1 John 1

== 1 John 1 ==
Written by the Apostle John, indications are that this letter, along with all the letters that bear his name, were written after the fall of Jerusalem and were written against the rise of the Gnostic heresy. There is much about those who deny that Christ came in the flesh or who deny that He is God, both of which were Gnostic teachings. John calls these people "antichrists" and warns against them in his letters.
=== 1 John 1:1 ===
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
The beginning, for John goes back to his time with Christ, walking about the Promised Land during Jesus's earthly ministry. He is an eye-witness to who Jesus is, the last of them in fact. This is one reason we know that this is written by John the Apostle, the eye-witness account he gives. This was one of the primary roles of Apostle (and why there can be no Apostles today), as John records in his gospel account, to be an eye witness to the world. Note that Jesus speaks of them bearing witness "from the beginning" in John 15:27, which John harkens back to in this verse.
This witness includes:
* they heard Jesus - that is to say that they were first hand disciples, listening and heeding the preaching directly from Jesus
* they saw Jesus - John with the other Apostles physically saw Jesus and were witness to what manner of being He was, namely human
* they looked up on Jesus - this is more than just seeing with the eyes, but to experience Jesus's life with Him, to learn from Him and be affected by Him
* they handled Jesus with their hands - this witness includes His physical humanness which the Gnostics deny, they shook hands with Jesus, hugged Him, leaned on His shoulder, touched the scars in His hands, feet, and side.
In a very visceral manner, John lays out his case in favor of the incarnate Son of God against the Gnostics as a primary witness of that incarnation. In no uncertain terms John writes that yes, Jesus is real, He is human, and He is God. In essence, John says that if you say different, well, you weren't there and don't know what you are talking about.
John, in the manner that he begins his gospel account, refers to Jesus as the Word of life, the very Logos that is God (John 1:1).
=== 1 John 1:2 ===
2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)
John iterates the claim by saying that the life, the Word, was manifested. To manifest means to make that which is hidden known or revealed, to make evident, to observe as real. John makes the claim again that "we", that is the Apostles, have seen that life which is Jesus and they bear witness as they were instructed to do. The purpose of their witness, a witness none have today, was to show Jesus unto mankind. John refers to Jesus as "that eternal life" because that is how Jesus defines eternal life in John 17:3, to know God the Father and Jesus the Son. John again harkens back to John 1:1 where the Word was with God the Father. He then iterates that this eternal life was not just manifested, but manifested to John and the other Apostles, the other eye witnesses.
=== 1 John 1:3 ===
3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.
Continuing on with the Apostle's given mission in John 14-17, John writes here that that which he had seen and heard, that which he observed and heeded, is what he and the other Apostles have declared unto those who were not able to witness Jesus directly. This testimony that John gives is for the express purpose of enabling the readers to have fellowship with the Apostles, to partake in their seeing in hearing through that testimony by faith. To have fellowship with these men, to believe the testimony of those who saw and heard the Messiah directly, who gave their lives to maintain that witness, is to be willing to do the same, to die for this belief in what they revealed. To have fellowship with them is to have fellowship with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, for they are in fellowship with God. This theme of fellowship will continue throughout this letter.
It is important to note here who John's audience is. The "you" that he is declaring these things to are Christians. He is wanting them to not be drawn away from the truth by false teachings, but to have fellowship with God and the Apostles. That is why he says "truly our fellowship is with the Father and Son". He is including both the witnesses, the Apostles, and those who believe their testimony, their fellow Christians.
There are those who would claim to be successors to these men, but it is a foolish claim for no man alive today, no man alive even when the claim began to be made around 185 AD, could truthfully say that they heard, saw, looked upon, and handled the Word of life. No man can be a successor to the office of Apostle because no man fits the role the Apostles were given. To claim otherwise is to lie.
=== 1 John 1:4 ===
4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.
Error breeds doubt and kills joy. That people were teaching things that were untrue about Jesus brought this doubt and killed the joy of their faith. John is writing to confirm their faith, to remove the doubt and make their joy full. The Gnostic teaching was about "special knowledge" that only those in the in-crowd have. That is to say, anyone who accepted and agreed with their heretical teachings had this knowledge. John will speak of the first hand knowledge of the witnesses, and the knowledge that the Christians received from these witnesses in order to not just have confidence in, but to know that they had eternal life and take joy in that fact.
=== 1 John 1:5 ===
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Ultimately, the witness of the Apostles concerning Jesus was for the purpose of the preaching of the message He taught them, that of the gospel. This message, at its core, is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it was far more than that. It encompassed the entire truth that is the New Testament. Part of this truth is that Jesus is indeed God in the flesh, a point that is not found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
Once again paralleling John's gospel account, he writes that God is light. In John 1, John refers to Jesus as the life and light of men and thus, once again, John is making the claim that Jesus is God. Here he states not only that Jesus is God and God is light, but that God is light. In other words, God is not just full of light, but that He is light and there can be no darkness within Him because of this. Light, it associated with truth and knowledge. John will continue linking this idea of light and truth here as he continues.
=== 1 John 1:6 ===
6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
John, speaking propositionally here, turns things around. If God is light and in Him is no darkness, and if the Apostles are in fellowship with Him so that what they testified of, what they taught was the truth, then those who walk not after the Apostles teachings are walking in darkness. This idea of 'walking in darkness' is that of willful living according to that which is false, a living in sin that is willful. We see examples throughout scriptures of people who walked with God: Enoch (Genesis 5:22-24), Noah (Genesis 6:9), and others. We see that Israel is called to walk with God (Deuteronomy 10:12; Micah 6:8). He wants that of us (2 Corinthians 6:16). To walk in darkness, then, is to be out of fellowship with God, to be lost in sin and lies, for He is light, He is truth. The idea of walking here is that of a direction, a continual, willful movement away from God.
