EschaJohn

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Going through the rest of the letter, reading it through about three times, I encountered some difficulties.  Today, I got myself a new Bible with the specific intention of using variously colored highlighters on it to help me organize my thoughts.  When I did, and when I began paying attention to themes, things began sticking out, and I haven't resolved them yet in my own mind.  At least, not with regards to the first letter of John as it stands on its own.

You see, everyone can quote the part about how God is Light, and that there is no darkness in Him at all, and they will get carried away by the poetry.  Then, out of context, I suppose these verses can mean whatever we want them to mean, because the imagery is so prototypical and flexible enough.

Then we love to quote 1 John 1:8-10

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

This is convenient for us, because it follows through with our presupposition that Grace precedes everything, that many of the moral imperatives of the Bible serve to prove our guilt before God and our reliance on Christ's forgiveness.  I also suppose that it helps a lot all of this confidence in Christ comes right at the very beginning of the letter, proving its primacy.

This can still be questioned, though.  I would assume that this sin is perpetual, and exists even now in the hearts of the sanctified Christians John writes to.  After all, he writes about this sin in the present tense.  Other people interpret this as to mean that we are liars if we claim to be without a record of sins.  Verse ten seems to reinforce this.  Perhaps a good way of answering this is by looking at the rest of the Bible.

What does it say about faith that the Apostles critically explore their own sinfulness and shortcomings in the gospels, but mention no explicit shortcomings in Acts, after they received the Holy Spirit? Did Luke just assume that their continued hiccups went without saying? Then beyond that, beyond just merely looking at history, what does our experience with everyday life tell us?  Have we ever seen a Christian who outright stopped sinning altogether upon conversion?

So again, I'm inclined to believe that these verses intend to point to our inherent sinfulness which exists in our past, present, and future.  It's a somewhat reckless conclusion, but over time it's what I've come to believe because of various factors.

Even so, when I try to interpret the rest of the letter in light of this confessions of guilt, the second chapter frustrates me.

Because although John said earlier that he was writing to reaffirm that Jesus was the Word made Flesh, and that he wanted only fellowship and to make his joy complete, he apparently changes his mind.  No, he's not writing about that; he's writing to stop people from sinning!

What does that mean?  I mean, sin can be fairly vaguely defined sometimes.  God could be referring to Original Sin, or sinful behavior, or a particular sin, or hamartia - the sin of falling short of perfection.  What I usually assumed he meant, what I always would have liked him to mean, was the sin of approaching God outside of Christ's atonement, of "following" the Law instead of clinging to Grace.  At one point in the Gospel of John, he defined righteousness and sin this way:

8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

Sin is the disbelief in Christ, the denial of what He accomplished and what His mission was.  One simply cannot approach the Father accept through the Son, and to do otherwise is sin.  And that language, recounted by the same author of this letter, also says that all judgment for our sins rested on Jesus' shoulders.

John's attitude, then, appears to be consistent with his experiences listening to Christ, because he instructs the church with something similar:

But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

So righteousness is having Jesus as your representative before God, right?

Well, I assumed that, too, and then pulled out my Orange Highlighter of Righteousness by Law to highlight the next four verses, because John then goes on to say that we approach God by following His commands (2:3-4).  He also says that we have to obey His word, and our love will be perfect (2:5).  How perfect?  We have to live just as Christ did (2:6).

This is ridiculous, an impossibility.  How can I possibly live as Christ did?  And did he just revoke his statement about approaching God through the Son?  Now, I have heard it said that Grace is Jesus and Jesus is the Law, so therefore salvation is through the Law and we approach God through the Law.  Problem: that person, with all his conviction for the Law, was one of the most evil people I have ever met.

John also doesn't seem to imply that Grace generates good works even when they aren't required, because his wording here states that they are required.  Surely, he's just saying that faith without works is dead, right?  That faith generates these works, which are incidental and a result of us being transformed?  How do we work our way around this?

Well, among other things, I do wonder what he means by people who "obey the word."  What is the "word?"  It can have several definitions.  I really wish he had been more explicit here, and I get frustrated that he doesn't clarify.  He is, after all, writing this letter in response to adversaries who threatened the faith.  You would think that he would want to make it perfectly clear where he stood on the issue with every single sentence he wrote.

Maybe he does clear things up.  Just as he opened with a proclamation of atonement, be proposes something new.  Because what he says about these commandments, he says is an old commandment.  He certainly never revokes it, but he apparently has something important to add.

8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

What exactly does he mean when he says that it is "seen in him and in you"?  Does it support our common refrain that we are in Christ, represented by His substitution?  Does it mean that because of Christ's sacrifice, we no longer have to make sacrifices of our own?  That redemption exists here and now, completely free?

Yet, John frustrated me.  A lot.  Because he goes on to command love, love, and more love.  This is all beautiful.  If you looked at this and held it next to the Quran, you would notice a markedly different theme.  The word "love" appears exponentially more often in the New Testament than the Quran, a sure sign of maturity.  That can be very inspirational.

Still, John says that anyone who doesn't love — and love with the same authenticity that Christ did — is in the darkness.  This is an absolute statement about one's position in God.  And it also seems to be referring to our visible actions and deeds, not the love that God sees in us because of Christ.

Or maybe we love, just a little, like the moon reflects the light of the sun.  God looks at that light and says "That is the light of the sun/Son!"  Then He counts such a small act of righteousness, a natural fruit of the Spirit, as if it truly was as impressive as Christ's acts of love when He appeared in the flesh.

