of love; so is Paul who really wrote the grandest description of love (I Cor. 13).
11) The negative fact just stated is at once proved by what John's readers have heard from the very beginning of their connection with God through Christ (άττ' αρχή? as in 2:7). Because this is the report (αγγελία, repeated from 1:5) which you heard from the beginning, that we keep loving one another.
The ΐνα clause is in apposition with ψ. This is not the Mosaic commandment of love to one's neighbor but what Jesus says in John 15:12, 17 to the effect that his disciples love one another. We love all men as our fellow creatures, but as spiritual brothers we can love only those who are such brothers. Because of love we do all manner of good to all men as opportunity offers, but especially to our spiritual brothers who are of the household (family) of faith, Gal. 5:10. This is true with reference to God himself. He is able to give gifts of love to his children which those who are not his children will not receive.
12) John inserts a pertinent negative illustration. Not as Cain was from the wicked one (the devil, verse lOa, a child of the devil) and slew his brother. This is not an anacoluthon, nor is anything to be supplied. No main clause is needed in order to express the sense, the subordinate clauses convey it completely. The main point is not the fact that Cain slew Abel but the reason that he did so. In χάριν nW (χάριν is placed before the interrogative) there lies neither the idea of purpose nor of Grund.
And why did he slay him? The answer shows that the point to be stressed is the fact that Cain's murder evidences that he "was of the wicked one." As one is « God and ik the devil, so are one's works; and especially some of the outstanding works furnish plain, incontrovertible evidence concerning whence Cain's murder is such a work. Hence the answer. Because his works were wicked while his brother's (were) righteous. Cain was undoubtedly "from the wicked one," his deed of murder notoriously advertises the fact that his deeds were wicked, and that he was thus of the wicked one. "The devil" (verse 10) is here called "the wicked one" because of Cain's "wicked deeds."
It is not enough to regard "while his brother's were righteous" as saying only that Cain thus had no reason whatever for slaughtering, butchering his brother (this is the meaning of the verb which is significantly repeated). This addition regarding Abel's works brings out fully the point of the wickedness and its origin as this is noted also in Gen. 4:4 and Heb. 11:4 although not in Jude 11. The devil's children hate God's children just because the righteous works of these condemn their own works as the wicked works that they are. So they crown their other wicked works as Cain crowned his and thereby more than ever evidence the fact that they are "from the wicked one" who is the murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).
Note that δίκαια matches the διχαιοσύνην occurring in v. 10; both are forensic as always, see 2:29. Why such an extreme exemplification in this first murderer? The answer is found in v. 15 plus Matt. 5:21,22. We often fail to see what wickedness is in its first origin until after it produces its full-blown works.
13) The new paragraph begins at lOb and not here (R. V.). Be not marvelling, brethren, if the •world keeps hating you. This is a condition of reality. The world certainly continues to hate, the world being the world, not "having been born from God," not being "the children of God" (2:29-3:1) but "the children of the devil," "from the wicked one," their deeds being "wicked" (v. 10-12). Jesus has made this very plain in John 15:18-21 where he uses the same "if" clause. This hatred should never cause the least surprise. According to 2:19 John includes in "the world" all the antichristians who especially try to break up the fellowship of the true Christians with one another. It is for this reason also that John says so much about our relation to each other and our love for each other. "Brothers" or "brethren" is the proper form of address here and not "little children," for John is a brother and now speaks of brotherhood.
14) We on our part (emphatic ^as) know (the fact, οϊ8αμα>) that we have stepped over out of the death into the life (we know it by this evidence) because we are loving the brothers. "On states the evidential reason; another and an important instance of this use of ότι is found in Luke 7:47. John expounds "having been born from God"; it means "that we have stepped over (βαίνω to take steps, μετά, over) out of the death into the life." God's grace, his Spirit, his Word led us out of the one into the other; being spiritually dead, we were made spiritually alive. This is the same perfect tense that was used in 2:29 and 3:9, and it has full present connotation.
"The death," "the life" are as definite as "the truth," "the Word," "the commandment," "the righteousness," etc.; they are not simply "death" and "life" in general. It is well to note that both the physical life and the spiritual life are not seen directly but are apparent only from their evidence, their activity. The plainest activity of the spiritual life is that of loving those who are one with us, are our spiritual brothers. We are not merely being friends with them (φιλάν), but, understanding our spiritual relation to them, we act with a purpose that is according (αγαπάν).
The one not loving (thus) remains in the death; his not-loving being the plain evidence. John once more writes the verb "remains," which appears throughout this letter. The fact that love always shows itself, just as does the absence of love, John will add presently.
15) It startles us when John adds: Everyone hating his brother is a man-murderer. So the world hates us and thereby attests its Cainlike nature. Whether blood is actually shed or not makes no difference (Matt. 5:22). Άνθρωποκτόνο·; is the very word that Jesus used with reference to the devil in John 8:44; it applies to all the devil's children (v. lOb) ; included among these are the antichristians who have gone out from us (2:19). John has called the latter liars (1:6, 10; 2:22) and combines liar and man-murderer as Jesus does in John 8:44. Let the deniers of the deity and of the expiation of Jesus (1:7; 2:2) read this double verdict on them!
And you know — I need not tell you — that every man-murderer does not have life eternal remaining in him. John says "life eternal." It is a rather superficial interpretation to say that this refers to the fact that murderers are put to death by execution of the government. John speaks of the murderers who murder by hating. This is not a crime in the eyes of the world; it is what the world does the world over. Worldly governments have killed even God's children; many thought that they thereby did God a service. Not to have life eternal is to be damned by God.
The view that by "has not remaining in him" John means: once had life eternal but has lost it again, stresses μίνονσαν unduly and disregards έχει. Whether such a murderer ever had life eternal and then became apostate is immaterial and not the point. This certainly cannot be said of "the world" which hates us and thereby commits this murder and thus together with any apostates who have gone back to the world "has not eternal life" so that this life could remain in them at death.
So much for the hating that is murder in God's judgment. It is the evidential mark of the world, of all those who remain in death, who have not eternal life as an abiding possession, and who, like Cain, hate us who have stepped over out of their death into life and want to rob us of this life and often, therefore, persecute or even kill us physically. They thereby reveal the fact that the devil is their father who murdered from the beginning, who has no life to give birth to anyone but only the power of death, to hold men in this death or to draw them back into it (Heb. 2:14).
16) Now "the love" which marks the children of God. In connection with this we have known (with the strongest affect and effect upon ourselves) the love (articulated: the love that is love indeed) that that One in our behalf laid down his life. It is important, first of all, to realize just what love is. The Germans have an advantage in that they can use die Liebe with the article like the Greek: "the love" that is love and not merely "love" in general. The same is true with regard to love as with regard to life: neither is visible to the eye, tangible to the hand; both are known as being present only by their activity. So John names the evidence. We Christians have truly realized in our hearts (perfect: and do still realize) just what love is, namely "in connection with this that that One in our behalf laid down his life." No evidence of love can go beyond this. Ότι is epexegetical and explains "this" (B.-D. 394); "because" in our versions is an inadequate rendering.
John uses εκείνοι repeatedly as a reference to Christ. In Rom. 5:6-10 Paul states in so many words why this evidence of Christ's love is supreme. What person in all the world ever laid down his life for another except in the rare cases where the other was a good man? But Christ did this for "ungodly ones," for actual enemies. 0 love divine, all love excelling! John uses the expression τίθημι την ψυχήν which he borrows from Jesus (John 10:11, 17, 18) ; it is not found in the papyri by M.-M. It means to go into death voluntarily. We know what this death meant for the Son of God.
Robertson 630, etc., The Minister and his Greek New Testament, 35, etc., has done much to answer the views that refused (and still refuse) to give mep the resultant meaning "instead of"; but read this for yourself. On our passage he remarks: "Surely the very object of such death is to save life." Again: "Theological prejudice must be overruled." The secular linguistic evidence also overrules it.
Translate as you prefer: "on our behalf," "for us," "for our benefit," "instead of," substitution remains because without it Christ's death would be of no benefit to the ungodly. In 1:7 John says: "The blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin"; in 2:2: "He himself is the expiation (ϊλασ^όϊ) for our sins," etc. It is sacrificial, substitutionary blood that expiates. Such love "that One" put into action and evidence, and we have realized it, we have stepped over from the death into the life by means of his substitutionary death. Note that ίκάνο* and imp ημών are juxtaposed: "that One in our stead."
And we on our part (^eis emphatic) ought in behalf of the (brothers to lay down the lives. This evidence of our love ought not to be beyond us. Άδίλφοί does not mean neighbors or men in general but "brothers" who are in the same family with us, begotten from God, God's children (2:29, etc.). Όφάλομεν means that the obligation rests upon us, i. e., when danger requires it, we willingly step in and lay down our lives to save the lives of our spiritual brethren. Ύπίρ has the same force that it has in the statement about Christ.
The present tense is used in general statements. The love we have realized begets like love in us with a like visible evidence. John restricts the love of Christ and its evidence to us, to God's children; but he does so only because in our imitation of his love the supreme evidence we ought to be willing to furnish is restricted to our brothers in God's family. The fact that our dying for our brothers can do no more than to save them from physical death while Christ's dying gives us spiritual and eternal life (v. 14) is understood.
17) From the supreme evidence of love, namely giving up life itself for our fellow believers, John descends to the common evidence of giving bread to our needy fellow believers. Only rarely will the supreme sacrifice be asked of us by the Lord who died for us all; this lesser sacrifice will often be requested. On the other hand, whoever has the life sustenance of the world and beholds his brother having need and locks his compassion away from him, how does the love for God remain in him?
Δε places this case beside the supreme one as being one that is different and one that deals with far less, only with earthly provisions for a needy brother. Yet because it deals with less — we may say with the least sort of evidence of love — it the more warrants the great conclusion: where this least evidence of love for one's brother does not appear, how can there be any love in the heart for God, the Father of us all?
Although it is now worded in the singular the statement is just as general as is the preceding one that has the plural. Bios is used in its third meaning, Lebens-unterhalt, one's "living," as it is in Mark 12:44, the poor widow's entire "living." We say: "I am making a living," enough to live on. The genitive "living of the world" helps to bring out the meaning. This is not in contrast with "life eternal," for the two are not comparable. Spiritual life is sustained by Word and sacrament; physical life in the world by provisions of the world.
John uses θεωράν which does not mean merely to "see" (A. V.), which may be only a superficial look, but "to behold," to see fully the case of a brother who is to be truly loved as a brother, who has need, who lacks enough for a living. John uses three coordinate verbs (subjunctives) as is his habit: he has — he beholds — he locks or shuts, and subordinates none of the three by the use of a participle.
The Greek uses the plural τα σπλάγχνα, the nobler viscera, heart, lungs, liver (the seat of the emotions) to express these tender emotions themselves. We use "the heart" in the same manner. The A. V.'s translation "bowels" is inadequate, for it leads us to think of the intestines. We translate: "And locks his heart or his compassion away from" the needy brother, i. e., closes it up so that it does not go out to this poor brother. See how James 2:15, 16 pictures this heart-lessness, this putting off the destitute brother with empty words.
John asks the readers themselves how "the love for God" remains in one who refuses to show this small evidence of love for a needy brother. The genitive is objective as 4:20 shows. Where such common evidence of love for a brother does not appear, there is evidently no love for the brother, and thus there "remains" (once more this important verb) also no love for God. The presence of love, as we have said, is assured only by its activity, its deeds, the evidence. John himself will consider this as he continues (4:7, etc.), for there is much more to be said. In 2:9-11 the sub j ect is only begun; now we have only its first expansion. It is John's beautiful way to expand gradually.
18) Little children (2:1, tender address, so fitting here where love is urged), let us not be loving (John includes himself) with word, neither with the tongue, but in connection with deed and with truth. Let us not pretend love with sham, empty evidence, but let us furnish genuine evidence. The first two datives are datives of means. To use only "word" and "the tongue" is mere hypocritical pretense of loving. Anarthrous λόγω = "something that we say"; articulated rij γλώσοτ? = "the tongue" which each person has for saying something. James 2:15, 16 applies here still more.
For the positive thought John uses ev: "in connection with work (or deed) and with truth" (reality), both nouns are anarthrous, qualitative. Some mere word spoken by the tongue is no real evidence of love, which need not be stressed to mean that love never uses some word and the tongue for expressing itself. But love can never stop with this. It moves the hand to some corresponding deed of love, and that not for show (Acts 5rl, etc.) but combined with reality. Άλ-ηθ&α, is properly added, for hypocrites may imitate love even by a deed. Our versions use "in" throughout and thus erase the difference. "In connection with" deed and truth joins these two to the activity of love and thus makes them the evidence of the presence of the love hidden in the heart; mere means, like some word spoken by the tongue, are not yet such evidence, no matter who seeks to palm them off as sufficient evidence.
19, 20) All that was said about love for the brother and the true evidence for such love is so vital because it reflects our relation to God. The question asked about our love for God in v. 17 reverts to this; but it does so because of what precedes, see v. 14 and recall the whole of 2:29-3:12. "The children of God" cannot be such children if they do not love also each other and show the evidence of such love. Hence John proceeds with our relation to God and offers the sweetest promise whereas without it, after what he said about our obligation to love the brethren, grave, disturbing doubt might assail us. In connection •with this we shall know that we are from the truth and shall persuade our hearts before him, if in regard to anything (o τι) the heart condemns us, that God is greater than our heart and knows everything.
We regard this as one sentence and not as two (A. V.) ; we do not punctuate with a semicolon (R. V.). We prefer the reading 5 η lav (R. V.) and not ότι (A. V., "for"). Also: "In connection with this . . . that God is greater than our heart," etc., and not: "because God is greater," etc. (R. V.). Those who prefer the reading that has two 5n do not know what to do with the second except to make it a redundant repetition of the first which is to be omitted in translation (A. V.). No one
has satisfactorily explained the insertion of this second on.
Think of what John has said in v. 16 about the real evidence of love! Many an honest Christian heart will question whether it is able to go that far. Even regarding v. 17, 18 many a heart will question whether it has always lived up to that as it should. Note that "we" includes John himself as it did in 1:10. This is what John means with "if in regard to anything the heart condemns us." The adverbial accusative δ Tt. is placed forward, and ημών is the genitive object of the verb. The English cannot duplicate the beautiful play on γινύσκω and καταγινώσκω, which is even repeated. The German can: erkennen — gegen uns erkennen. The second is forensic: a judge recognizes something as being valid against us, on which he must pronounce against us. The judge is in this instance our own heart which knows our inner motives (like conscience) and how often, at least inwardly, our love for a brother falls short of what it ought to be.
