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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:28:11 GMT -5
c. John recognized many antichrists in his day, and verse 19 importantly points out that these were individuals who had been part of the Christian community. While some argue that the persons mentioned in 2:19 weren’t the antichrists of 2:18, but perhaps people led astray by them, the pronoun “they” clearly refers to the antichrist figures; in fact, there is no other contextual antecedent. These antichrists, then, weren’t overt opponents of Jesus and His gospel, but followers whose opposition consisted in wrong understanding and redefinition. They hadn’t rejected the Messiah, but reimagined Him, but this deviation ultimately led to them departing from the community of believers they were part of. John didn’t address the particulars of their departure, noting only that it served to expose them for who they really were: “They went out from us because they were not of us.” This statement contains a play on words involving two parallel prepositional phrases. The two phrases share the same preposition indicating source or origin, but they embody this basic idea differently. The first phrase emphasizes the community of faith (“us”) as the individuals’ point of departure, while the second expresses their essential relation to that community: They departed from us, because they are not of us. This wordplay highlights the fundamental characteristic of the Christian Church as the believing community: It consists of those who share in the Messiah as having embraced Him in truth. Thus the departure of these antichrists testified that they weren’t part of Messiah’s new-creational “body.” It wasn’t simply that they had some of their doctrine wrong; they didn’t know Jesus the Messiah in a living way (cf. John 3:1-3, 6:48-58). They’d been among the community of His disciples, but weren’t actually of it. Even so, this hadn’t become evident until these persons departed from the body. Two things about this are critical to note:
1) First, it underscores the important truth that “antichrists” aren’t necessarily ungodly or rebellious in their disposition or conduct. These individuals were obviously devout, sincere and committed in their spiritual walk to the point that the community of believers embraced them as brothers; it took their physical departure to make the truth obvious to all.
2) The reason their departure revealed who they really are is grounded in the nature of Christ’s Church. It isn’t an organization or religious fellowship, but Christ’s spiritual body. It is a community of persons who together constitute His “fullness” by virtue of sharing in His life by His Spirit (ref. 1 Corinthians 12:12-13; Ephesians 1:22-23, 2:11-22; Colossians 3:1-4). The Church is the living, human temple of the living God, founded on the Messiah as the substance and cornerstone of God’s dwelling (cf. Isaiah 2:1-3 with 11:1-12; also John 1:14, 2:13-21, 4:19-26; 1 Peter 2:4-10). This is why John insisted that these persons would have “remained with us” if they were actually part “of us.” Can a finger separate itself from the body it is joined to? But these had departed, so that their going out evidenced that they were never really joined to Christ; they were “antichrists.”
d. In contrast, those who remained showed themselves to be authentic members of Messiah’s body; they were of Christ in truth. John expressed this by noting that they “had an anointing from the Holy One” (2:20). Many puzzle over this statement, but John was really making a very simple, yet profound point. This is more evident in the original language, since the terminology of anointing shares the same linguistic root as the term, Christ. Indeed, the Hebrew concept of mashiach (messiah) refers to one who is anointed – that is, marked out by God for some particular ministration or work of service. “Christ” is the Greek equivalent of Messiah, so that John identifying his readers as “anointed ones” connects them very closely with the Messiah Himself. They are anointed as He is anointed; they are Christ in the world, even as those who departed from them are antichrist. This connection between the Messiah and His own also suggests that John’s phrase, Holy One, refers to the Father rather than the Holy Spirit. Yes, Jesus was anointed with the Spirit, but this anointing expressed the Father’s purpose and empowered Him for the Father’s work (cf. Isaiah 61:1-3 with Luke 3:21-4:21). So it is with Jesus’ disciples: They are anointed with the Spirit to carry forward the messianic mission in the world (Acts 1:1-8); they are Jesus’ presence, truth and power as anointed ones, doing “greater works” than He’d done because He’d returned in triumph to the Father and sent the Spirit (John 14:1-20). Jesus had promised the Spirit to His disciples as the One who would lead them into all truth, and He’d accomplish this work as the “Spirit of Christ,” imparting to them Jesus’ life and mind; the Spirit’s ministration was to take what belonged to the Messiah and convey it to His own (John 15:26-16:15). Thus they would be fully equipped to carry out their mission on behalf of their Lord – not simply to proclaim truths about Him, but to live out His life in the sight of men; to bear His fragrance in every place (ref. 2 Corinthians 2:14-4:7). This is the sense in which John connected this anointing with knowledge: “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.” (This reading is preferable to the variant, “you know all things.”) John believed it was vitally important that his children in the faith recognize what was theirs in the Messiah. It wasn’t merely that they knew about Jesus; they knew Him as sharing in His life and mind by His Spirit (in contrast to the claimed “knowledge” of the Gnostic “antichrists”). In Paul’s words, they had learned the Messiah by hearing Him, being taught in Him by His Spirit so as to know the truth as it exists in Him (Ephesians 4:20-24). This is the living knowledge of Christ that attends new creation in Him; the renewal that is life hidden with the Messiah in the Father.
e. John was convinced his readers possessed this knowledge, and that was precisely the reason he wrote to them as he did (2:21). He wasn’t writing to inform them of the truth as it is in Jesus, but to exhort them to walk in it. Their anointing enabled them to withstand the deceptions of the antichrist influences, and they needed to stand fast in the truth: “I have written to you because you know the truth and you know that no lie originates in the truth.” Again, John’s concern wasn’t with truth in general, but the truth bound up in the person and work of the Messiah.
f. This is clear from his next statement (2:22a): “Who is the liar, but the one who denies that Jesus is the Messiah?” Just as John was speaking about the truth in relation to Jesus, so it was with the issue of lying. He was concerned with the lie that contradicts the truth – the lie that is at the heart of the antichrist principle; the lie that is any distortion, redefinition or misrepresentation of Jesus the Messiah. John recognized that any such adulteration, however subtle or seemingly insignificant, amounts to the denial of Jesus as God’s Messiah. All such denial, whether overt or tacit, is the essence of the principle of antichrist. Moreover, those who deny the Messiah have denied the Father, for the Messiah is the Son sent by the Father; the Son in whom the Father is revealed and explained; the Son in whom the Father is “yes and amen” (2:22b; cf. John 1:14-18, 14:1-11; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:1-3). Therefore all who deny the Son are severed from the Father; one cannot have the Father in truth without having Him in the Son. Conversely, because the Father is revealed, known and embraced in the Son, all who have the Son have the Father as well. And one “has” the Son when he confesses the Son – when he embraces the Son according to the truth of who He truly is (2:23). John’s point is clear: There is no distinction between the Father and the Son in the sense that relation to the one is relation to the other; a person knows and shares in both Son and Father or he knows and shares in neither. This assertion, too, seems to have been directed toward Gnostic notions. Gnosticism teaches that there is one supreme deity surrounded by Aeons (lesser, derived deities). This structure is hierarchical, with the highest deities being emanations of the supreme divine essence, and each lower group emanating from the one before it. Thus the degree of divinity and power decreases with each level of separation from the eternal, uncreated deity. So also the Aeons separate this transcendent god from the material creation, so that no human being can have any contact with or actual knowledge of it. Christian Gnostics seemed to have viewed “the Christ” as the manifestation of one of the Aeons (recall the Cerinthian and Docetic conceptions). The Christ pointed men toward the truth of the supreme god, but he didn’t connect them with that god, let alone embody it in any way. Knowledge of the Christ isn’t knowledge of the ultimate, self-existent God. Gnostic ideas are a radical departure from Christian truth, but they clearly were introduced in a way that made them seem “Christian.” The Gnostic antichrists were deniers of Christ, yet they had been embraced as brethren in Christ. Their denial wasn’t obvious until they walked away from the community of believers (likely, to form a new community around their own convictions). John’s treatment indicates that their denial amounted to a deceptive reshaping of the truth of Jesus – a reshaping that may have even appeared to some as a deeper insight into the Messiah. Gnostic ideas were at the center of this deception in John’s generation, but “the lie” can assume any number of forms and expressions, some easy to detect, and others very subtle and therefore especially insidious. But no lie has its origin in the truth, so that those who are informed and led by the truth as it is in Jesus are equipped to withstand the “antichrist” lie, however it manifests itself.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:30:26 GMT -5
Living as children of light (1:5-7, 2:8) involves living authentically as Christians – those who are “of Christ,” i.e., sharers in Jesus’ life and mind. And being “of Christ” means standing in antithesis to that which is antichrist – that which, in any way or to any degree, denies, contradicts or alters the truth as it is in the Messiah. The concept of antichrist implies opposition to Christ, but as it pertains to the Christian community – which is John’s concern here (2:18-19), this opposition takes the form of redefinition. Such “antichrists” don’t renounce Jesus as God’s Christ, but reimagine Him in a way that better suits natural human notions, concerns and interests. Antichrists refashion Jesus in their own image, which is the image of man as alienated from God and severed from His life and mind. At bottom, the principle of antichrist simply identifies the natural way of being human. Every child of the first Adam is antichrist, and the antichrist life is human existence determined by the “desires of the flesh and of the eyes and the pride of life.” Though John’s focus was the Gnostic “antichrists” who’d been influencing the Christian community he was part of, he clearly recognized that “antichrist” more generally speaks to human existence separate from the life of the True Man. The Gnostic conception of the Christ was but one expression of the flawed perception of Him inevitable to a darkened mind severed from the life of God (Ephesians 4:17-18). Thus John’s directive to “stop loving the world” was his plea to those made alive in Christ to renounce the natural human mind that defines and governs the human world (cf. again Colossians 2:20-23). And this involves recognizing and renouncing the antichrist “spirit” that drives the minds of men and reflects the mind of the world’s ruler (2:24-27; cf. 4:1-6, 5:4-5; also Matthew 16:21-23; John 8:31-47, 15:18-27; Ephesians 2:1-3). g. This is the framework for John’s exhortation, “let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning” (2:24a). In context, he was referring to the truth as it is in Christ – the truth of the Messiah promised in the Scriptures and manifested in the Christ event (cf. John 1:14-17, 14:6, 18:37). This was the truth that set them apart from the Gnostic antichrists (“As for you…”), the truth John knew they had heard “from the beginning,” even as he’d been part of that testimony as their father in the faith. Most importantly, this truth existed as a living principle within them: They had been made alive to it and nurtured in it by the Spirit of truth (ref. 4:1-6; cf. John 14:16-20, 15:26-16:15; Acts 1:1-8; also Colossians 3:1-17). Possessing the life and mind of the One who is the truth, they’d become sons of truth. The truth of the Messiah enlivened, empowered and directed them, and so they needed to jealously guard, preserve and nurture it. John was here reminding his readers that the truth of Jesus the Messiah is living truth – it is the truth of the resurrected Christ which human beings obtain by sharing in His life. This is why the truth abiding in a person amounts to that person abiding in the Son, and so also in the Father who is truly and fully known in the Son (2:24b). “Abiding in the Son and in the Father” is participating in the divine life through union with the resurrected Son. This life characterizes the eternal realm that God inhabits; it is the “eternal” life God possesses and imparts to all who dwell with Him as sharing in Him. It is the Father’s promise that is realized in the Son (2:25).
Thus John: If the truth of the Son abides in you, you will also abide in the Son, and so in the Father whom the Son reveals and embodies. This abiding is what Jesus promised to us; it is the promise of eternal life (cf. 1:2, 5:11; John 15:1-5, 17:3). Here, Jesus’ promise of “eternal life” doesn’t look to life after death and an eternity in heaven, but the new life of present and perpetual participation in the resurrection life of the Son (cf. 1 John 3:14-15, 5:11-13; John 3:36, 5:24, 6:54). John’s statement, then, highlights some crucial truths that must not be overlooked:
1) First, the adjective eternal identifies the nature and quality of this life; the matter of duration is implied, but isn’t primary. “Eternal life” refers to the life that the triune God possesses and that characterizes the “heavenly” realm – the sphere of existence He inhabits.
2) Eternal life inheres in the person of God, but has become a human property in the person of Jesus the Messiah. This life was perfected in Him, body and spirit, with His resurrection from the dead, and other human beings come to possess this life by being joined to Him by His Spirit. Thus eternal life is not unending life in heaven, which God gives as a reward to the righteous at their death, but the new and true form of human existence that characterizes man as he becomes truly human in Jesus – man as he is true image-son, taken up in God’s own life by union with the incarnate and resurrected Image-Son. This is what Paul had in mind when he reminded Timothy that Jesus, through the good news of what God has accomplished in Him, has brought to light (i.e., introduced and made known to men) life and immortality (2 Timothy 1:10).
3) Thirdly, this life of the eternal realm which Christians now possess is presently incomplete. It defines their inner person, but not their body (2 Corinthians 4:16). But this condition speaks to divine promise and fullness to come, not dichotomy or contradiction. The fact that Christians have already been “raised up in Christ Jesus” and “seated in the heavenly (eternal) realm in Him” (Ephesians 2:4-6) assures them of the future resurrection of their bodies. As Christ is True Man, body and spirit, so it will be with all who share in Him (cf. 1 John 3:1-3 with John 5:25-29; Romans 8:9-25; 1 Corinthians 15; Philippians 3). h. Again, John’s intent here was to provide a corrective and preservative against the antichrist influences seeking to lead his spiritual children astray (2:26). Unlike those deceivers, they (note John’s use of an emphatic pronoun – “as for you”) had an anointing (2:27). This statement echoes verse 20, but whereas that verse likely indicated the Father as the source of this anointing, Jesus seems to be the referent here. The reason is that the pronoun Him in v. 27a appears to have the same referent as the pronouns in verses 25, 27b and 28, which clearly refer to Jesus. In the end, however, the distinction isn’t particularly significant, since this anointing refers to the Spirit (“the anointing you received from Him abides in you”), who proceeds from both the Father and Son (cf. John 14:26, 15:26).
John’s concern wasn’t so much with the source of this anointing, but its nature and function: It is an internal, abiding presence and power that equips Christ’s people by imparting truth to them and illuminating that truth within them (2:27b). This anointing from Jesus – i.e., the Spirit of truth – leads Christians into all truth as it is grounded in the Messiah, and He does so by forming Jesus’ life and likeness in them (note again John 14:16-20, 15:26-16:15; also 2 Corinthians 3:17- 18). The Spirit’s teaching, then, “is true and not a lie,” not so much because it is factually correct, but because it is living, transformative instruction involving the impartation and formation in the Christian of the One who embodies the truth (John 1:14-17). Jesus emphasized to His disciples that His goal for them was their union with Him and their abiding in Him (John 15), and this inseparable union is the work and fruit of His Spirit. The Spirit’s anointing “teaches” (upholds and brings to fruition) the truth that Jesus Himself taught: “abide in Me” (2:27c). This understanding is crucially important, not least because it illumines what John meant by insisting that his readers “had no need for anyone to teach them.” Some have used this statement as scriptural support for the idea that Christians neither need, nor should subject themselves to, Christian teachers. Because every believer is taught by the Spirit, any other teacher is superfluous, if not contrary. Two problems with this view are obvious: First, it implies that the Spirit instructs in a vacuum, but it also denies teaching as a gift of the Spirit. The Scripture answers these two issues in the same way: The Spirit does indeed teach, but all of His ministrations operate in and through the community of believers by means of His endowed gifts, among which is the gift of teaching (Ephesians 4:11-16; cf. also Romans 12:1-8; 1 Corinthians 12; Galatians 6:6; note also 2 John 9-10). Others note v. 26, and argue that John was referring specifically to the Gnostic deceivers. That is, he was reminding his readers that they were instructed by the Spirit of truth, and this anointing meant that they were not to subject themselves to other teaching influences who would lead them astray (cf. 4:1-6).
