1 JOHNCITY GATES 23 RD APRIL 2017

INTRODUCTIONAs our study entitled “Mission Impossible?” draws towards a close, we wanted to look in a fair bit of depth at one of the letters in the New Testament. Paul’s letters tend to get a lot of preaching time, so I am going to

look at a letter that does not get a lot of preaching time, but it is a letter that both deserves, and needs, careful attention in order to explore its depths.

This morning I am going to share with you an overview of John’s first letter, and you may remember that I already gave you some background to this letter a couple of weeks ago in my teaching about “Jesus’ Mission”.

My notes that are available for you from today contain a lot more information than I am going to say this morning, so get yourself a copy if you want to explore 1 John for yourselves. The parts of the notes that are in dark blue bold italics I will not

be reading out this morning, but that extra content is there to help you to explore 1 John further.

John’s first letter has some apparent internal contradictions, as well as this first letter appearing to contradict John’s own gospel, and we need to explore these and understand why that seems to be the case. In order to understand and explain apparent contradictions, I will

frequently refer to the Greek text with regard to translation, but also with reference to how the Greek sentences are constructed, because changing the Greek sentence construction changes the meaning of those sentences.

This means that it is not enough to merely translate the Greek words into English – that is hard enough to do accurately as it is – but we also need to take into account the way in which the Greek text has been arranged so that we understand why John wrote in the way that he did.

As many of you will know, translating the Scriptures into modern English is anything but a simple task.

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For one example of an apparent contradiction between John and 1 John, consider the following two verses:JOHN 3:16For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.1 JOHN 2:15Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world…How is this apparent contradiction to be explained?What is an apparent contradiction in English is no contradiction at all in the Greek because, in John 3:16 he uses the word that means the created world – cosmos – while in 1 John 2:15 he uses the word that means the world order of things, the world system – not the created world itself. Therefore, the apparent contradiction between the gospel and the

letter is actually caused by the English translations using the word ‘world’ on both occasions and thereby failing to distinguish between the two different Greek words that are used.

As we explore 1 John, we will come across other apparent internal contradictions but, first, some background about John himself: Remember that when Jesus called his disciples, they were all

merely teenagers, with Peter the oldest of those teenage disciples at nineteen years old, while John was the youngest of those teenage disciples at just twelve years old.

At the time when Jesus called his disciples, John had not had his bar-mitzvah, and so he was still technically a minor at that time he responded to Jesus’ call and followed this unorthodox rabbi.

Jesus’ other disciples nicknamed John as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ and John’s youth meant that Jesus was not just a rabbi to John, but that he was effectively also his spiritual father in a very real relationship sense.

In later years, John became an apostle and overseer (effectively a pastor – but not what we could call a pastor today) of a Christian community – a church.

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He also became a spiritual father to that community of Christians (though we must remember that such churches back then knew nothing of paid staff, nor of membership, nor of charitable status, nor of buildings).

John’s gospel was written to that Christian community as, indeed, were his letters.His writings reveal that John’s Christian community was struggling with internal theological and heretical threats that were a very real and very aggressive opposition to his leadership.Those opponents would ultimately destroy that Christian community and wipe it out completely from all historical records. Threats to the community that had once been external to the

community were then internal through believers who claimed that they had secret esoteric wisdom, yet who held incorrect views of Jesus and who engaged in Christ-denying behaviour.

These people who strongly opposed John and the church leadership were from inside the fellowship itself and they were tearing it apart from the inside by disrupting and disturbing the disciples there.

John wrote so that his community would discern between the true and the false – especially in relation to Jesus the Christ himself – and to show the faithful Christians that sticking close to Jesus would let them discern between Christian behaviour and non-Christian behaviour.This was not a church setting of leisure and calm; rather, it was a community of Christians that were struggling with the intellectual, social and cultural settings of its day as well as with what the community’s own internal leadership were having to deal with.John was writing because serious problems had arisen — certain people had challenged his leadership and upended traditional teachings about Jesus through their talk of having ‘special knowledge’ and ‘private revelation’.It is not surprising then, that at the early church councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, those theologians looked to John’s writings for guidance