John does not deny the finding and the verdict of our heart or imply that our falling short escapes God or amounts to nothing in his sight. That would be lying, to use John's own expression. No; "in connection with this great fact shall we know that we are from the truth and shall persuade our hearts before him" when we come into his presence, for instance, when we pray (v. 22), namely the fact (epexegetical on) "that God is greater than our heart," so much greater that "he knows everything."
To be sure, he knows all our failures in love, all that our own heart finds against us; but he knows vastly more, namely all about our real spiritual state, that the measure of love we do have shows that we have stepped over from the death into the life (v. 14), that although we are as yet imperfect in love, and our own hearts penitently acknowledge it, we have been born from him and are his children (2:29, etc.).
Ε* τψ άληθά™ = Ιξ αί,τοϋ (2:29; 3:9 twice). "The truth" (1:8, etc.) = the light, the Word, as the source of our life. The anarthrous "truth" in v. 17 is not the same. The future tenses are certainly a blessed promise: "we shall know — shall persuade or assure our hearts," but they are also the regular tenses after protases with lav. They are proper here: after we have tried to live up to v. 16-18, our hearts bring accusations against us, and then the question arises: "How shall we recognize that we are from the truth, persuade ourselves in God's presence?"
21) John has shown how the condemnation of our hearts is to be answered and silenced. We recall 1:9 and 2:1, 2 which cover all the sinning of believers. So he proceeds: Beloved, if (thus) the heart does not condemn us, we (indeed) have boldness as regards God, and whatever we ask we receive from him because we are keeping his commandments and are doing the things pleasing in his sight.
As was the case in v. 18, this assurance also deserves a loving address. This is not the case of a heart that fails to accuse us when it ought to, but of one that does so and yet does not do so because of v. 19, 20. Because John says only "if the heart does not condemn us," some interpret: if, in the first place, it ^ever did this because it already knows what John says, and if, in the second place, it now does not after having heard what John says. John's own heart belongs in the former group. But John builds verse 21, etc., on what precedes. The cases are the same. The heart's condemnation always starts up anew; it would be a bad sign if it did not. John, you, and I will always be in the one class; the supposed first class does not exist.
The main point is the dealing of our heart with God, v. 19, έμπροσθεν αυτού, which is a juridical phrase that refers to an appearance before God as the Judge. So now, when we are sure of God's verdict despite our faults, "boldness have we προς, face to face with God," παρρησία is to be understood as it was in 2:28 in the sense of assurance, confidence, joyful fearlessness. Robertson calls προ? the "face-to-face" preposition which is used to indicate intimate contact. In 2:28 it is boldness at the Parousia; now the boldness that we already have to step into God's presence.
22) "And" completes the thought. John is thinking of our being face to face with God when as his children we come to ask things of him in prayer. Asking something is the test, hence prayers of adoration, praise, thanksgiving are not referred to here. As he has done previously, John is speaking about evidence. We are children of God when we show the evidence of love in deed and in truth. We want as much of this evidence as possible, so valuable is it for us. Now on God's side we again need and want evidence that he, indeed, despite our shortcomings accepts us as his children in love. Besides what he himself declares about us in his Word there is a most convincing evidence, indeed, on his part, one that we can see every day: he treats us as his beloved children. "We constantly are receiving from him whatever we keep asking."
This clause: "because we (as his children) are keeping his commandments" (on which John has spoken at such length in 2:3-8) recalls all that he has said; he now weaves it in anew. To show what he means John adds "and are doing the things pleasing in his sight" and now adds the new phrase ενώπιον αυτοί to έμπροσθεν αΰτοΰ and to ττρόϊ τον ®eov. Our Father watches us and sees that we are doing the things that please him, of which he tells us in his Word, his commandments. Every answer to our petitions is thus the clearest factual evidence that he treats us as children. Blessed are we indeed (verse 1) !
"Whatever we ask we are receiving from him" is expounded still farther in 5:14, 15. John has no more restrictions and reservations than Jesus has in Matt. 7:8; Mark 11:24; John 14:13; 15:7; 16:23. Unfilial minds may think that these promises mean no matter what we ask; scoffers challenge us to ask this or that folly which they propose and feel sure that we shall not get what we ask; unbelief simply sets SM such divine promises aside as being illusions of primitive minds. John addresses children of God. Will or can children of God ask from their Father anything that the children of the devil (verse 10) would like to have? We daily receive a thousand gifts and blessings from our Father beyond even what we know and ask; he even makes all things work together for our good, for us who love him. On God's side there are mountains of evidence for his love to us as his children (verse 1). The only question for us is regarding the evidence on our side. Thank God, we do keep his commandments, we do do the things pleasing in his sight, and our Father accepts them. Not that he needs this our evidence, he knows all things (verse 20) before they make themselves evident. We are the ones who need our own evidence of love to assure our own hearts to the extent of such evidence and therefore ought to supply it in greatest abundance. It cannot equal the evidence that God furnishes us for his love. Where it falls short we supply the evidence of true repentance in the confession of sin and have the assurance given in 1:9 and 2:1, 2.
23) John speaks of gospel commandments in v. 22 and now sums them up for us. And this is his commandment that we believe the name of his Son Jesus Christ and keep loving one another even as he gave us commandment.
When we look at his gospel we see scores of places where he tells us what is pleasing in his sight; hence John uses the plural "commandments." Yet when we look at all of them, they coalesce into just one, the one that John names. These are not two commandments: to believe and to love. These two are one. You cannot believe without loving nor love without believing. The previous mention of "commandments" and "commandment" (2:3-8) is again taken up and elucidated; we have what the term actually means.
The ΐνα. does not denote purpose; it introduces a subject clause in apposition with "this" and with "his commandment." The reading varies between the aorist τηστενσωμΐν and the present τηστεύωμεν. The latter means that we "ever continue believing" just as the next present tense says that we "ever continue loving." But it seems as though the aorist was changed to the present in order to make both verbs alike. The aorist is effective: definitely, effectively, once for all believe. It is not ingressive "come to believe," i. e., get to the point where we believe (R. 850). Nor does the aorist indicate that believing is basic as compared with loving. It is not the tense that conveys this idea; faith would be just as grundlegend if John had used the present tense. It is the nature of faith as compared with the nature of love that makes it basic whether we use the noun "faith" or the verb "to believe" in any of its tenses.
Some offer these distinctions in the meaning: τηστΐΰίΐν τινι is assensus, (so here) ; τπστευ'αν τίνα is noti-tio; πίστευαν el's τίνα is fiducia. These distinctions are specious. C.-K. 901, etc., discusses John's phraseology and in the case of our passage gives the meaning anerkennen was jemand sagt, seinen Worten trauen, acknowledge what one says, trust his words. The idea of trust and confidence lies in the verb itself and is never removed by the construction that follows: dative, accusative, a phrase, or a o« clause. The idea that our heavenly Father wants only our assent and not our fullest confidence is palpably wrong.
The dative is in place because it is "the name of his Son Jesus Christ." John does not say "that we believe in or on his Son," or "in or on Jesus Christ, his Son." He says more. The ονομα is the revelation. We regard the genitive as possessive. This name or revelation "of his Son" the Father sent us. The entire gospel reveals his Son Jesus Christ. It contains this revelation in prophecy and in fulfillment by the Son's own manifestation ("was made manifest," 1:2; 3:5, 8; 4:9). By his name alone is the Son brought to us; by his name alone we apprehend him in faith. We are baptized in connection with his name (revelation), Acts 2:38; we believe in his name, John 1:12; and that means "on the Lord Jesus Christ," Acts 16:31. All that John has said about the light, the truth, the Word = the name.
Once again he emphasizes the deity: "his Son Jesus Christ" (1:3, 7) over against the antichristians who deny the Father and the Son (2:22) —see the significance of this in these passages. Note, too, that "Jesus Christ" (1:3), in 1:7 simply "Jesus," points to the Son incarnate in Jesus and includes his blood by making it "the blood of his Son."
Our present-day modernists deny the όνομα, as it is expressed in terms like "the Messiah," "the Logos," "the Son of God" by making these old, outworn categories or patterns of thought for which we must produce up-to-date, modern terms from which the deity is eliminated; coming generations will find also our modern terms outworn and will, of course, then produce their own as modernists do today. It seems that the old antichrists of John's day (2:18, 22) have not advanced much in their modern representatives. The denial is quite the same; the only new feature is the fact that the written testimony of the apostles must be nullified, which is done as indicated (outworn categories or patterns of thought).
John expands his elaboration by introducing the word "to believe." Follow this through from here onward in 4:1, 16; 5:1, 5, 10 (three times), 13. He weaves in this new, significant thread: love for our fellow children of God is the evidence of faith. We attach the last clause "even as he gave us commandment" to the whole ΐνα clause and not merely to the love as some do. The final word "commandment" cannot mean less than this word at the head of the sentence.
24) And the one keeping his commandments remains in him, and he himself in him.
John repeats anew all that he has said in 2:3-8 about God's commandments (now once more using the plural) together with all that he said in 2:19, 24-28; 3:6, 9, 17 about remaining. The exposition of these passages belongs also here. To remain in him = the fellowship mentioned in 1:3, 6, 7, with which the development starts. It is this that constitutes true religion. Yet even here John advances when he adds God's remaining in us to our remaining in God (in true living connection with him). The two ever involve each other. This double remaining is repeated in 4:16. The Father's remaining in us rests on the statement of Jesus made in John 14:23.
The point has constantly been that of our knowing, γινώσ/ceiv, with decisive effect upon ourselves, so decisive as not to be shaken by the lies of the anti-christians. Pursue the word through 2:13, 14, 18, 29; 3:1, 6, 16, 19 ; and through the epistle. The light, the truth, the Word, the commandment enable us to know in this way. John now comes to the ultimate source of our thus knowing. And in connection with this ye know that he remains in us: from the Spirit whom he gave us. He names the Spirit as the ultimate source («). He reserves this statement for this place where he reaches the ultimate object which we know, namely that God our Father remains in us. Thus, too, he now mentions "the Spirit" directly by name. In 2:20, 27 he does so indirectly in "the anointment" we received and have, which teaches us everything. This anointment consists in the abiding bestowal of the Holy Spirit in baptism.
All else that we know is subsidiary to this supreme fact and this supreme object of knowledge, namely "that God remains in us." True evidence for this is important, indeed, but much more important is the source of this knowledge. Its source is the Holy Spirit whom God himself gave us. John uses kv τούτω γινύσκομεν with different appositions for "this": "in connection with this . . . that," (3:16; 4:13) ; "in connection with this: every spirit confessing" (4:2) ; "in connection with this . .· . when," etc. (5:2). John always has an apposition to "this," but each one is different: once it is a on clause, again a "when" clause, a clause without a particle, and here in 3:24 it is just the phrase εκ του ανάματος, "from the Spirit." There is no incongruity between lv and & because the ik phrase is the apposition only to "this." To say that God gave us the Spirit "immediately," and that from the Spirit so given we know in an "immediate" way that God remains in us, is to open the door to fanatical ideas, fancied revelations from the Spirit, morbid mysticism, etc. On Pentecost Christ sent the Spirit immediately, miraculously. He sent him to remain, to work in all the world. The Spirit was ever after given by Word and sacrament. Peter preached at Pentecost, the Twelve baptized 3,000. So God gave the Spirit to John's readers; so we have him as God's gift today. As he is given us by Word and sacrament, so he is now ours only by Word and sacrament. He speaks to us and in us, works in and through us, only by Word and sacrament. There we actually hear his voice, experience his power, and thus know fully with affect and effect (γινώσκομεν) that God remains in us. Those who attribute to him anything that is different from Word and sacrament do so without him. He is the source from whom by Word and sacrament we know, indeed, "that God remains in us."
Capitulo 4
The Fifth Circle of Facts,
Centering on Spirits,
4:1-6
1) The ultimate personal source through whom we know that God is in us, that we are, indeed, savingly connected with him (fellowship, 1:3-7) is God's own Spirit, who is given to us in Word and sacrament. From him comes this conviction, which in itself and because of this its source is true. This leads John to say still more since he is prompted by loving concern for his readers: Beloved, be not believing every spirit but (ever) be testing out the spirits whether they are from God, because many pseudo-prophets have gone out into the world.
Believe not every man but test out all men because many false men have gone out into the world as false teachers. John refers to the antichrists mentioned in 2:18 although he makes his statement broad so as to include more than Cerinthus and his antichristian following. Of the latter he says (2:19) that they went out from us because they were not from us. Now he says that they went out into the world, i. e., among men generally, to do their wicked work. He calls them ψΓυδοττροφ^ται, "pseudo-prophets," because they pretend to have the Spirit of God, to be moved by him, to bring God's true Word to men, while they do nothing of the kind.
John's readers must not be credulous: "be not believing every spirit." John begins with "believing" in 3:23 and now develops this term as he continues. Here he again construes this verb with the dative: "Be not placing your confidence and trust in what every man, who calls himself a prophet of God, who claims to be bringing you God's Word, preaches and teaches and asks you to believe."
John says: "Do not be believing every spirit but (ever) be testing out the spirits." He does not use •πνεύμα and πνεύματα to designate the constituent part of a human being, which is the spirit that makes him a personal being and by the ψυχή animates his physical body, as Paul speaks of body, soul, and spirit; nor does John have in mind a supernatural spirit. "Spirit" is the person as such with his inner, spiritual character. There is no need to put more into this word.
Every person reveals what kind of a personality or spirit he is by his word and his action although he may try to hide what he really is. Proper testing will penetrate the deception, will show whether what is in his spirit or heart is "out of, i. e., derived from, God" or from some ungodly, antichristian source. This testing John wants all his readers to apply to all who come to them as prophets in order to teach them. It is vital to find out whether "the spirits," these prophets and their inner spiritual character, what is in their hearts, "are really from God." If the source (<*), the spring, is divine and pure, one may drink; if the source is otherwise, it is poison.
