Series: 1 John
Week: One
Passage: Various
Title: Introductions
Focus: An Overview of 1 John
BIG IDEA: “True Fellowship comes through the Word and of the Lord.”
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK (Go Slow!):
• Explanation: Many Christians are accustomed to light, inspiring devotional material. We often get comfortable in “Our Daily Bread’s” or “15 minutes with God”. There is a stage in the life of an adult where we get comfortable in the “normal” life routines. While these resources and times with God can be good. We often loose the fellowship that we need more than ever.
• Illustration: 1 John is a small portion meal to be enjoyed slowly. The contents of the book are to be enjoyed not quickly consumed. We must chew on the contents with patience.
• Application: If the book is enjoyed slowly and applied in a daily context, the old “quick and easy” Bible study will seem like a one-dollar hamburger after a thirty-dollar filet mignon. Quick hamburgers are good but not on a steady diet.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” –Psalm 1:1-2
BOOK(S) BACKGROUND: John, the author of 1 John, is also the writer of the Gospel account titled “John”, the book of Revelation, and 1, 2, and 3 John. in his three writings John gives us as Christians a full picture of the Christian life.
PURPOSE: 1 John is writing to opposing three popular ways of thinking in his culture and time of His writing.
Thought #1: Heresy of Gnosticism
• Explanation: No other heresy threatened early Christianity more than Gnosticism. Reaching its height in the second century, Gnosticism had its origins at least a century earlier that was based on the Greek philosophers, with a its grounding in the teachings of Plato (420-350 BC). Gnostics had/have a dualistic view of reality, meaning the material world and the immaterial world were totally separate.
o The material (possessions) world is fundamentally evil.
o The immaterial (spiritual) world is fundamentally good.
• Beliefs:
o Creation of Evil: For the Gnostics, it was inconceivable that a good God could have created such an evil, material world.
• Isaiah 45:7 “I create light and darkness. I send good times and bad times. I am the Lord who does these things.”
• God is ultimately sovereign over his world. In accordance with his independent will, he can cause wars to cease and peace to prevail. He can bring disaster and judgment on nations. He is God who response to sin.
o Creation of Universe: They argued that a firework from God created the physical universe (Big Bang).
• Genesis 1 – Seven literal or seven figurative there is still a process to creation.
o Christ in Human Form: and could not believe that Jesus could have had a physical body but merely “appeared” to have a physical body.
• 1 Timothy 3:16 “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
o Knowledge is Salvation: Almost all the teachings of the Gnostics were part of a special body of knowledge that was necessary for salvation. Gnostics said that God informs only a select few. They claimed that their “special knowledge” of salvation came through the disciples to a select group of people. Because the soul alone was good, salvation was purely spiritual. There was no place for the resurrection of the body in Gnosticism.
• The claim to having their source of knowledge in the Apostles is one of the points that John drives home in his opening verses of 1 John. He claims that he (along with the other Apostles and a well known group of believers) has heard, seen, and looked upon, the Christ. His hands have touched the Savior. Then he says that all that he (they) have witnessed he (they) proclaim. He is giving the fullness of his personal knowledge to the rest of the believers that they all may have knowledge of who Jesus is.
NOTE: This is a line of rebuttal to the Gnostics for the next century – Iranaeus makes the same argument in the mid to late 2nd century. He was a disciple of Polycarp who was a direct disciple of John who was a direct disciple of Jesus. The line of authority is everything in this issue. (I know you touch on this in Thought 3, but I think it’s relevant here as well)
• The very heart of Christianity was at stake in every one of their stances!
• Illustration: Think education here. While education is good, when education pushes into person pride that trumps spiritual transformation an error has occurred (Pharisees – “Knowledge puffs up but love edifies” 1 Corinthians 8:1).
• Application: Knowledge and faith stand on equal balance. One does not trump the other. John is writing so that we might “know” the truth. This means he wants us as Christians to establish the Gospel as the only true knowledge.
o You know NOTHING unless you KNOW Christ!
