In 1 John 2:14, John has one more thing to say to the “young men” – he’s writing to them “because you have overcome the evil one.” So when John writes earlier in the verse that these young men are “strong,” he means this kind of strong, that they’ve stood their ground against the wiles and power of the devil.

And they are “young men” too – young in age or young in their growth as Christians – either way or both, they haven’t caved in to evil. Which is amazing, because they’ve managed to do what Adam and Eve didn’t do, and what the Israelites in the Old Testament never did either, so something since must have changed to enable people – still in the developing stage of their humanity and their Christianity – to fight off the devil. 

Well, we know now what that “something” was: it was the most gigantic moment in our human history, when “the Son of God appeared” on this planet in human form and “destroyed the devil’s work,” 1 John 3:8. He did what Adam and Eve and the Israelites didn’t and couldn’t do: he resisted the evil one in a face to face battle in Matthew 4 and sent him packing. How? By using the one weapon God gave us humans from the beginning: HIM. 

He’s always been there for us, with his wisdom and his strength. He was there in person for Adam and Eve, and if only they’d listened to him and let him guide them. And the same with the Israelites. He was always there for them too, again with his wisdom and guidance on hand at all times, but they wouldn’t listen to him either.

But Jesus did. He lived on “every word that comes from the mouth of God,” Matthew 4:4. That was his weapon that overcame the evil one. And the same for those “young men” John was writing to. The means by which they were able to overcome the evil one was “the word of God living in them” too, 1 John 2:14.

But how did that happen? Why were they able to do what Jesus did, and not do what Adam and Eve and the Israelites did? Well, we know that too now, that it was the second most gigantic moment in human history, when Jesus ascended to his Father after being victorious over the evil one and asked his Father to “send the Holy Spirit to live with us and in us,” John 14:16-17. And “The effect of the Holy Spirit” was amazing….(next blog)

In 1 John 2:14, John writes to “young men because the word of God lives in you.” Whether he means “young” in age or young in their Christian journey (or both) – the same point would apply, that they’d caught on to the essential ingredient in the growth and development of their fellowship with God. 

It was the same essential ingredient that created the fellowship of Jesus with his Father, as Jesus himself explained in John 14:10, that “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing his work.” So it was the word of the Father living in Jesus that created their fellowship together, and gave Jesus the ability to speak and act as strongly and effectively as he did.

Well, John is now writing to young men, or young Christians, who are displaying the same strength in their words and actions, and for the same clear reason too, that “the word of God is living in you.” In context, John is referring to Jesus as “the word of God,” so it was Jesus’ words that were being lived in these Christians, and that’s what created their fellowship with him and the strength they had. Or as John put it in 1 John 2:3, “We know we have come to know him (enter into real fellowship with him) if we obey his commands,” because what happens to “anyone who obeys his word,” is that “God’s love,” verse 5, “is truly made complete in him.” And when God’s love happens, creating a love for God and each other in us, “we know we are in him” (5). 

John is talking about how “our fellowship (comes about) with the Father and with his Son” (1:3). It comes from obeying the word or commands of Jesus, which came from the Father (John 12:49-50). And John is adamant on this point: “The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him,” 1 John 2:4. And in verse 6, “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus walked.” And Jesus’ walk was always love, which is why John wrote in verse 10, that “whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” God’s love in us creates that kind of strength and integrity and stability in us. 

And John was seeing the effect of that love that came from Jesus’ words living in people. A mighty powerful effect it was too, as even young men were “Overcoming the evil one”….(next blog)

For close to sixty years John has been watching the effect of his teaching. He’s watched newly hatched Christians grasp the love of the Father and his Son, enabling them to put their past lives behind them and start afresh, knowing they’re forgiven and forever loved as fully fledged members of God’s family. 

John then watched these same Christians set out on their new lives. John calls them “young men,” but it could be someone of any age who’s well into the next stage of their Christian lives, seeking to live as Jesus lived, 1 John 2:5-6.

They’re growing up well too, because John also writes that they’re growing up “strong,” verse 14, the Greek word meaning “mighty” and “powerful.” They’d entered that stage in a Christian life – pictured in Hebrews 10:32-35 – “when you stood your ground in the face of suffering. Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse – some days it was you, other days your friends. If friends went to prison, you stuck by them. If enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile. Nothing they did bothered you, nothing set you back.”