Note well that all Christians are told to do this testing. It is not taken out of their hands and reserved for the clergy of the church. What John 7:48, 49 speaks about shall not occur. Papal authority in this matter is usurpation of the rights of Christians. Like unto it is the arrogant authority of some scientists, philosophers, educators, who claim to be sole possessors of the means for making genuine tests, who demand that young and old must without question accept their findings and insult those who propose to test for themselves not only these findings but "these spirits" themselves. Christians will, of course, help each other in making the proper tests; some are more capable than others, have more experience than others; pastors are especially trained for this work. We accept all such aid; John is here offering it to his readers. Yet in the last analysis every Christian is personally responsible. Whom he believes or does not believe affects himself primarily. John wants himself to be tested by his readers.
Let us add that it is unscientific not to test and still more so to use false tests and not to test for the true source, i. e., whether teachers are « του ®eov or not. This is the unscientific thing that all false teachers demand of us in regard to themselves. Woe to us when we refuse to bow to their demand! They then smite us with their anathema as does the papacy.
"Keep testing for the source, ever become more proficient in this work!" is John's behest. The world is full of counterfeit coin. It seems that all the apostles loved this word δοκίμαζαν. Paul uses it and its derivatives quite often. In their day metals and coins were constantly weighed and tested before they were accepted.
2) In connection with this know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses Jesus Christ as having come into flesh is from God; and every spirit who does not confess this Jesus is not from God. And this is the one of the Antichrist, in regard to whom you heard that he is coming, and he is now in the world already.
The durative (iterative) imperatives used in v. 1 are followed by another. "In connection with this" refers to this testing of "every spirit," etc., as explained in 3:24. John offers the touchstone for sound, sure testing, by the use of which the readers are to know (γινώσκω, with due effect upon themselves — follow this verb through the entire epistle I) "the Spirit of God," i. e., his actual presence as well as his absence in the case of any "spirit," of any man who comes to them, especially when he comes as a prophet, i. e., preacher or teacher. The matter to be found out, as already stated, is whether he and what is in him are "from God" as their source.
This is the test to apply: examine the man's confession. The Scriptures nowhere ask us to look into a man's heart. They know of no Herzensrichterei. God alone sees the heart; no man can see into another's heart. It is precarious to assert: "The man's heart is all right!" when the man's confession is wrong. The Lord has given us the one safe test, the confession. Beyond this our responsibility ceases. "What is the man's real confession?" is for us the only question. Since one confesses not only with his lips but also with his practice and his acts, we are to examine both; his heart we are to leave to the omniscient God.
Every spirit who (do not translate "which") confesses "Jesus Christ as having come in flesh" is from God; we have the same ίξ αυτού that occurred in 2:29. There is no question that the inward, spiritual character of this true confessor is derived from God and the Holy Spirit as far as any judgment on our part is concerned. There is a difference in force between translating the participle as a participle and translating ΐληλνθότα as though it were the infinitive or equal to it. Our versions do the latter; one Greek text has the infinitive. But this would mean the confession of only a fact: "that Jesus Christ has come in flesh." The participle is attributive. This man confesses "Jesus Christ" himself "as having come in flesh," which means as his Lord and Savior. The fact that this can be truly done only by the Holy Spirit I Cor. 12:3 states. In 5:1 John says more.
"As having come in flesh" describes the vital point confessed about "Jesus Christ," namely his deity incarnate in flesh or human nature, once incarnate and remaining so (perfect participle). This person "Jesus (personal name: Savior) Christ" (the name which is derived from his office: Anointed to be our Prophet, High Priest, and King), who as God's Son (1:3, 7; 2:22, 23) existed from eternity, "has come" in the fulness of time "in flesh" (John 1:14). Cerinthus and his following denied the Son (2:22, 23) and thereby also the Father. These heretics made Jesus the physical son of Joseph upon whom "the Eon Christ" descended at his baptism but left Jesus again at his passion so that a mere man died on the cross. John says "every spirit who confesses" — to confess is the opposite of to deny — and "every spirit" includes all true confessors just as in v. 3 it includes all deniers, no matter whether they are adherents of Cerinthus or not.
It would be a serious mistake to think that John speaks of confessing only the one fact or doctrine of the Incarnation, of the Virgin Birth, of the two natures, so that it is of minor importance when other facts, doctrines, call them what you will, are either not confessed or are denied in some way. "Jesus Christ as having come in flesh" is not merely the center of the gospel but the whole of it. In Christ there inheres all that John has said and will yet say in this epistle, likewise all that John's Gospel, yea the whole New Testament and the Scripture contain. Like the seamless garment of Christ, Jesus Christ is one. He who clips off or alters any part never deals with what is immaterial although he may think so.
3) The negative is abbreviated in form: "and every spirit who does not confess this Jesus is not from God." The meiosis and litotes "does not confess" is stronger than "denies" and matches "is not from God." τον is the article of previous reference: "this Jesus" in the full sense of 2b. "And this is the one of the Antichrist"; to refers to πνεϋμα, "the spirit of the Antichrist," the inwardness of him. Some say that this is to proprium, the action of the Antichrist, i. e., the failure to confess this Jesus, which is true enough. John is, however, dealing with "the spirits" who are recognized as to what they are by confession as by nonconfession. He repeats 2:18 where he says that his readers "heard" about the coming of the Antichrist. While in 2:18 he adds "and now antichrists many have come to be," he now makes no distinction, for the subject is now "the spirit of the Antichrist," and of this he can say: "In regard to whom you heard that he is coming (this spirit), and he is now in the world already." A sample of such a spirit is every person who does not confess as John states. The negative μη appears in relative clauses but not in a conditional or hypothetical sense, "if such there be," but as not referring to some special person (B.-D. 428, 4; R. 962) : "the spirit of the Antichrist" appears in many persons already now.
4) According to the very canon here laid down for testing the spirits, namely their confession or non-confession, John certifies regarding his readers: You on your part are from God, little children. He uses the affectionate address that befits his age and his fatherly position so well. Coming from him who teaches them how to test out the spirits and is himself expert at this, this finding of his means much for his readers.
These two kinds of spirits that are of opposite origin never remain peacefully side by side. Those who are not from God constantly attack those who are from God. It is John's way of writing steadily to advance in stating the facts. He does not stop with telling his readers that they are from God but adds and you have conquered them, have been and continue to be victorious over them (perfect tense). Their efforts against you have left you firmer than ever. According to John's own test an*, finding this victory over them agrees with the origin of his readers as being "from God." In the Greek το πνήμα and the plural are neuters, but this is only a grammatical feature; hence John uses the masculine αύτου'«, "them." From verse 1 onward he is speaking of persons.
No wonder John's readers are victorious: because greater is the One in you, namely God (reverting to 3:24), than the one in the world, the devil (3:10). John does not say "than the one in them" but again advances the thought by saying "in the world."
5) So he at once adds: They are from the world, the devil's domain. In the preceding John says only that these nonconfessing spirits are recognized by us (when we test them) as "not from God." Now he states their origin: "it is from the world," which matches with the fact that "the greater One," God, is not in them but only "the one in the world." This explains still more: For this reason they speak (ever)r from the world, for all their utterance they have no higher source, draw from no divine fountain, and no stream rises above its source. All these facts help us in our testing these spirits. So also does this, that the world hears them, genitive, listens to them as admired and authoritative spokesmen. It likes their speech; this their speech is the world's own language. It never rises any higher than that which the world considers wisdom. The world hears and nods full approval whenever they speak. This is true to this day. It generally also pays its speakers well. The accusative αυτού? would refer more to what they speak.
6) We on our part are from God. John includes himself (compare verse 4). This, John says, is our origin. The implication is that, when we speak, we draw from a correspondingly high source, from God. We have the light, the truth, the Word, the commandment, etc., about which John has said so much. Some commentators refer this emphatic "we" to John alone or to him and the other apostles or to these and the other Christian teachers and tell us that John is contrasting only true and false prophets or teachers (v. 1). But the spirit of the Antichrist is to be found in the followers as well as in the leaders, and both certainly speak. John refers to himself and to his readers.
The one knowing God hears us; he who is not from God does not hear us. John once more writes the significant verb γινώσκω (see 2:3, 4 and follow the verb through the epistle). Cerinthus and his followers claimed "to know" God (Gnostics). The Christians alone know him, and know that they know him, and John adds the how and all the evidence. This is no mere intellectual knowing but a living apprehension with full effect on mind, heart, and life.
Note all the objects apprehended by this knowing as John has presented them. When we speak, John says, you and I — meaning on anything pertaining to our religion — "the one knowing God (characterizing present participle) hears us," again the genitive, really hears and heeds us as being the proper and true speakers. Luke 10:16; John 10:4, 5; 10:14. The genitive = the persons heard, the accusative would refer to what is heard. Some ignore the difference, but it holds throughout although not even to hear the speakers excludes hearing also anything they may speak.
Instead of saying "he who does not know God does not hear us," John substitutes "he who is not from God does not hear us." Only we who is from God, born from him and child of his (2:29-3:1, etc.), one of his family, has ears for us who speak from God, for God's Word, etc. The Pharisees did not even understand Jesus' language (John 8:43) but continually turned topsy-turvy what he said and mocked him in unbelief. I Cor. 2:14. In order to know and thus to hear with blessed results one must "be from God," born from him, must have "the eyes of your understanding enlightened," Eph. 1:18. Only thus are the speakers appreciated.
In the one clause John has ό with the participle: "the one knowing God"; in the other S« with a finite verb: "he who is not from God." John evidently wants to use expressions that are different in form. The one thus knowing God is in living relation with him as has been set forth at length and thus certainly hears when any of his fellow Christians speak on anything pertaining to God, his Son, etc. John properly uses the substantivized descriptive participle ό γινάσκων, "the one knowing God." The fact that he and we "are from God" the preceding clause states. To be from (origin, birth) and thus to know and to hear (effect, result) go together. In the opposite expression John names only the absence of the origin: "he who is not from God," and lays his finger on the ultimate difference and thus on the visible effect and result: "he does not hear us," the ones through whom God speaks. John's statements are most exact.
Now the conclusion: From this that the one hears us and that the other does not hear us, from this plain and open evidence we know the spirit of the deceit, we are able to distinguish the two without difficulty, not merely intellectually, but with inner effect upon ourselves so as to open our hearts to the one spirit and to close them to the other. John uses & τούτου, which is a little stronger than ίν τούτω (3:16, 24; 4:2; 5:2). The ik phrase = "from this fact."
One may regard the genitives as possessive genitives: the spirit that belongs to the truth — to the deceit; or as subjective genitives: the spirit that utters the truth — the deceit (the latter because speaking and hearing the speakers has just been mentioned). Because Jesus speaks of "the Spirit of the truth" in John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13 some conclude that John here refers to the Holy Spirit, and that thus "the spirit of the deceit" refers to the devil. But in verse 1 "be testing the spirits whether they are from God" cannot mean "be testing the Holy Spirit and the devil whether they are from God." John is stating how to test and to know the spiritual origin, nature, and quality of men, how to know who are pseudo-prophets and who belong to their following, how to know true teachers, apostles, believers who speak. You do not try to look into their hearts; you simply listen to what they confess, to what they utter (λαλάν, verse 5), to what they let you hear, and note who gives ear to the one speaker and who to the other speaker. That is how to tell men apart, the spirits of men.
We thus conclude that πνΛμα is here used as it was in verse 1, to designate the inner, spiritual nature of a man, which belongs to the truth, confesses and speaks it, reveals it to your ears, or belongs to the deceit, fails to confess the truth (verse 3), speaks what pleases the world. The fact that the one confesses and speaks "from the Spirit whom God gave to us" has been noted in 3:24; the fact that the other has not the Holy Spirit and thus speaks as a child of the devil (3:10) has also been brought out. Here, however, not the Holy Spirit and the devil are to be tested by us but the character and the nature of the spirit of men.
John has spoken of "the truth" since 1:6 and as synonyms has used the light, the Word, the commandment. This is what he now means. We should not omit the definite article as our versions do. By η πλάνη John means "the deceit" in accord with 1:8 where he has the verb and with 2:26 where he has the participle. "The error" is not exact. The very term "pseudo-prophets" denotes deceivers. The spirit of the deceit is ever active to deceive; it should not be restricted to its prophets, for it is active also in their followers.
The Sixth Circle of Facto, Centering on Love 4:7-5:3
7) Just as verses 1-6 develop 2:18, etc., so all that has hitherto been said about love (1:9-11; 3:1, God's love; 3:13-18) is now fully developed. The basic fact is stated in 1:3, our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. The elaboration spirals upward from this pivoted fact of fellowship. We are shown all that joins us to God, that we are in him, he in us ("remains in us," 3:24). All that creates this fellowship, the light, the truth, the Word, the Son's blood, remission of our sins, constant cleansing, plus all the evidence for our fellowship with God, all the assurance and effective knowledge of it — thread after thread — have been woven in; also the lying claims of fellowship with God (starting at 1:6), the deceivers and their deceits (antichrists 2:18; pseudo-prophets 4:1) have been presented.
Fellowship with God and with his Son involves fellowship with one another; this correlative fact is noted already in 1:7. It combines us in God, in the light, the truth, the confession, etc.; it joins us to each other in love; it separates us from the world and from all heretics who talk of fellowship with God and yet are not in the truth but in the darkness, who deny Christ's deity and his blood, etc.
All this is now carried still farther; it is centered on love but is enriched by the weaving in anew of other pertinent facts that also have been treated. More glorious light is shed on the whole and on every detail. The whole pattern, woven as a unit, nears completion, grows richer and more beautiful as so much of it is unrolled. John simply links into 3:10, 11, 23 as a weaver repeats a color in his design. We belong together in love; we do not belong together with those who have the spirit of the deceit (v. 1-6). Beloved, let us be loving one another because this love is from God. And everyone loving has been born from God and knows God; the one not loving did not know God because God is love. John says: "Let us go on loving one another" as we have been doing all along. Such an admonition is well prefaced by "beloved" which voices John's own love for his readers. The main point, however, lies in the facts which support this admonition.
The first fact is that "this love is from God." Note the article. When our versions translate "love is of God," this is not exact. Strictly speaking, this means that love in general is from God as its one fountain and source. But is the love of the world for its own (John 15:19) from God; or the love of publican for publican (Matt. 5:46)? Are we not told not to love the world (2:15) ? Only "the love," the one that John urges, the one of one Christian toward another, is from God. It is the love of our fellowship with one another (1:7) which results from our fellowship with God and with his Son Jesus Christ. It is for "one another"; it is returned as soon as it is bestowed.
