Epistles of John - Introduction

Introduction - Epistles of John

Th author is generally taken to be John the Apostle, the evidence for this comes from writings by several of the church fathers, inclusing Irenaeua, clement, trtullian and Origen. There are also several rsylistic similarities with John;s gospel.

The first letter may have been a tract circulated around the churches in the Ephesus region, warning against false teachings, and the other two shorter letters warn against false teachers. John is sometimes known as the “apostle of love”, and his letter warns of the importance of demonstrating love in practical ways. At the same time he also stresses the importance of doctrinal purity, so often we put the two in opposition to each other. The Bible does not do this.  One of the false teachings was nascent gnosticism, and was one of the earliest challenges to the gospel. The essence was that the spirit was good and matter was evil. From this flowed five key errors:

•  The human body is evil;

• Salvation is achieved by escape from the body;

• Christ’s true humanity was denied;

• The boidy was to be treated harshly;

• Conversely, it could lead to sexual sinfulness.

2 John was written to give advice on dealing with travelling false teachers. As christians there is a tendency for us to want to be “nice” and non-judgemental. John’s letters demonstrate the naivety of such an approach. The Bible, and John’s letters in particular, have a much more balanced approach.