This interpretation of John’s meaning is likely partially correct. He clearly had in mind the antichrist deceivers who were adversely affecting the community of believers, but he was addressing that problem in terms of the larger issue of the Spirit’s unique role as the Church’s teacher. In the truest sense, the Spirit is the sole teacher of Christ’s people; He is the one who imparts and nurtures the knowledge of Christ to human beings. That reality, then, must determine the place of other teachers and the Church’s response to them. Christians are accountable to the Spirit as their Teacher, and this means that they must discern, expose and refuse all teachers and teaching that doesn’t accord with His instruction (embodied in the scriptural canon as interpreted by Jesus and His apostles). But it also means that Christians must embrace those teachers whom the Spirit has gifted to carry out His teaching ministration. This began with the apostolic witnesses (cf. John 15:26-16:15 with Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:1-8), and continues with gifted teachers who perpetuate the apostolic gospel as witnesses to the Spirit’s truth (Ephesians 4:11-16; 2 Timothy 2:1-2; note also Titus 1-3).
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:33:21 GMT -5
4. The final two verses of chapter two (2:28-29) serve to transition between the preceding context and the subsequent one. John began this epistle with an emphasis on the theme of fellowship – fellowship with God that results in fellowship among His people (ref. 1:1-7). Most importantly, this fellowship has its nexus in Jesus the Messiah: It is in and through Him that people have fellowship with God and with one another. - John expressed this fellowship with God in terms of knowing and “having” the Father by knowing and having the Son through union with Him (2:23). - So this possession of the Father in the Son produces a new human relationship: those who “have” the Father and Son as “abiding” in them (2:24) also “abide” in each other as members of one another (2:18-19; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-27; Ephesians 2:11-22, 4:1-25). The concept of abiding, then, is key to John’s understanding of fellowship (ref. 2:6, 10, 14, 17, 19, 24, 27, 28, 3:6, 9, 14-17, 24, 4:12-16). Fellowship, for him (and the other New Testament writers and Jesus Himself), is a divine and christological phenomenon, not a natural one. That is, fellowship involves communion between persons by virtue of the union of their persons. Fellowship is first a divine reality in that it exists between the Father and Son (2:22-24; also John 1:1-2, 14-17 and 2 John 9). This same person-inperson fellowship then extends to human beings, first as they are taken up in the divine life and love in Jesus, then as that shared life joins their persons to one another (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 18-20, 27; Ephesians 2:1-22; Colossians 3:1-4; 1 Peter 2:4-10). And so, John first interacted with the theme of fellowship in terms of abiding in (union and communion with) the Father and Son (2:1-28). But he then further developed this concept of abiding by showing it to be a matter of sonship (2:29-5:5; cf. also 2:22-23 with 4:15, 5:1, 4-5). If fellowship implies person-in-person communion, this communion involves persons who share essential likeness. This is easy to see in the fellowship of the Father and Son and the fellowship between Christians, but it is perhaps not so evident in the fellowship between God and humans. Yet John – and his fellow apostles, following Jesus’ own instruction – saw this truth as fundamental to what it means to be a Christian and absolutely critical to an authentic Christian life. Christians enjoy fellowship with the triune God, but this fellowship is grounded in participation in the divine nature – this is “abiding” in the Father and the Son through the Spirit (cf. John 14:1-20, 17:1-24; also Colossians 3:1-4; 2 Peter 1:2-4). It is the fellowship of a shared nature; it is the fellowship of sonship. This Father-child fellowship (“common-union”), in turn, is the basis and substance of authentic fellowship among Christians (4:7-5:2). Thus 2:28-29 provide the transition between fellowship as union (“abiding”) and fellowship as sonship (being born of God): Verse 28 brings John’s preceding instruction to its climax by a final, pointed exhortation to his readers to continue to abide in Christ (and so in the Father); verse 29 advances that exhortation by connecting it with the reality of a new birth – a birth by which human beings become children of the Father so as to share in His nature. This reality, then, adds a whole new dimension to Christian identity and the ethic of Christian life and practice.
a. Verse 2:28, then, closes out John’s preceding instruction, punctuating his core challenge to his readers to continue abiding in Christ – i.e., conform their lives to the truth of who they are as Christians. But here, he added an additional dimension to this obligation by assigning to it an eschatological basis and motivation. That is, they were to persevere in abiding in Christ with a view to His appearing and the consummating of their relationship with Him in that day. A few things about this are important to note:
1) First, this perspective highlights that the Christian life has a distinct purpose and goal. And that goal isn’t eternal life in heaven, but the perfecting of the union and communion that now exists between the triune God and all who know God in the Messiah. Many Christians view their calling in terms of a faithful, obedient life committed to certain behaviors and practices with an eye to one day “going to heaven.” But John here presents a different goal – a future outcome that is the consummation of that which already defines and determines those who are in Christ.
2) For this reason, John’s perspective also adjusts common perceptions of “final judgment” and the nature of Christian obligation and final reckoning. John viewed the Christian calling in terms of “abiding,” which is necessary because it works toward what is to be fully realized at Jesus’ Parousia, namely the completion of the Spirit’s work of transformation.
3) John included himself in his statement, showing that he understood this duty to abide in Christ in view of His final appearing as a universal obligation. He, as well as his readers, needed to heed his exhortation. Every Christian must perceive and approach his present life in terms of its actual goal and outcome. And the destiny of the Christian life isn’t personal rest and happiness in heaven, but the consummation of the person’s union with Christ. What defines a Christian is the reality of “I in you and you in Me” (John 14:1-20, 17:20-26), and the consummation of this union comes when the whole person, body and spirit, fully shares in the everlasting, glorified life of the Last Adam (cf. Romans 8:9-25; Philippians 3:1-21; Colossians 1:3-27). The destiny appointed for God’s children isn’t a comfortable existence in a happy place, but the complete realization of life “hidden with Christ in God.” And this human destiny is the centerpiece of God’s eternal purpose to be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:20-28). This is the context for understanding John’s warning about being ashamed and shrinking away from Jesus at His Parousia (2:28b). Our natural tendency is to view this dynamic in moral or behavioral terms, much as a child is ashamed and turns his face (or even tries to run away) when his parents catch him in an act they disapprove. So we often have this image of standing before Jesus and being confronted with a list of life-long violations that we hope He’ll have forgiven. But John viewed this confrontation differently: it will address relational integrity and conformity, not behavioral uprightness as such (cf. Matthew 7:21-23, 25:31-46).
Thus, the shame John was warning about isn’t the guilt or humiliation of moral failure, but the shame of inauthenticity – the shame of having one’s relationship with Christ revealed as disingenuous, whether as a matter of degree (1 Corinthians 3:10-15) or false profession (Matthew 7:21-23). It is the shame that awaits those who have failed to “abide in Him.” This is akin to what a person experiences when he finally meets someone he claims to know (and perhaps sincerely believes he knows), only to realize that the person standing in front of him is a stranger. Confronted with the actual individual, the truth of the supposed relationship is instantly exposed. A false or self-deceived claim of intimacy can no longer stand, and the person finds himself instinctively drawing back rather than rushing forward to embrace the other as an intimate kindred spirit. So some who claim to know Jesus will shrink back at His appearing, while others will embrace Him with confidence. And it is their actual relationship with Him – whether or not they have abided in Him – that will determine their reaction. The significance of John’s term is seen in its use in the Graeco-Roman world of his day. In John’s world, this noun (confidence) concerned an objective status rather than a subjective feeling or disposition. It didn’t speak to how a person felt about himself, but his actual status and rights. Particularly, the term was used of the priceless privilege of free expression and freedom of speech that citizens and persons of recognized status enjoyed. In turn, it connoted the boldness that such status affords; the person possessing the right of unfettered speech and expression is able to openly and candidly express himself without any fear of reprisal – something that was completely unknown to servants, slaves, and all those who lacked social or political status and power (cf. John 7:13, 26, 10:24, 11:54, 18:20). The confidence that John had in mind, then, reflects an actual, acknowledged status, not personal conformity to a moral standard. And John didn’t leave it to his readers to determine what that status is: It is because they are sons and daughters that Christians have full and unfettered confidence before their Lord (2:29-3:2). b. And so verses 2:28-29 fit together and must be interpreted together. In verse 29, John connects the Christian’s righteousness – which reflects and expresses the righteousness of Christ – with his sonship, not his behavior. This is the focus of John’s statement, but it more generally provides the transition from fellowship as spiritual union (abiding in the Son and Father) to spiritual union (and so fellowship with God) as sonship. This is the context for John’s mention of the believer’s righteousness and his words must be interpreted in this light. This is vitally important, for the same human perspective that leads people to miss John’s meaning in verse 28 affects their understanding of verse 29. Both verses tend to be interpreted in moral/behavioral terms, leading to the conclusion that John was calling for the “righteousness” of behavioral conformity in order to receive Christ’s welcome at His coming. Yes, John suggests that being “born of God” is the ultimate criterion of this welcome, but those who’ve experienced this birth must demonstrate it by obedience to God’s righteous law.
But John’s language and expression, set within the larger context, shows that this sort of understanding falls far short of his meaning and the significance of his instruction for his readers. - First of all, the concept of “righteousness” in the Scripture is broader and richer than usually imagined. Again, the natural tendency is to define righteousness in terms of a person’s conduct in relation to a moral/ethical standard. Indeed, this definition is applied to God Himself, so that His righteousness is understood as His moral perfection – His impeccability. But, while it is certainly true that God is free of sin and corruption, “righteousness” speaks to His integrity more than His moral perfection. God is “righteous” because all that He says and does conforms to the truth of His person and purposes. Thus righteousness is closely aligned with the concepts of justice, faithfulness, and veracity (cf. Deuteronomy 32:3-4; Psalm 22:22-31, 33:1-9, 40:1-10, 71:15-19, 96:1-13, 119:138; Nehemiah 9:1-8; Isaiah 32, 46:8-13; Jeremiah 23:5-6; Daniel 9:1-19; Micah 7:1-9; Zechariah 8:1-8; Malachi 4:1-2; cf. also 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Titus 1:1-3). - Righteousness, then, concerns rightness – it is the status and condition of an entity when it is fully conformed in every respect to the truth of itself. This means that righteousness has to do first with what a thing is in itself, and only then with what it does; the “righteousness” of an action is determined by the nature and proper function of the thing itself. What constitutes righteousness for a cat cannot be applied to a horse. This premise underlies John’s association of righteousness in Christians with the righteousness that characterizes the Father (and so His Son). Christians are “born of God” – renewed to share in His life and nature so as to be “image-sons.” Like their Brother (Hebrews 2:5-17), they are begotten of their Father, and so manifest His life, mind, heart and purpose when they are true to themselves; their authentic righteousness as sons is the righteousness of their Father and His singular Son. So John: If you discern the righteousness that characterizes the Father, you know what is to live as sons begotten by Him; as is the Father, so are His image-sons. So it is that the judgment John alluded to in verse 28 pertains to the “righteousness” of a person’s authenticity and integrity – that is, his conformity to the truth of human existence as determined by God. This authentic humanity has been realized in Jesus and His resurrection, and it comes to other human beings through union with Him. Thus it is that those who abide in Jesus will stand confidently when He appears and judges the world; like a mirror, they will reflect His righteousness back to Him (2 Corinthians 3:18; ref. also 1 John 3:2). So also their righteousness as true sons reflects that of their Father – the righteousness of His purpose and accomplishment in His Son which will be fully displayed in His children in that day. It is in light of that consummate righteousness that they live in the present time, “practicing righteousness” by “abiding” in the Righteous One.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:36:12 GMT -5
E. Children of the Father (3:1-5:12) John introduced the theme of the believer’s sonship at the end of chapter two, and it is the foundational premise and central theme of the rest of the epistle. John referred to this truth in various ways, but most often in terms of a new birth – i.e., Christians being “born of God” (ref. 2:29, 3:9, 4:7, 5:1, 4, 18; cf. also 3:1-2, 10, 4:4, 6, 5:19). As noted previously, the primary connotation of the concept of sonship is likeness. Sons are of their father, reflecting him in their nature, mind, purpose, words and actions. This connotation was John’s starting point, and he treated the issue of Christian sonship through this lens. So also he started his treatment with the core aspect of father-child likeness: children share their Father’s nature.
1. John recognized and emphasized what many Christians do not, namely that Christian identity is ontological rather than ideological or ethical. That is, it concerns the relationship of one’s person to God, and only then his beliefs and practice. The substance of Christian identity is a new human identity grounded in personal union and communion with the triune God. It involves a “new birth,” but many misunderstand or understate what this entails and effects. “Born again” is a common expression in evangelical Christianity, but, like so many things in Christian culture, it has become little more than a slogan. For many – believers as well as non-believers, the phrase, “born again,” has become a virtual synonym for a serious-minded commitment to the Christian religion. Thus it represents one category of Christian individuals. On the one hand, there are people who identify as Christians because they embrace the Christian religion (whether as a matter of tradition, culture, personal affinity, etc.). But there are also “born again Christians” – those who have a serious, engaged commitment to Christ and the Christian faith, often as the result of some life-changing experience. Associating the “born again” label with a radical change of life is fine so far as it goes, but what is often missing is the realization that the “new birth,” as the Scripture understands it, goes beyond a new mindset, commitment and lifestyle. It is a divine work by which a person is given to participate in the divine life, and so also the divine nature. “Born again” means more than a new perspective, new convictions and a new set of religious priorities; those who are “born of God” are children of God – human beings now defined, animated and determined by a new kind of humanness that accords with the nature and life of God Himself; the humanness for which man was created. But, of course, this begs the question of what God’s life and nature look like in the context of human existence. What does it look like when a human being is animated by God’s life and shares His nature so as to be able to say, “to see me is to see God”? The answer the Scripture gives is that it looks like Jesus the Messiah. In Him we see, not merely the fact of such a human being (the fact that such a human can actually exist), but what that sort of person is like. Jesus is the truth of man as the divine image-son; He is man as truly human. So all other human beings become authentically human, not by following His example, but by sharing in His life and likeness. Jesus is the Last Adam – the substance and fountainhead of a new human community. And sharing in the humanness of the Son in this way is what it means to be children of God – to be “born of God”; Christians are sons in the Son, and so sharers in the divine nature.
a. John understood this truth and wanted to impress it on his readers. And there was no better way to do this than to remind them of the profound significance of their status as children of the Father: “Behold how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God!” John didn’t simply state the fact of their sonship; he called them to join him in his exultation in it. So he used a verb (“behold”) that normally implies a visible object, underscoring that God’s love takes on a marvelous, tangible quality when it produces children. The adjective John used to describe the Father’s love is also important to note. The English word great tends to fall short of conveying John’s meaning, especially because the idea of “greatness” has been trivialized by overuse. When everything of note is “great,” then true greatness is diminished. John’s adjective does suggest greatness, but of a kind that elicits amazement and wonder. It is greatness that’s transcendent; greatness that captures the imagination and provokes a visceral response in the observer. John also treated this love as an act rather than a sentiment. He didn’t say that the Father has a deep love for His children, but that He has bestowed His love upon them. This bestowal, and not simply the nature of the divine love, underlies John’s amazement and wonder. And this is especially so because of what the Father’s bestowed love has accomplished: It has taken alienated human beings and rendered them children. John regarded the divine love as splendid and astonishing, not because it is God’s love (though this is true), but because it is active and effectual – “and we are.” And the focal point of this is the person and work of Jesus the Messiah. In Him, God has embodied His love in such a way that it should achieve its goal in the world. Jesus is the “yes and amen” of the Father’s love; He is the Father’s love bestowed on the world that human beings should become children in Him (cf. 4:9-10; also John 3:16; Romans 5:1-8, 8:31-39). Again, likeness is the core issue with sonship, and John alluded to this by observing that the Father’s children have the same relationship with the world as His unique Son had: The world doesn’t know them because it didn’t know Him (3:1b); the natural mind relates to the Father’s children the way it relates to Him and His unique Son. The reason for this is that the world sees the Father and Son in them – the children share in the divine life and likeness, so that, in responding to them, people are actually responding to God. John had experienced this himself (“the world doesn’t know us”), just as the Lord had warned them (John 15:18-23).
