The Book of 1 John: Stay the Love Course Together
A study in five weeks
By Bob Mendelsohn
Given in September and October 2021
LESSON One: God is Light
INTRODUCTION
Thank you, Jimmy, and thanks to each of you who is joining us on this foray into the letter of John’s writing which is labeled 1 John. Americans say “First John” to distinguish it from John chapter 1 in the Gospel of the same author. For those on YouTube, if you haven’t yet read this chapter of the book, please pause your playback, read chapter 1, and then re-join us. Thanks.
Welcome back.
We studied the book of James in the last month as if it were a sermon given by Ya’akov to his flock in Jerusalem. That’s exactly how I see 1 John as well. It’s not really a letter as such to Gaius (compare 3 John) or to the Ephesians (where most of John’s interest seems to lie). But it’s likely a sermon that he gave and gave and gave and someone recorded for him.
I’m titling this series, “Stay the Love Course Together” because there are two major themes I see coming out of this Bible sermon book. One is the confrontation with the false teachings and I guess by implication the false teachers who are rejecting some authorized aspects of the question, “Who is Yeshua?” The other major theme I see in anything John writes is the love of God. The true and real God is known as love, his desire for us as his followers is love from a pure heart and a sincere faith. The course laid out for us by the Messiah is to love one another. Anything less than that, …is less than that.
This John who wrote this book, by the way, is the son of Zebedee, one of the original 12 disciples. Most commentators agree that he wrote this in the 90s of the Common Era. That’s at least two decades after the Temple was destroyed. That helps us understand why there are zero references to sacred Jerusalem and priesthood and no mention of offerings and Levites. It’s post-exilic writing and if you will, the first book of what we might call the Christian Talmud. Remember, Yavneh takes place in 90 CE, when the leading rabbis of the day gathered and tried to sort out what to do as Jews, now that the Temple was destroyed. Without the Temple, we needed a new definition, even a reboot to our religion. Talmud of course, the Jewish interpretation book, really books, of the Older Testament, foist themselves upon history as the authorized interpretation. It’s the answer to the question, “Now what?” after 70 CE. But with this first series of books (along with 2 and 3 John), John is giving us a more authorized view of Judaism, of Yeshua, of the world after the Temple is gone. What does God want from us now?
Those of you who like linear studies, one verse leading to the next verse to the next verse are going to be disappointed with old man John’s writing. He doesn’t write in a linear fashion. As we saw in the study of the Gospel of John, he compiles his writing like a scrapbook. Paul’s analytical style shown most clearly in the book of Romans is significantly different. I like that.
People argue about the Bible a lot as you would know. They say, “How can God be the author when he used ordinary people who wrote in such different styles.” I say that actually adds to the beauty and the magnificence of the Bible. When Patty and I were in Japan we went to the Shinjuku Gardens in Tokyo among other fantastic sites. There the chrysanthemums are the feature, and they abound. Every 50 metres or so is another patch of another color pattern or another size or another mum altogether. But the whole place is abundant with mums. I enjoyed the day, mostly because I was with my wife, but I don’t know about you… I prefer a variety of plants, bushes, trees, flower types altogether. Beauty to me is the different colors, the different shapes and sizes and … You get it.
And some people prefer paintings in the gallery which are all purple or black-and-white or TALL or certain animals or… And that’s just fine, of course. Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder.
What I’m trying to say is that God uses the people who wrote the Bible’s books, all 66 books, and their personality, their language, their understanding, their views of life and compiled them into his autobiography. What we read in the Bible is what God wanted others to say about him.
John’s simplicity and Paul’s erudition combine into part of what I appreciate so much about the beauty of this book.
With that as an introduction, let’s dive into chapter one today.
Prologue (.1-.4)
There are two major overriding themes John will cover, but like I’ve just done in this Bible study series, John starts with a prologue. He started with a prologue in the Gospel of John. And there were some major thoughts in that Gospel’s prologue that he repeats in this entire letter. The theme of light is the first concept he writes about there, and it’s the first he draws on here. God is light. The world is dark. Light shines in the dark. IF light shines in the light, no one would notice. But God shines his light in the darkened world in which John lived and in which we still live.
So what? Why does he write a philosophical term like light vs dark to believers nearby? The point is he’s trying to keep the believers on the right path. He wants us to stay the love course. How will he do that?
Verse one to four, the prologue. “What existed from the beginning…” Like in the Gospel, John starts with Creation. He’s not giving us a new-fangled idea like personal computers or closed-circuit television surveillance; he’s telling us that what he’s telling us has been around a long time. It’s trustworthy. I remember a television advertisement from years ago about the financial advisory company named Smith Barney. They used the tagline, “We make money the old-fashioned way; we earn it.” Old fashioned means still here and still worth your money. Still worth your trust. We existed then; we’re still here. That’s part of the reason some companies say on their logo, “Established 1960” or such. You do know that Jews for Jesus has this plate on any of the buildings we own worldwide: “Jews for Jesus: Established 32 AD, give or take a year.”
