FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

BIBLE STUDY FOR CHURCH WORKERS / LEADERS

By Ven. Dr. I. U. Ibeme

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PREAMBLE
By the authority of the Lord, the Apostles commanded (1Thess 5:27) that
the Church congregation be continually exposed to God’s Word (Col 4:16)
through:-
1. Bible Reading,
2. Bible Preaching,
3. Bible Teaching (1Tim 4:13).
This demands that Church Ministers must engage in Bible study in order
to have accurate interpretation that stands the test anywhere (2Tim 2:15).
Such study must seek to know the background of every Scripture in its
context in order to comprehend the accurate original meaning of any text
in view. This alone would ensure appropriate application of God’s Word.

As ministers of the Word to the congregation, our study of 1John should

seek to have accurate understanding by finding out
1. The historical circumstances that surrounded its writing.
2. The contextual meaning of its teachings and themes.
3. The exhortatory usefulness and doctrinal content of its message (i.e.
the life application).

Able ministers of the New Testament (2Cor. 3:6) must be well equipped,
through a good knowledge and understanding of the Scripture, and by the
power of the Holy Spirit, to make known the ways of God and how to walk
in them according to the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood.

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

BACKGROUND
Author: Apostle John, the son of Zebedee and brother of James.
Date: Towards the end of the first century AD (80 – 90 AD).
Purpose: Polemic treatise to the Church refuting the empty and deceitful,
philosophical traditions and speculations of GNOSTICISM which was

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creeping into the Church to syncretize with the Christianity (Col 2:8-10),
much like the Church needs to do about New Age movements and their
syncretic theosophy of today (1Tim 4:1-2).

WHO WERE THE GNOSTICS ?

Gnosticism is a bizarre, syncretistic philosophical religion (1Tim 6:20-21;
Col 2:8-10) which began to stealthily creep into the Church (Eph 4:14; Jude
4) in the second half of the first century AD but fully blossomed in the
second and third centuries. It is called GNOSTICISM (from the Greek
GNOSIS=knowledge) because it claimed to possess special knowledge
(gnosis) of some mystery speculations and magical formulations which were
secretly taught or revealed to its initiates.

The Gnostics instead of asking the practical question: “What must I do to be

saved from sin and inherit the Kingdom of God?”, rather set out to ask the
impractical question: “What mystical knowledge or wisdom must I
encounter to enlighten the divine spark in me for escape from the bondage of
material ignorance?”, and “How could the pre-evil order of wisdom and
knowledge be restored?” Gnostics of conflicting sects claimed they had
secret wisdom or knowledge of mysteries (truths and spells) handed down to
them exclusively from Messengers of Light like Patriarch Seth or Prophet
Mani or even Christ and their first followers which one can know by
intuitive experience or by instructive initiation. They sought after the
mysterious wisdom and magical word.

SOURCES OF GNOSTIC PHILOSOPHY

Gnosticism is a syncretic religion and philosophy. Gnosticism is based on
pantheist philosophy that nature is product of hypostatic emanations of
sparks from the infinite impersonal Ideal Fullness i.e. ?God? (INDIAN
pantheism), instead of product of “out-of-nothing” creation by the true God.
They also combine the mythical genealogies of pleroma hierarchy of
minions, archons and aeons (PERSIAN philosophy) and the equality of the
forces of GOOD/spirit and EVIL/matter (SYRO-EGYPTIAN dualism),
expressed in the language of Platonism (GREEK philosophy).

It is important to notice that Gnosticism has again resurged in the guise of

the New Age Movement and New Thought theosophies to remold the
Western culture with their postmodern hippie countercultural worldviews
and New Morality which the modern Church has syncretized into her
relativist revisionist doctrines, and motivational ideologies. The Church of
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today must promptly awaken to detect these deceptions to refute and reject
them.

GNOSTICISM REFUTED IN FIRST JOHN

The Gnostics who came into the Church believed that the Supreme Holy
God of pure light, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not the same as the
Creator God of the 0ld Testament. To the Gnostics the creator God is a
corrupted and lower divinity who is the author of matter and its evil and
darkness.

Cerinthus, a popular Gnostic teacher in Ephesus who joined and then broke
away from John’s congregation (1John 2:18-21), taught that Jesus was
different from Christ. To him Jesus was a phantom not a real human –
DOCETISM, while the Christ was the Aeon of true divine light who came
on Jesus not by birth (“not in the flesh”), but at baptism only (“by water
only”) and left before the crucifixions and death (“not by blood”). For him
Christ was an Aeon and did not come in the flesh because the flesh is matter
and evil. So St. John concluded that teaching that Christ was not divine all
through at birth (FLESH), baptism (WATER and SPIRIT) and death
(BLOOD) amounts to denying His full Divine Sonship. This is a denial of
both the Son Who is the Begotten and the Father Who is the Begetter (1John
2:21-23; 4:2-3; 5:1, 6).

