1 John

 What's going on in 1 John?

(Some context for Sunday's reading)

In a situation of false teaching, the Apostle wants to distinguish between true and false Christianity. How can we have assurance about the genuine gospel and the church it produces?

We could sum up John's tests like this:

(1) Belief / Doctrine/ The Gospel – especially about the incarnation and the cross of Jesus the Christ. The true faith.

(2) Behaviour / Obedience / Gospel transformation / faithfulness

(2a) Holiness: not a sinless perfection but also not deliberately continuing in sin but repenting and seeking to change, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. A faith which is not theory but is put in to practice in a different way of life. True Christianity is very different from the world.

(2b) Love: They demonstrate they are true believers by their love for other believers shown in practical fellowship and action.

(A doctrinal test, a moral test and a social test)

If genuine believers find themselves failing these tests, however, we will have misused the letter. John wants us to have reassurance in Jesus, not a crisis of faith because (1), well, are we really sound enough, do we really understand this or that and (2) well, our sin is a big problem and we don't really love enough or well enough. Jesus and the apostolic message about him really are sufficient to deal with our sin. And Jesus' love comes first and covers our failures to love. John wants his readers to be proved true and to prove true, not to be worried or anxious nor to look outside of Jesus for some kind of false assurance.

Of course you can't really separate these things out. We are to stick with Jesus. We have all we need in him. So-called apparent super-spirituality that offers some secret key is often worldliness.