I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, little children, because you know the Father.
I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father: In this instance, "I write" is in the aorist tense and should be translated "I wrote" or "I have written" as it is in verse 14. Why does John change the tense of the verb "write" in this phrase and in the next verse? Some think this phrase and verse 14 refer to John’s writings in his gospel. This is not a feasible explanation since John continues to address the same three classes of Christians. The correct solution to the question is offered by Woods, Wuest, Vincent, and others who suggest that John is using the epistolary aorist here, a tense in which the writer looks at his writing from the viewpoint of the reader when he receives the writing, as a thing done in the past. Vincent says, "The present, I write, refers to the immediate act of writing: the aorist is the epistolary aorist, by which the writer places himself at the reader’s standpoint, regarding the writing as past" (334).