John is often spoken of as the “Apostle of Love.”\u00a0 And there is no doubt that the word “love” is very much a part of John’s vocabulary.\u00a0 It is found in his gospel account and in his epistles.\u00a0 It is in his first epistle that the expression in the title of this entry is found (I John 4:8).\u00a0 And yet, while John does speak of love, that is not the focus of his epistle.<\/p>\n
John was writing to answer an insidious heresy.\u00a0 If it was not full blown gnosticism it was at least proto-gnosticism.\u00a0 Gnosticism is the view that all matter is evil.\u00a0 The body was evil, the world was evil.\u00a0 The problem this posed for the advocates of gnosticism was what to do with Jesus?\u00a0 Jesus had a body.\u00a0 Was it evil?\u00a0 Some Gnostics, those of the Docetic brand, “solved” the problem by saying that the body of Jesus was only a phantom; it wasn’t real flesh and blood. The Cerinthian brand of gnosticism “solved” the problem by saying the power of Christ came on Jesus at His baptism and left before His crucifixion.\u00a0 Thus, they denied Jesus had come in the flesh and died.<\/p>\n
Their view also posed a problem with their own bodies.\u00a0 If the flesh was evil, then what could they do with their own bodies?\u00a0 They “solved ” this problem with one of two positions.\u00a0 Some claimed because the body was evil, they had to control the body through ascetic practices.\u00a0 However, others “solved” the problem by saying that because the body was evil, it didn’t matter what they did with it as long as they possessed special knowledge or enlightenment which only they knew.\u00a0 Because they had this special insight, this “gnosis,” sin was no problem to them.<\/p>\n
In his first epistle, John is answering these insidious false doctrines from the outset of the epistle.\u00a0 John had heard, seen with his own eyes, looked upon and his hands had handled the Word of Life, Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus was real, flesh and blood real.\u00a0 Those who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh were “false prophets” and “antichrists” and were to be tried (I John 4:-3).\u00a0 This is the reason John wrote the letter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Furthermore, sin was real.\u00a0 John writes to make clear that one can sin but that Jesus died as a propitiation for our sins (I John 2:1-3).\u00a0 If a person was to claim they had no sin, they were liars (I John 2:22).\u00a0 Remember, this is the “Apostle of Love” who is calling the advocates of gnosticism liars and seducers (I John 2:26)!\u00a0 Sin, John said, was the transgression of the law (I John 3:4).\u00a0 Those who said sin was not real were liars and deceivers.<\/p>\n
And this is where love comes into the picture.\u00a0 Because God loved us, this proves Jesus came in the flesh and died for us (I John 3:16).\u00a0 The reason John speaks about love is not because it is a gooey, blind to all sins, answer to all problems attitude, but because it defeats the Gnostic heresy.\u00a0 God’s love was manifested when He sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for our sins, so that we might live through Him (I John 4:7-10).\u00a0 God’s love disproves the notion that sin is not real and that Jesus did not come in the flesh, thus defeating gnosticism.<\/p>\n
So when we speak about God being love, we are making a statement about our own spiritual condition, that sin, transgression of God’s law, is real (I John 3:4) and that Jesus really did come in the flesh so that we might be able to overcome sin (I John 5:1-4).<\/p>\n
Eric L. Padgett<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John is often spoken of as the “Apostle of Love.”\u00a0 And there is no doubt that the word “love” is very much a part of John’s vocabulary.\u00a0 It is found in his gospel account and in his epistles.\u00a0 It is in his first epistle that the expression in the title of this entry is found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctrine","category-gnosticism","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtvchurchofchrist.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}