Just like the apostles who, when flogged in Acts 5:40, “never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ” (42). And when Paul was nearly stoned to death in Lystra in Acts 14:19, a little while later “he got up and went back into the city” (20). These men were unstoppable. There was “nothing in them,” as John phrases it in 1 John 2:10, “that could make them stumble.” 

This was how it was in the early stage of the church, when like typical “young men” they were full of drive and energy. Life was tough at times, and opposition could be severe, but as Paul wrote in Colossians 1:29, “I struggle on with all the energy God gives me, which so powerfully works in me.” Paul had learnt too, that “I can do everything through him who gives me strength,” Philippians 4:13. 

And it was this same strength that John had seen developing in those he’d watched as they too entered this stage of life as a Christian, when life was tough and the world and its influence pressed in on them, but then seeing them come through it in a great show of strength. And it was thrilling to see. But so was the reason for why they had such strength: because “The word of God lives in you”….(next blog)

John has a second thing to write to those he calls “dear children,” this time in 1 John 2:13. Again, he’s talking to those starting out on their journey into “fellowship with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ” (1:3). 

And they’re well on the way, because, John writes, “you have known the Father.” Which ties in with the first thing John wrote to his “dear children,” about their sins being forgiven, because the reason their sins had been forgiven was because of the Father’s love. The two go together, as John goes on to explain in 1 John 4:10, that “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and (it was he who) sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 

The realization that our sins are forgiven leads to understanding that it was the Father’s love for us that got that ball rolling. And how crucial that is in our fellowship with him getting off to a good start, because as John writes in 1 John 4:19, “We love, because he first loved us.” We set out on life, therefore, “knowing and relying on the love God has for us” (16), knowing too that he loved us at our worst. 

And isn’t that how life starts for us as babies too? Our fellowship with our parents starts off the same way. We enter the world as entirely selfish beings. As one Dad said about his baby daughter, “I found, first, that she was very lazy. She did nothing but lie around the house all day, and contributed absolutely nothing to the household except to make a lot of trouble for everyone. And she was rude. She would burp right in your face and never apologize. She was utterly unconcerned about another’s reaction or another’s welfare. She was also highly uncooperative, oftentimes waking us up in the middle of the night for demands that could well have waited for morning.”

Not a bad description of our lives as little Christians too, because we’re still stuck with a lot of what we were: still being judgmental, impatient, rude, egotistical, easily offended, emotionally volatile, etc. But as that little baby girl grew, a lovely thing happened. She’d cry out “Daddy” and wave her arms around excitedly on seeing him. Because she’d come to know she was always forgiven and always loved by this weary, half-asleep creature, and that’s what would enable her to love in return. 

And with a start like that our fellowship with God can grow too, into the next wonderful stage John mentions, of “Growing up strong”….(next blog)

In 1 John 1:3, John writes that “our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” And that was something John really understood, because in the years he’d spent as a disciple, watching and learning from Jesus, he’d come to love Jesus very much, and he knew Jesus loved him too (John 13:23).

John also understood that fellowship is with both the Father and Jesus, because in “knowing Jesus,” he wrote, we “know the Father as well” (John 14:7). It was also John who quoted Jesus saying that “the Father himself loves you because you loved me” (16:27). Again, fellowship was with both Father and Son. So it’s not surprising that John was the one gifted to write about “fellowship with the Father and Jesus,” as to what it means, the joy it creates, and how we get to experience it too.

Having experienced that fellowship himself for possibly up to eighty years already, John writes like a wise old grandfather when starting out in 1 John 2:12, “I write to you, dear children.” These are the people at the very start of their journey into fellowship with God, the “newly hatched” Christians beginning their new life as newborn members of God’s family.

What brings them into fellowship with God – at this point in their lives – is “knowing your sins have been forgiven on account of Jesus’ name.” What kickstarts anyone at any age into an awareness of God is “the blood of Jesus purifying us from all our sin” (1:7).

John is talking about how “fellowship” with God is created and the crucial starting point, which is realizing and acknowledging that because of Jesus’ death our past life is no more. Whatever stupid and awful things we’ve thought, said and done, are no longer held against us in God’s eyes. And as literal children in a human family that’s where fellowship begins too, when as kids we said or did something we knew was wrong, but we heard our parent say, “You’re forgiven.” 

That’s the point when a real awareness of love begins, in being undeservedly forgiven, followed by the joy of a conscience relieved, a relationship restored, and learning what being a family is all about.

