Only by the precious blood of the Lamb are we saved. His spotless life given in exchange for ours. GOD IS LOVE…No greater love exists!
Let’s give Mark Hack the last word. "Let someone love you the way you are--as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.” SabbathMoments
Draw us forth, God of all creation.
Draw us forward and away from limited certainty
into the immense world of your love.
Give us the capacity to even for a moment
taste the richness of the feast you give us.
Give us the peace to live with uncertainty,
with questions,
with doubts.
Help us to experience the resurrection anew
with open wonder and an increasing ability
to see you in the people of Easter.
Amen. (Author Unknown)
John most likely wrote this letter with two purposes in mind—one pastoral and one polemical. John’s pastoral purpose was to promote fellowship. But for the believers to have true fellowship, they needed to understand the true nature of God. Thus the pastoral purpose naturally leads to the polemical purpose, which was to protect his readers against the deceptive ideas of false teachers. If the believers were deceived by false doctrine, they would eventually lose their unity, which is possible only in the love of Christ. Evidently some deceivers had arisen among the believers. If Christians could sort out truth from falsehood, they would be able to maintain their unity in the faith and have an opportunity to show love to their fellow believers. For John, a person’s behavior was naturally a result of that person’s belief. The NKJV Study Bible
1:3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
1:5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
2:29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
2:26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.
2:18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
2:26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.
3:11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,
The New King James Version
John is writing to address a division in the community of believers. This community might have been located in Ephesus, where the Apostle John resided near the end of his life.
God is light is a common metaphor in the old testament and Jewish literature for God’s perfection God’s light serves as a beacon for the righteous and leads others to Him. Darkness serves as a metaphor for sin, unrighteousness, and wickedness
Those who do wrong by others reveal themselves to not be in right relationship with God. A person’s actions should be the first measure of whether they are in relationship with God.
Those whom God has fathered spiritually (believers in Christ) enjoy a relationship with Him, they have been adopted as God’s children. As Father, God provides His children with guidance through the Spirit. John’s use of this language reflects God’s act of making people one with Him and restoring the image that God intended for humanity in the beginning.
Trying to deceive refers to the antichrists.
John may have inherited this language about the false-messiah from Jesus’ discussion of the end times. Jesus had noted that those who falsely claim authority—as anointed (messianic) leaders—would come.
From the beginning loving one another has always been foundational for faith. Faithlife Study Bible
The primary reason John writes is to provide his readers with an understanding of what they must do to have fellowship with the apostles and God. Fellowship carries both the idea of a positive relationship that people share and participation in a common interest or goal.
God is light by nature, in His essential being, just as He is Spirit and love. Light refers to God’s moral character. God is holy, untouched by any evil or sin.
Since God is righteous, those who practice righteousness will be recognized as being born of God. This verse does not say that everyone who is born of God practices righteousness. Believers can walk in darkness and sin. The point here is that when a child exhibits the nature of his or her father, he or she is perceived as the child of the father.
Love for one another, which here means fellow Christians, proves our spiritual birth and our relationship with God. Born of God recalls Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.
John views the rise of those who deny the truth of Christ from within the Christian community as an indication of the beginning of the end of all things. Antichrists is a combination of two Greek words: anti, meaning “instead of” or “against,” and christos, meaning “anointed one.” Antichrists most likely means those who seek to take the place of Christ. The many antichrists are the false teachers John opposed in this letter. They are reminiscent of the false christs Jesus told the disciples about. They are forerunners of the future Antichrist, also known as the beast in the Book of Revelation, who will exalt himself above God.
Those who try to deceive you refers to false teachers, or antichrists. You indicates that it is possible for believers to be deceived by false teaching.
John identifies loving one another as absolutely basic to living for Christ and advancing His kingdom. The NKJV Study Bible
When believers had confidence towards God, through the Spirit of adoption, and by faith in the great High Priest, they might ask what they would of their reconciled Father. They would receive it, if good for them. And as good-will to men was proclaimed from heaven, so good-will to men, particularly to the brethren, must be in the hearts of those who go to God and heaven. He who thus follows Christ, dwells in Him as his ark, refuge, and rest, and in the Father through him. This union between Christ and the souls of believers, is by the Spirit he has given them. A man may believe that God is gracious before he knows it; yet when faith has laid hold on the promises, it sets reason to work. This Spirit of God works a change; in all true Christians it changes from the power of Satan to the power of God. Consider, believer, how it changes thy heart. Dost not thou long for peace with God? Wouldst thou not forego all the world for it? No profit, pleasure, or preferment shall hinder thee from following Christ. This salvation is built upon Divine testimony, even the Spirit of God. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
2 John 5 And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another.
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