A Letter to the Family of God

In the last decade of the first century, the apostle John moved to Ephesus to pastor the church founded by Paul. Near the end of his life, John wrote three important parts of the New Testament—first, the Gospel of John (around 90 A.D.), the book of Revelation while he was imprisoned on the island of Patmos, and then, back in Ephesus, he wrote three final letters to the Christian community. He died soon after, around 100 A.D., and was buried in Ephesus.

Ephesus was a fascinating place at the time—a complex Roman world with strong, prevailing attitudes and beliefs from Roman culture. This thinking shapes the message of John’s first letter.

Many followers of Jesus in Ephesus were the children of the first Christians. They had heard the stories of what it was like for their parents when Acts 19 took place in their city. However, the thrill and glory had faded, and the Ephesians had left their “first love.” They also lost their high moral standards. Believers are called saints— ”set apart for God” —but they didn’t want to be different; they wanted to fit in with the world.

In Ephesus, persecution from the outside was not the enemy of Christianity—seduction from the inside was. Christianity was not in danger of being destroyed; it was in danger of being compromised. A popular heresy, Gnosticism, taught Jesus was fully God—but not fully man. Some taught Jesus didn’t have a body—when He walked, He left no footprints. Others taught divinity came upon Jesus at His baptism and left Him at the cross. Since John was one of the last people to have actually known Jesus Christ personally, he was uniquely qualified to combat this false teaching.

John likely recalled when he and his brother James met Jesus. When they were mending nets on the lake, Jesus came by and called them to follow Him. When John says, I want to tell you about Him, he witnessed Jesus’ reality. We saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears and felt with our own hands. We gazed on Him. For three years we “witnessed” eternal life in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1-3). He could say to the Gnostics, I experienced Jesus’s life myself.

So this first letter from John, a devoted pastor, is his letter to the family of God. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ brings us into God’s family and into the fellowship of the Father’s house.

First John helps us grow closer to God and each other (how to “walk in the light”) and restore our relationship with God and others when it’s broken by sin. The goal is to continue to believe in the name of Jesus Christ.

How do we keep believing when faced with cultural pressure? What about when we sin—how do we get back with God? How do we have fellowship with a holy God? How can this gulf be bridged? To get over this seemingly impossible hurdle, John presents three methods. Two of them are man-made and won’t work. The other is God’s method and the only one that will work.

Next: Find out what method of fellowship works.