There is no need to worry about our loving also our neighbor who is not a Christian. God loves all men and yet loves his children in a special way by bestowing all manner of loving gifts on them. He loves them in a way in which he cannot love the wicked. This is also true with regard to us. John speaks of this narrower range of love because this love exhibits so clearly our fellowship with God, yea, our origin from him.
Here it is: "And everyone loving has been born from God." "Has been born from God" links back into 2:29 (3:9). The exercise of this love for one another evidences our origin from God, our birth into God's family as his children (3:1), and proves that we are no longer "the children of the devil" (3:10). "Everyone loving" has no connection with the world's loving its own. Even our proper love for non-Christians is not considered, for our love for our fellow Christians exhibits our spiritual birth from God in the best way; it does this so clearly because the world does not love us.
John adds "and knows God" and weaves in this true heart knowledge which is always so effective; γΐΓώσ/cei, as distinguished from olSa, has been explained repeatedly. We get the full force of this addition by noting 2:4. This lover of his fellow believers "knows God," but not as these incipient Gnostics who claim: "I have known God!" i. e., have the real knowledge of him. Thousands still make this false claim today.
8) "The one not loving did not know God." The one who lacks this love for true believers vitiates any claim on his part that he knows God. He never knew him, ίγνω. The Greek often uses the simple aorist where we mark the relation of time and use the English perfect, "has not known God." Yet in 3:4 John, too, has the perfect. All that γινώσκω implies of affect and effect on the one who knows is again to be noted. This knowledge is the mark of true fellowship with God and with his Son. What Jesus will say to all those that are described here he states in Matt. 7:23: "never did I know you," ίγνων; he uses even the same tense that is employed here.
The reason for the fact that the one not loving has not known God is as prominent as Mt. Everest: "because God is love." It would be wrong for more reasons than one to use the article with "love." Compare the other fact: "God is light" (1:5) and John's repetition: "God is love" (v. 16). It deserves to be preached, sung, and made known in all the world. Because John has the copula ίστίν in these statements, light and love have been called the essential attributes of God, definitions of the essence of God. This is true, but it does not make God's other attributes something less. All of them are essential. Take away any one of them, say his omnipotence, and God ceases to be. God minus omnipotence is not God, is, in fact, unthinkable. All the references to attributes are condescensions on the part of Scriptural revelation to our finite minds which are unable to grasp the infinitude of God in one mental grasp. God is shown to us from various angles which we call his attributes. Even then each of them is infinite and only faintly apprehended. When we contemplate only one side of God we are overwhelmed and bow in the dust and worship.
The fact that love, infinite love, is one of God's attributes staggers us sinners most of all. No mind and no heart can fathom John 3:16 or what John reveals about God's love. Love is an energetic and not a quiescent attribute. God's love reveals itself in wondrous acts of love and reaches out to its object. John is not speaking of the love of the three persons of the Godhead for each other; in this connection it is enough to say that the one not loving has not known God because he has not known the manifestation of God's love in sending his own Son, etc., (v. 9,10).
It is unwarranted to state that when we speak of God's love as an energetic attribute we reduce the force of what John says, change "God's Love-essence" into mere manifestation of love. Every attribute, whether it is quiescent like his eternity or his aseity, or energetic like his omnipotence or his love, is nothing but his indivisible essence, his entire being revealed and perceived in one respect. The revelation of the supreme manifestation of God's love (verse 9, "the love of God was manifested") is for us the revelation that God is love. Without this manifestation no sinner could know God, could know that God is love.
Few will doubt that 5« is causal (not declarative in an object clause). This puts the facts in logical relation. The man not loving is not born from God and thus does not know God "because God is love," and this love of God was manifested by him. By not loving he is far from the loving God. The point of proof lies in what is evident: in the man no activity, in God the greatest activity. It is stated that, unless we include "the Essential Being of God" in the statement "God is love," the fallacy of an undistributed middle would result. This statement alters the term regarding the man. This does not merely say that he does not know God but that, not loving, he does not know God. The proof for this is not a fact about the essence of God (which, by the way, is beyond mortal knowing) but the fact of his loving as John says, the fact of his having manifested his love. The truth that all of God's acts, whether they are done by one or by another energetic attribute, are due to what in human language we term his being, essence, etc., is self-evident as we have already said.
"God is full of love," "the most benevolent of all beings, full of love to all his creatures," and similar statements drop far below what John has in mind when he says, "God is love." The rationalistic views that the God of love cannot punish, cannot damn to hell forever, cannot ask a blood sacrifice for sin, substitute a human conception of love for what God's love is, has done, and still does.
The words αγάπη and αγαπάν are inadequately, sometimes wrongly defined. The noun is practically unknown to secular Greek; look at it in Liddell and Scott and in C.-K. The long essay in G. K. is disappointing. It places too much feeling into the word and finally arrives at the idea of electing. One looks in vain for something adequate regarding our passage. C.-K. offers us something better with his WiTlensrieh-tung (although this is inexact) to which elegere and negligere are added and finally also Erbarmen, and thus his definition for "love" in our passage is as follows: "God is all that he is, not for himself, but for us." We have followed the development of the word elsewhere. Warfield's essay in Christian Doctrines has much of value, but we cannot define "love" as being due to seeing something valuable in the object loved. The author is right when he includes "seeing."
Αγάπη is defined as the love of intelligence, of comprehension and understanding. It always has that meaning in the New Testament, most completely so here where it speaks of God's love. Combined with this is purpose, a purpose that corresponds to the comprehension of the object, whether this is the Son, the Father, the child of God, the filthy world, the enemy, the things in the world (2:15). Saving αγάπη thus accompanies χάρπ, IXeos, compassion, benevolence. "Low" is the widest term because of what it includes, the other terms have narrower connotations.
From the world's standpoint it is intelligent and correspondingly purposeful to love only its own; for publicans to love publicans. Our definition holds good. God loved the World = saw all its filthy, damnable state and put his purpose into action in order to cleanse and to save. We are to love our enemies, to see (comprehension) all that is wrong with them, to do all that we can to change them (corresponding purpose). So Christ even died for his enemies. We are not to love the world and the things of the world; only blinded intelligence, coupled with correspondingly blinded purpose, can do that. We might cite other examples. Φιλάν, Φιλία indicate the love of affection; φίλο? = friend, φίλημα = kiss, the act of affection, of friendship. Jesus did not like Caiaphas (<£iXeiv), he loved even this wicked fellow (αγαπάν). Peter was to be even a friend who was full of affection for Jesus (John 21:17; 15:14, 15, φίλοι, intimates). Only to friends does Jesus confide and trust everything.
9) In this was made manifest the love of God in connection with us that God has sent his Son, the Only-begotten, into the world that we may live through him.
God is love. Love as well as life reveals its presence by its acts. In 3:1 it is the Father's gift that makes us his children. What this gift involves is stated already in 1:7 and 2:2 and is now stated anew. Observe that John uses φανερόω, "to make manifest," in 1:2; 2:28; 3:2, 5, 8. The word is used here as it was in 1:2 but with reference to the love of God in connection with us. 'Εν ήμϊν does not mean "toward us" (A. V.) although it was toward us; nor an uns (so the German commentators like B.-D. 220, 1) ; nor "among, with, or at us" (the English writers); nor "in us," i. e., in our hearts; nor "in our case" (R. V. margin). We, indeed, behold this manifestation, and it fills us with supreme joy; but the phrase lv ήμΐν means that the manifestation was "in connection with us," it involved us as the recipients of God's love.
John 3:16 states that God's love includes the whole world, but the world must have its eyes opened to behold this love's manifestation, and the antichrists deny the manifestation that God made of his love (2:22). "Was made manifest in connection with us" thus names "us," the believers, as the ones who truly see what God has done in his infinite love. The historical aorist "was made manifest," like the aorist used in 1:2, does not speak of the time when our eyes and our hearts came to see what God had done (the time of our conversion); this aorist refers to the time when God sent his Son upon his saving mission. The agent of the passive is God; we do not take the passive in the middle sense "became manifest" or "manifested itself."
"On is epexegetical of ίν του™, the phrase emphasizes the clause: in no less than this did God manifest his Jove, that, etc. The object "his Son" is placed emphatically forward; the verb and the subject are reversed, and thus the subject is emphasized: his Son he has sent, God has sent. The English word order is too rigid to duplicate this twofold emphasis found in the Greek. John repeats "God" eleven times in v. 7-12: God — God — God, who is love. The adjective "the Only-begotten" is added with a second article, thus it is also emphasized and is like an apposition in climax (R. 776), in fact, we may call ό μονογενή a noun.
On "his Son" see 1:3, 7; 2:22. John alone calls him "the Only-begotten." We discuss this term at length in The Interpretation of St. John's Gospel, 75, etc., and together with it the efforts which would empty it of its meaning. Both "his Son" and "the Only-begotten" avow the deity of the Logos; the latter = the aeterna Filii Dei generatio. Both ό λόγο? and ό μονογενή? extend back into eternity. He was "the Logos," "the Son," "the Only-begotten" in eternity άσαρκο*, before his incarnation, and is that still ενσαρκο?, in his incarnation. "The Father" (1:3; 2:22, 23) is the correlative term for the first person. Let this suffice here.
Him God "has sent with a commission into the world." He arrived at the time of the incarnation (John 1:14) ; he executed that commission, πέμπειν is also used: God sent the Son. Jesus regularly calls the Father "my Sender," ό πέμψαν με. Άποστέλλειν means a little more: "to send with a commission to carry out," to send in this sense, to commission. The corresponding noun is "apostle," one sent on a commission, and is commonly used with reference to the Twelve and to Paul; in Heb. 3:1 even Christ himself is so called. The perfect "has sent" adds the idea of the continuance of the commission to the past fact.
The purpose of this sending and commission is "that we may live through him"; 8«£ indicates mediation, he is the personal Mediator, the execution of his commission makes him the channel for bestowing spiritual, eternal life upon us. The aorist is effective: actually live through him. With this verb John reverts to 1:1, "the Logos of the life," and to 1:2, "the Life, the eternal one." He is the fount of life for us. "We may live" also links into 2:29; 3:9, our having been born from God, thus being "the children of God," (3:1). Life goes together with being born. The mission of the Son, the Only-begotten, includes his entire office, the part which he executed while he was here on earth plus the part that he is still executing as our Advocate (2:1), our eternal High Priest, and our King.
To send the Son, the Only-begotten, on this mission and for this purpose is, indeed, the supreme manifestation of God's love.
10) In this is the love, not that we on our part did love God, but that he on his part did love us and sent his Son as expiation regarding our sins.
The point is that God is love, and that God is thus the one source of love. We had no love for him; it was he who had this supreme love for us so that he sent his own Son as an expiation for our sins. When our versions translate: "Herein is love," and when commentators say that ή άγώη? means "love in the abstract," they forget the fact that the world loves its own like publican loves publican, and that John does not include this love. He writes the article which makes the abstract noun definite: "the love," the true love that alone deserves the name love. We may also regard this as the article of previous reference: "this love" of which he is speaking. This love has its origin wholly in God who, in fact, is love itself, not in any way in us who had nothing but our sins, the opposite of love for God. Aorists are in place here.
Ίλασμόν is a predicate accusative: "as expiation in regard to our sins." This is a repetition of 2:2 where we offer the exposition. This does not cover the entire mission of the Son; "expiation" goes with "the blood of the Son" (1:1) and thus shows the fathomless greatness of this act of God's love in that he sacrificed his own Son for us sinners. This is, indeed, the climax of the manifestation of God's love. We sinners were never little fountains or little streams of the love that is love; we were the opposite. The love that is love has its source in God; this supreme manifestation of love for us on his part reveals and proves that blessed fact.
11) After having shed all this light on the real love John now reverts to the admonition with which he began. Beloved, if thus God did love us, we, too, ought to be loving one another. As was the case in verse 7, John's true love calls on his beloved ever to love and to show love to one another. The condition is one of reality. To put an uncertainty into it, to speak of difficulty in rendering it into English, to let this "if" mean "if it be true" (English subjunctive), is to misunderstand the Greek condition of reality. "If thus God did love us" means: God did thus love us, and I submit this fact to you who will not, like the Antichrist, for one moment deny that thus he loved us. The emphasis is on ούτω?, "thus," sending his Son, the Only-begotten, that we may live through him, in order that his Son might shed his blood in expiation for our sins so that, cleansed from them, we live indeed.
"Thus" is aimed at Cerinthus, at his following, and at all who are of a similar mind. To them Jesus was the son of Joseph; the Spirit, who was bestowed on Jesus at his baptism, left him before his passion and his death. The deity of Jesus, the expiating efficacy of his blood were thereby denied. What these people said about the love of God and about fellowship with God (1:6) was thus as false as what the deniers of Jesus' deity and his expiation by blood say today. We see why John emphasizes in this way: "in this was manifested the love of God — in this is the love, etc. — if thvis God did love," etc. We must emphasize in this manner to this day. This is the love of God, not what those who do not know God (2:4) make of his love and of their sins (1:8).
But should John not say, "Then we, too, ought to love God who thus loved us"? He does, but in due time, in v. 19-21. John reaches our love to God through the evidence of this love, and this evidence is the fact that we who are in the family of God as "the children of God" (3:1) love one another. John leads us step by step, from fact to fact, until he brings us to the top. Many leap over these intervening steps and shout, "We love God!" They neither understand where alone this love is born (v. 7-10), nor what alone is the evidence of this love, namely that we who have spiritual life through the Son's expiation (v. 9, 10) love one another, love those born from God to this life, his children indeed (v. 29-3:1). It is thus that John begins with the admonition which he has voiced already in verse 7: "We, too, ought to be loving one another."
12) God no one has ever beheld (has seen, verse 20; John 1:18; I Tim. 6:16); he is invisible (Col. 1:15; I Tim. 1:17; Heb. 11:27). No human being has ever rested his eyes on God for any length of time (perfect tense). Yet: If we continue to love one another, we who are his children, born from him, God remains in us, God who is love, and his love has been brought to its goal in us. When we love our true brethren, although we have never beheld him, God who is love "remains in us" (3:24). John once again returns to this verb which he has used so often. The fellowship of love with one another is the evidence of our fellowship with God; he uses this term which he has employed in 1:3, 6, 7.
John adds: "and his love has been brought to its goal in us," his love for us with all that is said about this love in the preceding. Its goal is reached in us when God and this his love enter our hearts in order to remain there. Save for the periphrastic perfect, this is the same statement that was made in 2:5; compare 4:17, 18 in a different connection.
