Outcomes for 1st John: Confronting cancer of Heresies in the last days.
This letter was written by John the brother of James, son of Zebedee and an eye witness of Jesus Christ who became man. John wrote 5 books in the New Testament, one gospel, three letters and the book of Revelation .
After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans AD 70, the love of many believers started to grow cold. Many believer’s began to be divided between two options like the time of Elijah ( 1 Kings 18:21) (good and evil, Christ and antichrist, light and darkness, life and death, truth and lies, love and hate etc).
This letter was written to counter the false teaching that God, who is Spirit could not be a Man. The Doctrine of incarnation was denied, the doctrine of Emanuel (God with us) was rejected by these anti christs (see John 1:14 -the Gospel,… The word became flesh and dwelt among us). As an eye witness of Jesus Christ who became man, John corrected that falsehood by affirming that Jesus was 100 percent God and 100 percent man and hence we could have fellowship with him. In his letters to a fellowship whose love was growing cold because of the increase of wickedness (Matthew 24:12), John emphasis on four messages of truth, namely:
We are sons of God in Christ Jesus,
We have fellowship with both the Father and with the Son,
We are held together by love (God is love and love of God),
Connected to Jesus the light of the world , we could light up the dark world.
In summary John wrote to expose and refute false teachers, to give believers assurance of salvation and to confront and combat false teachers who boasted in having special knowledge from God and their false teachings.
John probably wrote to the seven churches in minor Asia, where Jesus was first seen waking among the seven golden lampstands (Rev 2:1) but was last seen standing at the door, knocking desiring to be let in the fellowship to eat with them and them with Him. Rev 3:20. So how did Jesus got outside the fellowship? What message could help the believers open the door for Jesus, John attempt to answer these and many other questions.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