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as they discerned the nature of Christ’s relation to the Father and the meaning of the Incarnation.TODAY’S CULTUREWe will return a little later to think about the situation in John’s church, but first let’s think briefly about our situation today.Like John, we live today in age and a culture where anything goes – especially if it sounds mystical and intriguing.As in John’s day, a thousand theologies and theories are asserting themselves in the public imagination while simultaneously oppressing and dismissing the foundation of true Christianity, which is a love relationship with God through Jesus the Christ.Unfortunately, we often idealize the New Testament era and its churches, and we can easily fantasize about how life must have been back then. We think, for instance, that the congregations of Paul generally

found their conflicts to be external to their congregational life. But rarely do we accept the notion that many of these churches

struggled internally; that they experienced a laity in revolt, or a failed leadership, or elders who challenged the authority of the apostle, or genuine confusion about Christian faith and practice.

But the early church did experience all of these things and more.

It should be reassuring to us to realize that we can, and should, lay to rest the fantasy of a pristine and harmonious early Christianity – because it simply did not exist.

The church — John’s church and our church — is both a divine creation and a human institution. To the extent that we can appreciate John’s struggles, we will

learn how to cope with and overcome the human struggles in our own Christian communities.

Occasionally we are given other Scriptural glimpses of such struggles.The church at Corinth, for instance, certainly had internal problems of leadership, behaviour and mission.

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Likewise, Paul’s letter to Philippi was occasioned not simply by the persecutions of those hostile to Christ, but also by reports that members of the church itself were at each other’s throats, living selfishly, arguing aggressively, and barely exhibiting the character of Christ at all.Simply put, Paul had oversight of churches that were engaged in seriously destructive and immoral behaviour. The letters of John, and particularly 1 John, are documents that lend some insight into the difficult years of John’s pastoral leadership.For instance, 1 John 2:18 – 19 suggests that the church receiving this letter had even already split; some members had left the congregation in an uproar.John even used the term “antichrist” to describe their behaviour.But the trouble didn’t stop there.These disgruntled former members still held a pull on the church.They were playing heavy-handed politics.They were cajoling John’s faithful members to come away and join the revolt.John spared no words in criticizing these people.He called them “children of the devil”.They called themselves Christians all right, but they regarded themselves as ‘special’ Christians, as ‘advanced’ Christians, as Christians given knowledge and revelation that were not available to the rest of Christian society.Early traditions indicate that John planted churches in Ephesus.Eusebius, the fourth-century historian, quotes Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (France), who tells us that John was a leading ecclesiastical figure in Asia Minor (present-day western Turkey).Clergy from throughout the area travelled to Ephesus just to learn from John and hear his stories about Jesus.

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How did Irenaeus know all this?He says it was confirmed to him by Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, who in his younger years was instructed by John.Similarly, Eusebius also preserves for us a letter by the bishop of Ephesus itself (Polycrates), in which the Ephesian bishop tells us that John, who reclined near the Lord at the Last Supper, was buried in Ephesus.Today two tombs still exist in this ancient city, both claiming to be the burial place of John. While the early church was well known for its fanciful traditions about the apostles, many scholars do not count this story about John among the fiction.John was a pastor, a leading pastor, whose memory of Jesus and whose recollection of his teachings gave him unique prowess in antiquity.John’s community of believers lived on the frontiers of Judaism.His church was heterogeneous: Jews who had moved into the Greek world lived alongside Greeks who knew nothing of the Old Testament.Their common bond was a firm allegiance to Jesus, their Messiah, and John was their leader.And yet, because John himself and his “Christian message” were rooted in Judaism, it was natural that this community would live in close proximity to the synagogues of his city.In fact, it is here, in this relationship with the synagogue, that the Johannine community’s “story” was forged. At its earliest stages, this community was cultivating an outlook of division: The world outside the church was a place of darkness, persecution, and turmoil.In Jesus’ prayer (John 17) there is no record of Jesus praying for the world; he simply prayed for the survival and success of his followers.Above all, stories that held deep meaning for the community ended up in the Johannine archive about Jesus: fights with