We do not regard η ayairq αΰτοϋ as having an objective genitive: our love for God. This necessitates the meaning "has been completed" for the verb. It can never be said that our love for God has been completed in this life, nor would this agree with the present tense "if we continue to love one another." Our versions have translated "his love" (the subjective genitive: his love for us), but their rendering "is perfected in us" is not correct. God's love is ever perfect, is never subject to perfecting. His love aims at reaching a certain goal in us, the one we have indicated. When we keep loving one another, this goal has been reached by God's love; our loving one another is the evidence that God's goal has been attained in us. This is evidence that we can see; the stronger our love, the clearer and the stronger is the evidence.
The perfect "has been brought (by God) to its goal" means that this goal is being retained by God: he has entered into our hearts and remains there. Jesus speaks in the same manner in John 14:23. The periphrastic perfect emphasizes the continuance. One might take it in the sense of the middle: his love has attained its goal; we regard the passive as being preferable.
13) Our love for one another is evidence that God is remaining in us, that his love for us has not
vain but has been brought to this goal, namely God's union with us. Valuable as this evidence is, it must be taken together with what underlies it, namely God's gift of the Holy Spirit to us. It is this Spirit who produces the love of one to another in our hearts. All holy impulses and actions are his work, and so also is brotherly love with all its deeds of love. Hence John repeats from 3:24: In connection with this we know that we remain in him, and he in us, that he has given to us from hi» Spirit. On John's expression "in connection with this we know (truly realize)" see 3:24. "This" = "that he has given us," etc. This second ότι is epexegetical as it was in 3:16 and not causal.
A strange sense is the result when εν τούτω is referred to the preceding: "in connection with our perfected love" (verse 12 being understood in this manner). Then we could never realize that we remain in God and he in us, for who save a perfectionist dares to say that his love for God has been perfected? Even if a high degree of love gives you this knowledge, are you ready to claim such a degree of love? No; if this is the basis for our really knowing that we are united with God, we should have a slender basis, indeed, and should wrestle with constant doubt. "This" points forward to the second ότι, to God's gift of his Spirit.
In verse 13 John says: "God remains in us." We have seen how John advanced to this expression in 3:24 although he had before used only "we remain in God." He now combines the two: "that we remain in him, and he in us"; the one is never without the other. To understand fully what John means follow γινώσκω, /tf'vetv and "in him" through all that precedes. The force of these terms grows stronger as John proceeds. These and other terms of his are diamonds that have many facets, of which the spiritual eye never tires. Some, like Robertson, say that ίκ is partitive: "of his Spirit," part of the Spirit. But 3:24 says that God gave us the Spirit. Is John now saying that he has given us only a part of the Spirit? Since when is the Holy Spirit divided into parts? That very thought is strange. After saying that God gave to us the Spirit, John advances and says that God has also given to us "from his Spirit." Just as God does not come into our hearts without the greatest gift for us (his Spirit), so, when the Holy Spirit is given to us, he does not enter our hearts without gifts for us. God gave "the Spirit" to us (3:24) and thereby has given "from his Spirit" to us, has given us a number of gifts, all of which come "from" the Spirit as the source. Among them is this "fruit of the Spirit," which Paul names as the first in Gal. 5:22, "love," the love for one another of which John is speaking, which is so great a mark of our connection with God that Paul sings its praise in strains that go even beyond those of John (I Cor. 13). έκ denotes source, it is not partitive.
Our love for one another is evidence for our union with God, whose children we are; but when we look at the source of this love and see that it is a gift of God from his own Spirit, whom also he gave to us (3:24), we know by "this" that we remain in God, and he in us. We keep the coherence of John's facts as he builds ever higher and wider.
14) Καί adds a still greater assurance of knowledge. And we ourselves have beheld and are testifying, we, the apostles, I, John, being one of them. He repeats and links back into 1:2: "we have seen and are (ever) testifying" that the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. He resumes v. 9, 10. All that we have said on 1:2 and on 4:9,10 belongs also here. Yet John now substitutes for the predicate "as expiation regarding our sins," "as Savior of the world" — note "regarding the whole world" in 2:2. So great is God's love. John is one who beheld this deed of God's, beheld it when he beheld the Savior himself and his glory full of grace and truth (John 1:14). All of this testimony John's readers have. This, too, God gave them from his Spirit who speaks through the apostles. The new term "Savior of the world" sheds still more light on what John has been saying.
15) Linking back into v. 13 but reversing the statements and thus linking back into all the expressions regarding remaining, John adds: Whoever confesses (actually, aorist) that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. In this way the connection with God is made, and in this way it continues. John links back into verses 2, 3. Confession is open evidence for the invisible inward union with God. Its substance is "Jesus Christ having come in flesh" (4:2), and this is proof that one is "from God," "born from him" (2:29), or in other words, "that Jesus is the Son of God." Here belongs all that we have said on "Son of God" (1:3, 7; 2:22, 23; 3:23; 4:9, 10), on the denials of his deity, on all that lies in the Sonship, namely the entire gospel with all its facts ("doctrines" when the facts are adequately and correctly worded). Regarding this confession and the Holy Spirit add I Cor. 12:3.
16) With what John says about the apostles and their testimony and about whoever confesses he connects the further statement: And we on our part have known and have believed this love which God has in connection with us. Because of the predicates the "we" used in verse 14 denotes the apostles; because of the predicates and because of lv ήμΐν at the end this new "we" denotes John and his readers. John speaks with Peter as recorded in John 6:69: "We have believed and have known" but reverses the verbs: "we have known and still know, and have believed and still believe" (perfect tenses). This, John implies, is back of our confession. As γινύσκω runs back through this epistle, so πιστίνω resumes 3:23. To know as John speaks of knowing is to believe, and vice versa. No inner realization can be without a corresponding confidence, no true confidence without such a realization.
The object of both verbs is "the love which God has in connection with us." This is the same tv ήμϊν that was found in verse 9. It does not mean "to us" (A. V.), "in us" (R. V.), "in our case" (R. V. margin), the German an uns, etc.; but "in connection with us," ev being used in its original meaning, the connection being the one which the context indicates, here the fact that God's love succeeded in connecting itself with us. For that reason, too, John says "the love which God has in connection with us" while in the next breath he repeats from verse 8: "God is love." John's wording is always most exact.
God is love (see verse 8), and his love has succeeded in connecting itself with us through the Son's expiation (v. 9, 10) ; it has been brought to the goal in us, the goal indicated by John (v. 11, 12). So John is able to connect God himself, who is love, with all that he has been saying about "remaining," beginning with 2:24-28, then in 3:24, and last in 4:12, 15, and he is able to shed more light on this "remaining" by adding to "God is love": and the one remaining in this love which God has in connection with us, which has succeeded in connecting itself with us, remains in God, and God remains in him. He is in connection with us, he who is love, we are in connection with him. John again uses both expressions as he did in v. 15. The unio mystica is here described as being due to this love. Only by remaining in this love do we remain in God because God is love; only in this way do we remain in him.
Yet all that John has said about the manifestation of God's love and about the goal that it has attained in us (verse 9, etc.) must be retained. Without the Son's expiation as the Savior of the world, without our confession of the Son, which means that we know and believe this love of God, this double remaining is impossible. The heretics of John's time may talk as they please about God's love while they deny the deity and the expiation by means of the blood of Jesus, they do not remain in God, God does not remain in them. This is still true with regard to all who are like them today.
We see how all this unfolds the κοινωνία (fellowship) with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, with which John began in 1:3, with which he presented the first development in 1:5-10. True fellowship with God is his remaining in us and our remaining in him and not a mere claim of fellowship (1:6).
17) In verse 12 John says that God's love has been brought to its goal in us by God, this goal being that we continue to love one another. One goal of God's love is that love be kindled in our hearts, that we ever love all those that are in the family of God. This is, however, not the only or the whole goal which God's love attains in us. John is now able to say: In this has this love been brought to its goal with us, that we have boldness in connection with the day of the judging because even as that One is, we on our part also are (although still) in this world.
'Εν τούτω = "να, etc.; it is an epexegetical substan-tative clause and not a purpose clause. This, too, is the goal to which God's love has been brought μεβ" ημών, "in company with us," in its companionship with us, namely that with God's love as our companion we have boldness whenever we think of the day of judging (the day when God will judge) and have one great goal which God's love wants to reach in us. In verse 12 John writes about the goal that is reached "in us"; he might again have used "in us." When he now uses μίτά he makes God's love our companion, writes as though that love walks arm in arm with us and assures us in regard to the final judgment. John follows Jesus in combining God's love with the fact that we are not judged on the last day (John 3:16-18: "he that believeth on him is not judged"). On the day of judgment the believer merely comes to the light so that his deeds may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in connection with God (John 3:20). Κρίσκ is a word that expresses an action: the day "of judging."
Ή aya-ιτη has the article of previous reference and thus refers to the same love that was mentioned in verse 16, God's love. Not only this, it is here said to be μεθ" ημών, our companion. This is not our love (whether for God, for our brethren, or for both), and the verb does not mean that our love "has been perfected" ("is made perfect," our versions), and the thought is not that only when our love gets to this stage, do we have boldness for the judgment day. Let us say that we should then be in a sad state, for we should never know whether our love is perfect enough. We must daily confess that our love falls short of the ideal (1:9). Our boldness for the judgment day rests on God's love, on v. 9, 10.
John writes: "we have boldness," have it now. The tense is perfectly plain when we translate εν rrj ημέρα τη* κρίσεων "in connection with the day of judging." We are looking forward to that day and to the fact that on that day we shall stand with God. As we do so now we have no fear but only παρρησία, "boldness." This word at times has the sense of "confidence." When b/ is taken to mean "in" in the sense of "on," "at," a clash in dates seems to result. John should then write: we shall have boldness on the day. John's present tense "we have" is correct when «< is properly understood.
Ότι is causal. God's love promptly reaches this goal, that we confidently face the final judgment; we face it with all our sins remitted, with our Advocate and his expiation, with his blood (1:7-2:2), to which add 4:9, 10. So John introduces ΐκάνο·,, "that One," namely Christ, whom he calls "expiation for our sins," "Savior of the world," in verses 10, 14. Yet John does not remain with these facts but advances by saying that we have boldness "because even as that One is, we on our part are (although still) in this world." The stress is on the subjects, hence Ισμίν is not enough, but the emphatic ry/teis is added.
In this world" cannot be the predicate, for that One is in heaven, that One is no longer in this world as we are. His being in this world as we are in this world would also not be a cause for our confidence in regard to the final judgment. This means that the predicate for that One and for us is not expressed but is to be sought in the context. It means that "in this world" applies only to us, that it is added to us because, although we are still in this world, we are already filled with bold confidence at the thought of God's final judging.
In what respect are we already just as that One is so that this likeness between him and us fills us with such confidence? Many different answers are given. The context points to the love of God, the love that sent the Savior, love that saved us through him and thus attained in us the goal indicated. So we regard as John's thought: "because even as that One is, God's love in company with him, also we ourselves are, God's love in company also with us (^θ" ημών) although we are still in this world." We think that also for this reason John uses μιτά and not lv when he speaks of God's love. If God's love walks arm in arm with us (μετά) even as his love is ever with Jesus, the coming judgment brings no fear to us. John has already mentioned this boldness of ours in 2:28 and in 3:21, and it is thus that he now weaves it in anew in connection with God's love for us.
18) There is no fear in connection with this love; on the contrary, this goal-attaining love throws out this fear because this fear has punishment; moreover, the one fearing has not been brought to the goal in connection with this love.
The Greek places the negative with the verb, the English places it with the subject. "Fear" is the opposite of "boldness"; where the one is, the other is not. John's statement is not axiomatic and general as some regard it, as also our versions regard it. These overlook the fact that lv τί/ άγάττη has the article of previous reference: "in connection with the love," i. e., with this love of God for us of which John is speaking. There is no place for fear on our part in connection with this love of God for us. This love has removed all our sins (1:9; 2:1, 2; 4:10) ; what is there left to* make us afraid?
"On the contrary (αλλά), this goal-attaining love throws out this fear." Now also τον φόβον has the article of previous reference. This love of God for us throws out of our hearts this fear which John has just mentioned and substitutes bold confidence (-παρρησία, verse 17) in its place. We have stated how God's love does this. God does not let those who have been born from him, the children of God (2:29-3:1), quake with fear at the thought of the judgment day; his love pulls this fear up by the very roots and throws it out as though it were a poisonous weed. Whereas John first says "in connection with this love" he now inserts the adjective τΐλύα, which has the same meaning as the verb he is using here and in verses 12, 17:
"this goal-attaining love." Having this fear thrown out of our hearts and filling us with confidence instead is the very goal that this goal-attaining love of God promptly reaches in our hearts when God rids us of our sins through Christ.
Such fear (again the article of previous reference) cannot remain where God's love is brought to its goal in us; God cannot let it remain "because this fear has punishment," κόλασα, torturing punishment, the A. V. thus translating "torment." The verb "has" means "has to do with" (B.-P. 690). John states this in order to show why, in being brought to its goal, God's love necessarily throws out all such fear. This love would not reach its proper goal without that. This is stated with 8e': "moreover, the one fearing," living in such fear of punishment, "has not been brought to the goal (by God) in connection with this love" of God for us. If you still fear punishment from God you have prevented his love for you from remitting your sins and thus from planting sure confidence in your heart instead of this fear.
There is no danger of misunderstanding John's thought. All God's children are ever to fear God in true, childlike fear, are to shrink from offending him. This fear accompanies both God's love for us and our love for him. John is speaking of the fear which all the wicked, "the children of the devil" (3:10), must sooner or later suffer because of their unforgiven sins.
Our versions and some commentators refer John's words to our love for God: our love for him throws out fear of him, but it does so only when our love is perfect or has developed to a high degree. This is Catholic doctrine, according to which no one can be certain whether his love is perfect enough. In these verses John is speaking of what God's love does. He touches upon our love in verses 11, 12a and now returns to that.
19) We on our part continue to love because he as first one loved us. We had no love at all (verse 10) ; God is πρώτο?, "the first one," who did the loving. The aorist repeats the ήγάττησεν used in verse 10 and refers to the great manifestation of God's love there described. That astounding act of his love kindled love in our hearts so that we on our part continue to love. The objects of this our loving are not yet the point, so no objects are named. The emphatic ημάς is not in contrast with those who do not love. It places us and our loving beside God and his act of love, and on states that God's love is the cause of ours; ήμεί? balances avros and not ό oo/SoiWvos.
