Real Christianity: Background to 1 John

Before we go much further into 1 John it might be helpful to look at the background of this epistle. Tradition (history) tells us that John wrote his epistles, his Gospel and the Book of the Revelation in the last decade of the first century (A.D. 90-99). This most likely made him the last surviving apostle. Thirty or forty years before this, the church saw the great Jewish controversies battled by the apostle Paul. The issues of justification by faith, of the status of Gentile believers, and of meat sacrificed to idols, etc. had all been resolved. By this time the Jewish connection with the church had largely disappeared for two reasons. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed, and the gospel had been taken all over the Roman Empire and won numerous Gentile converts, thus taking root in the Hellenistic world. The growing number of Greek and Roman converts naturally resulted in an ever-increasing Hellenistic influence in the church. As the church had previously been infected by Jewish sentiments in its early years, it now felt the sway of Hellenistic thinking.

Scholars tell us that the more we learn about the first century, the more groups we find who were following mystical (mystery) religions. Just who had been troubling the believers in Ephesus and its environs is hard to say. However, their basic teachings are fairly clear both from historical studies in ancient religions and from John’s writings. The religions appealed basically to those who considered themselves intellectuals. Greeks were proud of their wisdom and considered the gospel “foolishness” (See 1 Cor. 1:22-23). The idea of a “crucified god” was preposterous to them. Therefore, in order to make the gospel more palatable to these erudite heathen, some felt they could “contextualize” the truth and modify certain distasteful notions. Furthermore, certain mystery religions held to the separation of the spiritual from the physical. The spiritual was good and the physical was viewed as evil. Therefore, the true God did not “become flesh,” He only appeared to do so. On top of that, they concluded that what one did in the physical realm really had not effect on the soul, and so they denied the possibility of committing sins with the body. The result was false gods and false lives. Those who adopted these ideas left the church and caused great trouble for those “simple” folk who clung to the teaching of the apostles.

Much of what John wrote was to counteract these pagan influences. Among other things he insists on both the humanity and propitiatory death of Christ, the necessity of obedience to God’s commands, the impossibility of the regenerate believer continuing in sin, and the fact that every believer has true knowledge of God. John refers to those who left the church and teach heresy as “they/them,” and identifies himself with the other apostles as “we/us.” John wants his readers to fellowship with “us,” the apostles, who teach the truth about God and Christ. Therefore he wrote this epistle to expose the falsity of the claims of the departed intellectuals and to strengthen the assurance of those who had Real Christianity.