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Jewish leaders (see John 5, 8, 9, and 10), the continuing relevance of Jewish festivals like Passover (see John 6), and the ongoing importance of John the Baptist (see 1:35 – 51; 3:22 – 36), to name but a few.Indeed, the Gospel of John was an empowering Gospel that shaped this Christian community so that it would expect dynamic spiritual experiences.Jesus and the Father were dwelling inside these spiritually reborn believers (John 14:23)!No other gospel speaks like this!The Holy Spirit promised to provide them with incredible powers: power to recall Jesus’ very words (14:26), power to work miracles greater than those of Jesus (14:12), power to have prayer answered (14:13 – 14), and power to confront a hostile world (16:7).They even had the authority to pronounce sin forgiven (20:23).Above all, the Spirit gave them the power of prophesy, to continue speaking with Jesus’ voice, revealing new things not recorded in Scripture (16:13).JOHN’S STRUGGLESNow let’s return to the struggles that John experienced in his churches.John’s once-unified congregation began to be torn apart from within, and for John himself, it must have been a crisis beyond belief.In 1 John 2:18 he even says that it is “the last hour” for the community.Who were these dissenters that were tearing his church apart from within?Essentially, they were a self-selected group of Johannine Christians who knew the Fourth Gospel well because they already had it, who claimed to be inspired by the same Spirit as John, but who aggressively challenged John’s understanding of Jesus the Christ’s personhood and work.

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And they were certainly succeeding in their work of tearing the community apart by unsettling and disrupting the faithful members of that fledgling community. The community was splitting, harsh words were being exchanged,

and the vocabulary once reserved in the Fourth Gospel for those in “the world” was now being aimed at fellow Christians within the church.

Our evidence for this division is found in John’s response to the crisis, that is the letter we know as 1 John. In its pages, we have evidence of severe social conflict: The

painful departure of a group (1 John 2:19–26) and warnings about “deceivers” and “liars” who twist the truth of Christ (1 John 2:22; 2 John 7).

In addition, severe theological debates (1 John 5:5–8) were being fought among teachers all claiming to be filled with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and yet saying very different things (2:20,21; 4:1–6).The letter’s repeated emphasis on love makes clear the severity and desperation of the situation.Yet, the sobering fact is that John’s church did not survive the conflict.The church split, with strong leaders taking the remaining fellowship down the road of Gnosticism and Docetism while John’s own disciples remained in communion with the other New Testament churches of Paul and the apostles.The earliest commentaries on John (e.g.: Heracleon) were written by Gnostics, which shows how the Fourth Gospel was embraced in these heretical circles.And the orthodox church (the “Great Church,” as the Johannine scholar Raymond Brown labelled it) only embraced the Fourth Gospel reluctantly.The church’s Gnostic enemies were using it — or a form of it.As many scholars believe, it was the letters of John — 1 John in particular — that redeemed the Fourth Gospel for the New Testament we possess today.

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Brown believed that at this point the Fourth Gospel may have gone through a revision to correct some misunderstandings.The Gospel, for instance, gained its prologue (John 1:1–18), which emphasizes Jesus’ full incarnation (v. 14).These introductory verses have an uncanny resemblance to the opening verses of John’s first letter (see 1 John 1:1–4).It is possible that the event that inspired this “writing up” of the Gospel was John’s death.John 21 implies that the apostle has died, even though his community thought he would survive till Christ’s second coming (see John 21:20–25).In fact, when John’s disciples stitched together their leader’s story of Christ, they gave him a title of veneration that would make him famous: ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ (13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7,20).John did not call himself this; rather, his followers gave him this name.Therefore, we might view the literary sequence in this way:

(1) An early draft of the Fourth Gospel circulates widely and is subject to misinterpretation.(2) John pens his letters and writes a prologue for the Gospel.(3) John dies, and his followers publish the final form of the Gospel (including the prologue and chapter 21), as well as organize and preserve his letters.

SUCCESS AND FAILUREAs a Baptist pastor, I meet other pastors at various events and meetings throughout the year. When I meet a pastor that I have not met before, I will almost

always be asked, “How big is your church?”By modern church pastor standards, John was a failure. John’s congregation did not thrive, it did not grow, it did not

prosper. If anyone should have built a mega church – surely John should.