20) John now mentions the objects of our love. If someone says, I am loving God! and hates his brother he is a liar, for the one not loving his brother, whom he has seen, God, whom he has not seen, he cannot be loving.
This elaborates the brief statement made in verse 12: "God no one has (ever) beheld," which was connected with our loving one another. The aorist "if someone says" considers the case of a single declaration by some person who asserts, "I am loving God." The essential thing in our loving is that we love God. This truth no one contradicts or questions so that John simply proceeds by taking this for granted. But this is true only in the Christian sense. Because God loved us God is the supreme object of our love.
There is a simple test by which we may verify both regarding ourselves and regarding others whether the claim: "I love God," is true or8not. He who makes this claim "and hates his brother is a liar." This also means that he who makes this claim and loves his brother speaks the truth. iVP explains how this is to be understood. It is impossible for anyone to love God, whom he has not seen, when he does not love his brother, whom he has seen. To claim that this is possible, to say, "I am doing it," is to lie. Such supposed love for God is not love, it is a fiction. The God whom this person claims to love is also a figment of his mind, namely a self-made God who lets him hate his brother, which our God, who is love itself, cannot do.
The point lies in the objects. It is sometimes thought to lie only in the relative clauses, namely in the verbs "has seen" — "has not seen," and the explanation is then given that it is easier to love one on whom our eyes have rested and can rest again and again than one upon whom our eyes have never rested nor rest; that he is a liar who claims to be doing the more difficult when he is not doing even the easier. This seems a somewhat weak thought for such strong language as "he is a liar" (cf. 1:6, 10; 2:22). Add to these verbs and these relatives their nouns "his brother whom he sees" — "God whom he does not see." These objects of love are even juxtaposed in order to give them ά greater effect. John states only a part of the thought when he declares that it is impossible to love the latter while not loving the former; he states the rest in verse 21 and in 5:1-3, especially in 5:1, 2, for there we learn why this is impossible.
The explanation that loving the brother is loving God who is in the brother so that not loving the brother makes it impossible to love God, the brother being visible, God invisible, is on the right track but does not go far enough. John goes much farther.
21) In the first place he points to God's own commandment which was given us through Jesus (John 13:34; 15:12), which was noted already in 3:23, but which goes back to 1:7, to our having fellowship with one another. And this commandment we have from him, that the one loving God love also his brother. We do not go back to Matt. 22:37, 39, for there love to all men is referred to; John refers to the love which we are able to have only for him who is our brother. The word "commandment" recalls all that John says in 2:3-8 regarding our keeping God's commandment (compare also Jesus' statements in John 14:21, 23, 24; 15:10,12,14). This commandment already shows that one who hates his brother cannot love God, for love to God would most certainly keep God's commandment.
CAPITULO 5
1) Before giving the final explanation John states who a child of God is, and who is thus a brother of a child of God, and thereby takes us back to 2:29-3:1, 9; 4:7, ("everyone having been born from God," etc.), and at the same time back to 3:23, "believe the name of his Son" (4:16, "believe"). Only the believer is the believer's brother; only the reborn is brother to the reborn. Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God.
The antichrists call each other "brother, brother"; so also do men in self-made brotherhoods. When such brothers love one another, this is not evidence that they love God. I must be born from God, be born into God's family, to be a brother to those in this family, to have them as my brothers ("the children of God," 3:1), to love them as my brothers, and to be loved as a brother by them. The love that John speaks about in 4:20, 21 is the love that is possible only between brother and brother. This is also necessary because it at the same time means love for the Father from whom all of us brothers have been born.
Only the believer is so born. John says that the content of his faith is "that Jesus is the Christ," and he says in 4:15 that this faith is confessed; so we can easily know who is a believer and thus a brother born from God. In 4:11 we have pointed out that Jobji there, too, strikes at the heresies of Cerinthus and of his following. John does this from the very beginning of this epistle as we have noted throughout. John, the apostle of love as he is often called, is not a sentimental pacifist but a very strong polemicist — "liar" (1:6, 10; 2:22; 4:20) is hurled like a bolt from his pen.
Since he uses the unmodified name "Jesus" (so also in 1:7) John has in mind the man Jesus, he who walked here on earth as a man. The heretics said "that is all that he was and that he is." To believe that the man Jesus is "the Christ," i. e., all that is contained in this term starting from l:l-3;l:7;2:l,2on through to 4:9, 10, 14, means to believe the deity of Jesus, the expiation of his blood, the remission and the cleansing which this blood effects, in fact, the whole love of God that is expressed in the whole Saviorhood of Jesus, the whole gospel. John is not presenting the minimum content of faith but its full, normal, true content. After all that he has said his brief wording is sufficient.
The true believer "has been born from God," he alone. With this verb (which has the same tense it had in 2:29; 3:9) John refers to these passages. By this birth God made the true believer one of "the children of God" (3:1), a brother to all his other children. Thus John now advances to the statement: And everyone loving the One who gave birth loves also the one who has been born from him. John does not say, "He ought to love." The truth that the child of God loves the Father who begot him as his child and thus loves also his brother whom the Father has likewise begotten, is a simple fact. To imagine the opposite, namely that one who is so begotten should not love him who has likewise been begotten, is to imagine the impossible.
This is the basis for the "ought" used in 4:11. We have the full unfolding of what is implied in 1:3, the fellowship of the readers with us (the apostles); in 1:7, the fellowship with one another; and of all that lies in 2:9-ll; 3:10-18; 4:11, 12, in loving one another, loving one's brother, not hating him. John goes to the root of it all. He weaves into one fabric all the threads of his epistle, all that he says about the Father, about Jesus, his Son, the Christ, and this Son's blood and mission, about our connection with the Father and the Son, about life (1:1, 2; 4:9), about passing from the death into the life, and about remaining in the death (3:14). In fact, a full exegesis of our verse would include the exegesis of all that precedes. This is John's wonderful way of writing: each brief, crystal-clear statement involves all that precedes.
Believing and love go together in 3:23, in 4:16 (God's love), and in this passage. The believing makes confession (4:15), loving shows itself in deeds (3:18). We thus have no difficulty in knowing whether we are in God, and he in us as his children, and who are our brothers who are likewise born from God with the same faith and the same love in their hearts. All this has at the same time its polemical side against those who went out from us because they were not of us (2:19), who are not in this family, who are not believers born of God and filled with this love, who lie when they claim fellowship with God (1:6) and declare, "I love God" (4:20), lie because they deny the Son and thus also the Father (2:22, 23) and prove it by not loving us, God's children, show their Cain-like nature, the fact that they are children of the devil not born from God (3:8-12). Here are God's commandments. Review all that John says about "commandments," notably in 2:3-8, also in 3:22-24, finally in 4:21. By doing these commandments, gospel commandments which ask for both faith and love (3:23), you are loving God; and by loving God you are loving the children of God. Just look at what you are doing with the commandments of God, who is love, then you cannot help knounng, i. e., realizing. The negative is, of course, equally true. Not to be doing God's commandments (3:23) leaves you with nothing but the lying claim that you are loving God (4:20) and have fellowship with him (1:6) ; and then any love for God's children, in fact, any claim that you are one of them and are born from God becomes fiction.
There are three boxes. The outer one is doing what God wants. Open that, and in it is loving God, the Father of all his children. Open that, and in it is loving his children. So you know. The apposition to εν τούτω is the όταν clause (compare the remarks on 3:24b; R. 700, and especially B.-D. 394: δη to denote a fact, lav or όταν to denote a supposition).
3) Tap adds the important explanation: For this is the love for God, that we keep his commandments. Just to make the claim: "I am loving God!" (4:20) amounts to nothing, is, in fact, lying (1:3). But remember 3:23 as well as 1:3, "fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." John weaves in τηράν from 2:3, 4, the commandments have been given (3:22, 24) for the purpose of keeping; doing what each one says (5:2), actually loving not merely in word but in deed (3:18), when it comes to my brother, my fellow believer, is their chief aim.
Are these commandments burdensome, a heavy weight that is, if possible, to be avoided, to be complained about when it is shouldered? And his commandments are not burdensome. Is it a burden to believe in the Son of God who died in expiation of our sins (2:2; 3:23; 4:10) ? There is no greater joy than this confidence and trust. Is it a burden to be called one of God's children (3:1), children of him who is love (4:8, 16), and for the love of him who first loved us (4:10) to love him and thus also his children even as he loves us, and as they love us? Can there be any greater joy than to stand in this circle of love, to have this love poured out upon us, to be warmed into answering love by this love? No; his commandments are not burdensome!
2) John now weaves in our knowing, the γινώσκειι/ about which he has said so much. Trace the word back and note its full meaning, knowing with full affect and effect in ourselves. In connection with this we know that we are loving the children of God, those born from him (the plural now denoting all of them), whenever we are loving God and are doing his commandments. It is as simple as that.
The Seventh Circle of Facts,
Centering on Testimony, Faith, Life
5:4-17
4) In 4:14 "we are testifying" recalls the beginning of the epistle: "we are testifying and are declaring to you" (1:2). John now weaves in the facts regarding this testimony. He does so at this point where he has connected believing with love. We have these two together in 3:23, and believing continues in the development in4:l;4:16;5:l. John now joins testimony and believing. All testimony wants to be believed, it is offered for that purpose only. All true testimony ought to be believed; not to believe it is to make him who testifies a liar. John adds what this means for the liar.
John makes no formal division at this point. Hence one may add v. 4, 5 to the preceding. The only reason we divide here is the fact that John introduces the new terms "victory" and "winning victory" and connects these terms with "faith" and "believing," and thus passes on to "testimony" and "bearing testimony," which he now expands, which appear eight times and thus form the new center. The old division into chapters which is found in our versions lets the new circle begin at v. 1 although v. 1-3 still carries the key word "love," which is dropped in v. 4.
Because everyone who has been born from God (reaching back into 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1) is victorious over the world; and this is the victory, the one that became victorious over the world, our faith. John links the thought with 2:13, 14 where he says that the youths have achieved the victory over the wicked one and then tells all his readers not to love the world. The wicked one rules the world; to be victorious over him is to be a victor over the world and over all that is in it, which is not from the Father (2:16). If the youths have achieved this victory and stand in it (perfect tenses), this is certainly also true of all who are no longer youths. John now speaks of all of them and includes himself.
"On makes this victory the reason that our keeping God's commandments in love for God cannot be burdensome. How can victors find it hard to show their love for God by keeping his commandments which ask them to believe in the Son and to love one another (3:23) ? They have been born from God, have been filled with strong, spiritual life, and are thus victorious over the world, over this power which would interfere with their keeping of God's commandments. It should certainly be easy for us victors to go on in our victory, to trample upon any interference from the world which is opposed to God, and to love God and to keep his commandments.
This becomes clearer when we see what this victory is, "the one that became victorious over the world," the aorist participle going back to the beginning of the victory. It is "our faith." When God, then, asks us to believe (4:23) he is asking us only to be victorious; when he asks us to love he is asking only for the fruit of faith which it naturally bears. Both faith and love show that we have been born from God (v. 1), that the power of a new life is in us, that in believing and in loving this power of the new life is showing its activity. It does so positively in regard to God and to God's children who are in the same victorious army with us and negatively in regard to the world, in keeping up our victory over it (present tense).
5) Here again, as in verse 1, John is not content with the words "believe" and "our faith" but adds the content of this faith. Now who is the one that is victorious over the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The question implies that no one will think of a different answer. If our victory is our faith, the victor is the believer. This makes the abstract statement concrete. Yet everything depends on what we believe. Believing some fiction, some lie is not victory but defeat, surrender, victory for the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44), for the world, the devil's children (3:10) who cling to his lies and his deceptions. Not a single lie is from the truth (2:21). John has said much about the light, the truth, the Word. He now states their substance: "that Jesus is the Son of God"; in verse 1 it was: "that Jesus is the Christ." This is what the believer believes, this is what makes him a victor over the world.
John again links into all that he has said on the deity of Jesus and on the power of his blood in 1 :l-3, 7; 2:1, 2, 22, 23; 3:8, 23; 4:9, 10, 15; 5:1. Let us once more add that the truth "that Jesus is the Son of God," "the Christ," the "expiation for our sins," the "Savior of the world," is not one article of our faith but the sum of all of them, not a piece of the gospel but the whole gospel. It is necessary to say this and to cling to it because so many imagine that "the truth" and "the Word" can be cut into pieces, and that we can deny this, that, and even many pieces and yet be true to the Father and to the Son and to God's children.
6) This One is the One who came by means of water and blood; not in connection with water alone, but in connection with the water and in connection •with the blood.
The content of the faith of the victor over the world is "that Jesus is the Son of God," a truth which Cerinthus and his adherents denied outright by making Jesus the natural son of Joseph and of Mary. That is why this epistle from beginning to end holds up the deity of Jesus, why it with such decisiveness stresses the fact that he is "the Son of God." Deny this, and you deny and have no Father (3:22, 23), and all talk of fellowship with God (1:6), i. e., all talk of true religion, is nothing but a lie.
But these antichristian heretics had more to say. This natural son of Joseph was joined to the eon Christ (the earliest Gnostic notion) at Jesus' baptism, but this Christ eon left the natural son of Joseph at the time of his passion so that Jesus died as a mere man who was never "the Son of God," was never the incarnate Logos, the second person of the Godhead, but had the Christ eon only for a time. This heresy deprived the death and "the blood of Jesus, the Son of God," of all efficacy as a ίλασ/λό? or "expiation" for the sins of the world (2:2; 4:10). In fact, these heretics denied that we have sins and also in this respect made God a liar (1:8-10). That is why John now says: "This One is the One," i. e., this Jesus who is the Son of God, "who came by means of water and of blood," and then adds specifically: "not in connection with the water alone" as Cerinthus claims, "but in connection with the water and in connection with the blood."
Ούτοϊ is the subject of εστί, and ό &θ<άν, κτλ., is the predicate: "this One" is "the One who came," etc. The aorist indicates the historical fact. "The One who came = 4:9, 10: "God has sent (commissioned) his Son, the Only-begotten, as expiation regarding our sins." This One came as the one thus sent and commissioned, this One being the Only-begotten, the Son of God.