John’s appeal is clear. After his appeal to Creation, he appeals to the living witnesses of the life of Jesus. Oh yeah, himself! And four times in three verses he says “I SAW IT ALL!” Verse one, “we have seen”, and again, “looked at with our eyes”, verse two, “we have seen”, verse three “we have seen.” You seriously cannot miss that. The people to trust are the eyewitnesses. I like this and maybe this which I’ll tell you will help you as well.
When my sister and I speak, which is generally weekly, for an hour, we tell stories sometimes with other cousins on our call. It’s a lot of fun, and sometimes we go back a long way telling stories about events from decades ago. But sometimes, those stories have morphed into fanciful tales of falsehood, over time. What I mean is that history tends to get edited when staged in fading memories. That’s why the telling of stories, history, needs to be regularly corroborated. I know that John Kennedy was shot in November 1963. I saw that video played over and over. I read the newspaper the next day. I watched the evening news as they talked about things. The doctors gave reports. The testimony was corroborated and thus validated. That’s the good thing about current history. We can get to the rub; we can know the truth.
John is saying, “I was there. I heard and saw this which I’m going to tell you, for myself. And there might be others around who can corroborate this.” Now here’s a help for you about the accuracy of the Bible. The writers, especially of the Newer Testament, wrote their books quickly in time, and there were many folks around who could have knocked back the data as wrong. Think of the Gospels, all but John’s written before the Temple was destroyed. Plenty of people, even hostile witnesses, could have spoken up and said, “That’s not what happened!” But that didn’t happen. The events were seen and heard; people recorded that history; no one knocked it back. What we have therefore is accurate.
John is saying, “I was there. I saw this. I heard this. I touched him. I ate with him. I saw him die. I ate with him for nearly 6 weeks after he died. I saw him ascend while I watched.” You can trust me!
What’s the point of his telling us this?
That we might “so that you too may have fellowship with us;” The NAB translates that as “so that you may share life with us.” I really like that. “Fellowship” is a great term, if we get it, but so many use it for so many things, we can miss it. Koinonia in Greek means to share life. It’s about community; it’s about love in a congregation and in relationships with others. You cannot have fellowship alone.
I appreciate that some of you are living in a remote place, and what’s glorious since Covid hit us 20 months ago is the capacity we all have to meet together on Zoom, or those watching this lecture on YouTube. In a way, we have fellowship together as a result. And it goes well beyond this moment in time, of course. I’m privileged to know some of you in person for decades and others to meet only this month! The end result, John says, of our sharing, of my sharing in this teaching section, and in the 30 minutes we will share after the lecture part of this class, is that we might share life together.
Yes, there are exceptions and exceptional circumstances, but the ordinary way of God in this transitory world is that we have others with whom to share. And then he tells us that this is not just that we play sport together, or have joined a book club. He is insisting that our shared life is similar to and in fact based on the shared life of the Father and the Son.
What we have is what God has in himself; deep fellowship and shared life. Remember Yeshua said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5.19) And again, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.” (John 6.57)
And the life which we share is defined in verse 1 as the Word of Life. Just like he said in the prologue of the Gospel. The Word was with God and the Word was God.
The life is also in verse 2 as ‘eternal life.’ God’s word is not only information. It’s long-lasting, in fact, it will outlive me, he says, it will outlast the dynasty of the Mings in China or the Bronx Bombers in NY in the 1920s and 1930s. It will outlast the Dragons of St George or anything else that we think will never end. Even the Rolling Stones will one day stop performing. The life of God is eternal. It’s perpetual. It had no beginning and will have no end. Thus it’s true. It’s reliable. It’s trustworthy. John is appealing beyond his own witness. He’s saying that God is true and life and you can count on him. That will build the faith of every hearer, even you and me!
In the Gospel, John uses seeing and hearing as helps toward faith. Paul the apostle picks that up as well in Romans and elsewhere.
What will be the result of our faith and our sharing life? Of taking this on board? He says in verse 4: our joy will be complete. He’s not saying only his and a companion. He’s saying OUR joy, yours and mine and everyone who is sharing this life of God. We will be more complete in our joy, that fruit of the Spirit that grows each time a believer brings God into our conversation and rejoices with others. Have you felt that at times? When you hear a believer share their story, doesn’t it help your joy to grow? When another shares a tough time through which they are traveling, and then you hear them say, “Yet I know that God has been with me the whole time” don’t you internally smile and share that strength with them? That’s what John is meaning here.
Here then is the message: God is light
Verse five: This is it… God is light. Don’t miss this. The first of the two great “HERE IS THE MESSAGE” sentences. It’s like the ‘subject’ line on this original email of the apostle John. God is light.
John says he heard it from him.
John says he told me to tell you.
