A Known Christ, an Enacted Commandment, a Truth That Remains

“Little children” is teknia, the diminutive Jesus used at the supper, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you” (John 13:33). “Advocate” is parakletos, one called alongside to plead a case, the title Jesus gave the Spirit as “another Comforter” (John 14:16). “Another” implied Jesus was the first, and here he is.

The Greek Old Testament uses hilasmos for the Day of Atonement itself (Leviticus 25:9) and for a sin offering (Ezekiel 44:27). “He is” is present tense: the advocate pleading the case is himself the atoning provision. “Not for ours only” resembles Caiaphas’ unwitting prophecy that Jesus would die “not for that nation only” (John 11:51–52).

“Hereby” is en touto, “by this”, a formula the letter uses over and over to introduce a test. “We know that we know him” is literally “we know that we have come to know him”, a perfect tense. “Keep” is tereo, to watch over, the verb of John 14:15, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

Jesus used almost the same vocabulary of himself in John 8:55: “if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying.” The letter turns his words around: to claim to know him without keeping is to become the liar. “Liar” is pseustes, the word Jesus used of the devil in John 8:44.

“The love of God” can mean God’s love for the believer, the believer’s love for God, or the kind of love that belongs to God, and the Greek allows all three. “Perfected” is a perfect tense of teleioo: brought to its goal and standing there. “Verily” is alethos, truly, answering the liar of verse 4.

“Ought” is opheilo, to owe a debt: the claim creates an obligation. “He walked” uses ekeinos, “that one”, the pronoun this letter repeatedly uses for Jesus (3:3, 3:5, 3:7, 3:16, 4:17), almost as a title. After washing feet, Jesus had said “I have given you an example” (John 13:15).

“Brethren” stands in later copies; the oldest read “Beloved”, agapetoi, the first time the letter uses that address. “From the beginning” here means the beginning of the readers’ own hearing of the gospel, not the beginning of creation as in 1:1. The same phrase does two jobs in one letter.

“Which thing” is neuter in Greek and cannot refer to the feminine “commandment”; it points to the whole statement. “Is past” is present tense, paragetai, “is passing away”, the same verb verse 17 uses of the world. “True light” recalls John 1:9, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man”.

“Even until now” is heos arti: whatever the claim, he has never yet left the darkness. “Hateth” is present tense, a settled attitude, not a flash of temper. “His brother” means a fellow believer, the family word the letter uses for the community.

Jesus had said it in John 11:9–10: “If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.” The phrase can mean there is nothing in him to make others stumble, or nothing to trip him up.

“Knoweth not whither he goeth” repeats Jesus’ words in John 12:35 almost exactly: “he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.” “Hath blinded” is an aorist, a thing done to him, and John 12:40 quotes Isaiah’s “He hath blinded their eyes” a few verses later.

“Because” renders hoti, which can also mean “that”: “I write unto you that your sins are forgiven.” Either the forgiveness is why he writes, or it is what he writes. “For his name’s sake” is how Peter preached it to Cornelius: “through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

The second address to “little children” uses a different word, paidia, little ones, where verse 12 had teknia. “The wicked one” is poneros, the devil, as in Jesus’ prayer “keep them from the evil” (John 17:15). Modern Greek editions begin verse 14 with the last sentence of this verse, so references differ between Bibles.

Only the line to the fathers is repeated word for word. The line to the young men grows by two clauses, strength and the abiding word, set before the victory as its ground. “I have written” is an aorist where verses 12–13 used the present, and whether it looks back to an earlier writing or to this letter is argued.

“Love not” is a present imperative with a negative, “do not go on loving”. The Gospel says “God so loved the world” (John 3:16) with the same verb and noun forbidden here. “The love of the Father” is a phrase used nowhere else in the letter, set squarely against love of the world.

“Life” here is bios, livelihood or property, the word for the widow’s “all her living” (Mark 12:44); the “pride of life” is swagger about possessions. Many readers have set the three beside Eve in Genesis 3:6: the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desired to make one wise.

Paul said the same in 1 Corinthians 7:31: “the fashion of this world passeth away.” The doer of God’s will “abideth for ever”, the phrase used of the mountain of Psalm 125:1, “as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever”. What passes and what stays are set side by side in one verse.

“The last time” is literally “the last hour”, eschate hora, a phrase found only here in the New Testament. “Antichrist” is a word that occurs in the Bible only in John’s letters (2:18, 2:22, 4:3, 2 John 7). The prefix anti can mean “against” or “in place of”, a rival claimant as well as an opponent.

“They went out” recalls Judas at the supper: “He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night” (John 13:30). The words “no doubt” are the translators’ addition. “Continued” is meno, the letter’s verb of remaining, which the departed did not do.

“Unction” is chrisma, anointing, from the same root as Christos, “anointed”. The antichrists deny the Christ; the believers carry the chrism. The oldest manuscripts read “ye all know” rather than “ye know all things”. “The Holy One” recalls Peter’s confession, “thou art that Christ, the Holy One of God” (John 6:69).

Writing to people who already know is the letter’s stated method: confirmation, not new information. “No lie is of the truth” compresses Jesus’ description of the devil, who “abode not in the truth… When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own” (John 8:44).

The Greek has the article, “Who is the liar”, the liar above all others. The Gospel of John states its own purpose in these words: “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ” (John 20:31). Irenaeus later described a teacher named Cerinthus who separated the Christ from the man Jesus; whether he is in view here is an inference.

The King James prints the second half of this verse in italics, with “but” in brackets, because the translators found it in only some of the Greek texts they used. The clause is in fact in the oldest manuscripts. “Acknowledgeth” is homologeo, the “confess” of 1:9.

The Greek opens with an emphatic “you”: “As for you, let what ye heard abide.” The King James uses three English verbs, “abide”, “remain” and “continue”, for one Greek verb, meno, used three times in the verse, and the repetition is the point.

“Promise” is epangelia, a word used in John’s writings only here, and the Greek repeats the root: “the promise which he promised”. The promise named is eternal life, the life of 1:2 “which was with the Father”, now offered as the content of what they were told.

“Seduce” is planao, to lead astray, and it is present tense: those trying to lead you astray. Jesus opened his teaching on the last days with the same verb: “Take heed lest any man deceive you” (Mark 13:5). The letter now names its occasion outright.

Jeremiah 31:34 promised a covenant in which “they shall teach no more every man his neighbour… for they shall all know me.” Jesus had said the Comforter “shall teach you all things” (John 14:26). The final “ye shall abide in him” can also be read as a command, “abide in him”.

“Appear” is phaneroo, to be made manifest, the verb of 1:2, “the life was manifested”: the first coming and the second share a word. “Coming” is parousia, found only here in all of John’s writings. “Be ashamed before him” is literally “shrink away from him in shame”.

This is the letter’s first mention of being born of God, the new birth of John 3:3–7, and it will run through the next chapter. The logic is family likeness: a child resembles its father, so the one who does righteousness shows whose child he is. The second “ye know” may be a command, “know ye”.