1 john when was it written

How would you characterize your relationship with God—consistent and fruitful or sporadic and parched? John knew that we would never find in ourselves the faithfulness God requires. Instead, we have to place complete trust in the work and grace of God, believing that He will certainly conform us to the image of His Son, Jesus.

That sense of being grounded in God only comes when we set aside our sin in the pursuit of the one true God. View Chuck Swindoll's chart of First John , which divides the book into major sections and highlights themes and key verses. First John. Who wrote the book? Where are we? Why is First John so important?

What's the big idea? How do I apply this? This heresy was also libertine throwing off all moral restraints. Clement of Alexandria place the apostle John in Ephesus during most of his later years. As Burdick notes:.

The earliest confirmed use of 1 John was in the Roman province of Asia in modern Turkey where Ephesus was located. Clement of Alexandria indicates that John ministered in the various churches scattered throughout that province.

It may be assumed, therefore, that 1 John was sent to the churches of the province of Asia. This letter may have been a circular letter sent to Christians in that area. The letter does not mention any individuals by name, nor is there any indication that it was written for one specific church, although Ephesus is in that province and John was there at some point.

Notes: 1. Donald W. Burdick, p. I think the short answer to your question is that either it was written a to the greater Church in general and not any specific local Church; or b to Parthians Persians , resident either in Asia Minor or in Parthia near Bagdad and Babylon.

The letters of James, John, Peter, and Jude are known as the "Catholic" - or universal - Epistles, and are not generally believed to have been written to any specific Church. Bede , however, in his introduction to his commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, wrote:. Accordingly, many church writers, among whom is Saint Athanasius, head of the church of Alexandria, assert that his first Letter was written to the Parthians.

The statement that 1 Jn was written to the Parthians I have not been able to find among the writings of Saint Athanasius. However, Saint Augustine In Ioh.

Ancient Parthia lay to the south of the Caspian Sea, and presumably was regarded as an entirely pagan area. Augustine's primary witness seems to consist of simply how he subtitled his commentary on 1 John: Ad Parthos. No conclusion is offered, but the observations are interesting:. In this designation of St. And yet St. Augustin neither in these Tractates nor in any other of his extant works explains or comments upon this peculiar address.

In the Latin church, since Augustin, it frequently occurs in authors and in mss. John was written ad Parthos. But there is no indication elsewhere that St. Athanasius was acquainted with this superscription, and with the exception of a few very modern mss. The tradition according to which St. I can't find the work of Cassiodorus that Dom David alludes to online. Cassiodorus was a Roman administrator and Christian writer that lived a century or so later than Augustine This occurred prior to his coming to Ephesus and to his eventual exile on Patmos where he wrote Revelation.

During John's time there were two cities named Seleucia: one major Parthian city located between Babylon and Bagdad on the Tigris, and another lying on the southern coast of Asia Minor, within the confines of the Roman Empire. The Asia Minor Seleucia would have been on the way between Palestine and Ephesus, which was John's next stop according to the Synaxarion.

The Synaxarion refers to the latter Seleucia, but perhaps there was some connection between the two cities. So the Parthians that John may have written to could have been people of Parthian origin that he came to know in Asia Minor and not necessarily Parthians in Parthia itself. But this is all speculation on my part.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So no unbeliever has to confess their sins to be saved, Acts 10, 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. The only case I can make of it is, the writer who new the people of 1John and had meet Jesus or the Apostles, wrote them this letter, and had possibly meet John Baptist, telling them that they need to get Johns Baptism, 4John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

I have been pondering this as well. I was mystified as to why there was so much emphasis on sinning, law and commandments. Then in 1John he mentions the message they heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Followed by reference to Cain and Abel.

Only Jews would have known about Cain and Abel. Both Polycarp and Papias lived in the greater vicinity of Ephesus in western Asia Minor, the location to which the apostle John is said to have fled at about the time when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem AD 70 , taking Mary the mother of Jesus with him.

There he presumably lived for the rest of his long life, on into the reign of Trajan, the Roman emperor who ruled the empire from AD 98 to Irenaeus AD — , bishop of Lyon, was born in Asia Minor and as a child personally knew Polycarp, who is said to have been appointed bishop of Smyrna by eyewitnesses of the Lord Jesus. Irenaeus says that John, the disciple of the Lord who was with Jesus in the upper room, wrote the gospel of John while living in Ephesus Haer.

Even though such sources are subject to the same historical scrutiny as other ancient documents, this is a remarkable chain of historical witnesses—from Irenaeus, to Polycarp, to John himself—enjoyed by no other New Testament book. But ever since the fourth century when Eusebius wrote, there has been debate in the church about the authorship of the three letters attributed in the New Testament to John.

Although the issue of authorship will not likely ever be known with certainty, the author of these letters clearly claims to be a bearer of the apostolic teaching about Jesus that was based on eyewitness testimony about his public ministry, death , and resurrection.

The relationship between the three letters and between them and the gospel indicates that the same author likely wrote all three letters, and he was also either the author of the gospel or a close associate. These letters insist that this apostolic testimony trumps any reinterpretation of Jesus by those who were not commissioned by him and who were far removed from personal knowledge of him. All books of the New Testament refer to events that happened in the first century, such as the life of Jesus, the spread of the gospel, and issues that arose in the infant churches.

The New Testament books were themselves written in the second half of that century. The New Testament as a whole is focused on one person who lived in the early third of the first century, Jesus of Nazareth, and the significance of his life, death, and resurrection.