(c) There was a third kind of Gnostic belief. True Gnostics regarded themselves as spiritual people in every sense, as having shed all the material things of life and released their spirits from the bondage of matter. Such Gnostics held that they were so spiritual that they were above and beyond sin and had reached spiritual perfection. It is to them that John refers when he speaks of those who deceive themselves by saying that they have no sin (1 John 1:8–10).
Whichever of these three forms Gnostic belief took, its ethical consequences were perilous in the extreme; and it is clear that the last two forms were to be found in the society to which John wrote.
(2) Further, this Gnosticism resulted in an attitude to men and women which inevitably destroyed Christian fellowship. We have seen that Gnostics aimed at the release of the spirit from the prison house of the evil body by means of an elaborate and mysterious knowledge. Clearly, such a knowledge was not for everyone. Ordinary people were too involved in the everyday life and work of the world ever to have time for the study and discipline necessary; and, even if they had had the time, many were intellectually incapable of grasping the involved speculations of Gnostic theosophy and so-called philosophy.
This produced an inevitable result. It divided people into two classes – those who were capable of a really spiritual life, and those who were not. In the ancient world, every individual was thought of as consisting of three parts. There was the sōma, the body, the physical part. There was the psuchē, which is often translated as soul; but we must be careful, because it does not mean what we mean by soul. To the Greeks, the psuchē was the principle of physical life. Everything which had physical life had psuchē. Psuchē was the life principle which human beings shared with all living creatures. Finally, there was the pneuma, the spirit; and it was the spirit which was possessed only by human beings and which made them kin to God.
The aim of Gnosticism was the release of the pneuma from the sōma; but that release could be won only by long and arduous study which only the intellectuals who had time on their hands could ever undertake. The Gnostics, therefore, divided people into two classes – the psuchikoi, who could never advance beyond the principle of physical life and never attain to anything else than what was to all intents and purposes animal living; and the pneumatikoi, who were truly spiritual and truly akin to God.
The result was clear. The Gnostics produced a spiritual aristocracy who looked with contempt and even hatred on lesser mortals. The pneumatikoi regarded the psuchikoi as contemptible, earthbound creatures who could never know what real religion was. The consequence was obviously the annihilation of Christian fellowship. That is why John insists throughout his letter that the true test of Christianity is love for one another. If we really are walking in the light, we have fellowship with one another (1:7). Whoever claims to be in the light and hates a fellow Christian is in fact in darkness (2:9–11). The proof that we have passed from dark to light is that we love each other (3:14–17). The marks of Christianity are belief in Christ and love for one another (3:23). God is love, and whoever does not love does not know God at all (4:7–8). Because God loved us, we ought to love each other; it is when we love each other that God dwells in us (4:10–12). The commandment is that those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also, and those who say they love God and at the same time hate their brothers and sisters are branded as liars (4:20–1). The Gnostics, to put it bluntly, would have said that the mark of true religion is contempt for ordinary men and women; John insists in every chapter that the mark of true religion is love for everyone.
Here, then, is a picture of these Gnostic heretics. They talked of being born of God, of walking in the light, of having no sin, of dwelling in God, of knowing God. These were their catchphrases. They had no intention of destroying the Church and the faith; by their way of thinking, they were going to cleanse the Church of dead wood and make Christianity an intellectually respectable philosophy, fit to stand beside the great systems of the day. But the effect of their teaching was to deny the incarnation, to eliminate the Christian ethic and to make fellowship within the Church impossible. It is little wonder that John seeks, with such fervent pastoral devotion, to defend the churches he loved from such an insidious attack from within. This was a threat far more perilous than any persecution from outside; the very existence of the Christian faith was at stake.
The Message of John
The First Letter of John is a short letter, and we cannot look within it for a systematic exposition of the Christian faith. Nonetheless, it will be of the greatest interest to examine the basic underlying beliefs with which John confronts those threatening to wreck the Christian faith.
The Object of Writing
John’s object in writing is twofold; yet the two aspects are one and the same. He writes that the joy of his people may be completed (1:4), and that they may not sin (2:1). He sees clearly that, however attractive the wrong way may be, it is not in its nature to bring happiness. To bring his people joy and to preserve them from sin are one and the same thing.
The Idea of God
John has two great things to say about God. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all (1:5). God is love, and that made him love us before we loved him, and made him send his Son as a remedy for our sins (4:7–10, 16). John’s conviction is that God is self-revealing and self-giving. He is light, and not darkness; he is love, and not hate.
The Idea of Jesus
Because the main attack of the false teachers was on the person of Christ, this letter, which is concerned to answer them, is specially rich and helpful in what it has to say about him.
(1) Jesus is the one who was from the beginning (1:1, 2:14). When we are confronted with Jesus, we are confronted with the eternal.
(2) Another way of putting this is to say that Jesus is the Son of God, and for John it is essential to be convinced of that (4:15, 5:5). The relationship of Jesus to God is unique, and in him is seen God’s ever-seeking and ever-forgiving heart.
(3) Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah (2:22, 5:1). That again, for him, is an essential article of belief. It may seem that here we come into a region of ideas which is much narrower and, in fact, specifically Jewish. But there is something essential here. To say that Jesus is from the beginning and that he is the Son of God is to preserve his connection with eternity; to say that he is the Messiah is to preserve his connection with history. It is to see his coming as the event towards which God’s plan, working itself out in his chosen people, was moving.
(4) Jesus was most truly and fully human. To deny that Jesus came in the flesh is to be moved by the spirit of antichrist (4:2–3). It is John’s witness that Jesus was so truly human that he himself had known and touched him with his own hands (1:1–3). No writer in the New Testament holds with greater intensity the full reality of the incarnation. Not only did Jesus become a man, he also suffered for men and women. It was by water and blood that he came (5:6); and he laid down his life for us (3:16).
(5) The coming of Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension all combine to deal with human sin. Jesus was without sin (3:5); and human beings are essentially sinners, even though in our arrogance we may claim to be without sin (1:8–10); and yet the sinless one came to take away the sin of sinning humanity (3:5). In regard to our sin, Jesus is two things.
(a) He is our advocate with the Father (2:1). The word is paraklētos. A paraklētos is someone who is called in to help. The word could be used of a physician; it was often used of a witness called in to give evidence in favour of someone on trial, or of a defending lawyer called in to defend someone accused of an offence. Jesus pleads our case with God; he, the sinless one, is the defender of sinning men and women.
(b) But Jesus is more than that. Twice, John calls him the expiation for our sins (2:2, 4:10). When we sin, the relationship which should exist between us and God is broken. An expiatory sacrifice is one which restores that relationship; or, rather, it is a sacrifice through which that relationship