b. John’s heart and mind were filled with exultant joy in the unspeakable privilege of being a son of the Father, and he wanted his beloved children in the faith to share his joy. They, too, were children of God, begotten by His Spirit and taken up in His life and love in the Son. And yet, the glory of their sonship was only a glimmer of what it was ordained to be: “Now we are children of God, but what we shall be is not yet manifest” (3:2a). John didn’t provide an elaborate explanation, but what he added (3:2b) indicates that he had in mind the same already-but-not-yet dynamic Paul continually stressed in his letters:
The Father’s children have been raised up in Christ Jesus, but their share in His resurrection is yet incomplete. It is, however, the promise of the fullness to come – that is, the resurrection of the body – when Jesus appears at the end of the age. John’s language and imagery differ from Paul’s (cf. Romans 8; 1 Corinthians 15), but he was highlighting the same truth. What God’s children presently lack is full conformity to Christ. They share in Christ’s life and likeness, but incompletely; it is not until Christ appears that they will be fully “like Him” – that is, fully characterized by His human qualities as the Last Adam. Many Christians see in this statement a reference to the process of inner transformation that occurs in this life (2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:16), but John’s association of this fullness with the Parousia shows that he had in mind the resurrection of the body; what doesn’t presently appear will be manifest at His appearing. The second statement of verse 2 elaborates on the first one, but in a way that is not entirely clear. The primary difficulty is how the two clauses in that statement relate to one another. In general, there are two possibilities: The first is that the second clause modifies the main verb (“we know”) of the first clause. If this was John’s intent, he was saying that Christians can be sure of their complete conformity to Jesus because they will see Him as He is at His appearing: We know that we will be like Him, because we know that, when He appears in person, we will finally perceive Him in all truth. The other option is that the second clause modifies the verb clause, “we shall be like Him.” In this case, John was explaining that our likeness to Jesus at His appearing involves seeing Him as He is; “we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is” (cf. Colossians 3:4). Both views have their strengths, and John may have been intentionally ambiguous. Either way, he was assuring his readers that the fact of Jesus’ Parousia gives God’s children all confidence that their conformity to Him will be completed. When He appears in glory, they will share that glory. Just as surely as His appearing means that they will see Him as He is, so it means that they will at last be fully like Him, body and spirit.
c. John wanted his readers to understand that the present reality of sonship is a kind of first-fruits; it is the substance and promise of the fullness to come. Every child of the Father is destined for full conformity to the Son. And, because this conformity involves sharing in the divine nature, it has its own goal in the perfection of the intimate oneness between the living God and His imagechildren. And that goal, in turn, serves the Father’s ultimate design to sum up the whole creation in His Son, such that the triune God will be “all in all.” The saints’ present sonship, then, is the promise and sure hope of the consummation of “lives hidden with Christ in God,” and that destiny calls for the “righteousness” of fully embracing it. So John: “Everyone who has this hope centered in Jesus purifies himself, even as He is pure” (3:3). All whose destiny is oneness with God in Christ ought to devote themselves to that goal; they need to “strive to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of them.” The obligation of ritual purity has, in Christ, become the high calling of sonship – of consecrated integrity.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:38:20 GMT -5
Sonship is the central theme of chapters 3-5, and John began by emphasizing that God’s sons and daughters share the nature and likeness of their heavenly Father. And they do so by sharing the life and likeness of Jesus, the incarnate and glorified Son. They, too, are partakers in the divine nature, raised up in the resurrected Messiah and seated in the heavenly realm in Him (Ephesians 2:4-6; Colossians 3:1-4). The renewal and transformation of one’s person, then, is the fundamental issue in Christian sonship, but this ontological reality expresses itself in practice; a thing’s true nature is revealed in its activity. Or, to put it differently, a thing is true to itself when its external existence conforms to its internal nature. This dynamic is the essence of the biblical concept of righteousness, and this is the reason righteousness and truth are so closely connected in the Scriptures – with respect to God as well as human beings (cf. Psalm 15:1-2, 19:9, 40:10, 45:3-4, 85:10-11, 89:14, 119:142, 160; Proverbs 20:28; Isaiah 48:1, 59:14; Zechariah 8:7-8; Malachi 2:1-6; John 7:17-18; Romans 1:16-19, 2:1-8; 1 Corinthians 13:4-6; 2 Corinthians 6:7; Ephesians 4:20-24, 5:1-9, 6:13-14; Revelation 15:1-3, 16:7, 19:1-2, 11).
2. This understanding is critically important to rightly interacting with John’s second argument, which is that God’s children are characterized by righteousness rather than sin (3:4-12). Without the proper perspective, the reader will almost certainly interpret John’s instruction incorrectly and come away with the sense that his concern (and so God’s concern) is with proper conduct on the part of those who claim Christ. This places the emphasis on behaving rather than being, and that framework, in turn, perverts the meaning of righteousness, sin, and lawlessness. The result is that sin and righteousness are viewed as behavioral concepts tied to conformity to specific directives (law).
a. John introduced this section with a general statement that directly parallels and contrasts the one in verse 3. Each presents a universal truth (“everyone”), but truths that stand in antithesis to one another. On the one hand, everyone who has a hope fixed upon the Messiah and His appearing directs his life accordingly; he lives in conformity to that hope. On the other hand, there are those who live contrary to the Messiah and the present reality and future hope that are bound up in Him. These John described as “practicing sin” (3:4). So also he identified this practice of sin with lawlessness, drawing a very close and important correlation between the two: Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, because sin is lawlessness. This statement is straightforward, but it seems to argue for something that the Scripture elsewhere refutes, especially if “law” is understood in terms of Israel’s law (the Law of Moses). For that law pertained solely to the Israelite people; the Gentiles were not subject to it, nor were they even aware of it. This is not to say that Gentiles were free of sin, but that they sinned apart from the law (cf. Acts 14:8-17 with Romans 2:12; 1 Corinthians 9:19-21; Ephesians 2:11-15; etc.). Their sin didn’t constitute direct violation of law; it wasn’t “lawlessness” in that sense. Of course, many answer this dilemma by arguing that all people, Gentile and Jew alike, are under God’s eternal “moral law,” which is said to be summarized in the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). That position derives from a set of premises and arguments that are beyond this study, but suffice it to say that interpreting John as equating sin with violation of the Ten Commandments falls far short of his meaning.
A closer look at the surrounding context, John’s larger argument in the epistle, and even the overall scriptural witness points in a different direction. 1) The first thing to note is that John was arguing from an eschatological perspective. That is, he penned this instruction from the vantage point that the last hour had come upon the world (2:18). This “last hour” refers to the present form of the eschatological kingdom of God – the kingdom Jesus inaugurated with His death, resurrection and enthronement, and which will culminate with His appearing at the end of the age. John also recognized that the “last hour” has an already-but-not-yet quality, which he emphasized by focusing on two of its critical features. The first feature highlights the “already” aspect, which is that the last hour has ushered in God’s new creation, now present in human beings who’ve become children of God in the Son (cf. 3:1-2, 9-14, 4:4). The second feature is the continuing presence and influence of the satanic world ruler (cf. 2:18, 3:7-12, 4:1-3, 5:18-19), which highlights the “not yet.” John wrote his readers, then, with the intent that these two fundamental and opposing realities – new creational sonship set in the context of a world still under the sway of the evil one and his power – would inform their understanding and practice. They needed to understand who they are in Christ, what they’re up against, the spiritual resource that is theirs, and the final outcome toward which they are striving. This is the contextual framework for interpreting his instruction regarding sin and righteousness.
2) Secondly, the term rendered lawlessness connotes the idea of iniquity. That is, its underlying concern is an inward bent away from God and His truth, rather than violation of a particular law or legal code (ref. Matthew 23:27-28, 24:12; Romans 4:7, 6:19; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 1:9). This is consistent with the biblical concept of law as torah. Torah isn’t a legal code, but a relational (covenantal) definition and prescription; it is God’s disclosure to men concerning Himself, them, and their relationship with Him. Lawlessness, then, is deviation from God’s revealed truth – deviation that originates in a heart and mind inclined away from Him. Iniquity is the heart of lawlessness, and that connotation is very much in the forefront here. It’s also significant that John attached the definite article to the nouns sin and lawlessness in both of their occurrences in verse 4. This indicates that he had in mind a specific sort or dimension of sin and iniquity rather speaking of them in generic terms.
3) A third crucial consideration is the way the New Testament uses this Greek term (lawlessness). In virtually every instance, it pertains to the same eschatological dynamics described above (cf. Matthew 7:23, 13:40- 42, 24:10-13; 2 Corinthians 6:14-16; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-7; Titus 2:14).
Most importantly, this lawlessness (iniquity) has Christ Himself at its heart, reinforcing the conclusion that John was using the term to signify the principle and pattern of rebellion and opposition that characterize the present age. He wasn’t referring to violation of the “moral law,” or any legal code for that matter, but the lawlessness – the iniquity – that is the denial of (and so opposition to) the truth of God’s Messiah and what God has accomplished and inaugurated in Him. It is the satanic “mystery of iniquity” that permeates and characterizes the last hour.
4) Finally, John here equates lawlessness and sin. The term “sin” looks beyond a particular violation to the principle of failure that results from deviation from the truth (in Israel’s case, from God’s Torah). The person who “sins” diverges from an appropriate course or outcome, like an arrow that falls short or flies past its target. And so, whereas iniquity speaks to a person’s inward bent away from God and His truth, sin is the fruit of that bent; like a bullet fired through a bent barrel, a skewed heart and mind insure the waywardness of every human exertion (cf. Proverbs 23:7; Isaiah 1:1-17; Haggai 2:10-14; Matthew 12:34, 15:1-20). And so the antithesis John presented in verses 3 and 4 doesn’t concern proper versus improper conduct, but purity versus sin and iniquity as they relate to Jesus, His new-creational kingdom, and the consummation to come at His appearing. The issue isn’t behavior as such, but a person’s state of being and orientation – specifically, how he stands in relation to the messianic work. - Purity has its premise in the sonship Jesus inaugurated in Himself – sonship that is the present reality for those who share in Him and which will be perfected in the day of His appearing. Because this sonship defines the Father’s children in their persons, it expresses itself in the lives they live. Purity, then, is the children’s authenticity; it is their conformity to the truth of who Jesus is, what He accomplished, what they now participate in, and what they are destined for. In John’s words, the children “practice righteousness (rightness), just as He is righteous” (3:7). - In contrast, there are those who “practice sin” by denying the truth of the Messiah and the messianic work. Claiming to know and follow Jesus, they are actually at odds with Him because they’ve redefined Him, and so also what He came to do. They “practice the sin” of continuing to live according to the former creational paradigm that Jesus condemned and put to death – i.e., the world order under the sway of the evil one (5:19). In this way, they demonstrate that they don’t discern the messianic work; they fail to understand that Jesus “was revealed in order to take away sins” (3:5) and “destroy the works of the devil” (3:8). At bottom, the “Jesus” such individuals embrace isn’t Jesus the Messiah. And following after a different “Jesus,” they don’t share in the true Messiah as sons in the Son (2:24-3:1); rather, they continue as sons of the one He overthrew.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:41:28 GMT -5
Children share the nature and likeness of their father, and this is the premise behind John’s assertions regarding the children of God and the children of the devil. In the first instance, he insisted that God’s children do not – indeed cannot – practice sin because they are “born of Him” and “His seed abides in them” (3:9). The term seed connects father and offspring in the procreative sense (Mark 12:19-20; Luke 1:54-55; John 7:42, 8:33, 37), which seemingly doesn’t apply in the case of God and His children. God isn’t the biological father of His offspring, but they are born of His seed in the sense that His Spirit is the agent of their new life. “Seed” points to the children having their origin in the Father, but, more importantly, to their participation in the Father’s nature. The concept of “seed” highlights that the children are ontological offspring, and not merely sons and daughters in the ideological or behavioral sense (cf. Galatians 3:19-29). God produces children by taking up human beings in His own life. This divine life has its human existence in Jesus, and is conveyed to other human beings as they participate in His life by the Spirit (cf. 1:1-2, 5:11-12 with John 1:4, 6:49-63; also Romans 8:9-11). This is the sense in which John spoke of the Father’s seed abiding (remaining) in His children. It is this living, ontological union of the children with the Father (and so with the Son) that frames John’s delineation of the children of God and the children of the devil. Specifically, he distinguished these two types of children in terms of two particulars: the practice of righteousness and the practice of love (3:10-12). John has already interacted with the issue of righteousness (vv. 7-9), but this opens his treatment of love. And having introduced it here, this topic dominates the balance of his instruction (3:10-5:3).
d. John insisted first that a distinguishing mark of the children of God is their relationship to righteousness. God’s children are righteous, but as they practice righteousness (ref. again 3:7). This points away from the idea of “righteousness” as a condition or “imputed” status. John wasn’t talking about a moral/ethical reckoning or status, but a way of being human – an inherent way of being that expresses itself outwardly in doing. It’s also interesting that John expressed this truth (and its counterpart regarding love) in the negative: everyone who fails to practice righteousness is not of God (i.e., not born of Him). This phrasing doesn’t change the meaning, but it does heighten the sense of absoluteness. John constructed his statement in such a way that it would convey an absolute truth, but this creates its own difficulty. If failure in the arena of practical righteousness disproves one’s sonship, how can anyone make the claim to be a child of God? The answer, again, lies in understanding the nature of “righteousness” and “sonship” and the correlation between them. - Sonship involves God’s children sharing in His life and nature, and a thing’s nature necessarily expresses itself in its practical existence. - This agreement of nature and practice is righteousness. For the children of God, their practice of righteousness consists in the conformity of their lives to the truth of their sonship (2 John 1-4). And so the issue isn’t “sinless perfection,” but authenticity – the children being who they are.
Viewed from this perspective, it’s clear why John understood sonship and righteousness to be mutually implying and inseparable. It’s impossible that the Father’s children, who are born of His “seed,” would not manifest His life and likeness; children are of their father. But this means that those who do not manifest the Father’s nature – i.e., those who do not “practice righteousness as He is righteous” – have no legitimate claim to know Him as His children. e. The children are like their Father, and love is the preeminent expression of this likeness. John understood this, and so it was impossible for him to address the children’s righteousness without turning the discussion to the matter of love (cf. 2 John 1-6). He recognized that any consideration of human righteousness that doesn’t take love into account is fatally flawed, even as there is no authentic righteousness where love is absent. The central place of love in John’s theology and doctrine of sonship is evident in the scope of his treatment of it, but he grounded all of what he had to say in the fundamental truth that God is love, so that all who know Him in truth as His children are characterized by love – love as it exists in Him and is true in Him; love as it has been fully manifested and fully actualized in Jesus the Messiah (4:7-12, 16, 19; cf. also 3:16). John wanted his readers to understand that love is a sure evidence of sonship, but he specifically connected that love with their relationship with their brethren, not their heavenly Father. This should have immediately caught his readers’ attention, since one would naturally expect John to refer, in the first instance, to the children’s love for their Father. After all, they share His life and nature, and their relationship with one another is secondary and subsequent; it exists because of and is determined by their relationship with Him. No one can be certain why John chose to identify sonship with love for the brethren rather than love for the Father, but there are some clues that perhaps point in the right direction. - The first has already been suggested, which is that John must have known that this approach would catch his readers’ attention. If he had stated the obvious – the children of God are evident by their love for Him, his readers would have acknowledged that as true, but his statement wouldn’t have had the same effect on them. For, everyone recognizes that children instinctively love their father, even when he neglects, mistreats, or even abandons them. That instinct is so strong that children even tend to blame themselves for their father’s mistreatment; if he is unkind, neglectful or cruel to them, it must be because they deserve it. So, also, the natural parent/child relationship has nothing inherently to do with brothers and sisters. A person is a child of his father regardless of his relationship with his siblings. Indeed, his sonship exists and is the same whether or not he even has siblings. But John insisted otherwise; not only are siblings presupposed in the fact of Christian sonship, a person’s love for those siblings is the sure evidence that he is a child of His Father. At the very least, John’s statement forces his reader to pause and ponder.