Note who John is writing to here. As we saw in verse 3, John is writing to his fellow Christians. So when he writes "we" and "our" he is speaking of Christians, not men in general. That is not to say that those who are not Christians do not walk in darkness. It is to point out John's specific context. It is only when we understand this that we can properly understand what John is saying as some will fail or refuse to use the proper context and end up teaching all manner of error. They will, ironically, use these passages about light and truth to continue to walk in darkness.
What does John then say puts them out of the light and into darkness, not doing truth. This point then is that if a Christian turns from faithfulness to Christ, from living and doing what is right, to willfully do that which is wrong, to walk in darkness in an ongoing manner (walk in darkness vs stumbling while walking in the light), then these Christians are lost. The next verse will affirm this further.
=== 1 John 1:7 ===
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
In contrast to walking in darkness (lies, sin), John states the proposition that if we (that is Christians) walk in the light. Light here is the opposite of darkness, it is truth, the revealed truth from the Father, through Jesus the Son, inspired to be written by the Holy Spirit by these eye-witnesses. If we walk in this truth as Christ is in this truth, then we (Christians) have fellowship with one another. This "one another" is Christians in general, the Apostles - vs 3, and the Godhead.
The last part here is one that really addresses a lot of error. If we walk in the light, then the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, continually cleanses us from all sin. When we are baptized, our former sins are washed away (Acts 22:16) and we are freed from its mastery (Genesis 4:7; Romans 6:16-18). Yet Christians can still sin. We will discuss what this means further into this letter from John, but the fact remains that Christians can still sin. Furthermore, we cannot enter Heaven with sin, thus we need to be cleansed of that sin. This verse shows that this process of cleansing is continuous. That is, when we stumble, Christ is there to lift us up and help us continue in the light. The sin is washed away the moment is it committed if we are living faithfully.
There are those that accuse us of believing that any time we sin, we are lost and then when we repent and confess we are saved again and there is a constant back and forth. I believe that this verse and the previous show that the only time we are truly lost after being immersed into Christ and saved initially is when we willfully reject the light and turn to walk in darkness in continual fashion. A momentary sin of weakness is already covered because we are in Christ, in the light, continually in contact with the blood of Christ. 
However, when we do willfully rebel and turn to walk in darkness again, we must turn back to the light before we have that continual cleansing again. It is not necessary to be immersed into Christ again, but as Acts 8:22 and James 5:19-20 show, we must repent of walking in darkness and turn back to the light to be continually cleansed again.
1 John 1:8-10
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
This last section is likely the hardest for many, even those in the church, to process. What I will write here will likely find disagreement among many, but I believe that the full context of 1 John will bear out what I will write here. Before you condemn me as a heretic, I beg you to read my whole commentary on 1 John.
If we... Again, John writes propositionally, that is, he writes in terms of propositional premises that are either true or false. He begins this series of three propositions by highlighting who he is considering. "We" is again representative of Christians. In essence, he is saying "if Christians say".
...say we have no sin... If a Christian says they have no sin. What does John mean by this? It cannot mean that a faithful Christian walking in the light and continually cleansed of their sin says they don't currently have sin on their soul because then John would be contradicting himself in the very last verse! Instead, I believe that John is saying that we who have been saved from our sins claim that we have never sinned in the first place, that we have always been sinless
...we deceive ourselves... For a person who has been saved from sin and are now sinless to claim that they never sinned in the first place is a self deception. They have convinced themselves that the holiness of Christ that has washed them clean is instead their own holiness, which removes the glory from Christ and puts it on themselves.
...and the truth is not in us. John, including himself in this with the words "we" and "us", says that anyone who has been saved that tells you they have never sinned does not speak the truth. Furthemore, since truth is light and light is Christ in this context, John is saying that Christ is not in them (see Ephesians 3:17). In other words, the person who believes such is walking in darkness and is lost in the very sin they claim never to have committed.
John continues by contrasting this claim of never having sinned by writing about Christians confessing their sins. In this context, I believe this is more about Christians owning their past sins in contrast to claiming they never sinned to begin with. If we confess that we have sinned in the past, then when we sin in the present, we are walking in the light and thus are continually cleansed of those sins. John is not saying that if we sin, we first have to go confess that sin to a priest or a fellow Christian or to the church or even to God in order to receive that continual cleansing. That would make the cleansing happen in discreet moments, not continual. But if we are walking in the light, part of that walk is the acknowledgement of our past sins to others, a powerful teaching tool and testimony of what Christ has done for us that we can use to convert others.
Verse 10 is an iteration of what John is saying and I believe is a bit clearer in showing that what I was talking about. If we say that we have not sinned as opposed to saying yes, I've sinned, but I've been washed clean in the blood of Christ, then we make Jesus a liar. The reason for this is because Jesus is the one that taught that those who have been baptized, have thusly come into contact with His blood and been cleansed of all their sins. If these people had been baptized and are in Christ but claim they never sinned, then they are contradicting all that Jesus said about them being cleansed in the first place. This is the word, the gospel message in full, that Jesus died for sinners and we find cleansing by being baptized into His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6; Galatians 3:26-27). If we deny that this is what happened to us because we have never sinned, then His word, His teachings are not in us. His light is not in us and we have only darkness.
In Truth and Love.
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