A Family Likeness That Takes Visible Form

“What manner of” is potapos, a word that began as “from what country?”: a love of some foreign, unheard-of kind. “Sons” is tekna, children, a birth word. The oldest manuscripts add three words after “called the sons of God”: “and so we are”, a flat statement of fact after the naming.

“When he shall appear” can also be read “when it shall appear”, meaning when what we shall be is disclosed; the Greek verb has no expressed subject. Moses was refused the sight of God’s face (Exodus 33:20), and Psalm 17:15 looked forward: “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”

“In him” is literally “upon him”, ep’ auto: the hope rests on Christ, not merely inside the believer. This is the only place the noun “hope” appears in all three letters of John. “Pure” is hagnos, the word for ritual cleanness, here measured by “that one”, Christ.

“Transgression of the law” is one word, anomia, lawlessness, and the Greek sentence can be turned round: sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin. After the talk of antichrist in 2:18, some hear an echo of “the man of sin”, literally the man of lawlessness, in 2 Thessalonians 2:3.

“Take away” is airo, the verb of John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The oldest manuscripts read “to take away sins”, without “our”. Jesus once challenged his opponents, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:46).

“Seen” is a perfect tense, heoraken, the settled seeing of faith that the Gospel speaks of when Jesus says “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). 3 John 11 repeats the pattern almost word for word: “he that doeth evil hath not seen God.”

Ezekiel 18:5–9 defines the just man by a list of things he does and does not do, and then concludes, “he is just, he shall surely live.” John argues the same way: doing righteousness shows a righteous person, as a tree is known by its fruit. The warning “let no man deceive you” points back to the seducers of 2:26.

“Destroy” is lyo, to loosen or undo, the verb for untying knots and taking buildings apart, and the verb of Jesus’ saying “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Wisdom 2:24 traces death itself to the devil: “through envy of the devil came death into the world.”

The verse begins and ends with the same phrase, “born of God”, framing the claim like a ring. “Born” is a perfect participle, begotten and remaining so. John’s Gospel describes the children of God as those “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

“Manifest” is phaneros, open to view. “Children of the devil” has echoes elsewhere: Paul calls Elymas the sorcerer “thou child of the devil” (Acts 13:10), and in the parable of the tares “the tares are the children of the wicked one” (Matthew 13:38). The verse is a hinge, moving the letter from righteousness to love.

Two statements in the letter begin “this is the message”: “God is light” in 1:5, and “love one another” here. Many readers divide the letter at these two points, one half about walking in light, the other about love. The command itself is Jesus’ “new commandment” of John 13:34.

“Slew” is sphazo, to slaughter by cutting the throat, the verb used for sacrificial animals and for the Lamb “as it had been slain” in Revelation 5:6. Some Jewish tradition made Cain the serpent’s offspring; the Targum attributed to Jonathan reads Genesis 4:1 that way. The letter says only that he was “of that wicked one”.

“Marvel not” is how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). “If the world hate you” echoes John 15:18. “My brethren” is the only time the oldest manuscripts of this letter use that plain family address.

“Passed from death unto life” repeats Jesus’ words in John 5:24 exactly: he that heareth and believeth “is passed from death unto life”. “Passed” is metabaino, to move from one place to another, a change of residence. “We” is emphatic: we, at least, know this.

“Murderer” is anthropoktonos, man-slayer, used in the New Testament only here and in John 8:44, where Jesus says the devil “was a murderer from the beginning”. Jesus had already moved the command against killing inward: whoever is angry with his brother without a cause is in danger of the judgment (Matthew 5:22).

The Greek says simply “Hereby know we love”; the words “of God” are supplied by the translators. “Laid down his life” is the Good Shepherd’s phrase, “the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), and John 15:13 adds, “Greater love hath no man than this.”

“This world’s good” is ton bion tou kosmou, the world’s livelihood, the same bios as the “pride of life” in 2:16. “Seeth” is theoreo, to look at steadily, not a passing glance. Deuteronomy 15:7 had already forbidden this: “thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother.”

Ezekiel was told of hearers who “with their mouth… shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness” (Ezekiel 33:31). “In truth” means genuinely, and it also prepares the next verse, “we are of the truth”. The verb is a hortatory subjunctive: “let us love”, the writer included.

“Assure” is peitho, to persuade or reassure, the verb the chief priests used when they promised the guards, “we will persuade him, and secure you” (Matthew 28:14). Here the heart is the one being quieted. “Before him” is emprosthen, in his presence, the place where the heart must speak.

“Condemn” is kataginosko, to know against, to find fault, the verb Paul used of Peter at Antioch, “because he was to be blamed” (Galatians 2:11). “Knoweth all things” recalls Peter’s answer by the lake after his three denials: “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:17).

Job held out the same kind of clear heart: “my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live” (Job 27:6). “Confidence” is parresia, the free speech of 2:28, here used of approaching God in prayer, as the next verse shows.

Jesus tied answered prayer to abiding: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7). “Pleasing in his sight” echoes what Jesus said of himself: “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29).

This is the first time the verb “believe” appears in the letter. “Commandment” is singular though it has two parts: believing on the name of the Son and loving one another are one command, not two. Jesus’ own summary in John 13:34 supplies the second half.

The mutual indwelling, the believer in God and God in the believer, is the language of the vine: “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4). This is the first time the Spirit is named in the letter, and the next chapter opens at once with a warning to “try the spirits”.