- The above observations point to another issue that adds its own startling quality to John’s statement. That issue is the human belief that love is individualized and differentiated. That is, people experience love on an individual basis; they love some while not loving others. So also, people’s love for others isn’t uniform; their love for some is stronger, more intimate and more committed than it is for others, even within their own family. All people experience love this way, but John’s statement, rightly understood, delegitimizes this experience, further hinting that the love he had in mind transcends the human facsimile. John recognized neither distinctions nor degrees in love, and this was because he knew it to be a divine phenomenon. Love exists in God and has its nature in His nature, and this is true for human expressions of love as much as divine ones. John’s statement, then, underscores three foundationally important truths:
1) First, loving people implies and substantiates love for God; love for any person presupposes and expresses one’s fundamental love for God – love that is grounded in one’s participation in Him. In other words, the children love because of and according to their nature as children of the One who is love (4:7-8). This is all the more so in the case of the brethren – those who are fellow sharers in the Father’s life and nature. (It goes without saying that John was referring to brothers in the Lord, not siblings or “brethren” in some earthly, fraternal sense – cf. Matthew 12:46-50; 25:34-40; Luke 22:31-32; Acts 9:10-17; Romans 14:1-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8; James 2:14-16; 1 Peter 2:17; etc.) And so, when John spoke of loving one’s brother, he was assuming the premise of loving the Father, for the former is simply the extension and expression of the latter. John’s emphasis on loving the brethren might seem to argue against the contention that love doesn’t differentiate. And didn’t Paul exhort the Galatian Christians to do good to all men, but especially the household of faith (Galatians 6:10)? This seems to imply a differentiation, but the distinction here isn’t one of nature or quality, but of manifestation. Love is one, even as God is one, so that it is the same with respect to all people and in all interactions. But there is a unique manifestation of love among brethren in Christ because of the unique relationship that exists between them. They are members of one another as sharers in the same Spirit, life, and mind, and so enjoy a unique intimacy that doesn’t exist with those outside of Christ (cf. John 17:20-23; Ephesians 2:11-22; 1 Peter 2:4-5). 2) Secondly, the fact that love exists in God and is true of people only as they share in His life exposes and falsifies the natural human conception and practice of love; what people regard as love is just another expression of their alienation and unrighteousness. Indeed, the presence of love’s natural counterpart proves the absence of actual love.
3) A person’s relation to love (here, love for the brethren) is a sure evidence of his sonship – whether he is a child of God or a child of the devil. John spoke in absolute terms, and there are two dimensions to his absoluteness: First, every person is a child of one or the other father; there are no exceptions. But one’s sonship is proven out by the presence or absence of love. Love defines God’s children; lovelessness the children of the devil. Taken at face value, John’s absoluteness seems strained, if not unwarranted. For, every human being knows that love doesn’t operate at the extremes; it can’t be said of any person that he either loves or doesn’t love at all. And that being the case, how could John say that one’s sonship is proven by the presence or absence of his love? He seems to have set up a false criterion that doesn’t accord with human experience. But John was speaking from a different vantage point, one that is grounded in the nature and unity (sameness) of love. The issue isn’t love as a variable human sentiment, but love as the essential quality of authentic human existence. There is only one kind of love – the love that defines God, and so also those who are born of His seed. The absence of this love, then, indicates the absence of God’s life, and so the absence of genuine sonship. God’s children share in His life, but also His nature; they are image-sons who reflect the Father. How, then, can they exist in antithesis to His nature? How can the children of the One who is love be devoid of love? John wasn’t at all denying that human beings in their natural state are capable of affection, kindness, and self-giving actions. Indeed, his argument presupposes it. But he wanted his readers to understand that such affections and actions aren’t truly love, because they originate outside of God. Love has its reality and substance in God – He is love. This means that people love in truth only as they manifest His love, and they are able to do so only as they share in His life and nature; they love only as children born of God (note again 4:7-8). And so, what people call “love” is a pseudo-human counterfeit; it is an expression of the satanic world order that Jesus condemned and put to death. For all its apparent goodness, this “love” operates under the devil’s authority as one of his “works.”
f. John could speak in sweeping, absolute terms because he grasped the nature and scope of the messianic work and its fruit. He understood that Jesus had come into the world to destroy the old order and its works, including natural human love, and establish a new creational order under a new human creature. This perspective underlies his summary contrast between Jesus’ instruction regarding love and Cain’s treatment of his brother (3:11-12). Jesus’ message anticipated the new creational order He was inaugurating in Himself, whereas Cain’s disposition reflected the old order under the curse. The Lord was emphatic that love is the law of His kingdom, and He embodied that “torah” as New Man – the first-fruit of God’s new creation. Conversely, Cain epitomized “lawless” man under the old order – pseudo-man driven by the lovelessness of radical self-interest.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:43:45 GMT -5
3. John’s first epistle doesn’t lend itself to a well-ordered outline because he wrote as a father burdened for the spiritual children he loved so fervently. His letter reads just that way – as a father’s intimate correspondence, not a well-crafted doctrinal treatise. John’s overarching concern was that his children in the faith understand who Jesus the Messiah is and who they are in Him. His goal was practical and not merely theological; he longed to see them live out their identity authentically and faithfully, flourishing in a world at odds with the new creation their Lord inaugurated and they now inhabit as children of the Father. Thus John’s emphasis on sonship and its relationship to righteousness and love. His interaction with these themes resembles waves rolling onto the shore – he uses them to reiterate and reemphasize key truths, but in a way that builds his argument ever higher. Sonship, righteousness and love remain in the forefront as John moves through his epistle, but with differing emphases as he interacts with them from various vantage points. In the balance of chapter three (3:13-24), John’s general focus was on how these themes implicate the children’s likeness to the Father. In particular, he addressed the issue of likeness in terms of personal conformity to the Father and the response it evokes from the world that is alienated from Him.
a. John chose to begin this treatment with the world’s reaction to the Father’s children, which might strike the reader as strange. It would seem more natural to start with the issue of their conformity to the Father, and then examine the effect it has on other people. But, constructing his argument this way is actually quite effective; noting the effect the children have on the world around them is the best way to spotlight the true nature of their relationship to the Father. It shows that this relationship involves a fundamental transformation of their persons. And John described the world’s response to the Father’s children in one word: hatred (3:13). The form of his statement gives the impression that this hatred is only a possibility (“if the world hates you”), but John’s grammar shows that he believed otherwise. The world does hate the Father’s children, and John recognized that the reason for this is that it sees Him in them; it hates the children because it hates the Father whose likeness they bear. This hatred was first manifested toward the Son, who is the full and perfect image of the Father, and it’s now directed toward His brethren who share His Father’s likeness in Him. Jesus had told John and the other apostles to expect this hatred (John 15:18-25), and they’d all personally experienced it. Now he wanted his children in the faith to have the same expectation. They, too, shared the Father’s life and likeness and should expect the same reaction from the world that is estranged from Him. Many have noted that John seems to be overstating and oversimplifying a situation that is actually complex and nuanced. It’s true that some people do hate Christians, but there are many others who are indifferent to them, and even some who find Christians interesting and intriguing. How, then, could John make such a sweeping generalization? Some conclude that he was referring to the “world” that is hostile to Christians and the Christian faith, not the world as a whole. Others believe John was using hyperbole to drive home his point.
The difficulty notwithstanding, it does seem that John was speaking universally, both with respect to the world and its hatred for God’s children. The wider context is the key to making sense of this, especially the fact that John was distinguishing between the two world orders (old creation/new creation) and the human paradigms that define them. Thus he moved from Cain’s hateful response to his brother (v.12) to the world’s hatred of the father’s children. John wasn’t speaking of hatred in the sense of personal animus directed toward certain individuals, but the human principle that defines and drives the world order under Adamic man (cf. John 17:14; Titus 3:1-3). In John’s usage, hate is the antithesis of love – not love and hate as people naturally understand them, but as they are the defining principles of the two realms of human existence: the old creation in the first Adam and the new creation in the Last Adam. Hatred defines the old Adamic order, but this order continues in the present, “already-but-not-yet” form of the new creation. This means that the hatred Abel experienced at the hand of his brother continues in the world, now directing itself toward the Father’s children.
b. The hatred John was referring to, then, is not so much personal and situational, as eschatological. It reflects the antithesis between the old and new creations and their human paradigms – in John’s language here, between the realms of death and life (3:14; cf. John 5:24). The former corresponds to pseudo-human existence under the curse, and the latter to the authentic humanness that exists in the resurrected Messiah – the Living One – and all who share in His life. The Father’s children should expect to experience the hatred John spoke of precisely because it defines the realm of death and they have “passed out of death into life.” They now inhabit a new realm of being – a new way of being human that contradicts the natural human pattern and so indicts it as false. The world’s hatred, then, reflects the confusion, fear, and sense of condemnation that people experience when confronted with the new humanness of the children of God. Again, this is the same hatred Jesus experienced; indeed, hatred of the children is hatred of the Son, for they share in and manifest His life and likeness (ref. again 3:1b; John 15:21).
c. John regarded love and hate as antithetical concepts, but not in the sense of being contrasting attitudes or emotions that a person may express under certain circumstances. They are antithetical in that they are the defining qualities of the two opposing realms of human existence – the realms identified by the concepts of life and death. Love defines God and the realm He inhabits, and so also those who have passed out of death into His life, while hatred defines those who yet abide in death (3:14b; cf. Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 3:1-4). This helps to explain John’s assertion that hatred amounts to murder (3:15). Here, too, John seems to be overstating the case. Everyone agrees that hatred can result in murder, and even that someone who hates another person may actually wish him dead. But that’s not the same as equating hatred and murder. If hatred is murder, then murder has two forms: an outward act and an inward disposition. But if this is the case, are these two forms really identical? Is there no difference between them? And if they’re the same, how are they to be treated the same?
Viewed from a natural perspective, John’s statement is baffling, if not absurd. But, again, he was speaking from the vantage point of hatred and love as the defining qualities of the old and new creational orders. Hatred has the quality of murder, not because the person who hates has a murderous intent or desire or actually carries out murder, but because hatred defines human existence in the realm of death – the realm of human dissolution in which man ceases to be man. This understanding is reinforced by the fact that the only other instance of this word “murderer” in the New Testament occurs in John’s gospel in relation to the satanic world ruler (John 8:44). He is the prototypical “manslayer” (the Greek noun emphasizes the object rather than the act – the fact that it is a human being that is murdered), driven by a hatred that opposes and seeks to destroy man as God created him – man as he is ultimately true and complete in Jesus the Messiah (John 8:37-44). This is the sense in which the one who hates his fellow man is a murderer and child of the “evil one” who rules the realm of death (ref. again 3:10). And this is why John insisted that no manslayer abides in “eternal life” (i.e., the life of the eternal realm); no person can inhabit the realms of death and life at the same time. This also explains why love as people naturally know and experience it is itself a form of hatred: It exists and operates in the realm characterized by hate – the realm of pseudo-humanness in which all things work toward the ultimate destruction of man as he truly is, man as divine image-son.
d. Hatred, then, has its antithesis in authentic love – not love as men understand and experience it, but as it is true in God and has its human manifestation in Jesus. This love reached its climax and saw its most rigorous and most compelling expression in Jesus’ self-giving at Calvary – his “laying down his life” (3:16). This phrase only appears in John’s writing, and underscores this action as deliberate, purposeful and entirely voluntary. Not surprisingly, he always used it with Jesus’ death in view (ref. John 10:11-18, 13:33-38, 15:13). According to John, that act instructs human beings in what love is and how it manifests itself: “In this, we have come to know love” – love as it is true in God. The triune God has revealed this love – the divine self-giving – through Jesus the Messiah: the Father giving Himself in the incarnate Son (cf. Isaiah 40:1-11, 59:1- 60:3; Zechariah 2-3; Malachi 3:1 with Luke 1:67-79; John 3:16, 17:22-23; Romans 5:1-8), the Son giving Himself at Calvary (John 12:23-33, 13:1, 10:1-18, 15:13), and both Father and Son giving the Spirit (John 14:16-20; Romans 5:5). And as it is with God, so it is to be with His children: They, too, “ought to lay down their lives for the brethren.” Both times in this verse John used the noun usually rendered soul, which refers to one’s essence – one’s essential life, not biological life as such. He wasn’t calling his readers to repeat Jesus’ bodily death, but to manifest the same love – the disposition that regards one’s own existence as God-given resource to serve others’ good. It is self-dying, self-consecrated, self-giving love, not death, that marks God’s children. This is what Paul meant when he said “death works in us, but life in you” (ref. 2 Corinthians 4:1-15).
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:46:51 GMT -5
e. John took this general description of love – laying down one’s life for the other – and provided his readers with a practical example in which one person’s need becomes known to a brother with the resource to meet it (3:17-18). This example is eminently appropriate, first because it pertains to an everyday situation that virtually everyone has experienced. But even more, it spotlights well the multifaceted nature of love as self-giving: Love involves concern and compassion, but also discernment, availability, generosity, and sacrifice. It equally implicates a person’s perception, judgment, sentiment and action. So in the present example, the individual acts upon a need he’s personally aware of and concerned about (v. 17), but in a way that honors the truth (v.18). It’s also important to note that, while some English versions place the emphasis on material goods (the “world’s goods”), John’s language is more encompassing. It includes material goods, but goes beyond them to encompass everything pertaining to life in this world. Many times people are in need of material provision, but there is another arena of need that is universal and ever-present. Whether a person has much or little of the world’s goods, everyone has the same inward needs associated with love and relationship. Even the wealthiest person can find his life devoid of genuine concern, care, acceptance and intimacy. In fact, wealth is a stumbling block to love and authentic relationships. This is the reason so many of the rich and famous find themselves drawn to the people they were close to when they were “nobodies.” Those are the only relationships they can trust to be real – relationships grounded in genuine interest, affection and concern. When human needs are considered, physical needs (food, water, shelter, etc.) are typically put in the forefront. But human beings are divine image-bearers, so that their non-physical, uniquely human needs have a certain primacy. John recognized this, and so made the issue of meeting a brother’s need (whatever the need may be) a matter of love. He wasn’t so much concerned with supplying another’s material lack as having an open heart toward the brother in need. - The noun here rendered heart literally refers to internal organs (hence the common KJV rendering, bowels), and so symbolizes one’s innermost self, including one’s deepest sentiments and emotions. - More narrowly, it was associated in the Greco-Roman world with affection, love, mercy and compassion (cf. Luke 1:78; 2 Corinthians 6:12, 7:15; Philippians 1:8, 2:1; etc.). John’s concern was that the saints bring an “open heart” – i.e., sincere and eager affection, concern, compassion and availability – to the circumstance of a brother’s need, whatever that need may be. John insisted that love acts, but he also recognized that actions are emptied of genuine goodness when they’re devoid of love. Actions must reflect and express an open heart of love. Thus God’s condemnation of Israel’s loveless worship and obedience (cf. Isaiah 1:1-14 and Zechariah 7:1-6 with Matthew 15:8; ref. also Corinthians 13:1-3).
Actions are to be expressions of love, and this occurs only when actions are informed and motivated by loving hearts. Especially in affluent cultures, material help – giving some thing – has little real cost (ref. Mark 12:41-44), and all the more so when it brings tax advantage and can be done at a distance. Writing a check to a charity is easy and it allows the giver to tell himself that he cares for others; actually getting one’s hands dirty and encumbering one’s heart with real people is a much more costly venture that relatively few are willing to take on. But it’s exactly this sort of personal involvement that John was calling for. The issue here isn’t giving something, but the open, eager giving of one’s self – one’s heart and so also one’s resource – to a brother in need. John’s concern was the authentic love that manifests itself in the truth of self-giving, not merely detached actions, affirmed ideals or sympathetic words (3:18; cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8). This is the sort of love that defines God and characterizes His actions. He gives, not merely good things, but Himself, the Christ-event being His superlative act of self-giving; the God who is love has demonstrated His love for the world by giving Himself in His Son (cf. 3:16, 4:9-11; cf. also Zechariah 2-3; Hosea 1-3; Isaiah 40:1-11 with Matthew 3:1-17; also Luke 1:67-79; Romans 5:8). This same love defines the image-sons who share the Father’s nature and likeness, enabling John to ask the question, how can those with shuttered hearts believe that the love of God abides in them (3:17b)? There are three ways the phrase, “love of God,” can be understood, and all three have their proponents:
1) The first is that John was speaking of love for God. In this case, then, he was questioning how a person can claim to love God and not love his brother who is a fellow child of God (cf. 4:20).