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Paul and Barnabas’s church in Antioch became the first mega-church. It was large, wealthy, and influential. The church at Antioch sent missionaries throughout the

Mediterranean. Even famous biblical scholars in later centuries (such as Diodore

and Lucian) hailed from this church in Antioch. For six hundred years Antioch gave theological and pastoral

leadership to the Christian world. But no such claim can be made for John, because the Johannine community completely disappeared into historical obscurity. No heritage. No records. No fame.Therefore, controversy swirled around all of John’s writings as they were being twisted by his opponents and, in later years, questions were asked about whether John’s writings should even be considered as Scripture at all, since they were the writings of a ‘failed’ pastor. Yet John was a faithful pastor who found himself navigating his congregation through an impossible storm and, as his community was being battered, he distinguished his leadership with discretion and good judgement.With the aid of the Spirit and deep understanding through study he cultivated sound theological instincts, which served him well in battle.He knew which issues were utterly essential to the faith, and he knew where there could be no compromise.He possessed keen insight into what made for a vital Christian community.John did not want a church that was orthodox but yet unloving, any more than he wanted a church that misrepresented Jesus the Christ.He wanted both sound doctrine and a vibrant Christ-centered community — and he refused to settle for less.

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John was faithful because he knew how to stand firm in what was essential.His compassion for his congregation burned as intensely as his anger against those who were making them prey to heresy. In the same letter, John could speak of “his little children” and then

chastise his opponents as “the children of the devil.” By the way, it is interesting that none of the writings of those people who successfully opposed John have survived.There are interesting and important parallels between the situation John faced, and the culture in which we proclaim Jesus today. John’s day was a difficult period of Christian history, when the

boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy were unclear – and surely that is where we find ourselves today.

There were no creeds or church councils. There was not even a collection of books called “The New

Testament” that could be used to arbitrate theological disputes. John’s day embraced a culture in which anything was ok and the

more strange and mysterious it was, the better – and that is certainly the culture that we live in today.

In his culture and social environment, John returned over and over again to one major subject as he wrote:Christology – who the person of Jesus the Christ was and is.Many in John’s church had deviated from the supremacy of Christ as Messiah and Lord and even doubted whether God really became flesh as Christ, and in so doing cast doubt upon the man Jesus really being the incarnation of YHWH.John’s opponents embraced a type of “high Christology” that elevated Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity.The Hellenistic world of John’s day commonly affirmed a cosmos that was populated by numerous deities in the heavenly places – but those deities never got involved in the affairs of earth, because this same Hellenistic world rejected any idea that such divinities ever materially entered into our world.

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Elevating Christ into their company was easy, given the tolerant outlook of the day in which religions and cults were freely mixed together as in some kind of mystical soup, and so Christ was easily recognized and counted as a such a deity that had no part in earthly affairs.

Using this dualistic outlook, Christ was separated from the world, set apart with the divinities of heaven, and there left to rule without any interaction with the earth and its people.

In other words, such an outlook totally rejected and denied the incarnation.

One Christian variety of this view said that Christ may have “seemed” (Gk. dokeo; hence, Docetism) to appear in the flesh but in actuality did not, and to them the notion that Christ would appear “in flesh” was ridiculous, if not abhorrent.

Nevertheless, if the earthly life of Jesus Christ was now irrelevant, these people still claimed to have exclusive, immediate and special access to God. In their view, they had moved beyond the basic, elementary

orthodox teachings of Christianity and, inspired by the Spirit, could know God directly and in a way that the vast majority of Christians could never know him, and would never know him.

I. Howard Marshall describes them well: “They were like men kicking away the ladder on which they have climbed to the heights and leaving themselves without any visible means of support.”The very gospel that had given birth to their faith was jettisoned.As John himself said it:Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.This tendency to divide the world along dualistic lines that separated reality into opposing forces (light/darkness, above/below, spirit/flesh, etc.) was common in the first century.The notion of immediate revelation through divine knowledge (known as Gnosticism) was just coming to life.

