What, then, are the major emphases of John’s first letter for ourselves and our contemporaries? There are five of them.
The first message of John is his insistence upon the truth and value of the old message of the Gospel as opposed to new or modern alterations of it, such as would change its character. Clearly John is not against a new statement of the Gospel in and of itself. There can be a true restatement of the Gospel just as there can be a false one. Indeed, it can be claimed that John has given us an example of the first in the fourth Gospel. But John is opposed to any statement of the Gospel which would change it. Since the message received from the beginning is true, any alteration is quite obviously false and should be rejected.
As for John’s age, therefore, so also for ours. It is the old message that needs to be sounded forth once again from our pulpits and in our seminaries, a message of the incarnate Son of God, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, in order that He might bring many sons into glory. On this point Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, wrote, “The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.”1 This should be the desire of God’s people in every period of church history.
The second message is that of the historical Christ, without which Christianity ceases to be Christianity. What we believe about Christ is not optional. If Jesus did not really come in the flesh, die for sin, rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven from which He will come again, then Christianity is stripped of its essential doctrines. There is no sure revelation of God, no atonement for sin, no hope of life beyond the grave, and no future either for the world or the individual. Without the historical Christ and His work there is nothing left. With this message Christianity has a sure and life-shaking message for the world.
The third message is assurance. We live in an uncertain world, in particular a world which today is as confused and as unstable as it has ever been. But into this world Christianity breathes a note of certainty. According to John a Christian can know, first, that Christianity is true (this is an objective or historical certainty) and, second, that he is a Christian (this is a subjective or personal certainty). The message of the letter is that this double assurance is right, necessary, and normal for Christian people.
Fourth, John teaches that righteousness must characterize the life of those who claim to be Christians. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5). Consequently, if a person says that he has fellowship with God but actually continues to live in bondage to sin, he is lying or is self-deceived. Here the first letter of John offers a continuing challenge to all who claim to be Christians. Do our lives show evidence of God’s presence? Is there holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord?
Finally, John stresses the need for Christians to let all that they do be characterized by love. This, indeed, is the “mark of the Christian,” as Francis Schaeffer calls it. There may be right doctrine, but without love it will be but a bitter orthodoxy. There may be a sharp and well-reasoned apologetic, but without love no one will be converted.
Are the churches today characterized by love? Are the lives of Christians? If we answer honestly, what Christian will fail to admit that in many areas and at many times the answer is clearly “No” and that, as a result and as Jesus clearly taught, the believers involved have no right to think that the world should consider them Christians. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). Are we concerned for the world? Do we want others to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Then we must love. For it is by love and not by words alone that we will win them.
1 C. H. Spurgeon, Autobiography, Volume 1: The Early Years, 1834-1859 (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 162.