2) The second is that John was speaking descriptively of the sort of love that characterizes God. Here, then, he was arguing that a heart closed against a brother is inconsistent with the sort of love that characterizes God. This view, too, has contextual support (ref. 3:16, also 4:9-11).
3) The last option is that John was referring to love as it has its substance and origin in God. In this view, John’s premise is that God’s love defines His children, so that the absence of this love argues against one’s sonship. The third option also has strong contextual support, but perhaps the strongest argument for it is the fact that the first two options are actually subsets of it. First of all, the children’s love for God and one another has its basis in God’s love for them (cf. 4:16, 19). But it’s not simply that a person’s love for God and other people is grounded in God’s love for him; rather, the love that characterizes the children is the same love that defines and characterizes their Father; their love is the extension and expression of His love. Therefore, everyone who loves demonstrates that God abides in them and that they share in His nature (4:12). Conversely, the one who closes himself against his brother demonstrates that God’s love doesn’t abide in Him, and so neither does the God who is love.
The children are animated by the Father’s love, so that their righteousness (authenticity) is found in their manifesting His love. Hence John’s exhortation: “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (3:18). Here he was both exhorting his spiritual children to an authentic love and recognizing the existence of a pseudo-love – a human counterfeit that people naturally confuse with love. John’s expression has several elements of parallelism (word/tongue, deed/truth, and the relation between the two pairs of nouns) that have been variously understood. But the context suggests something like this: Little children, let us renounce the false love of lofty ideals and detached rhetoric, and love with deeds that manifest the truth of love and the God who is love. John was making a crucially important point, but precisely because it is a point about love – love as it is true in God, his exhortation must be treated carefully and wisely. Specifically, it must be interpreted in the light of the larger scriptural instruction concerning love and the way it expresses itself. Without this defining framework, John’s instruction is easily reduced to an emotional ethic of undiscerning sympathy and uncritical generosity. But he was calling for love in action, not action that appears loving. The starting point, then, is to understand what love is and how it operates. Two things are critical in this regard: - The first has already been emphasized, which is that love is self-giving; it involves the giving, not of things per se, but of oneself. Love acts, but out of the conviction that the self and all of its supply are God-given, Godempowered resource for serving others.
- Secondly and most importantly, love is inseparable from and dependent upon discernment and wisdom; it rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love pursues good for the other, but that which is truly good as God understands good, and as He has revealed and illumined it in the Scriptures and through the leading of His Spirit. Taken together, these truths show that love is both a way of being and doing; it defines the person as well as the conduct of the God who is love, and so also His children who possess His life and nature. Love, then, is self-giving that purposefully pursues the true and greatest good of its object as informed by Christ’s mind and impassioned by His heart. Love is discerning and disciplined as well as compassionate and caring. People can possess these qualities in some measure, but that doesn’t mean they are capable of love. Love discerns the true and ultimate good of its object, which is not possible for those who are alienated from God because He is that good. Natural human love is a phenomenon of the realm of death; it operates according to that realm’s principles and outcomes (Proverbs 14:12). Whatever its sincerity, apparent virtue and good fruit, natural love exists in contradistinction to the mind of God, and so works against the true good of the other (ref. Matthew 16:21-23; cf. also 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15; 1 Timothy 5:3-16).
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:49:06 GMT -5
f. John insisted that love cannot be confined to sentiments or words, but always expresses itself in actions. This is because love is self-giving; it pursues the true and most needful good of its object, and this transcends loving attitudes and words (though it includes them). Love acts, but such action reflects and expresses the inward disposition of love – love as it is true in God. Hence the actions of love conform to the truth of love; they are deeds of truth. The implication, then, is that a loving heart will always express itself in loving actions, but seemingly loving actions don’t necessarily prove the existence of a loving heart. People can do kind, generous and helpful things in the absence of love; indeed such actions are often motivated by guile and even malice (cf. Proverbs 23:6-7, 26:24-26 with 2 Samuel 15:1-6; Luke 22:25; Romans 16:17-18). “Good deeds,” then, are not enough; deeds must be done in love. And deeds that appear to be loving are revealed as genuinely loving when they conform to the truth of love – not truth as men imagine it, but as it exists in God and is manifest in Jesus. Deeds are loving when they bear His fragrance and reflect His mind and heart. Put simply, loving deeds testify of the Son, and so bear witness to a person’s sonship. This is the premise behind John’s instruction in verses 19-21. At the outset, it should be stated that this is an especially difficult passage. First John epistle is known for its interpretive challenges, but few disagree that this particular passage is one of the most challenging. There are many reasons for this, most notably the awkward, even confusing structure of these verses. That feature perhaps explains another difficulty, which is the large number of variants in the existing manuscripts. It seems that early copyists sought to smooth out the awkwardness by making adjustments to the text. The result is that the original reading of 3:19-21 is very uncertain. Fortunately, the same isn’t the case with the general meaning; for all the difficulties with the text itself, and whatever the disagreements concerning specific details, John’s overall point seems clear. Presenting and analyzing all of the difficulties in this passage exceeds the scope of this treatment, but a couple of them are important to point out. One is the relation between the two clauses of verse 20. Both begin with the same conjunction, which suggests that they somehow clarify or develop each other. A second matter, then, is how these two clauses contribute to verse 19; in particular, what does a self-condemning heart have to do with one knowing that he is of the truth? And beyond that, how does a condemning heart persuade a person before God? Was John speaking of this persuasion in a negative or positive sense (i.e., as indictment or reassurance)? Finally, John seems to indicate in verse 19 that God overrules the self-condemnation that Christians often experience, but then in verse 21 he stated that it’s those whose hearts don’t condemn them who have confidence (assurance) before God. Just these few considerations suffice to demonstrate that the challenges in this passage aren’t insignificant. The goal, then, is to examine the critical issues and arrive at an overall understanding that does best justice to the language, context, and John’s larger perspective.
The first thing to note is John’s phrase, “By this we will know…” Throughout the epistle, this sort of expression typically looks ahead rather than backward (ref. 2:3, 3:10, 16, 24, 4:2, 9-10, 13, 5:2), and many believe that’s the case here as well. If this interpretation is correct, it seems that the pronoun this points to John’s assertion in verse 20. Thus 3:19-20 is conveying something like this: If our heart condemns us, we can know that we’re of the truth and assuage and reassure our heart, because God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Others argue that John’s phrase points back to verse 18. Thus the proposed meaning: By this – by deeds of love conforming to the truth – we will know that we are of the truth, and so reassure our hearts as we stand “open and laid bare” before God who has authority over our heart and knows all things. Loving deeds in conformity to the truth testify that a person is “of the truth” – sons in truth, through union with the One who is the truth (cf. 2:21, 4:6; 2 John 1-3; also John 18:37). Such sons can have all confidence before their all-knowing Father. John’s verb rendered assure/reassure presents another interpretive challenge. The verb’s basic meaning is to persuade, convince or win over, and this persuasion can be positive or negative. That is, a person can be persuaded that he is right about something or that he is wrong about it. In the first instance, persuasion is affirmation, in the second it’s dissuasion, and John might have intended either in this passage. The difficulty is heightened by the fact that this persuasion derives from awareness of God’s authority and knowledge. Does this awareness lead the person to confirm his self-assessment or rethink it? And why is this the case? John associated this persuasion with the heart and the issue of self-condemnation (3:20). The “heart” can signify the mind, conscience or emotions (or all three), but it’s clear John was talking about an internal, nagging self-accusation that is “persuaded” by a point of truth. The passage’s awkward structure and phrasing make it difficult to know exactly what John was getting at, and the difficulty is only increased by the way he brought God into his argument: What is the significance of God being “greater than our heart and knowing all things,” and how does this authority and knowledge “persuade” the self-condemning heart? - Is John’s point that no one can truly assess himself, and so God’s children should defer to His judgment and trust His mercy and forgiveness, whatever their hearts tell them? Or is the point that Christians need to “assure their hearts” that God is a knowing and just judge who will deal with them in truth, rather than according to their own self-perception? - Was he speaking about an unwarranted sense of self-condemnation that God vanquishes because He knows better than our heart? And if this is his meaning, was John speaking about our justified state (Romans 8:1), or making a point about how God addresses our ongoing sin and failure and frees us from the guilt it produces (1 John 1:8-9)?
- Or was John asserting that God overcomes our legitimate selfcondemnation, because He is greater than our heart and triumphs over the accusation it rightly brings against us as sinners? And if so, how, exactly does God do this? If our hearts are justified in condemning us, how can God overrule them? How can He set aside the truth? Was John saying that God overcomes our sense of self-condemnation by producing works of authentic love in us, thereby enabling us to have reassured hearts before Him, in spite of our ongoing failures? Verse 21 further adds to the interpretive challenge, because it seems to argue differently from verses 19-20. In the first instance, John spoke about being persuaded before God in the context of an accusing heart; then he insisted that those whose hearts don’t condemn them have confidence (assurance) before God. He could have been making two different arguments, suggested by his use of different expressions: persuade our heart before God versus have confidence before God. But the fact that he directly addressed his readers in verse 21 indicates that he was making a summary point. This means that his assertion in verse 21 cannot be separated from verses 19-20. Whatever John was trying to communicate, his meaning derives from all of the content in these verses. Perhaps the most important issue to resolve is John’s overall perspective in this passage. Specifically, was he arguing from the vantage point of God overruling the human heart in judgment or in mercy? In other words, was John seeking to reassure his readers of God’s fatherly mercy in order to relieve their accusing consciences, or cautioning them that the all-knowing God would deal with them according to the truth, however they might perceive themselves? Here, too, interpreters have historically been divided, so that the best one can do is carefully consider the immediate and larger context. In that regard, John’s overall purpose in the epistle was to warn, exhort and encourage his readers regarding the deceiving influences that were attempting to lead them astray from Christ (1:1-4, 2:18-29, 4:1-6, 5:1-5, 18-21, etc.). These “antichrists” were likely gnostic in their thinking, and one of the strands of Gnosticism held that physical deeds are irrelevant; godliness and truth are inward realities. That perspective may lie behind John’s exhortation that love (and so sonship) proves itself in deeds conforming to the truth, and not simply in convictions and sentiments. This instruction provided a corrective, but it could also provoke a crisis of assurance; John’s readers might look at their own failure to love in “deed and truth” and conclude that their claim to sonship was false. And so, though not certain, it seems reasonable to conclude that John was trying to encourage his readers that, whatever their failure with respect to love (and all fall short), they could reassure their troubled hearts that God knows His own, and His heart toward His children overrides their heart toward themselves. He knows they are of the truth, even when they deviate from it, and their faith in His power delivers them from self-condemnation and gives them all confidence before Him.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:51:59 GMT -5
Verses 19-21 are typically interpreted in terms of two general perspectives, both of which reflect John’s assertion that “God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.” The first one views this instruction as a warning based on the severity of God, whereas the other views it as encouragement based on God’s mercy and provision for His children. In truth, the two perspectives stand together and complement each other, since John’s instruction pertains to the children’s obligation of love. On the one hand, John rightly insisted that love proves one’s sonship, since a son shares in his father’s life and nature, and God is love (3:14-15, 4:7-8). In this regard, his instruction does warn his readers of the dire implication of lovelessness. But, while the Father’s children do love, it is equally true that love isn’t yet perfected in them; it doesn’t presently appear what they shall be (3:2). And so, love as the sure proof of sonship must be understood in terms of the reality of present sonship – sonship that is “already-but-not-yet.” The children of God love, but not fully and not without flaw. Thus John’s instruction also provides reassurance and encouragement to those who fall short in their love for their Father and their brethren.
g. The second half of chapter 3 focuses on how it is that God’s children share in and manifest His likeness, and John concluded this treatment by highlighting the issue of obedience (3:22-24). He insisted that the children keep their Father’s commandments, but he did so as summing up his broader instruction. This is critically important, for treating these verses in isolation can leave the reader concerned to assemble and comply with a list of scriptural commandments, perhaps with a view to God granting him the things he desires. Not only is compiling such a list a daunting task, it is made all the more challenging by the need to determine the criteria for it. In other words, which commandments/directives should be included, and how does one know? And are there commandments that pertain only to Christians (as opposed to ancient Israel), and which, if any, are universal? Different traditions give different answers to these and other related questions, which only compounds the difficulty. - There are some who take the broadest approach, arguing that everything God commands in the Scripture applies to all people. Everything the Scripture prescribes is God’s “will” for human beings, and they will be judged accordingly as obedient or disobedient. - Others distinguish between laws and commandments that apply to all people versus those that pertain only to specific groups. One example is Thomas Aquinas’ formulation (adopted by many in the Reformed tradition) which treats God’s law under the categories of moral, civil, and ceremonial. The “moral” laws are said to be universal and unchanging, while the civil and ceremonial laws were limited to Old Testament Israel. - Another approach is based on distinguishing between the Old and New Covenants. In general, this view holds that the Law of Moses contained God’s laws and commandments for Israel, while the New Covenant sets out and prescribes the “Law of Christ,” which pertains to Christians.
Of course, one must then determine which particular laws and commandments comprise the Law of Christ. Some argue that it includes every prescription and directive found in the New Testament writings; others go further, insisting that the Law of Christ also includes every Old Testament law and commandment that isn’t specifically rescinded by Jesus and/or the New Testament writers. (This criterion is helpful to those who associate the so-called “unchanging moral law” with the Decalogue.) In the end, what might at first glance appear to be a simple obligation – keep God’s commandments – quickly turns into a massively complex, convoluted and confusing undertaking that all too often leaves people frustrated and discouraged. But, if John’s instruction is allowed to take its place within his epistle and its own context, the difficulties and complexities begin to evaporate. First and foremost, John defined “God’s commandments” as the obligations of faith and love (3:23). Starting from the premise that God has issued a multitude of commandments, the natural conclusion is that faith and love are simply two that John happened to mention here (perhaps regarding them as most important). His point, then, is that Christians must exercise faith in Jesus and love one another, but they must also keep all of God’s commandments (whatever they may be). John’s statements, however, don’t seem to support this understanding. - Again, after speaking of keeping God’s commandments, John specifically identified faith and love as the Christian’s obligation of obedience. He didn’t say, “here are a couple of those commandments that you need to keep” but “this is His commandment.” - John’s wording indicates that he was encapsulating all of God’s commandments within the obligations of faith and love, a conclusion reinforced by his shift from the plural (commandments) to the singular (commandment). This is further supported by the fact that he referred to faith in Christ and love for the brethren – two distinct obligations – as comprising the commandment (cf. 4:20-5:5; 2 John 4-8). In context, then, it seems that John understood all of God’s commandments to be subsumed in the obligations of faith and love. Moreover, he saw these two obligations as together comprising God’s singular commandment. While this may seem strange and even incorrect to some, it perfectly accords with Jesus’ teaching (cf. John 14:15-21, 15:7-17, 17:1-26) and the apostolic writings. - In Romans 13:8-10, Paul insisted that any and every commandment – even those associated with the so-called “moral law” – is simply a specific articulation of the singular obligation of love. In a word, “love is the full substance and full expression of law (torah).” He made the same assertion to the Galatians, writing them that the whole law is fulfilled in one divine word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:14).