Gnostics taught that sin was not any fault of humans but the limiting and
oppressive force imposed on humans by the Creator God called
DEMIURGE, using the prison of the material and evil body. Humans
therefore are not guilty of any lawlessness. For this reason, the Ten
Commandments and all moral law are rejected by the Gnostics as part of the
evil devices of the Demiurge Creator God. John therefore insists that sin is
lawlessness (John 3:4) and we must accept and keep the commandment if
we are born of God (1John 2:3-4; 5:2-3).

The Gnostics believed their spirit-man were sparks of the divine Light
imprisoned in bodies by the Creator Demiurge. So they claim that since their
flesh did not belong to them, they had no sin but were in the light. But John
pointed out that denying that our flesh and its sins did not belong to us is
self-deceit and a lie. The truth is that Jesus provides the cleansing and made
the propitiation for our sins (1John 1:8 – 2:2).

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To the Gnostics whether you love or hate, be moral or immoral is irrelevant;
what matters is initiation into the secret knowledge of the way of escape
from the Demiurge Creator learned from spirit-guides (i.e. learning from the
serpent of Eden!) to attain realization into the divine pleroma of aeons
through reincarnations and initiations. John insisted that being born of God
goes with love and righteousness (1John 3:10); to live in sin is to belong to
the devil (1John 3:5-9); to indulge in worldliness, immorality and arrogance
is to be in enmity against Christ by Whom everything was created and
illuminated (John 1:1-5; 1John 1:1-3) and to belong to the Antichrist (1John
2:15-18).

Gnostics sought occult initiation or illumination through some form of

altered consciousness or contemplative ecstasy to submit to an ethereal
spirit-guide or an adept spiritist guide that would mediumistically teach one
some occult knowledge to enlighten one till one attains pleroma divinity.
This is being taught in esoteric groups today. So John insisted that we
already have the anointing from God in the form of the Holy Spirit and need
no other spirit to teach us nor need any other occult knowledge than what
has already been taught from the beginning (1John 2:20-27).

CHAPTER SUMMARIES
Chapter 1
The Apostolic witness of John was surer than the Gnostic spurious claims
because it was based on real, daily, open historical contact with Christ. Their
message was the original message and there is no other as claimed by the
Gnostics. The church is meant to be the fellowship of light for the purified
sinners with the Father and the Son.

Chapter 2
Christ has made propitiation for our sins, so we must not sin any longer,
though there is provision to advocate for us if we fall into sin unawares. True
GNOSIS (KNOWLEDGE) is to keep God’s commandments and follow the
examples of Christ. The commandment is to love our brother as Christ
loved, not to love the sinful ways and things of the world. If we hold fast to
the apostolic witness and fellowship we are sure of eternal life, which Christ
has promised and partake of the glory that shall be at his appearing.

Chapter 3

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We are children of God through Christ so we shall be like Him on the last
day. Sin is the practice of lawlessness not an evil in matter. Righteousness is
the practice of God’s commandments not a presumed spiritual spark. Those
born of God are able not to sin because the seed of God remains in them
having passed from death to life and having received the indwelling Spirit
through Christ.

Chapter 4
The test of the Spirit of Truth is based on the Christ that is preached and
believed. The true Christ is He who came, not only in the Spirit and by
water, but also in the flesh and by blood (Ch. 5). Christ’s love was the love
that was unto death and so was propitiatory.

Those who have fellowship with this Christ share in the love that is of God.
The Christ who suffered and died is the true demonstration of God’s love
and so is the motivation to love for all who believe in such Christ.

Chapter 5
Loving the brethren and loving God, who first loved us, is a mandate that
true believers don’t find burdensome. Neither is God faulty nor is God’s
commandment an oppressive regimen of an evil oppressive Demiurge.
Christ overcame the world and the satanic sway over the world. This He did
by taking up the human flesh, dying in the flesh, and rising unto eternal life.
By raising Christ from death unto eternal life, God testified to all that Jesus
is actually the Son of God and truly the Christ.

Due to this stupendous testimony from God, we who believe in Jesus as the
Christ have confidence that God answers us what we ask in Christ’s Name.
As such, we triumph over the world when we are in Christ.

Ven. Dr I. U. Ibeme

Last revised: June 26, 2007

 
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