In other words, the information that follows is from God himself. And it has a purpose, which I will unveil in a short while. It’s light vs darkness. It’s Beowulf. It’s Star Wars. It’s the dark side against the heroes of the tale. In fact, almost every story, whether a fairy tale from Aesop or Grimm, Disney or Spielberg or JK Rowling has this basic plot: Light vs Dark. Who will win? What happens if dark wins? What will I do if I’m wrong… you get it.
So in verse 5, God has no darkness at all. Ya’akov said that in our last series. Chapter 1 of James said that God is the “father of lights in whom there is no shadow of turning (no variation).” That means he is reliable and consistent.
Listen everything in our world today is striving for consistency. We want reliable 5G internet. We want a reliable prime minister or president. We want our car to start when we turn the key, and our kids to turn out the way we set them in their course. If you want reliable, John says, look to God; he’s reliable.
Then the question arises of our lack of faith in the Messiah. After all the Jewish believers to whom John is writing were copping it hard after Yavneh. They were being outed as heretics, MINIM, they were called. And persecution was coming from Rome as well as from the synagogues. John is calling us to continued faith. To eternal life. Don’t replace your faith and love and life with temporary acceptance. He calls that “darkness.”
Verse six says we are not practicing the truth (of the Messiahship of Yeshua) if we walk in that darkness of disregard, the darkness of rejection of King Jesus.
Verse seven, says we can have this shared life, even if we have sinned because we come to God to ask for forgiveness. That’s such an awesome reality. I wonder if you’ve considered that during the last fortnight. The 10 days of awe, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are the time when we Jews ponder sin and atonement, getting right with each other and with God. We chant viddui and al khet. We pray all day hoping, maybe God will hear us and forgive us. And if you had conducted an exit poll yesterday after Ne’ilah asking Jewish people if they felt forgiven, you would have found 99% who had no guarantee that their names were written in the Book of Life. Assurance doesn’t exit there. But if you ask Jewish believers in Yeshua if we are forgiven, we will shout “Hallelujah!” because the blood of Yeshua, God’s Son cleanses us from all sin.” (verse 7)
Verse 8, if we say we don’t sin, we are deceiving ourselves. Of course we did sin and we still sin. The more you know God, the more you know how far short you fall of his standards. John in his typical exaggeration says ‘the truth is not in” those who talk like that. What he is saying is that those who walk away from the forgiveness and love and light that God extends to us in the Messiah.
Verse 9: One of those memorized Bible verses for many of us is verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Our forgiveness is not based on our Ashamnu confessions or the fasting on Yom Kippur. It’s based on two things. 1) The grace of God in his own faithful and righteousness and 2) our confession of our sins. End of story. God has done it. We enter into that by agreeing with him.
Confession doesn’t wake God up to the substance of our failures. He wasn’t ignorant of our sins. Confession means to agree together with him that we have sinned and what he calls sin is sin. We agree. That agreement is our salvation.
If we say we haven’t sinned, we call God a liar, because he has declared his standards and thus our failures, and if we say ‘no’ to that, we are calling him a liar. And thus his word, which is the word of life, is not in us.
What do we learn? That God wants us to have life and to share that life with others. He wants us to stay the course until the end. We can count on his faithfulness because he was there in the beginning and will be to the non-end.
I hope this book will deepen your joy and your pleasure in learning more about the Living God, and that this Shabbat and Sukkot which begins on Monday night, will find you sharing that life with more and more folks, until Yeshua returns.
INVITATION
Dear friends, if you’d like to have the forgiveness and the fellowship about which I spoke, you can do so today. Just now you can pray and find that the God of love extends his life to you in giving you pardon for all your sins. That forgiveness will usher you into the freedoms of knowing the God of love. Isn’t that a wonderful idea?
If you’d like that, please pray and ask God to forgive you your sins and to make you born again.
Then let us know you have done this, won’t you? Write to us (admin@jewsforjesus.org.au) and tell us you have prayed for the first time. We want to send you some literature and welcome you to the family.
And if you have any questions, use that same address, ok?
And join us next week as I continue the new 5-part series from the first letter of John.
Until then, Shabbat shalom.
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Bibliography
To see the whole book in one short graphic and wonderful summary, watch this video:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/1-john-introduction/#overview
Actual text
1John 1:1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we dhave looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the fWord of Life — 2 and athe life was manifested, and we have bseen and ctestify and proclaim to you dthe eternal life, which was ewith the Father and was amanifested to us — 3what we have aseen and bheard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our cfellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 aThese things we write, so that our bjoy may be made complete.
1John 1:5 aThis is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that bGod is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6 aIf we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we blie and cdo not practice the truth; 7 but if we awalk in the Light as bHe Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and cthe blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 aIf we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the btruth is not in us. 9 aIf we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and bto cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 aIf we say that we have not sinned, we bmake Him a liar and cHis word is not in us.
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