In making this claim, Paul wasn’t innovating a new approach to God’s law or perpetuating some rabbinic tradition beyond the scriptural text. Rather, he was simply reiterating what Jesus Himself taught (Matthew 22:25-40), a practice the other apostles followed (James 2:1-8; 1 Peter 1:3-23). - So Paul also affirmed the idea that faith and love together comprise the Christian’s singular obligation of obedience. Writing to the Galatians, he insisted that God’s true covenant people – His sons and daughters in Jesus, the Messiah – are defined by new creation, which manifests itself in “faith working through love” (ref. Galatians 5:1-10 and 6:12-16). Faith expresses itself in love, but it’s equally true that love presupposes faith, since all who love have been born of God (1 John 4:7-8). Two implications follow from this: First, love and faith are inseparable, mutually implying and mutually defining. Second, because love is the substance and fullness of law (torah), love and faith together encompass all of God’s commandments for His image-children. This helps to explain John’s connection between keeping God’s commandments and doing what is pleasing to Him, and why the one who does so can expect to receive from God what he asks of Him (v. 22). The obligation God imposes on all people is to attain their true humanness as image-sons by sharing in the life and likeness of the incarnate Son. As True Man, Jesus embodies the full truth of Torah – He is in Himself what Torah requires of human beings; He is man fully and perfectly characterized by love, faith and faithfulness. And as True Man, Jesus’ mind, heart, purpose and will are fully conformed to His Father’s (John 4:31-34, 8:28-29, 10:17-18), so that seeing Him was seeing the Father who sent Him (John 14:1-11, cf. also 5:15-24, 12:44-45, 15:20-24). This perfect unanimity of Son and Father saw the Father granting the Son’s desires, for they were His own (John 17). But so it is with those who share in the Son; the children’s conformity to Christ insures that the Father will grant their requests and fulfill their desires and longings (cf. 5:14-15, John 15:7-8, 16:26-27; cf. also Psalm 37:4; James 5:16-18). God’s requirement for human beings is faith and love: faith in the Son (here, faith in the Son’s name, which emphasizes the truth of who the Son actually is) that unites the believer to the Son’s life and mind, and so produces a life characterized by love – first for the Father and Son, and then for the Father’s other children. This is what it means to “keep God’s commandments,” and this is why John could insist that such obedience demonstrates that the person abides in God (3:24; cf. 2:3-10, 24-29, 3:1-9, 4:11-16). And abiding in God means abiding in the Son and Father through the power and abiding presence of the Spirit. The Spirit is the substance of the divine “abiding,” and therefore the proof that one abides in God and God in him. But how does a person know that he possesses the Spirit so as to abide in God? The answer takes John’s argument full circle: It is by “keeping God’s commandments” – not as compliance with a set of directives, but a life characterized by faith and love; a life of authentic sonship marked by the “I in you and you in Me” obedience in the Spirit that distinguished the incarnate Son.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:54:07 GMT -5
4. Underlying John’s instruction in chapter 3 is his recognition of the fundamental antithesis between the world that Jesus entered and the new world – the new creation – that He inaugurated in Himself and is now enlarging through His Church, His Body in which He has His fullness (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17 with Ephesians 1:22-23, 3:8-10). John described this antithesis in terms of light and darkness, life and death, love and hatred: The former “world” is the realm of darkness and death, and human existence in it is characterized by hatred (enslaving self-concern) that works toward the disintegration and destruction of the human creature. In contrast, the new world of the new creation is the realm that God Himself inhabits – the realm of light and life, and human existence in it is characterized by love (selfless self-giving) that exerts itself for the sake of the wholeness (the true good) of its object (cf. 1:1-7 with John 1:1-10; also 1 John 4:16). Furthermore, John understood that the Spirit is the focal point of this new world and life in it (3:24; cf. Joel 2:28-32 with Acts 1:1-8, 2:1-21). He is the Re-Creator Spirit whose power raised Jesus from the dead, endowing Him with resurrection life, and who now imparts that life to other human beings by joining them to Jesus (cf. Zechariah 4:1-10, 6:9-15 with John 3:1-8, 6:22-63, 14:1-16:15; also 2 Corinthians 3:18). Ultimately, He will exercise His life-giving power on behalf of the entire cursed creation in bringing forth a renewed heavens and earth (cf. Isaiah 32, 59; Romans 8:1-27). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life and truth, now fully realized in the incarnate, resurrected and glorified Son. Now, in the fullness of the times, the Spirit has become the Spirit of Jesus, not only in the sense that Jesus fully embodies the divine life and truth, but in the sense that the Spirit imparts and perfects Jesus’ life and likeness in other human beings (cf. John 14:16-20, 15:26-27, 16:12-15 with Romans 8:9-10; 2 Corinthians 3:18). The Spirit is the presence and power of the Father and Son in the new world over which Jesus presides as enthroned King. He is the Spirit of life and light and truth, and it is His work to inform the minds and direct and empower the lives of the Father’s children. In this way, He “convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:7-11). This understanding of the Spirit’s work is the premise of John’s instruction in 4:1-6. a. The Spirit teaches and leads Christ’s people, but this doesn’t mean He informs everything a Christian might happen to think or believe. For this reason, Christians can’t automatically assume that their judgments and convictions are “of the Spirit” and conform to the truth; rather they must “test the spirits.” Like Paul, John recognized that Christians err and fall short in their thinking; in every case, they “know in part,” even as “it has not appeared as yet what they shall be” (cf. 3:2 with 1 Corinthians 13:9-12). All Christians misjudge and misunderstand in various respects, but this isn’t what John had in mind; he was concerned with the false doctrine that gives voice to the antichrist “spirit” that fills the world (4:1-3, cf. 2:18-22). John previously warned his readers that the antichrist “spirit” was already manifesting itself in numerous antichrist figures; here, he exhorted them to withstand those individuals (and so the spirit behind them) through the Spirit of Christ who testifies truthfully to Him. 88 b. John associated these antichrist “spirits” with false prophets, which seems to point to individuals within the Christian community who were presenting themselves as visionaries having a superior insight into the person of the Messiah and Christian truth (ref. 2:18-19). Again, the way John described their message suggests that these individuals were promoting Gnostic ideas that were already making inroads into the Church, ideas that seemed consistent with Christian teaching to the undiscerning, but which actually led people away from the true Messiah. John specifically noted that these false prophets were denying Jesus the Messiah as having “come in the flesh” (v. 2; cf. 2 John 7), which was central to Gnostic Christianity. Recall that Gnosticism draws a fundamental distinction between the material and immaterial realms (“flesh” and “spirit”), such that it is impossible that the divine can (or would) assume a physical form. Hence some “Christian” Gnostics maintained that Jesus only appeared to have a physical body, while others argued that the Christ “spirit” came upon the man Jesus, empowering Him for His earthly work and then departing at His death. John recognized that both of these notions (and other similar ones) amounted to the denial of Jesus, the incarnate Christ. The issue for John wasn’t the fact that Jesus possessed a physical body, but the critical truth that He was the Logos enfleshed – the eternal Word embodied in our humanness. John recognized the reality of incarnation as crucial to the Messiah’s person and work and its fruit in resurrection and new creation (cf. again 1:1-4 with John 1:1-18). Any refashioning or rejection of incarnation was a denial of the truth of the Christ and God’s work in Him. c. This is why John could insist that denying Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh amounts to the denial of the Christ himself. It is antichrist – i.e., that which opposes Christ, whether openly and directly, or only indirectly by reimagining Him, as in the case of the Gnostic false prophets. Importantly, John associated this antichrist phenomenon and the Christian’s response to it with two opposing spirits: the spirit of antichrist (v. 3) and the Spirit of God (v. 2). These “spirits” perform the same function in the human world, namely testifying to their respective “Christ.” - With respect to the Spirit of God, John devoted considerable attention in his gospel account to how He accomplishes this work: The Father and Son sent the Spirit into the world to testify to the Christ, not merely by informing human minds, but by producing and perfecting the Messiah’s life and likeness in them (John 14-17; cf. Acts 1:1-8, 2:1-36). In accordance with the divine design, the Spirit has become Jesus’ resurrection presence and life in the world; in terms of His function, the Spirit of God has become the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9-10). - The “spirit of antichrist,” on the other hand, labors in an antithetical work: It cannot impart the life and likeness of a false Christ, because no such “Christ” actually exists. What this “spirit” does do is attempt to bind people to a false “Christ,” and so lead them away from the true one. 89 An important question here is whether John was referring to an actual spirit (and spirits) or simply using a metaphor. - On the one hand, he spoke of this antichrist “spirit” as manifesting itself in numerous individuals: the coming antichrist was present in many antichrists; the one antichrist “spirit” was embodied in many such “spirits” (ref. again 2:18, 4:1; also 2 John 7). So also, the Scripture often uses the term spirit to refer to the inner human person (cf. Genesis 45:27; Job 6:4; Psalm 31:1-5, 32:2, 51:10-17, 77:3-6; also Romans 8:16, 12:10-11; 1 Corinthians 2:11), or as a metaphor for a person’s disposition, work or activity (cf. Isaiah 4:4-5, 19:13-14; Jeremiah 51:1; Hosea 4:12; Romans 11:8; 1 Corinthians 4:21; etc.). These considerations lend support to the conclusion that John was speaking metaphorically rather than literally. - On the other hand, several things argue that John had an actual spirit in mind. First of all, he contrasted the spirit of antichrist with the Spirit of God, describing both “spirits” as speaking their “truth” and seeking to persuade human beings. The parallelism suggests that John wasn’t treating the one spirit as actual and the other as a metaphor for false and deceptive teaching. So also, he associated this antichrist spirit with the satanic being whose deception fills the world and leads people away from the true Christ (ref. 2:13-14, 3:12, 5:18-19; cf. also 2 Thessalonians 2:7-10). Perhaps another indirect support of this interpretation is John’s exhortation to his readers to stop believing the spirits who are of the antichrist spirit (4:1a). John recognized that this spiritual influence was able to deceive even those who belong to Christ, and such capability speaks to immense power of deception that the New Testament elsewhere ascribes to Satan, the great deceiver himself (cf. Matthew 4:1-10 with John 8:31-44; 1 Corinthians 5:4-5, 7:1-5; 2 Corinthians 2:1-11 and esp. 11:1-15). Assuming that John regarded the antichrist spirit as an actual spiritual power, how should we understand the spirits he associated with the false prophets (4:1)? Was he referring to the spirits of the men themselves, or supernatural spirits using them to propagate their antichrist message? And if the latter, did John view those spirits as manifestations of a singular antichrist spirit (4:3), or as distinct spiritual beings acting on behalf of the one antichrist spirit? - It’s quite possible that John was speaking of the spirits of the false prophets themselves, even as Paul exhorted the Corinthians that the spirits of prophets are to be subject to the prophets. There Paul was referring to the accountability that prophets have for the things they speak and promote within the community of believers (1 Corinthians 14:29-32). John may have used the term spirits in the same way, in which case his concern was with the false prophets themselves and the need to discern, expose and resist them (4:4), not spiritual forces operating behind the scenes. 90 - But it’s also possible John had in mind actual spiritual powers – demonic powers – operating among the saints as servants of the Adversary and his agenda. John recognized the existence and activities of such spirits, as did Paul and the other apostolic witnesses (cf. Matthew 12:22-28, 38-45, 25:41; 1 Corinthians 10:13-21; 1 Timothy 4:1-3; James 2:19, 3:13-15; Revelation 9:17-21, 12:7-9, 16:12-14, 18:1-2, and esp. 13:11-18). In the end, John likely intended both meanings. For there are indeed “false prophets” who are witting or unwitting pawns of satanic power and deception (cf. 1 Kings 22:22-24; John 13:21-27; 1 Corinthians 11:12-14; 1 Timothy 4:1-3). And beyond that, “the whole world lies in the evil one” (cf. 5:19 with 4:4), such that humans in their natural state are “children of the devil” who share his mind and desires (ref. Matthew 16:21-23; John 8:31-44; Revelation 2:8-13). d. This relation to Christ by the Spirit – that is, discernment born of relational knowledge through participation in Jesus’ life and mind (“you are of God,” i.e., born of Him) – is the premise behind John’s assertion that the saints “have overcome them (the false prophets, and so also their “spirits”) (4:4). In John’s words, this victory is because “He that is in you (Christ, in His Spirit – Romans 8:9-10) is greater than he that is in the world” (Satan, in his antichrist spirits). And this spirit that rules the present world directs the minds and hearts of those “in the world” (Ephesians 2:1-3), even as the Spirit directs the minds and hearts of those in Jesus (John 15:18-21). The result is that those who are “of” each spirit hear that spirit’s voice and follow his leading. Thus both the message and the response of the hearer are evidences of the spirit behind them, and so evidences of truth and error/deception: Those who are of the antichrist spirit – “of the world” – promote his message, even as they embrace it themselves; so it is with those who are of Christ’s Spirit, and so “of God” (4:5-6). This larger section of the epistle speaks to the children’s likeness to the Father – how it is that a son is of his father. In this passage, likeness involves the matter of discernment; true children share their father’s mind and judgment. As the unique Son is one mind with His Father, so it is with those who are sons in Him. And this ability to discern requires them to rightly judge what presents itself to them – to rightly “test the spirits.” This involves discerning the opposing “spirits” of truth and deceiving error, and this is first a matter of knowing, and then listening and speaking. “Testing the spirits” begins with an informed and discerning mind, but one that is committed to careful listening, for only a meeting of the minds enables the hearer to rightly judge what he’s hearing. But when he has heard, he must judge with the mind of Christ and the truth as it is in Him, not his own notions or convictions. So that same mind and truth must inform the Christian’s thinking, judgment and speech; this is the premise for John’s insistence that “the one who knows God listens to us.” For the person who knows God is attuned to hear His voice by His Spirit and looks to hear it in other people (cf. John 10:1-5, 14-16). Those who speak by the Spirit of truth are heard by those who are of the truth – those who share the same Spirit. Those who don’t hear and who speak otherwise are of a different spirit.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:55:22 GMT -5
5. Of all the ways in which the Father’s children share in and manifest His likeness, the most fundamental and most important is their love. Because God is love, it’s impossible that His sons and daughters should not be characterized by love. John understood this, and so made this theme the centerpiece of his instruction. He’s already spoken to the issue of love (ref. 2:7-11, 3:13-24), and here returns to it by way of bringing his letter to its climax (4:7-5:3). Because John stepped away from this subject to address the matter of spiritual discernment, only to then return to it, some have seen 4:1-6 as an awkward insertion in the middle of a larger context. But the truth is that the discernment John was calling for is precisely one way in which Christians fulfill their calling to love one another. For love pursues the true good of the other, and conformity to the true and living Christ is the ultimate good for every human being. Therefore, Christians seeking to safeguard themselves and their brethren from deceiving and destructive influences is a preeminent ministration of love. Love acts, but always in service of the truth. Love is, as one man put it, “the mode of knowing that includes, but transcends all other modes of knowing.” And so, when John reiterated the obligation of Christians to love one another (4:7), he wasn’t changing the subject, but showing that his instruction on “testing the spirits” is itself a practical articulation of what love for the brethren looks like.
a. John began this section by stating the fundamental truth that underlies and informs the issue of Christian love, which is that love is entirely a divine quality. As such, it only exists in the human realm in those human beings who share in the divine nature: “Love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (4:7). Two things are critically important in this statement: The first is that love originates and has its true substance in the person of God; the second is that love exists in humans in connection with an intimate relational knowledge of God that is grounded in sharing in God’s life and nature. Verse 8, then, expresses the same truths, but from the negative vantage point: “Whoever doesn’t love, doesn’t know God, for God is love.”
b. John’s assertions about love imply that it is foreign to human beings in their natural state. This means that the way people define love and the things they point to as examples of it may approximate it, but they necessarily fall short of the truth of it. And what John implied in verses 7-8 he directly affirmed in his next two statements (4:9-10). These statements emphasize that one must look to God’s actions to discern what love is. Both actions pertain to God’s sending of His Son, but the first focuses on incarnation, while the second focuses on propitiation. Some English versions obscure John’s meaning in verse 9 by the way they render his prepositional phrase in the first part of the sentence. The ASV and NAS, among others, express the idea of God’s love being manifest in us. The point of his statement, then, is that God’s love is manifest as an inward phenomenon experienced by those who obtain eternal life as the result of Jesus coming into the world. But a better understanding – one that better suits the context – is that John was referring to the outward, observable manifestation of God’s love in the incarnation: “By this the love of God was manifest among us, namely that God sent His Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”
God makes known the truth of love by His own actions, and John specifically mentioned the incarnation as one such action. But the issue in this testimony to God’s love isn’t simply the fact of incarnation, but the purpose for it. John recognized the “Word becoming flesh” as critical to God accomplishing His design for His creation. The incarnation was the Father sending His son into the world, but with a very specific mission in view. The Son came as the Father’s apostle and minister of life, even as Jesus would later send His disciples as apostles in the cause of His apostolic mission (John 17:18-23). John’s point, then, was not that the incarnation as such manifests God’s love, but that love is revealed and demonstrated in the incarnation as it was foundational to the divine work of love that God accomplished in the Christ event. The incarnation manifested God’s love – and so love as it actually is – by being the beginning of the new creation that was the goal of that love. In the incarnate Messiah, God and man were forever reconciled, even as man himself was renewed as divine image-son. And that reconciliation and human renewal were the promise of the same outcome for the human race and the entire cursed creation. This is what Jesus had in mind when he declared that “God so loved the world that He gave His Son…” (John 3:16-17). John regarded the Father’s sending of the Son as the supreme expression of the divine love – not the mere act of sending as such, but what it entailed and the purpose for it. When God sent the Son into the world, He was sending Himself; He was fulfilling His long-standing promise through His prophets to return to Zion. And this return wasn’t metaphorical or ethereal, but actual and physical in the unique miracle of incarnation: The Creator God and covenant Lord of Israel entered into His creation in a new and profound way as taking it to Himself by uniting Himself with His human creature in complete and everlasting union. If one would attempt to define and grasp God’s love for His creation, he must first ponder the astonishing, awe-inspiring mystery of incarnation. The incarnation made the divine love tangible and visible and it provided critical insight into its nature and goal, but it wasn’t sufficient in itself. First of all, the incarnation didn’t provide a complete explanation of God’s love. But more importantly, it didn’t fully realize the goal and work of that love. It was absolutely crucial, but incomplete; incarnation served the goal of propitiation. Thus John: the love of God was manifested in the incarnation (i.e., in the sending of the Son), but God’s love consists in this, that the Son came as propitiation for sin (4:10). John here embodied the entirety of the divine love in the Son’s work of propitiation, and this demands careful consideration. For propitiation is only one dimension of Christ’s work; specifically, it pertains to God’s appeasement of His indignation against the offense of sin. As noted previously (in the treatment of 2:2), John alone employed this term, and he used it with respect to the issue of Creator/creation estrangement and its resolution in Christ.