I don't know for sure.  And once I reread John several times, I knew in my gut that the answers to this require looking elsewhere — at the big picture.

If there's any consolation, he never abandons the principles of God's mercy completely in this book filled with moral imperatives.

12 I am writing to you, dear children,
    because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
13 I am writing to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
    because you have overcome the evil one.

14 I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.

These declarations are absolute.  They are past tense where they need to be past tense, present tense where they need to be present tense, in order to reinforce a position of Grace.

So therefore, when he writes about how those who love the world do not love the Father, I get the feeling that, when everything has been accounted for, he writes in full confidence that the essential s/Spirit of their love is directed toward God.

Now I'm going to wrap things up before ending this entry.  When I pick up again tomorrow, I will start off with the section about the enemies of Christ, but first I have to make some overall observations and lasting impressions that this little bit of 1 John had on me.

The structure I see thus far, with some interpretation, goes something like this: The unchanging order behind the universe became incarnate in the form of a person (1:1).  There is a moral imperative that we follow, and we fall grievously short of that mark in our hamartia (1:5,8).  God does not compromise on that He can accept (1:6).  Now, as it happens, the righteous Christ goes out before us on our behalf so that our sins can be forgiven (1:7,9; 2:2:1-2)(he does not explicitly say "paid for", but I suppose you can't expect him to use every expression of Christianese in one short letter).  Since knowledge of God is a physical reality as well as an intellectual assertion, our works of love prove that we are in Him (2:3).  Our flesh does not know God and still commits sin (2:4).  The old commands couldn't take care of that problem of the flesh, but John has a new command: Hope in what is yet to come (2:7-8).  What good we do now is a reflection of the Kingdom, which will come in its full glory.  When that happens, there will be no darkness in us at all (2:8).

What do you think of that summary?  Is it consistent with the Bible as a whole?  How about this passage?  I understand that there are very valid arguments that I am not representing John's actual thoughts here, both from people who believe in using "the most plain and literal of all possible interpretations of the Bible," and from cynics who believe that the Bible was contradictory to begin with.

Asides from my attempt to synthesize what I just read with what I've come to understand from the rest of the Bible, certain things stood out to me that I didn't bother mentioning while making my way from verse to verse, because they open up narratives of thought autonomous from my main purpose in study.  Nonetheless, the questions they bring up, I believe to be important, and they make for good topics in group conversation, because it takes more than one person to truly comprehend the Bible (you could say it takes a church).

1. When speaking of fellowship (1:7), what exactly is the purpose?  In the most perfect picture, we obey the commandments, but for what?  We obey the commandments in order to have fellowship, and we have fellowship in order to obey the commandments.  This relates to my thoughts in my last entry.  What is the ultimate purpose into which God's plan leads?

2. Jesus died not just for believers, but everyone.  Even the sins of those who don't accept forgiveness are forgiven (2:2).  According to other verses in the Bible, this doesn't mean that the world is universally saved, because people will still die in Hells of their own making.  Does this mean that salvation and forgiveness are two different things?  My thoughts: while we will not receive eternal life unless we ask for it, we are all forgiven in this lifetime, and this could explain why God seems to act impartially in blessing believers and nonbelievers alike.  More importantly, it allows us to forgive others, genuinely, because the price for their sins has already been paid for.  Otherwise, forgiveness of sin is impossible , even for God, unless someone has paid the price for undoing the wrong that was done and returning the relationship to its proper terms.  What do you think?  What are the implications when John says that God forgave everyone?

3. In 1 John 2:8, it says "its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining."  First, I notice the different absolutes attributed to the darkness and the light.  The darkness still exists, but its dominion is less than absolute because it has already started passing away.  One day, it absolutely will no longer shroud us.  The light, alternatively, is currently shining in us and it is true, and I take this to mean that the righteousness that God attributes to us is the absolute be-all and end-all in how He perceives and judges us.  That's our position in us, but furthermore, John suggests that we actually experience this light and that it's more than an abstract, imaginary quality of our character.  Whatever the case, his sentence structure is eschatological, because he's talking about new commands, things that are to come, and an implied completion.  In otherwise, what Paul calls "everything/not yet."  For whatever reason, God is using our current selves, and the present reality of Creation is still upon us.  Only, some of the future has leaked into the present, and we show the image of the people we are to become.

4. In 1 John 2:17, he says "The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."  Again, John reasserts an eschatological context.  Things are changing.  Everything we know is completely real, but it is only the present, not eternity.  The infinite smallness of the present renders it powerless.  The true nature of the universe is to be found in its eternal destiny.  He brings this up to discourage the believers from worshipping the world, but at the same time he validates it, because John wrote this letter in response to enemies of Christ who denied the humanity of Christ and believed, as the Greeks did, that physical reality was inferior to philosophical, spiritual reality.  But more than just that, I believe that this makes for a completely different view on salvation than what we're accustomed to.  Right away, his language is comforting, much like a passage that offers an assurance of salvation.  Yet, he isn't talking about Heaven, but a restored Creation.  He also isn't talking about a restored relationship for an individual, where everything is right again within the confines of that relationship, but a restored relationship for the world, where everything is right, period.  While not necessarily talking about universal salvation, could this possibly be the key to understanding why John emphasizes fellowship in this letter?

Sincerely,
John Hooyer