Thought 2: Heresy of Docetism (doh-see-tiz-uhm)
• Explanation: Docetism taught that Jesus only appeared to have a body (not God - Greek, "dokeo" = "to seem"). Again we see a dualistic philosophy in this stance that John wrote against. Docetism had a few key views:
o Matter is Evil: Docets felt that God could not be associated with matter (meaning God being perfect could not suffer so the “word could not have become flesh”.
• Jeremiah 10:16 (repeated in Jer 51:19) - for he is the one who formed all things, and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the Lord of hosts is his name.
• John 1:1,14, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.. "
• To deny God in the flesh meant that Jesus did not truly suffer on the cross and that He did not rise from the dead.
• 1 John 4:2-3. "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world."
• 2 John 7, "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist."
• Acts 20:24-29: Jesus and Thomas – v27 “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
• Illustration: The teachings of Docetism is seen today in the New Age movement and spiritistic Christology.
• Application: Docetism was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Christ is not an illusion. He is God in the flesh. John’s beginning remark is to blow this thought even today. Jesus has been “seen, heard, looked at, and touched”.
o Jesus IS God in human FLESH!
Thought 3: Heresy of Cerinthus (Sir-in-thus)
• Explanation: John’s biggest opponent was a Gnostic heretic named Cerinthus. Cerinthus was leader of a group of Christians who had Gnostic tendencies (opposition of the three points we already discussed above). Cerinthus believed…
o Creation: The world was created not by God
o Jesus: Jesus was an ordinary man, upon whom “the Christ” descended at his baptism. Jesus God like power came at his baptism by John the Baptist and His God like power abandoned Jesus before his crucifixion.
• Illustration: The church father Eusebius (c. 260–340) quotes a story from Irenaeus (who lived in the late second century), who heard it from Polycarp (a disciple of the apostle John). The story says that John heard that Cerinthus had come into an Ephesian bathhouse where he (John) was. John immediately rushed out of the bathhouse shouting, “The building will collapse because the enemy of truth is inside!” Some scholars believe that certain passages in John’s writings may have been directed against Cerinthus (John 1:1–3, 14; 1 John 4:1–3).
• Application: 1 John 1:7 states that the blood of Christ came for the sole reason for us to have fellowship with God.
o Remember: Fellowship starts with a relationship with Jesus. To take any of God’s attributes away from Jesus means that we destroy the Person and Work of Jesus as well as Christianity.
RECIPIENTS: John writes so that all believers (then and now) will not get caught up in these heresies. If the people in biblical times could get caught up in the theories of their day, we run the risk of doing the same. From the little children to the young in the Lord.
PURPOSE: 1 John is a positive book that strives to maintain proper spiritual fellowship with Jesus and each other. While the immediate fellowship is with the Apostles it is ultimately a relationship with the Father (God) and His son (His creation) through Jesus. We must have fellowship with God the Father through Christ in order to have fellowship with one another.
STRUCTURE:
o God is Light (Chapter 1 and 2)
o God is Love (Chapters 3 – 5:5)
o God is Life (Chapter 5:6 to end)
KEY WORDS: FELLOWSHIP. All other words are related to fellowship. Fellowship means…
1. Greek – koinonia (coy – no – nee – ah).
2. Definition: fellowship, share, willing contribution
3. Appears 19 times in NT, 4 times in the first seven verses of 1.
4. John uses the term to describe a living bond that unites Christians together. It begins with the individual united with the Son and the Father (v3b, 6) and extends in a like-manner to all others who submit themselves to the Lord (v3a, 7).
THEME: 1 John is all about showing that the child of God has been brought into fellowship through the new birth and so the believer is to maintain that fellowship in the midst of a world that opposes true fellowship in sin and spirit of anger.
CONCLUSION: “True Fellowship comes through the Word and of the Lord.”