In the prior instance, John spoke of Jesus Himself as God’s propitiation, not as having made propitiation. The same nuance occurs here: The sent Son is propitiation for sin. In both instances, John connected propitiation with incarnation, but not simply in terms of incarnation facilitating propitiation (i.e., Jesus had to be born in order to die an atoning death). Rather, his statement implies that incarnation somehow embodies propitiation. This may seem like an overreach, but this is because incarnation and atonement are typically treated separately as distinct aspects of God’s work in Christ: Incarnation was the foundation for that work, whereas atonement was its climactic focal point; incarnation is about Jesus’ birth, while atonement concerns His death; incarnation set the stage for atonement, but it is not part of Jesus’ atoning work. And because propitiation is a dimension of atonement, it follows that the distinction between atonement and incarnation must be carried over to propitiation and incarnation. Viewed from this usual perspective, it’s difficult to see how (or why) John so closely connected incarnation and propitiation. Even more challenging is his insistence that these two together are the singularly great testimony to God’s love. But his thinking becomes more transparent in the light of a more truly biblical understanding of atonement. - Many, if not most Christians think of atonement in terms of satisfaction for sin. To say that Jesus “atoned for sin” is to say that He paid the penalty that human sin incurred. Thus atonement is viewed primarily as a legal concept – it is God’s ordained means for satisfying the legal guilt and debt resulting from legal violation (law-breaking). Atonement pertains to sin and forgiveness, but as a judicial matter more than a relational one. - But the goal of atonement isn’t legal satisfaction, but reconciliation. Atonement does address legal guilt incurred through law-breaking, but law-breaking as violation of divine-human relationship, which is the concern of God’s torah (law) in all of its formulations. Atonement reconciles God and human beings, but beyond merely resolving the enmity between them. God’s intent in Christ was obtaining true sons and daughters; atonement looks to the formation of image-children who share in the life and love of their Father according to the principle of intimacy that is “I in you and you in me” (cf. Isaiah 53-54 with John 17:20-23; Romans 8:1-23; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Ephesians 1:3-6; Hebrews 2). This is the sense in which propitiation concerns human alienation and divine wrath; this is the sense in which propitiation is at the heart of atonement. It was this understanding that enabled John to encompass Christ’s atoning work within the concept of propitiation and also bind together propitiation and incarnation: Jesus the Messiah is Yahweh returned to Zion; He is the human embodiment of the living God such that, in His person, God and man are reconciled and united in an exhaustive and everlasting communion of love. In Him we see the reality of propitiation as the sovereign exertion of divine love.
c. John exhorted his readers to love one another, not because it’s good or right from an ethical standpoint (although it is), but because it’s inherent in being a Christian. For Christians, by definition, are those who share in God’s life and nature through union with Christ, and God is love. How, then, can one possess the divine life and nature that is defined by love and not be characterized by love? And so, the truth that God is love carries two implications: - First, it implies that no one loves who is alienated from the life of God. For, it’s not simply true that God loves; rather, love inheres in Him because He is love. This means that a person can only know love and appropriate it in his own life and experience when he shares in God’s life; everyone who loves has been born of God. - But the converse is also true: All who share in God’s life are characterized by love. Hence John could insist that those who don’t love don’t know God – that is, they have no living, relational knowledge of Him; they are not true children who share in His life and nature. Everyone who knows God has been born of God. Given John’s warnings about antichrist influences that were denying the incarnation – denying Jesus as the enfleshed Christ (cf. again 2:18-23, 4:1-3), it’s likely that these statements connecting new birth, love and the knowledge of God had the Gnostic “Christians” in mind. For these were followers of the Christ who based their confidence in the fact that they had a superior, even esoteric knowledge of the Christ, and so of God Himself. Yet, from John’s perspective, their denial of the incarnation proved that they didn’t know either the Son or the Father (2:23). So their actions among the community of believers further proved this out. Whether or not they recognized it, they were of the antichrist spirit; in the name of drawing people closer to Christ, they were leading them away from Him. They were obscuring a true knowledge of the Messiah, and so acting contrary to the truth of love. In this way, they were demonstrating that they were not sharers in the God who is love, and so had no actual knowledge of Him or the Christ He had sent into the world. Claiming gnosis, they remained unknowing. But John believed better of His readers: Here, for the final time, he addressed them as his beloved (4:11). He was confident that they did indeed know the Father and the Son as those “born from above.” And sharing in the divine life by the renewing, indwelling Spirit, they were authentic children of God – children who were to manifest the divine love among themselves and in the world. But in order to do so, they must discern what love actually looks like, and for that insight John directed them toward God’s manifest love: “If, in this way, God loved us, we ought to love one another with the same love.” John wasn’t obligating his readers to incarnation or propitiation, but to the loving concern and goal behind them. The Father’s love, manifest in the Son’s person and work, pursued and accomplished creational reconciliation and the shalom and shabbat of new creation. So the children’s love – which is His love – should display it and work for its fruition.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 16:57:59 GMT -5
d. Christians discern what love is and how it operates by considering God’s actions in incarnation and propitiation. That is what it means that a person comes to know love by coming to know Christ; He is, in His person and work, the divine love in action. But because love inheres in God, and humans, in their natural state, are estranged from Him, love is foreign to natural human existence. The only way people come to know and practice love is by knowing God, and they only come to know Him by sharing in His life and nature through union with Him in Christ by the Spirit. God has revealed love in its truth and fullness in the incarnate Son, but that is insufficient in itself; love becomes a property of other human beings only as they share in Him. This is the reason John so closely connected love and the principle of abiding – God abiding in people and them abiding in Him (4:12-17; cf. 2:4-6, 24-28, 3:6-9). John began this passage with an interesting statement: “No one has beheld God at any time” (4:12a). He made this claim, even while insisting elsewhere in his writings that one sees God (the Father) when one sees the incarnate Son (ref. John 1:1, 14, 12:45, 14:5-9). Taking John’s statement here alongside its parallel in his gospel account (John 1:18), it seems he was referring to God in His essential being. If so, his point was that God’s inner essence has always remained hidden from human observation (cf. 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:13-16). - In Jesus, “all of the fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9) so that He is the true image of God – the “express image of His person and substance” (Hebrews 1:3). This is why John (and Jesus Himself) could insist that seeing the Son is seeing God the Father. - At the same time, God in His essential substance is transcendent spirit (John 4:24) and, as such, cannot be observed or discerned by sensory observation. But John wasn’t simply making a theological point about God’s essential being; he was arguing that the God who is immaterial spirit is nevertheless available to human perception. Taking the two assertions of verse 12 together, John seems to suggest that human beings come to know God as He is in Himself when they love one another. This is a profound claim that requires careful unpacking in order to make sense. The fundamental premise underlying John’s claim is the fact that a person’s love for another has its basis in his union with the living God. People love because they abide in the God who is love; their love is His love expressing itself in and through them. The implication, then, is that the person who loves manifests the truth of the God who is love – not just the truth of His works, but the truth of His person. In this way, the unobserved God is made observable to human beings. “On the one hand, no one has ever seen God; on the other hand, God indwells those who love one another… In some way, loving one another must replace seeing God in His essential being. Although God cannot be seen in His essence, since He is love, He can be seen indirectly in His people when they love one another.” (Burdick)
John assumes that all Christians – all true children of God – love because they have their life (they “abide”) in the God who is love. But this implies that those who fail to love do not abide in Him: “If we love one another, God abides in us.” John obviously recognized that no Christian loves perfectly, for “it hasn’t yet appeared what we shall be” (3:2). At the same time, it’s impossible that a person could share in God’s nature and be devoid of love, for God is love. This is why John viewed love for the brethren as a sure test of whether a person is a Christian – whether God abides in him. It is also why he could assert that all who love their brothers and sisters in Christ have God’s love “perfected in them.” This statement is profound, but also puzzling: - In what sense can God’s love be perfected? If He is perfect – and He is, then His love must also be perfect, especially since love characterizes God’s being. - Or, was John referring to the way God’s love expresses itself in Christian love? If so, how could he state that this love has already been perfected? Nothing is more evident than that no Christian loves perfectly. The starting point in discerning John’s meaning is recognizing that perfection here has to do with completion or full realization – i.e., a thing, condition or circumstance attaining its fullness or intended goal. John was saying that God’s love has been perfected in His children, not in the sense that His love has become something it wasn’t before, or that Christians love perfectly without any flaw or failure. Rather, His love has been perfected in them in the sense that it has achieved its eternal goal: God’s love has brought into existence true image-sons who are characterized by love, just as He is. Yes, their love presently falls short, but it is actual and true in its substance, because it is His love in them as partakers in His divine nature. Either the children’s love is actual and true, or they don’t love at all. And if their “love” isn’t truly love, then they are not genuine children who abide in Him and Him in them.
“The fact that the Word was with God already before creation implies a God who is outward-looking, for a word needs an audience. This God is who He is when He is speaking and acting [hence the Logos was God], and He is love when He is loving. His love is not perfectly what it should be [that is, it does not fulfill the truth of itself] until it begets children in His image who themselves love. In John 17:23, Jesus prays to his Father for those who believe in him, ‘that they may be brought to perfection as one; thus the world may come to know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me.’” (Raymond Brown) Though God’s essential being can’t be observed by men, they are able to see Him as He is when they see His children love one another. This is because their love is God’s love, and they manifest this love because they share in Him; they abide in Him, even as He abides in them. Moreover, this abiding is the spiritual union of a person’s being and the being of God. It is a union wrought by and mediated through the Spirit of God; that is, it is in and through His Spirit that God achieves His intended “I in you and you in Me” relationship with human beings (4:13; cf. John 14:16-20, 17:20-23; Romans 8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19; Ephesians 2:17-22; etc.).
Leading into this passage, John set out a two-fold commandment by which Christians show themselves obedient and affirm the genuineness of their profession. The first pertains to their faith and the second to their love: They must embrace and attest Jesus the Messiah as He truly is, and they must love their brethren (3:23). In putting this before his readers, John was only reiterating what Jesus Himself had commanded (John 15:1-16:15). And at the center of this double commandment – both as Jesus issued it and John later reasserted it – is the person and work of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who enlightens and informs a person’s knowledge of Jesus (4:1-3, 5:1-7; cf. also John 15:26-16:15), and it is the Spirit who animates his love. Most importantly, He does so by uniting the person with God’s life, nature and mind by joining him with the resurrected Messiah; in John’s words here, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (4:13). The Spirit attests the union of Father and children, bearing witness with the Christian’s spirit (Romans 8:14-17) that he abides in God and God in him. This work of the Spirit begins with the new birth and continues on with His transforming, indwelling presence (2 Corinthians 3:18). Most English versions translate John’s language with the phrase “given us of His Spirit” (cf. 3:24), which suggests to some that he had in mind a partial endowment of the Spirit, compared with Jesus’ full endowment (ref. John 3:34). Others believe John’s expression should be rendered, “from His Spirit,” arguing that he was referring to the Spirit’s gifts to the Father’s children. But John was addressing the Spirit as the source of spiritual knowledge (note vv. 14-16, cf. again 4:1-6), suggesting that his statement has this sense: We know that we abide in Him and He in us by this – He has given us this knowledge from His Spirit. John’s point was not that the presence of the Spirit as such proves this mutual abiding, but that the Spirit causes those He indwells to discern this union/communion. Again, John emphasized the Christian’s two-fold obligation of faith and love, and he connected the fulfillment of this obligation with the Spirit’s presence and work. The Spirit conveys the true knowledge of the Messiah to men – in the first instance, to Jesus’ disciples, and then to all of the Father’s children. Both seem to be in view with John’s pronoun: “We have beheld and bear witness….” The Spirit imparts the knowledge of Jesus as “Savior of the world,” but as He is the Son of God (4:14-15). Here, and together with his parallel statements, it’s clear that John was using the phrase, Son of God, to denote the sent Son – the incarnate Son who is God’s propitiation; the Son who took up the world’s brokenness in Himself as the enfleshed Word in order to reconcile all things to God and finally “sum them up” in Himself. This is what it means to discern, confess, and testify that Jesus is Savior. And the one who knows Jesus in this way has God abiding in Him and him in God (4:15), for this knowledge is imparted by the indwelling Spirit (4:2). And those who’ve come to know Jesus in truth as children abiding in God and God in them have also come to know God’s love – the love of Father, Son and Spirit. They know this love because they know the God who is love; they know His love experientially in its nature, design, work and power, for it has been fully realized (perfected) in them as they have become children of love in the Son by the Spirit (4:16).
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 17:00:00 GMT -5
e. Christians have been perfected in love in the sense that God’s love has attained its eternal goal in them. His love has created a new human community of true children through the life and work of the incarnate Son, made effectual by His Spirit. The perfecting of the divine love is thus evident in sons and daughters defined by love just as God Himself is. These children share God’s life and nature through union with the Son through the renewing Spirit, and so also His heart and purpose for His creation; “as He is, so also are we in this world” (4:17). God is love, so that the church that dwells in love, dwells in God and God in it. By making the church the dwelling place of the Father and the Son, the Spirit makes the church participate in the concrete embodiment of the love of God in the incarnate Son. It is in that indwelling and love that the church has its essential life. Love in the church is precisely its participation in the humanity of Jesus Christ, for he is the love of God poured out for mankind. In him the church is rooted and grounded in love, and in him it becomes itself a communion of love through which the life of God flows out in love toward every human being. As He is, so we are in this world.” (Torrance) This understanding of the divine work of love and the Christian’s relationship to it underlies John’s assertion in v. 18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.” The reason this background is important is that people often treat John’s statement narrowly and in isolation, which tends to leave them focusing on the issue of fear and how it relates to the Christian’s life and relationship with God. This type of approach becomes especially troublesome when John’s words are compared with other scriptural instruction that makes the fear of God foundational and even essential to a right relationship with Him (cf. Deuteronomy 6:1-15; Psalm 19:9; Proverbs 1:7, 9:10; Isaiah 11:1-4; Acts 9:31; Romans 3:9-18; 2 Corinthians 5:1-11; 1 Peter 1:14-17, 2:17; etc.). From this perspective, it seems that John is contradicting Paul and Peter, not to mention God Himself, as He instructed the sons of Israel concerning their relationship with Him. But treated in context, no such contradiction exists, for John wasn’t speaking of the “fear of the Lord” in the sense of the above citations, but the fear that exists in the absence of love and that is antithetical to love. This is clear from John’s initial assertion: There is no fear in love. John stated this in absolute terms, and then went further. Not only is fear antithetical to love, love that is perfect – i.e., pure, complete and whole as it is in God Himself – actually drives out all fear. Love will not abide fear; to the contrary it triumphs over it so as to utterly dispel it. Love and fear cannot coexist, and the reason is that fear arises from a certain relational dynamic: “Fear involves punishment.” Fear is grounded in and reflects estrangement, and so is the essential quality of man’s natural (fallen) relationship with God (note Genesis 3:6-10). In their natural state, all people exist in a state of fear and hiding, seeking to avoid the true God and the truth of their alienation from Him and its consequence in death and judgment (ref. Hebrews 2:14-15).