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But the application of these principles to a Christian Christology was something new.One of the first teachers to do so was Cerinthus.What we know about him is contained in the records of his opponents, particularly, Irenaeus.In Irenaeus’s work Against Heresies (c. A.D. 180), we find an important story, reported by Polycarp, that brings Cerinthus and John together.Apparently once when John was in the public baths at Ephesus, he discovered Cerinthus there and cried out, “Let us save ourselves; the bath house may fall down, for inside is Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth.”Irenaeus goes on to say that John proclaimed his gospel in order to refute the errors of Cerinthus.Irenaeus carefully outlines Cerinthus’s theology.He was one of the first to distinguish carefully Jesus and the Christ.He argued that Jesus was the earthly man of Nazareth, well known for his piety and wisdom, but that Christ was a heavenly deity, who descended on Jesus at his baptism and departed before the crucifixion.Thus, the man Jesus died on the cross, not the Son of God.When we therefore read in 1 John 2:22, “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ,” many commentators wonder if it is just this sort of distinction that John has in mind (see also 5:1, 11, etc.).Someone (perhaps many) were saying that the man Jesus is not the Christ. It is notoriously difficult to confirm Polycarp’s bathhouse story or build any kind of chronology for Cerinthus.But even if he lived after the time of John, incipient ideas like his, ideas shaped by the dualistic environment of Hellenism, were likely present in Asia Minor.

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This is an important realization for us to understand what John regarded as unethical or immoral behaviour.JOHN REBUKES THE REBELSWhile John had a lot to say about the ethics and the behaviour of many of the Christians within his community, it was not like the usual exhortations we find in Paul’s writings, where believers were warned against catalogues of sins (1 Corinthians 6), and nor was it like the dispositions of the heart (Galatians 5).John’s opponent’s theological rationale was that Christian behaviour was of no consequence for the Christian life, because Christ himself was of no consequence for the Christian life.We need to understand the specific views that his opponents held and which John was fighting so strongly against: 1. They boasted that they were ‘without sin’ and by doing so were

claiming that there really was no such thing as the original sin nature in human beings.This was not about specific sins (actions or words), but about the sin nature itself.

2. They boasted that they had direct and exclusive fellowship with God.Yet their words and deeds made it clear to John that they were actually walking in darkness and were at best confused and illogical and, at worst, totally rebellious.

3. They boasted that they knew God in an exclusive and special way.Yet they were disobedient to the very God that they claimed to know – so that the ‘Christ’ that they claimed to know was merely a distorted parody of the Son of God.

4. They boasted that they loved God.Yet they hated their brothers and sisters and were actively aggressively opposing the church’s leadership.

5. They boasted that they were ‘in the light’,Yet treated other Christians as a lower class of people whose Christianity was inferior in every way to theirs.

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In response, John made clear that to truly abide in God was to obey him – and that meant walking as Jesus walked. He also made plain that deliberately damaging relationships was

really sin that proved that Christians who did such things did not know the one true God and his Son Jesus the Christ.

John proclaimed that to know God was to know love – and knowing God had to be reflected in the love that Christians had for one another, because Jesus was inclusive, not exclusive.John’s battle with those who opposed him was not based upon their living immoral lives in the same way that the apostle Paul countered in his writings – rather it was that they denied the very existence of sin itself and, in so doing, denied the need for a Saviour. Denying the very existence of the sin nature meant that they had

no need of Christ’s atoning death on the cross, and so the Son of God became just another vehicle for peddling their own brand of mystical spirituality.

Those who opposed John claimed to live on a higher spiritual level than all other ordinary Christians and so they refused to conform to traditional Christian teachings, and consequently refused to submit to the leadership that bore those teachings. The conflict resulted from their ‘superior’ spirituality.These people had become elitist in their view of themselves and utterly dismissive of and disrespectful to every other Christian or Christian leader. And any who sought to exhort those ‘superior’ Christians but who

could not catalogue similar experiences for themselves, had no credibility in the eyes of the rebellious Christians.

We must not, however, read John’s words about community love as applying merely to his opponents.Too often we have characterized these unorthodox Christians as difficult, haughty, and unremitting in their attitudes toward the church.John also exhorted his own followers to exhibit love because they were actually responding to the secessionists with equal hostility.