Neither δια nor the two ev are local; nor does <b/ indicate manner (R. 583) or accompanying circumstance akin to μετά and συν (R. 589). Jesus, the Son of God, did not come as one who walked through (local), or in the manner of water and of blood, or with water and blood accompanying him. The mission on which God sent his Son and in which he came as "Savior of the world" (4:14) made him use these two means (Sui), water and blood; when he came, it was not "in connec-tion with" water alone (as the heretics claimed) but •'in connection with the water and in connection with the blood." The lv is· to be understood in its originai sense, the two articles are articles of previous reference to "water" and to "blood."
The δίά states what the connection indicated by & was: it was the connection of means. John is not referring to John 19:34 where blood is placed before water, which also the heretics did not have in mind. The twc iv phrases also indicate two connections and not one in which water and blood were combined. The first is the baptism of Jesus, the Son of God, in and by which he assumed his office as Savior of the world, for which God had sent him. The second is his sacrificial death on the cross where he shed his expiating blood; compare what is said on "the blood of Jesus, his Son," in 1:7.
John utterly repudiates what the heretics made of the baptism of Jesus. Read John 1:29-34: "the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world," the Lamb came to shed his blood for the sin and was "the Son of God" as the voice of the Father declared from heaven (Matt. 3:17; John 1:34). The heretics denied what that voice said, denied "the blood of the Son of God" (1:7), the expiation on the cross.
When the historical aorist ό ίλθύν is disregarded, symbolical and figurative ideas are allowed play, and when these are given free rein they go to extravagant lengths. We list only the one that water and blood denote the two sacraments, which is held by even a man like Besser who in addition finds a reference to John 19:34.
On whose testimony does this our victorious faith in Jesus, the Son of God, and on this fact that he came and thus carried out the mission on which God had sent him (4:9, 10) rest? John reverts to 1:2: "we are testifying," and to 4:14 where he writes the same words. And the Spirit is the One giving testimony because the Spirit is the truth. John no longer stresses the fact that he himself and the apostles are the ones testifying as he did in 1:2 and in 4:14, but he does not do this because their apostolic testifying is not sufficient for faith. John advances from the intermediate bearers of testimony to the ultimate One who testifies. As the epistle progresses it advances with every new addition. It does so here.
The ultimate One bearing testimony, from whom all the apostles also derive their testimony, on whom their own faith also rests, is the Holy Spirit, none less. The το Τίνεϋμα must refer to the third person of the Godhead. There is no need to mention what some, following their spiritualizing fancies, have found in this word. The Spirit is above all the One giving testimony, is thus the ultimate Testifier, "because the Spirit is the truth," the truth itself. Jesus calls him "the Spirit of the truth" (John 15:26; 16:13). Jesus adds: "He shall testify concerning me." To the apostles Jesus says: "And you, too, testify, because from the beginning you are with me" (John 15:27). All of this agrees with what John says in 1:2 and in 4:14 about the apostles' testifying and now about the Spirit as the One testifying. The relation of the apostles to the Spirit is plain: Jesus gave them the Spirit. They speak as being borne along by the Holy Spirit (II Pet. 1:21), the Spirit being the ultimate Testifier.
John says more than that the Spirit is "true"; he is "the truth" just as Jesus says this regarding himself (John 14:6), the embodiment of the saving truth, which he thus also imparts by his testimony in order to save us. We do not regard ότι as declarative: "that he is the truth" (Luther). This would be out of the line of thought. To μαρτυρούν, "the One testifying," is the present tense because the Spirit has never ceased testifying. We hear his voice in the Scripture, notably in the New Testament. We should not translate this participle into English by means of a neuter word or speak of a neuter being "personified." The Greek Uvev^a is grammatically a neuter, but in the Greek it refers to the third person of the Godhead, and the predicate "the One testifying" is not "something testifying."
7, 8) But the law has ever required and requires to this day that two or three testify (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; II Cor. 13:1) ; God himself adheres to this principle, (Heb. 10:28, 29); so does Jesus (Heb. 6:18; John 5:31-37). So John adds a second causal clause: Because three are the ones giving testimony, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are for one thing, i. e., their testimony is one identical thing, the three agree without the least deviation in their one testimony in regard to Jesus and to his deity. The Spirit is the One testifying, he who is the truth itself because two others testify with him and substantiate even in a legal, formal way all that anyone can require in regard to testimony. The fact that these two others are not persons does not disqualify them. In Heb. 6:18 the second is not a second person; in John 5:36 Jesus names his "works" as testifying.
The baptism of Jesus speaks volumes about his deity and about his entire mission. We have already pointed to John 1:29-34 and to the accounts of the baptism itself. The death of Jesus does the same; remember his words on the cross, in fact, his entire passion, the whole of which is the testimony of "the blood." The one supreme Testifier, the Spirit, has these two others to support him.
The R. V. is right in not even noting in the margin the interpolation found in the A. V. How completely spurious this insertion, often called "Comma Joan-newm," really is Horn, Introduction, 7th ed., vol. IV, pp. 448-471, shows, offering even the facsimiles of the very late texts that contain the Comma and treating the whole subject exhaustively. Zahn, Introduction, III, 372, adds a few new items in his remarks on the subject.
9) If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater because this is the testimony of God, (this) that he has given testimony in regard to his Son. We certainly receive the testimony of men in regard to all manner of things, many of them being most important. The testimony of God is infinitely greater because this is the testimony of God, this that (declarative ότι) he has been testifying, not about some small thing, but about the greatest of all, his own Son. What the Spirit, the water, and the blood say is God's own testimony; these three testifiers are furnished by him, by him because this testimony of his deals with his own Son. This constitutes its greatness. Once given, it stands now and ever — the perfect μίμαρτνρηκε. When the Father sends us three testifiers and through them in the most legal way testifies about his own Son, can we who daily receive the testimony of men refuse to accept this great testimony, which is great because it is given by God and is given about his Son?
10) John emphasizes this thought. He repeats the term "testimony" and the verb "testify" no less than eight times, "God" seven times, his "Son" six times. See the similar repetitions of "commandment" in 2:3-8; of the verb "to remain" in 2:24-28. The one believing in the Son of God has this testimony in him (in his heart, for believing so receives it) ; the one not believing God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony which God has testified concerning his Son. The perfect tenses imply that he has done this from the moment when God brought his testimony to his heart and this disbeliever refused to believe God himself when he was testifying concerning his own Son.
It is making God a liar when one refuses to believe God's testimony regarding other matters; it is making God a liar in the worst possible way when one refuses to believe God's testimony about his own Son. Let the disbelievers in the deity of Jesus note what they have done. Compare 1:10 on making God a liar; and 2:22, the fact that only liars do this. Yet they claim fellowship with God (1:6) as though God were a liar and fellowships liars!
Note that believing is not a matter of the head and the intellect alone but that it ever appeals to the heart. Faith is the confidence of the heart, the fiducia, that holds "in him," in the believer, the objective testimony of God and thus all that God's testimony contains as John now makes plain.
11, 12) And this is the testimony, that God gave to us life eternal, and this life is in connection with his Son. The one having the Son has this life; the one not having the Son of God does not have this life.
Understand well what this testimony of God is, which he has testified through his three testifiers, in order that you may well understand what believing this testimony is and what not believing it is. This testimony about his Son is no less than "that God gave to us life eternal"; with a simple καί John adds the thought that "this life is in connection with his Son." The articles used with ζωή (three times) are those of previous reference: "this life." What connection life eternal has with God's Son, John has stated in 4:9, 10 ("that we may live through him"); in 3:14 ("we have stepped over from the death into the life"); in 1:1, 2 (Jesus, "the Logos of the Life," "the Life that was manifested,'7 "the Life, the eternal one"), plus all the passages on "having been begotten from God" (2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 14, 18).
John binds everything together. God's testimony brings us his Son; eternal life is in his Son, is in him for us; it is given us in and by this testimony; to believe it is to have the Son, and to have him is to have this life; not to believe it is not to have the Son and this life. It is all as simple and as lucid as these brief statements make it.
John can say for himself and for his readers: "God gave to us life eternal," gave it to us when we believed his testimony and thereby received the Son into our possession with all that he is for us. Regarding the heretics he can now let the general statement suffice: "The one not having the Son does not have this life."
13) With a direct address to his readers John now combines the three terms into one succinct statement : the name of the Son of God — believing in his name — life eternal. The name comes to us through the "testimony." On όνομα and its use with "the Son of God" see 3 :23. These things I wrote to you in order that you may know that you have life eternal as those believing in the name of the Son of God.
We think that it is fruitless to debate as to whether this epistolary aorist refers only to what immediately precedes or to the whole epistle; because of the way in which John writes, letting his thought spiral upward in ever-widening circles, what he just wrote is only a further advance on the rest. The whole of it, like the last sentences, is to bring to the mind of his readers the fact that they have life eternal as those who believe in the name (revelation) of the Son of God.
John uses ol8a as he does also in the three following notable statements (verses 18-20) and not γινώσκω. His intention is not that he wants to exclude the knowing of the heart, which realizes with full effect upon the readers (γινώσκω), but that he wants his readers to know also intellectually, with a clear understanding of the mind that they have life eternal only as believers in the name of the Son of God over against all the heretics who refuse to believe in this name and revelation and deny the Son of God (2:22; 4:15). The readers must know this with a clear mental perception in order to meet and to refute these Gnostic heretics when they come with the claim that they are the ones who know. The aorist άδήτε is effective: "that you may actually know." This is the purpose of John's instructive, clear, simple presentation. John has already said that he is writing nothing new and strange (2:7, etc.), also that his readers have for a long time realized and believed (2:13, etc.; 4:16); John writes in order to fortify his readers just as we must constantly be informed and fortified anew.
14) The fact that John is thinking of the dangers that are besetting his readers becomes evident in what he adds. And this is the boldness which we have regarding him that, if we ask anything in accord with his will, he hears us; and if we know that he hears us, (hears) whatever we ask, we know that we have the askings we have asked from him.
John links back into 3:21, 22, which he now amplifies, but he states this as a preamble to the danger that he has in mind, to what he expects his readers to do in rescuing a brother from such danger. So he once more reminds them of the great -παρρησία, the boldness and confidence that they have rrpos αυτόν, "face to face" with God when they go to him in prayer (see 3:21 on this preposition).
It is a fact that, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. The fact that we as true believers and God's children will never come face to face with him and ask what is against his will is in a way self-evident; hence it is not mentioned in so many of the promises of Jesus regarding prayer nor in 3:21, 22. That point is in place here because John speaks of cases when God does not want us to ask. That is the reason John does not now use the active of alre<o as he did in 3:22 but twice writes the middle αίτάμεθα and then twice follows this with the simple active.
G. K. and others think that there is no difference between these forms, at least, that none is intended. But here and elsewhere, especially where the active and the middle are used side by side, a difference is apparent and certainly seems to be intended. It is admitted that the middle is used in business dealings, where one has the right to ask. Herod's oath gave Salome a certain right to ask, a right of which she made full use (Matt. 14:7). Why should the two middle forms that are used here not include this right? Does the phrase "according to his will" (θέλημα, what God has willed and has made known as being willed by him) not imply a certain right for our asking?
15) John repeats "he hears us" by saying "we know that he hears us," we know it as a fact; Jesus himself has told us so. The person one hears is stated with the genitive, the thing one hears is stated in the accusative: "he hears us" (genitive), hears "whatever we ask" (accusative clause). "He hears" is to be understood in its full sense: "we know that we have the askings that we have asked from him." He hears and grants. Μτήματα is the cognate object (R. 477). It is a word that expresses a result like θέλημα: the askings as made by our action of asking.
"We have asked" does not need to be the middle here. R. 805 remarks that in these verses the difference between the middle and the active may well be the point; we think it is and do not follow B.-D. 316, 2 who says that the change in voice is "arbitrary" here and in James 4:2, etc. Moulton, Einleitung, 253, etc., records several wrong opinions, objects to Blass's view regarding "arbitrary," but seems to think that Mayor is right, who says that the active denotes that the asking is without the spirit of prayer, which is an untenable idea.
In ίαν οϊδαμεν we have the indicative; it is found once more in the New Testament in I Thess. 3:8; it occurs often in the papyri (R. 1010) ; in the modern Greek the indicative is used as frequently as the subjunctive.
16) Now there follows the application. If one sees a brother sinning a sin not unto death he will ask, and he (God) will give to him (that asks) for those not sinning unto death. There is sin unto death. Not concerning that do I say that he make request.
Here is a brother that is living in some sin (present, durative participle), and one of us (singular) sees it. Knowing what we all know about asking God and about God's hearing us, one of us asks God, and God gives this one life for this brother, "for those sinning"; the plural indicates that there will be others that sin from time to time. The future tenses are perfectly regular and are not intended as imperatives. This cannot be the case as far as δώσει is concerned.
The subject of the latter is God. This is indicated by the addition of αϋτω which must mean "to him" who does the asking. Some, like the R. V. margin, refer it to the sinning brother, but they must then make the plural rois άμαρτάνονσι an apposition to the singular ούτω, which, to say the least, is strange. In the R. V. "even" is added: "even to them that are sinning." If we supply anything we prefer to supply "God" with the verb. This leaves us the proper Scripture thought that God gives to him who asks. The idea that you and I give life to anyone is not Scriptural. Those who accept that idea say that this person gives life to his sinning brother when God, in answer to his prayers, enables him to do so. So, after all, the Giver is God, and the circumlocution has no advantage. John says twice that in these cases the sinning is •"not unto death"; irpos is used as it was in v. 14 with ihe meaning not facing death as the inevitable result. Since ζωή is "life eternal" (v. 13), which, as we now "have" it, is spiritual life, "death" must be its opposite, namely the loss of spiritual life, which is spiritual death. Once having been born from God (2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:4, 18) into the new life, "death" means that this life has been lost. We are not to think of physical death, either that which is inflicted by the government (which is then conceived as punishment for a capital crime) or that which results from the effects of the sinning on the sinner's body. What God does when lie gives life for these sinners is to strengthen their damaged, declining spiritual life, which they have not as yet lost. Δώσει is used to match αίτησα: God shall give to him who shall ask. He also gives not to but for these sinners.