John here expressed the relationship between fear and punishment in an unusual way. Literally, he wrote that fear has punishment, which has been interpreted as fear involving, including or bringing punishment, or even fear as itself punishment. Since the context suggests that this punishment is associated with the future day of judgment (v. 17), many believe John’s point was that fear concerns punishment in the sense that it anticipates it. This fear, then, contrasts the confidence (assurance) that marks those in whom God’s love has been perfected. Almost certainly John had future judgment in view in verse 18, but his language suggests that he was making a more profound point. - Yes, the specter of future punishment in a coming day of judgment can (and does) provoke fear, but, again, John stated that fear has punishment, indicating that fear itself somehow possesses or embodies punishment. - It seems then, that John was highlighting the truth that fear – whatever provokes it – is its own punishment; it is an enslaving and debilitating power that works toward the destruction of the person subject to it. And so, while the fear John referred to certainly anticipates a future day of reckoning, it involves a very real aspect of punishment in the present. Fear shackles, oppresses and destroys its subject, and so is antithetical to the freedom, wholeness and well-being that belong to the children begotten of God’s love (John 8:31-36; Romans 8:14-17, 20-21; Galatians 5:1; Hebrews 2:14-15). In John’s words, “the one who fears has not been perfected in love.”
f. God’s love triumphs over fear, but it does so as it reproduces itself in those it rescues. Because human fear is grounded in alienation from God, reconciliation with Him vanquishes it. But because reconciliation has its goal in sonship, the end of fear means the beginning of a life characterized by love. God’s design wasn’t simply to end the alienation and enmity between Himself and His image-bearers, but to see them attain the destiny for which He created them. The goal of atonement and reconciliation is a sonship in which human beings are image children in truth – children who share their Father’s life and nature. This is why fear and love cannot coexist: The latter dispels the former, even as it dispels the form of human existence that engenders fear. By divine design, love’s work goes beyond addressing fear and its enslaving power. Love vanquishes fear by producing sons, and sons are defined by love, even as their Father is: So John’s climactic statement: “We love, because He first loved us” (4:19).
g. And because God’s love produces children who share in His loving nature, it is impossible that they should not be characterized by love, anymore than God Himself should fail to love. First and foremost, the children love their Father. And they do so, not simply as their rightful response to His love, but intrinsically, as sons in the Son; they love the Father as image-children sharing in the life and likeness of the Son who is one with the Father in nature, heart, mind and purpose.
And this relationship with the Father explains why it’s impossible to truly love Him and not love other Christians: whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him (5:1b). Christians are children who share the Father’s life and nature; how, then, can such a one love Him and not love those in Him? The failure of love among Christians has always been a problem, but John likely had in mind the lovelessness of the Gnostic “Christians” who were hating the Father’s children by leading them away from Him, even while claiming to know and love Him. This is supported by John’s explanation that one cannot love God whom he cannot see and not love his brother whom he does see (4:20). Inherent in Gnostic spirit/flesh dualism is the doctrine that deity is immaterial and cannot take any material form (hence the Docetic and Cerinthian conceptions of Jesus as the Christ). For a Gnostic, it’s absurd to speak of seeing God. On the other hand, people are material beings that are seen, and so must be distinguished from deity. Gnostic dualism imposes an absolute distinction between God and His human creatures, and this pertains to love as well: It is necessary (as well as proper) to love God in a way that one doesn’t love other human beings. But John didn’t make any such distinction; he recognized that love is one. A reader will search in vain for anything in John’s writings that suggests that he acknowledged the existence of different species of love. There is love as it is true in God and there is the absence of love (which John termed hatred – 4:20a). Those who love, love with the one and same love, whether it’s directed toward God or human beings. And so there are two bases for John’s assertion in 4:20: - The first is the nature of Christian existence – the fact that Christians share mutually in God’s life and nature. When one sees his Christian brother or sister, he is seeing the image of God Himself. How then, can He love God and not his brethren? How can he love the God he’s never seen and not love those who tangibly manifest that God? - The second is the nature of love itself – the fact that love is one. In a crucial sense, a person either loves or he doesn’t; either love is true of him or it isn’t. This doesn’t deny that people love imperfectly and inconsistently, but no one can be defined by love and hate at the same time. All who are born of God are defined by love just as He is (4:7-8).
h. Both of these considerations underlie John’s claim that it’s by loving God and obeying Him that a person knows that he loves God’s children (5:2). Obedience is simply the obligation of love – first and foremost, love for God. And love for God will express itself in love for His children. In the end, the commandment to love is simply the obligation of authenticity that God rightly imposes on His children (4:21). Just as He is who He is, so it is to be with them. And when the children live out the love that is intrinsic to their sonship, they show themselves to be true brethren of Jesus – brethren who, like Him, can affirm that seeing them is seeing the Father. Thus obedience is love (5:3) and love is obedience (3:21-24).
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2023 17:02:59 GMT -5
6. Finally, John concluded his treatment of the children’s likeness to the Father by considering their relationship with the world (5:4-12). The heart of his argument is that the children’s participation in the Father’s life has set them in a new relation to the human realm that exists outside of His life. They have passed out of death into life and are now children of light in the “present darkness”; they are of their heavenly father, while the rest of mankind are children of the world ruler (3:7-10, 5:19; cf. also Ephesians 2:1-3). And because they share their Father’s life and nature by sharing in the life of His incarnate Son, they embody His mind, heart, will and work among men; as He is, so are they in the world (4:17; cf. John 15:18-16:15; 2 Corinthians 2:14-17). The children – when they live out their identity authentically – experience the response from the world that the singular Son received: those who embraced Him and His words embrace them and theirs; those who refused and hated Him refuse and hate them (4:5-6).
a. This dynamic, then, is the context for interpreting John’s assertion that Christians have overcome the world: “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world – our faith” (5:4). Treated in isolation, one might conclude that John was promising and promoting a kind of Christian triumphalism – a “victorious life” in which God’s children effectively live above the fray, experiencing divine deliverance from earthly troubles and trials. Though trouble or affliction may come against them, it is, at worst, a temporary disruption of the blessing that God intends for all of His sons and daughters. One need only believe and trust God for His deliverance, and it will come in due time; didn’t John say that our faith is the victory by which we overcome the world? This sort of interpretation is instinctive, for human beings naturally devise religion (in whatever form) as a scheme of magic by which divine forces are engaged and made amenable to desired outcomes. Humans approach the divine as their servant, and religion serves this ministration. And so it’s perfectly natural that people would find in John’s words the promise of personal triumph in this world. But this sort of understanding not only ignores the wider context, it rests upon a flawed, self-referential definition of John’s terms and ideas. The first thing to note about John’s statement is that he assigned this victory to everything that God has begotten. This is reflected in the KJV and certain other English versions: “Whatever is begotten of God overcomes the world.” John used a neuter gender adjective when a masculine one (“everyone”) would be expected (cf. 5:1, 18), and this points to several possible meanings:
1) The first is that John used the neuter gender to highlight the generic nature of his claim. That is, he wasn’t specifying a particular sort or group of individuals, but was including every person who meets his criteria for victory over the world (cf. the neuter in 1:1a; also John 6:37, 39, 17:2, 24).
2) The second option is that John was indicating the creation-wide extent of this victory; it isn’t just humans who triumph over the world, but the entire creation. All things are “begotten of God” as being reconciled to Him. 102
3) Some commentators have suggested a third option, which is that John used the neuter adjective to highlight that this victory doesn’t belong to the person per se, but to the renewal (new birth) that God effects in him. So Plummer: “It is not the man, but his new birth from God which conquers.” While it’s difficult to be certain which view is correct, the third one fits well with both John’s language and the context. - Again, John’s statement literally reads, “everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world.” Yet he just previously used the masculine adjective (everyone) in 5:1 and would do so again in verse 18. This suggests that his use of the neuter here was intentional and not arbitrary. - With respect to the context, this statement explains the preceding assertion that God’s commandments aren’t “heavy” (v. 3). John seems, then, to be emphasizing that the new birth is the reason that obedience (keeping God’s commandments) isn’t burdensome; Christians are able and equipped to meet the obligations of love (and faith) precisely because they are sons who partake in the life and nature of the God who is love. Assuming this meaning, then, John was indeed referring to human beings and not the entire creation (note vv. 4b-5). At the same time, he had in mind their state as begotten children and not merely their human identity. In other words, the victory he spoke of is the property of the new creation, and not human beings as such; the children have triumphed precisely because they are begotten of the Father. But this points to the question of what John meant by saying that God’s children have “overcome the world.” What does the term world denote, and in what sense do Christians enjoy victory over it? Probably the most common view is that John was referring to the “world” as the realm of evil – the realm of human existence defined by the rule of the “evil one” (5:19; cf. also 2:15-17, 3:1, 4:4-5). Others interpret the term more broadly as referring to the earthly creation that Jesus entered, redeemed and reconciled (cf. 2:2, 4:1-3, 9, 14, 17; also John 3:16-17). In the end, John likely had both meanings in view. For while it is clearly true that God has delivered His children from the subjugating power of the world ruler (cf. John 12:31-32 with Ephesians 2:1-6; Colossians 1:13-14; Hebrews 2:14-15), He has done so by making them children of His kingdom and rule; their triumph is grounded in new creation. And so, their victory doesn’t pertain merely to the devil and his power, but to the “old creation” – the created order under the curse. This understanding, then, illumines the sense in which Christians are overcomers. The most appealing understanding is that God has granted His children victory over the principles and forces of this fallen world. This premise underlies the “prosperity gospel” with its promise of physical and material well-being. Because Jesus’ atonement extends to the created order, the claim is that His work of healing and wholeness ensures health and wealth for all who will lay hold of it.
Other Christians don’t go that far, but still argue that their victory over the world promises their deliverance from the satanic power and its human minions (4:4). This idea has broad scriptural support (ref. Psalm 18, 91, 121; Luke 10:17-19; Romans 16:20; Ephesians 6:11-13; etc.), so that the problem isn’t with the concept as such, but how it is understood. The Scripture everywhere promises the triumph of God’s children over the world powers, but not in a way that bypasses, eliminates or reduces suffering under those powers. Quite the opposite, the nature of the children’s triumph insures that their hardship and suffering in the world will exceed that of unbelievers. For their victory is the victory of new creation in Jesus, and this triumph sets them at odds with the present world order in a way that other people can’t experience. The Father’s children are brethren of the Son, and relate to the fallen world in the same way He did. So also the world relates to them the way it related to Him (cf. 4:17 with John 15:18-21, 15:26-16:11). The children’s triumph ensures and exacerbates their suffering, but it also exists in the midst of that suffering. This is a critical truth that many Christians overlook, but John highlighted it by insisting that the children’s triumph exists as a present, settled reality; they have overcome the world (5:4). John didn’t say this because he’d experienced a Christian community free from adversity, persecution and suffering. He himself had suffered greatly and would continue to do so until the time of his death. So it was with Paul, who also spoke frequently of the children’s victory over the world powers, though he was well acquainted with suffering at the hands of those powers. Indeed, many of his glorious, unequivocal affirmations of triumph were made from a prison cell (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon were all penned in prison), which shows that he didn’t regard victory in Christ the way so many do today. The man who proclaimed his complete triumph over the world as one seated in the heavenly places with the enthroned Messiah did so within the unspeakable filth and degradation of a Roman prison. And so the “overcoming” the apostles celebrated was realized in and through the most profound suffering. And how could it be otherwise, since they were appointed to share in the triumph of the Messiah Himself? Jesus’ victory over the world and its powers was achieved through His willing and loving submission to their hatred and fury. In the greatest possible irony, the absolute, everlasting triumph of the King of kings was bound up in His self-subjection to the abject humiliation and crushing agony and death of Calvary’s cross. Jesus overcame the world in that way, and it is His victory that the Father’s other children share in. How is it, then, that any Christian could claim – much less actually believe – that John had in mind a triumph that renders impotent “the world forces of this darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly realm” (ref. Ephesians 6:12)? John, as Paul and the other apostles, recognized that God’s children have overcome the serpent and his minions, but as not loving their lives even to the point of death (Revelation 12:10-12). The triumph promised to the saints isn’t deliverance from persecution, affliction and suffering, but triumph in and through them (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:1-2:14, 4:1-12; Galatians 6:14-17; Philippians 1:1-2:18, 3:1-11; 2 Timothy 3:10-12, 4:1-18; 1 Peter 4:1-19; etc).
But if the world powers continue to oppress, afflict and even slay the Father’s children, in what sense have they overcome the world? One day they will be free of its onslaught, but in the present life they are entirely subject to it. John provided a hint at the answer by insisting that the children’s faith is their victory over the world. This statement, too, is easily misunderstood when viewed through the lens of natural human religion. Again, religion is magic; its purpose is to facilitate interaction with the divine and achieve favorable outcomes for the worshipper. Viewed from this perspective, John’s statement could seem to imply that faith is a kind of talisman by which a person can be delivered from difficulty in this world. In fact, this is precisely how many professing Christians understand faith and its role in the Christian life. The so-called “word of faith” movement is an excellent case in point. Its adherents argue that faith is a force and words are the container that carries that force. Hence words spoken in faith have the power to prevail with God; the “word of faith” uttered with firm conviction speaks into existence that which it articulates. Needless to say, this way of thinking reflects a perverse conception of faith and what it means that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the authentication of what is not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is not a spiritual force that brings things into existence by compelling God to act. Indeed, faith doesn’t even direct itself to what God has promised, but rather to the God who gave the promise; faith has God Himself as its object, not things, circumstances or outcomes. Faith is the spiritual faculty by which a human being can know God in truth and hold fast to Him in confident, trusting devotion. Thus faith (faithfulness) is the essence of a right relationship with God; it concerns who and how a person is in relation to God, not what God can or should do. God Himself is the reward which faith grants (Hebrews 11:6).
b. This is why faith is centered in the person of Jesus the Messiah (5:5); He is the full, embodied truth of the living God. Faith in God – i.e., a true knowledge of God and true relationship with Him – is thus faith in Jesus. God is known in Him, and it is in Him that God and human beings are intimately related. But, because faith is relationship according to the truth, faith in Jesus means knowing and embracing Him as He actually is. This has been a central theme in this epistle (cf. 1:1-7 with 2:7-8, 18-27, 3:23-24, 4:1-3, 13-15, 5:1), and here John reiterated that faith in Jesus involves embracing Him as the Son of God. But this means more than acknowledging Jesus’ deity. John has already emphasized that a true knowledge of the God who is love entails knowing Him as love embodied and effectual – knowing Him in the person and work of Jesus; knowing Him in terms of incarnation and propitiation (4:8-10). Here he reiterated that same pattern, associating faith in Jesus with knowing Him as the messianic Son who “came in water and in blood” (5:6). This expression will be addressed shortly, but the heart of John’s point is that faith as “victory over the world” is faith in Jesus the Messiah. It is the victory of sharing in Jesus’ triumph – sharing in His suffering, death and resurrection. And so it isn’t a triumph that removes life’s suffering, but one that christifies it (2 Corinthians 4; Philippians 3).
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