Word of Life - 1John

by Rev.M.D.Rogers

The Word of Life

  Who is Jesus of Nazareth? This is the fundamental question which the Gospel of John poses for us. John develops his gospel to answer that question using compelling evidence and eye-witness testimony.

John, the youngest of the twelve apostles, wrote his gospel late in life, around 100 AD, in the city of Ephesus, a Greek-speaking center of commerce and culture. By that time the vast majority of Christians were no longer converts from Jewish communities, but people who lived in a world dominated by the culture, thought, and worldview of Greece and Rome. John appealed to their powers of reason and reflection to consider who Jesus claimed to be.

     John was in Ephesus when he wrote this letter. He sent it to the churches in that region. He wrote to the Christians in those churches. He knew them well and he loved them. He thought of them as his own family. So he spoke to them as if he was speaking to his own children.

   The reasons why John wrote this letter

Some people in these churches believed wrong things. The people who had taught them these wrong things had been members of the church. However, they had moved away from the *faith and they had left the church (1 John 2:19). So John intended to correct these wrong ideas in his letter.

One wrong idea was that Christ was not really a man. He seemed to be a man but was not a real man. John taught quite clearly that the Son of God came as a real man. He lived his life here on earth as a man. The Christ actually died as a man. The man, Christ Jesus, rose again from the dead.

Some people taught that Jesus was merely a man. They taught that he was not really God. They did not believe that God could die. They said that the *Christ came upon Jesus. Then the *Christ left him again before he died. John answered this. He showed that Jesus is one with God. He is the *Christ, who gave his life for us. No mere man could take away our *sins as the *Lord Jesus Christ has done.

These people taught other wrong things. This is what they argued:

·The body is bad, but the spirit is good. True life is in the spirit. What we do in the body does not affect the spirit. So it does not matter how we live in the body.

These people thought that their evil actions did not matter. They said that they loved God. However, they lived for themselves. John shows that such ideas are false. If we love God, our lives must be good. We must not continue to *sin. We must live as Jesus lived. We must live right and good lives because God is good.