John says in elucidation: "There is (indeed) sin unto death," and adds: "not concerning that do I say that he (the petitioner) shall make request" (aorist, to denote an actual request). This raises the question: "What is sin unto death and sinning not unto death?" When we answer this question we should not overlook the "if one sees" (aorist, actually sees). A Christian is able to see when another is not sinning unto death and thus by implication when he is. This does not mean that his sight is infallible, or that he may not fear that his brother's sinning will bring him into death. In certain cases, however, the death will be so apparent that intercession is no longer in place "in accord with God's will."
Those are right who say that the answer should not be given abstractly but in the light of John's whole epistle.
17) Every wrong is sin, all or every deviation from God's norm of right, i. e., "all unrighteousness." That is unquestioned by Christians. All αδικία, all αμαρτία must be guarded against by him who has been born from God (v. 18; 3:9). John writes these things so that his readers may not sin (2:1). All sin and all wrong are dangerous to our spiritual life. Who can tell what damage will result for him if he enters on a course of sinning? The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Thank God that all sins and all sinning are not unto death, that by confessing and fleeing to the intercession of our Advocate we may have our sins remitted and be cleansed (1:8-2:2) !
So we say that where the way for this is still open, the sinning is not unto death. Our intercession for each other is to the effect that God may help us to use this way. He has his means for driving us to the cross of Christ. John says αμαρτία ου προ? θάνατον because the phrase modifies the noun; in v. 16 he writes μη because it there modifies participles.
"Sin unto death," is that sinning which involves the closing of the door to the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son (1:7). It is the sin which itself denies the Son of God (2:22) and all the sinning that goes with this denial. John has added the main features. One is making God a liar (1:8, 10), claiming that one has no sin; another is stated in 1:6, lyingly claiming fellowship with God while repudiating his Word. Go through the epistle. Can one see this? Yes. Bengel thinks only of a state; the state is there, but John speaks throughout of more than a mere state, he speaks of all the acts that proclaim that state. He never counsels his readers to look into a man's heart. Clear evidence is the thing.
Confusion has resulted from making the distinction between "mortal" and "venial" sins and then listing certain gross sins as mortal. Romanists list seven: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, ira, gula, invidia, acedia (Traegheit, sloth), and then devise a penitential system that is to be applied by the church, in which the priests measure out the satisfactio operis in their sacrament of penance. The sin against the Holy Ghost has also been referred to; when it is wrongly defined it has not helped matters. See Matt. 12:31, etc.; Heb. 6:4, etc.; 10:25, etc.; also Acts 7;51.
The Final Summary,
Centering on "We Know"
5:18-21
18) John sums up; he has come to the end. He does it by means of three οϊδαμεν (compare v. 15 on the verb. "We know," these things are fixed for us, fixed as facts. Nothing can shake them in our minds.
The first is: We know that everyone who has been born from God does not go on sinning; on the contrary, the one born from God keeps himself (read Ιαντάν). "Has been born from God" = 2:29; not sinning = 3:9. The perfect passive includes the resultant present state; the aorist passive is content to state the past fact (R. 1117). John has used τηράν a number of times just as Jesus uses this word often; but only in this verse does John use it with the reflexive: "he keeps himself," namely by the strength of the spiritual life that is born in him.
This is, indeed, a fact. This is not the place to expand but to sum up. Hence John does not add the opposite negative, which has been done sufficiently in various ways. Yet here, too, the fact is to be used in order to draw a clear line between all the antichristian heretics and all who truly keep the commandments or the Word (2:3, 5).
This means safety: and the wicked one does not fasten himself upon him, άπτεται, middle voice. This is John's designation for the devil (2:13, 14; 3:12), he writes "the devil" in 3:8. The wicked one will try to fasten himself upon him but will not succeed. He and the sin unto death go together.
19) The second thing is this: We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the wicked one. Εκ θεοί goes back to 4:4 and restates what is said objectively in verse 18: "everyone who has been born from God." In "from" God (v. 18, 19) there lies the fact that all our spiritual life has its origin in God. How this origin shows itself John has just stated in v. 18, which sums up all that John has said to the same effect throughout the epistle.
Parallel to the statement about the wicked one is this about the world: "and the whole world (as in 2:2) lies in the wicked one," lies prostrate in his power domain. Few will agree that τω πονηρά is now a neuter. "Evil one" in our versions is not as good as "wicked one," for πονηροί = actively, viciously wicked. In κείται there lies the idea of passivity which does not even struggle against the devil. He does not need to fasten himself on the world; he already has the whole of it completely in his power. This in no way contradicts 2:2, for John has also written 3:8.
20) What underlies the preceding two οϊδαμα is now summed up in the third. We know, moreover, that the Son of God is come, and he has given to us understanding so that we know the real One. And we are in connection with the real One, in connection with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the real God and life eternal.
Δε' adds this final knowledge which is ours. "The Son of God has come," ήκει is used as a present tense. This restates 3:8. This Son "has given to us" (with permanent effect, perfect tense) Siavoiav, Erkenntnis-vermoegen (C.-K. 767, etc.), spiritual sense and ability to understand, "so that (ίνα to express result, it is not epexegetical to διάνοιαν) we know the real One," namely God. John now writes the verb γινωσκω, "to realize with inner affect and effect." "ίνα with the indicative appears three times in the New Testament (R. 984). The Koine permits the use of this indicative, and it is employed here to indicate a result clause.
Ό αληθινό'; — "the real One" as opposed to spurious gods, "idols" (verse 21). At the end of this epistle, which has dealt with the antichrists who deny both the Son and the Father and has not dealt with pagans and with their idols or divinities, John writes "the real One" as opposed to the fictional God of the heretics, the God that they made for themselves in their un-regenerate, lying dianoia as men still do today. No one knows who God really is save the Son and he to whom the Son reveals him (Matt. 11:27; John 1:18).
Just as it does in verses 18 and 19, καί now adds a separate statement. This is best indicated in the English by the use of a semicolon or by the construction of a new sentence: "And we are in connection with the real One." The Son of God has placed us in connection with the real God by giving us dianoia, and thus making us know God. There is nothing fictional about either the God with whom we are connected or about our being in him, about our fellowship and connection with him. It is the Son of God himself who made this real God known to us and joined us to him. The heretics have no Son of God, have not the Father, (2:22, 23), have only an illusion which they call "God," so that their claim of having fellowship with God is a lie (1:6). They do not have fellowship with what they call "God" because their "God" does not exist.
John's iv, "in the real One," in union and communion with him, in living spiritual connection with him, summarizes all the similar "in" phrases that run through this epistle, cf. 2:5, 6; 3:24, all the μέν&ν &> statements, our "remaining in" God, this last "in" taking us back to the κοινωνία, "the fellowship," mentioned in 1:3, 6, 7. They express the unio mystica that is wrought for us by the Son through the light, the truth, the Word, the gift of the Spirit, when we were brought to faith, were born from God, were made "the children of God," were filled with God's love to us> with love to him and to all the other children of God, and were separated from the world, from the wicked one and from his children (3:9, 10). Thus the entire epistle is summed up in this final εν phrase.
The εν τω αληθινά does not refer to a different person than does τον άληθινόν, namely "the real God." The article with the dative reads like an article of previous reference. Our versions translate otherwise: "And we are in him that is true (real), even in his Son Jesus Christ." This makes the second a> phrase ap-positional to the first so that "the real One" in the phrase = "his Son Jesus Christ." A comma is, therefore, placed between the a> phrases. If this were John's meaning, he would have omitted αυτόν, would have written: "And we are in the real One, (namely) in the Son Jesus Christ." He wrote αυτού, the antecedent of which is τω αληθινά. We translate without the use of a comma: "And we are in the real One (God) in his Son Jesus Christ."
Only in this way are we in God. Apart from the Son no one is in God (John 14:6). He who denies the Son has not the Father (2:23). This is the burden of the entire epistle. This meaning cannot be eliminated at the climax. We are in the real One in Christ; no man is in God without Christ. But this Christ is not a mere man. The early Gnostics conceived him to be such, to them he was nothing more than the physical son of Joseph (see the introduction). That is why at the end of the epistle, in the summary, "the Son of God" is once more strongly emphasized: "The Son of God has come," etc. He made the real God known to us. We are in the real God only in and not apart from this real God's Son Jesus Christ; John now adds his name "Jesus Christ." The Gnostics dreamed of an "eon Christ," which "eon" joined Jesus at his baptism but left him before his passion so that only a poor, helpless man died on the cross. But the blood of Jesus is "the blood of his (God's) Son" (1:7), the expiation for the world's sin (2:2; 4:10).
When this is seen, we shall fully understand this summary statement: "And we are in the real One (i. e., God) in his Son Jesus Christ."
Only in this verse in this epistle does John use o-with Jesus Christ. He ordinarily uses this "in" only with God. But note that at the beginning John has two μ,ίτά: "and we have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1:3). The two "with" are placed side by side and are connected by only a καί. Now at the end both are advanced to "in," and now the καί disappears and the two "in" are combined: "in the real One in Christ." This is the ultimate fact. It calls for an "in" (εν) also with reference to the Son.
This puts us in the clear for the clinching statement: "This One is the real God and life eternal." Ούτοϊ, "the One" = "his Son Jesus Christ." Everything depends on his deity, and his deity means no less than this, that as the Father who is made known to us by him is the only real God (I These. 1:9), so also his Son Jesus Christ "is the real God" and eternal life. If the Son is less, if he is not real God even as the Father is the real God, then this entire epistle and all that it declares about his blood, expiation, our fellowship with God, etc., are futile. That, too, is the reason the predicate that refers to Jesus Christ is doubled: "This One (his Son Jesus Christ) is the real God and life eternal." "His Son Jesus Christ" takes us back to 1:3; this Son is now defined as no less than what he is: "the real God," God's "Son" in no inferior sense. "And life eternal" takes us back to 1:2 and to the double designation: "the Life was made manifest" — "the Life, the eternal one, who was with (π/oos, face to face with) the Father" (see the exposition of 1:2). John ends as he began.
This is the old exegesis. It played a great role in the controversy with Arius who, because of his denial of the eternal Sonship, was compelled to make John say that "this One" (ούι-os) = God and not Jesus Christ. This Arian exegesis became that of all later anti-Trinitarians, of the old Socinians, of the English deists, of the German rationalists, etc. Against them stands the exegesis of the church as it was advanced from the early days onward.
This exegesis of the church is now called a mistake by a number of commentators who believe in the full deity of Jesus as it is revealed in Scripture but feel convinced that this ουτ-os clause speaks of the Father and not of his Son. The question is: "Of whom does it speak?" There are weapons more than enough elsewhere in Scripture to smite all Arians without the use of this clause. Is this also one of the weapons or not? It is unfair when those who answer "no" intimate that we who with the church answer "yes"' are swayed by dogmatical interests. Whether we have one passage more or one less in our tremendous arsenal against Arius and his followers makes little difference to us.
In the first place, if οΰτοϊ has as its antecedent "the real God" (the Father), then the statement is a tautology; John would say: "This real God is the real God." He would say it after having twice said: we know the real God and are in the real God. When R. 707 thinks that the antecedent is αυτόν, this makes no difference, for the antecedent of the pronoun is "the real One" (God). It is denied that, when this clause is referred to God, it is a mere tautology. But look and think for yourself. Remember, too, that not a few think that Jesus is not called "God" outright in other passages; to have Jesus here called "the real God" seems even less probable to them. Let us ignore the tautology. Where is the Father ever called '"life eternal" ? John 17:3 has been referred to. But Jesus says: "This is the eternal life (for them) that they know thee, the only real God, and him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ." The Father is, indeed, called "the only real God" as John calls him in our passage, but neither the Father nor the Son is called "the eternal life" in John 17:3, for "the eternal life" is the life which we have (John 3:15, 16) and not a designation for God or for Christ himself. A complete exegesis must go back to ή ζωή and to τψ ζ^ν την αίώνιον in 1:2, and must combine these designations of the Son of God with the predications made in 5:11-13; for when Jesus, too, calls himself "the Life" (John 14:6; 11:25; compare 1:4) he means that he in his person is the Life, the fountain of life for us.
It is this second predicate that is so decisive. When John 5:24, 26 is referred to, the designations of Jesus used in John 14:6; 11:25; I John 1:2 should not be overlooked. John 5:24, 26 contains no designation of either the Father or the Son as these other passages plus ours do; all of them are designations for what Jesus is as the eternal Son sent by the Father that we may live (4:9, 10). Instead of John 5:26 proving that in our passage the Father is called "life eternal," the fact is that John 5:26 proves why Jesus, the Son of God, truly calls himself "the Life" and is truly so called by John in various passages.
Here at the end John calls the Father, whom he has hitherto designated only by the terms "the Father" and "God," "the real One" (i. e., the genuine God), for John has now reached the end and the climax. He cites αληθινός from Jesus (John 17:3). So John has hitherto called Jesus "the Son of God" and "his (the Father's, God's) Son," and now, here at the end and the climax, John duplicates and calls also Jesus Christ the real God's Son because he is the real God's only-begotten Son (4:9), yea, "the real God." As the Father is the real (genuine) God, so his Son is the real (genuine) God, and this Son places us in fellowship with the Father. Need we add the words that Jesus himself spoke in John 10:30; 12:45; 14:9?
21) John closes: Little children, guard yourselves from the idols! This final hortation may surprise us. Yet it is the final stone that rests upon and stands up from the great inverted pyramid that John has built in this epistle. When we understand the structure of this epistle we shall fully appreciate this its last word. It has been thought that this is the very last word that we have from John's pen. This assumes that all his other writings are the products of an earlier date, which is a rather hazardous assumption and not one on which to write a sermon: "The Last Words of the Last Apostle," as has been done.
On the affectionate address "little children" see 2:1. Like so many apostolic hortations, this, too, has the effective aorist imperative: "guard yourselves," let there be no question about it. The readers are to stand like armed guards, ready to conquer every attack (2:13, 14; 4:4; 5:4, 5, νικαν). We prefer the reading ίαυτά, the neuter, to fit τ«νία, which some have changed to the masculine.
What John means by "the idols" from which his little children are to guard themselves is made plain by the context, in fact, by the entire epistle. John is not speaking of common pagan idols, which are then irrelevantly introduced at the very end of his epistle. These "idols" are the fictional conceptions of God that were held by Cerinthus and by his devotees. By calling these conceptions "the idols" John places them in the same class with all the pagan images and the imagined gods. This includes all the anti-Trinitarian conceptions of God, no matter by whom they are held.
John's epistle is intended for many churches and thus closes without a series of salutations as it also begins without the common epistolary greeting.
Soli Deo Gloria