Hi James and Ellen,
1 John is a circular letter. The 1 John missive’s circulation probably began in the city of Ephesus sometime between 85 A.D. and 95 A.D. The five chapters in the 1 John letter were scribed by one of Jesus’ first cousins. The cousin’s name was John. Jesus’ Aunt Salome was a sister of Jesus’ ma. Salome married a fisherman whose name was Zebedee. Jesus called his Uncle Zebedee thunder. When Jesus began to seemingly randomly choose guys to be His disciples, Jesus told two of his Uncle Zebedee’s kids – whose names were James and John, to follow Him. John ended up in Jesus’ inner circle of disciples. John came to believe that Jesus loved him more than He loved His other disciples. John would outlive the other eleven guys who Jesus arbitrarily chose over about a year span to personally disciple. John was an old guy when he penned his 1 John communiqué. Because an egregious emperor – whose name was Domitian, had banished John for a time to the Isle of Patmos sometime between 81 A.D. and 96 A.D., your grandpaa thinks that John penned his 1 John dispatch while he was doing survival on the Isle of Patmos. Before Domitian exiled John to the Isle of Patmos, John had Domitian toss him alive into a cauldron of boiling oil. John had gotten on Domitian’s nerves big time when he refused to stop instructing publicly in the city of Ephesus the belief paradigm that his cousin Jesus had jumpstarted through His teachings and which was affirmed through His inhuman crucifixion, incredible resurrection from death to life and improbable ascension into heaven. Domitian became so deluded in his quest for absolute acquiescence and total deference by every guy and gal around him that he thought of himself as a god. When John did not experience any ill effects after being sadistically dunked in a pot of boiling oil, Domitian had John sent to the Isle of Patmos thinking that by doing this that it would stop John from promoting the eternal value of a guy or gal becoming a Christ-follower and from presenting faith’s role in how a guy and gal daily lives his or her Christ-follower life. The Isle of Patmos was over 1,900 years ago a barren, nearly uninhabited outcropping. The Isle of Patmos over 1,900 years ago was used for disposing perceived incorrigible guys – such as how Domitian saw John as being. The Isle of Patmos – which is about ten miles long and six mile wide, is today a country of Greece island that is situated about forty miles off the country of Turkey’s west coast in the Aegean Sea.
Instead of going into a deep funk because of having to suddenly face social deprivation after having been unsympathetically left on an isolated island with very little – if any, communal interaction, John to your grandpaa uses what to many would be an untenable situation as an opportunity for introspection and reflection. Because of love being John’s core mantra, your grandpaa thinks that John not having guys or gals around him who he could unconditionally use the love spirit to accept, affirm and approve that John had to have really missed having the companionship of guys and gals who had been doing love reciprocating with him. Because God hardwired your grandpaa as a high end introvert, your grandpaa does not mind it when he is not around guys, gals and kids while John – because your grandpaa thinks that God hardwired John towards being an extrovert, needed to have guys, gals and kids around him to fill his energy tank.
Over thirty years before John somehow was able to have his 1 John letter couriered to the city of Ephesus with hopes that it would become circulated among the various Christ-follower fellowships of guys and gals that had taken root in the province of Asia Minor, another early Christ-follower church leader – whose name was Paul of Tarsus, spent up to three years in the city Ephesus doing in the Hall of Tyrannus intensive Bible education and leadership development. Paul followed up on what he did in the city of Ephesus by assigning Timothy – a young guy who had traveled extensively with him for over ten years, to oversee the leaders of the Christ-follower house fellowships that were in the city of Ephesus. Your grandpaa thinks that when John spent time in the city of Ephesus that Timothy was no longer in the city of Ephesus. The concern that John had regarding what was happening in the fellowships of Christ-follower guys and gals in the city of Ephesus that led him to pen 1 John was the emergence of a heretical teaching that was called Gnosticism. A gnostic argues that the spirit is entirely good while matter is entirely bad. A self-serving extrapolation of this heterodox belief paradigm is that the body of a guy, gal or kid – being matter, is wholly evil while God – because God is a spirit, is wholly spotless. One gnostic dogma has it that because sin has completely permeated the body of a guy, gal or kid that there are no moral restraints to keep the guy, gal or kid from doing whatever. The only way to a gnostic to achieve hope/salvation is through his or her own knowledge pursuit. John’s reason for penning 1 John was to expose the fallacies of false teachers who taught deceptive, unbiblical views and to reassure each guy and gal who became a Christ-follower of his or her eternal hope/salvation in Jesus Christ. John elucidates in what he penned in his 1 John letter that a Christ-follower guy and gals will always demonstrate ethicalness or morality in whatever he or she does, will have a conditioned practice of always confessing any wrong that he or she has done, will always obey each Biblical mandate and will always be unconditional love practitioners.
1 John