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And just because their theology was right by no means says their angry attitudes were justified.Defenders of good traditions cannot defend their own misconduct because they are correct.This disposition to spiritualize the earthly career of Christ but giving it no great importance in relation to salvation, and to deny the spiritual importance of one’s own physical, moral life had some currency in antiquity.Gnostic systems of religious thought were in intense debate with Christianity from about A.D. 150 – 300, years after John’s death, yet the framework that would lead to these systems was already in place.This later literature speaks of a religion of enlightenment and of special knowledge, preserved only for the initiated.Believers were “reborn,” creating a unique union with God that literally brought about a state of sinless perfection.“Sin” belonged to another nature, our material nature, which no longer mattered in God’s economy.Hence, enlightened spiritual experiences validated spirituality while at the same time practical questions of moral conduct were deemed irrelevant.Scholars who have compared the Johannine literature with second-century and third-century Gnostic writings find striking similarities of language and tone.For instance, when 1 John 3:9 talks about God’s “seed” remaining in one born of God, this echoes the teaching of the Valentinian Gnostics, who were great opponents to the orthodox church.In the nineteenth century, this even led some to conclude that John was directly in debate with a fully developed Gnostic religious system (and hence his writings were to be dated much later than the first century).But this is not necessary.The predisposition to divide the world along material and spiritual lines (dualism), to seek spiritual enlightenment

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(mysticism), and to deny personal moral responsibility were well established in John’s day.Colossians and the Pastoral Letters, for example, bear similar witness to Christians with Christological deviations, who disregarded the value of practical moral conduct. THE HOLY SPIRIT AND DISCIPLESHIPIf study of the Fourth Gospel was central to this community’s spiritual formation, it comes as no surprise that the Spirit played a pivotal role in discipleship.No Gospel places as much emphasis on the Spirit as John’s Gospel.In fact, the indwelling of Christ and the transformation of the believer are both framed in terms of Spirit-experience in this literature (John 3:1 – 8; 14:23 – 24).Even the Lord’s Supper is defined as an assimilation of Christ in Spirit (6:52 – 63).John’s followers were confident of their “anointing,” and in his polemic against the secessionists, he must take this spiritual context into consideration.In 1 John 4:13 John reassures his followers that have the Spirit is characteristic of those who “abide in God.”Such abiding is not simply a matter of orthodox confession (4:15) or loving conduct (4:16), although these are important.Abiding in God is experiential, it is a personal experience with the Holy Spirit.Therefore, John’s opponents (the false teachers) must buttress their authority with some (Holy) Spirit experience, some evidence that they have the Spirit too.This explains why in 4:1 – 3 the church is called to “test the spirits.”These opponents are claiming to be prophets (4:1 labels them false prophets) who, under the inspiration of the Spirit, are making striking new claims about Christ.It is interesting to note what John does not say.

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He does not employ his apostolic authority as, for example, Paul does in Galatians to refute the Judaizers.

He does not leverage pastoral authority, power anchored in a position.

Instead, John urges the church to test the spirits to see if they affirm traditional beliefs about Jesus, thereby undercutting the authority of these prophets.His tactic, therefore, is characteristic of those struggling against rival leadership claims in a “charismatic” setting.One cannot deny the Spirit.One must teach discernment and urge congregants to weigh claims made in the voice of the Spirit.

But John goes further.If these secessionists are claiming a superior spirituality, John reminds the church that each member has been equally anointed with the Spirit (2:20, 27).In other words, spiritual discernment is the task of every person.To be a Christian is to have the indwelling Spirit, and no one may come along claiming exclusive spiritual insight.Christians must be well grounded and confident in the authenticity of their own spiritual experience and not swayed by the seemingly more compelling experiences of others. HOW WE USE JOHN’S WRITINGS?Once we have believed something, it can be very hard to change our perspective, and it can be especially hard if we have believed it for a very long time. This is certainly the case with Christian ‘truth’, which we may have

believed simply because we had heard it taught over a long period of time and by many Christians.

It may also be because down through the years we have been taught by the kind of leaders who surely knew what they were talking about.

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For example, some Christians have taught over many years that we should ‘keep short accounts with God’.This teaching arose from just one Scripture verse:If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)Yet, this verse cannot be lifted out of its context and applied to faithful Christians at all, because the Greek construct of the letter and the text itself simply does not allow that interpretation, and neither does the verse’s context and placement within the letter.Unfortunately, it is still quoted out of context many times.Lifting that verse out of context and quoting it by itself is what has caused the error.Our perception of 1 John 1:9 may need to change, not just because our perception may be in error, but also because it was actually addressed to Christians who denied original sin and, in so doing, denied the sacrifice of Christ.

So, what we have here in this simple ‘truth’ is a foundational error that has been repeated over a great many years by many people.It is the error of believing that God keeps accounts of sin when, in fact, he doesn’t keep accounts at all.In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. (2 Corinthians 5:19)We cannot keep accounts with God, whether short or long, because God does not count people’s sins against them.God simply does not keep accounts.In all the letters of the New Testament that are specifically addressed to Gentile Christians, God’s forgiveness to people is always in the past perfect tense.The past perfect tense indicates something that has happened that can never happen again – either because it cannot happen again or because it does not need to happen again.It is so here in 1 John – for example:1 JOHN 2:12

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I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven (past perfect tense) on account of his name.In trying to keep short accounts with God, we are attempting to get God to do something he cannot do and therefore will not do, and the whole idea of keeping short accounts with God is based upon an error.We have believed this strange idea because so many sound people said it, and we have tried to live it despite the fact that this is the only verse in the entire New Testament written specifically to Gentiles that apparently supports the idea.The idea, the doctrine, the theology of keeping short accounts with God is utterly un-Christian, utterly un-Scriptural, and it is actually quite impossible for any human being to achieve anyway, because God simply does not keep accounts.Furthermore, such a doctrinal error sets our ongoing relationship with God on the foundation of our own good behaviour, and that is a completely false foundation.Such a doctrine – keeping short accounts with God – is totally unsupportable from the Greek of 1 John 1:9.Contrary to the rest of John’s writings, forgiveness suddenly appeared there in the future perfect tense but only this once here in 1:9, while everywhere else in letters addressed to Gentiles it is in the past perfect tense.Only in 1 John 1:9 forgiveness is in the future perfect tense, and even then it indicates a forgiveness that will only ever happen once – and it will happen when John’s opponents recognise and acknowledge their own inbuilt sin nature through repentance.This teaching of keeping short accounts with God has been based only on this one Scripture verse that actually stands over and against the rest of the Scriptures that were written to Gentiles.In reality, John’s letter is at the same time both an encouragement to the brothers and sisters who are faithfully following Jesus the Christ and, also a firm rebuke to those people who thought that they knew better than John and who thought that they had a higher spirituality than John.

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So, John’s first letter jumps rapidly between encouraging the faithful and rebuking those who think that they have a higher spirituality than everyone else.

How do we know which bits of the letter are addressed to the faithful Christians and which bits are addressed to the trouble-making rebels? Remember that a couple of weeks ago I told you about these

intimate terms that are scattered throughout 1 John:My little children… Beloved… Little children… Fathers… Young people… Children… Fathers… Young people… Children… Little children… Children of God… Little children… Children of God… Little children… Beloved… Little children… Beloved… Beloved… Little children… Where John uses one of these terms of intimacy, he is writing to

the faithful Christians in his church. Where there is no such intimate address, he is writing to the

rebels. It is simple as that. Although the modern way of breaking the text into chunks in a

different way hides what John was doing in this letter. The whole of the first chapter of 1 John is addressed to those

rebels, and the intimacy to faithful Christians does not start until 1 John 2:1.

Thereafter, where there is a term of intimacy, John was writing to the faithful, and where there is no term of intimacy he was writing to the rebels.

This was the dual purpose of the letter we know as 1 John.John was himself being hurt by those who were seeking to rip apart the church that he oversaw, and his heavy, hurting heart found expression in his letter alongside the anger at what was happening to his flock.We should not make the mistake of thinking that John is calling for mere right-thinking-opinion-about-Jesus in his letter, for he is not. He is proclaiming Jesus as the one and only Messiah and saying

that it is only in him that light, fellowship, love (etc) are to be found.21

It is that personal for John.Now, since it is very likely that John’s church had a draft form of his gospel, that is why John could write his letter(s) in the way that he did. He was writing to remind them of what they already knew, not to

tell them new things. He was using themes, phrases and words in his letter that

connected directly back to his own gospel, a copy of which they already had in their possession.

For example, John wrote about light because he was referring to a slogan used by his opponents in the church.Light represented God in Gnostic thinking, and Gnosticism was a religion of mystic enlightenment.First-century Hellenism embraced the idea that light was a metaphor for God.But neither Hellenism nor Gnosticism would ever equate Jesus with God, or light with Jesus.This was the heart of the error they were founded upon that John was striving to oppose.As early as Plato, light imagery formed the conceptual basis of Near Eastern dualism.Even Philo, who merged Hellenism with Judaism, affirms, “God is light, and not light only, but the archetype of every other light, or rather, more ancient and higher than any archetype (De Somniis, 1.75).”John agreed that God is light.He said so plainly.But John was not speaking of some distant and disinterested source of light, he was speaking about the Living God who is supremely active in human history.Such activity found its highest expression in Jesus.In the opening chapter of his first letter, John was opposing three false truths that were being peddled by those who were seeking to discredit John and destroy his church.

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He used six if clauses to combat the rebels in 1 John, and they belong together in this way:1:6 If we say we have fellowship with God yet walk in darkness….1:7 But if we walk in the light as he is in the light…

1:8 If we say we have no sin…1:9 But if we confess our sins…

1:10 If we say we have not sinned…1:11 But if anyone does sin…

Since the whole of what we know as chapter one was addressed to the rebels, it is totally inappropriate to lift verse nine (or any of the first chapter) out of context and apply it to those who are truly following Jesus.Some people in John’s church were claiming to know God, to walk with him, and yet to have no sin in their nature and therefore to have done no wrong. They were proclaiming that they had reached an advanced level of

spirituality that had no need of Jesus and his sacrifice.This was no minor theological difference of opinion. John’s enemies denied the reality of fellowship, and also denied

the connection between relationship with God and relationship with each other.

John countered such teaching and in doing so he intrinsically linked fellowship with God to fellowship with his people.The people John was fighting against were seeking to destroy the fabric of the Christian community.The one verse of 1 John 1:9 within John’s first letter cannot and must not be lifted out of context and have a theological house of cards built upon it.1 John 1:9 has no connection or direct relevance whatsoever to those who are truly following Christ and loving their brothers and sisters. The future perfect tense of forgiveness in that one verse stands over and against the rest of the New Testament Scriptures written to Gentiles, and that fact alone should be enough to stop us taking it out of context.

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In 1 John 1:8, the Greek literally says, “We do not have sin…” and it is referring to the ingrained sin nature and not to specific sins. John’s opponents were denying the existence of sin in human

nature, and that is what John was writing and contending against.It is vitally important to treat New Covenant Scriptures with integrity and that always means carefully examining the Greek and researching the writing of those scholars who have done the work in order to help our understanding.Building a theology or a doctrine on only one verse in an English translation is a serious mistake.It is time to put the idea of keeping short accounts with God in the grave, where it belongs.As we examine John’s first letter, we must do so in the understanding that he always has two simultaneous purposes in writing. One is to encourage the faithful and the second is to fight against

the lies of his enemies.Therefore, the letter cannot be applied wholesale to those who are truly following after Christ, because parts of the letter were addressed only to John’s opponents.As we seek to follow Christ faithfully and build a community of faith, hope and love, we can take great encouragement from 1 John.John’s intimacy is reserved for the faithful Christians within the Christian community who: Know the joy of sins forgiven. Know the Christ of God. Have conquered the evil one. Know the Father. Are strong in God. Have the Word of God in them.Let us follow Jesus, let us walk as Jesus walked, and let us love one another with the love of Christ that marks us out as his disciples so that people may know and love Jesus for themselves.

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