Because it’s into God’s family that we’re being brought and learning what it’s all about now too. Which, as John adds next, comes from “Knowing the Father”….(next blog) 

In 1 John 2:13, John writes “to you fathers, because you have known him (Jesus, 1:1) who is from the beginning (has always existed).”

What John meant by “knowing” he’d explained already in chapter 1:1-4, that “We’re writing to you because we saw and heard the very Word of life himself, the One who’s always existed with the Father, our point being that you too can know him and the joy-filled fellowship with him that we had when he was here with us in person.” So joy for John was these “fathers” who for years had known and experienced Jesus too. 

And it must have meant a lot to John because he writes exactly the same words to these fathers a second time in 2:14 – because they’d proved his point. From their years of experience they could say of Jesus, “I know him, I truly do,” having taken to heart what Jesus said in John 10:10, “I came to give you life to the full (Greek perissos, meaning  ‘a surplus’, over and above abundance into superabundance, a life beyond what we can even imagine).” 

Like John these fathers believed that when Jesus appeared this was the life he came to make visible and real, 1 John 1:2. And by the word “life,” Jesus meant “eternal life” (2), the life he’d lived forever with his Father (3). The life, therefore, that “we proclaim to you,” John writes in verse 2, “is the eternal life.” Not the utopian fantasies the world dreams up, but life as the Father and Jesus enjoy together, that we can enjoy with them, and with each other.

Which all sounds wonderful, but what’s the key that unlocks this life for us now? John answered that back in 1 John 2:13, when he said, “you fathers have known him.” The key is knowing Jesus. 

But what brings us to the point that we too can say, “I know him, I truly do”? John answered that in verse 3: “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.” And in verses 5 and 6, “We know we’re living in him (really knowing him) when we’re walking as he walked.” Which makes sense, because Jesus’ commands and his “walk” were both based on love. To obey his commands and walk as he walked is to love as he loved and live as he lived. And doing that for many years, like those “fathers” did, we too can say, “I know him, I truly do.” 

And having done this for many years himself, John knew what it was like, therefore, to have “Fellowship with God”….(next blog)

By the time John got around to writing 1 John, he was a very old man, maybe a hundred years old, which explains why he often addresses his readers as his “dear children” (2:1). But like a Grandpa he’s got a lot of wisdom and experience to pass on, having possibly been with Jesus since he was a teenager, and definitely having lived what he’s writing about for seventy years or more already.

So, what does the Grandpa in him want his “children” to grasp? It’s remembering who they are: that they’re not just his children they’re primarily the children of God. Remember for always, then, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. Because that is what we are,” 1 John 3:1.

And because that’s what we are, John gets us remembering what that means in 1 John 2:12-14. That, first of all, verse 12, “our sins have been forgiven on account of his name.” Because that’s the bedrock we base our Father’s love for us on. We see his love in Jesus, that “name.” In that name, the Father has given us a bell to ring in our heads any and every time we’ve stepped out of the light into the darkness, and been stumbling around being idiots. Because what Jesus does when that happens is “speak to the Father in our defence,” verse 1. 

So here’s Jesus presenting himself to the Father on our behalf, mentioning us by name, of course, which is embarrassing in itself, but even more so when mentioning what we’ve said or done required Jesus to have himself murdered for us being idiots, rather than us. 

But also knowing that’s the set up the Father put in place to get the point across as to how much he and Jesus love us. They have a conversation together that results in the sin being forgiven, which is somehow relayed to us so we don’t jump off a cliff in our disgust at ourselves, and out of the darkness we step into the light again, our fellowship with our Father restored, which could then lead to restoring fellowship with any fellow human we mangled by our stupidity as well.

It’s amazing, because as children of God, it means there’s no problem that cannot be worked out. Thanks to Jesus the problem caused is forgiven and the wrong righted (1:9). And for John, having experienced Jesus doing this in his own life again and again over a span of seventy years nonstop, he could say of Jesus, “I know him, I truly do”….(next blog)

In 1 John 2:10, “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light,” which fits in perfectly with verse 5, that “God’s love is truly being made complete in us” – because the proof of his love growing in us is the startling ability we now have to love each other, no matter how imperfect or different from each other we are.

And it really is startling too, because with God’s love, verse 10, “there is no cause for stumbling in it.” The Greek for “cause for stumbling” is skandelon, meaning an object in the path that could cause a stumble or trip, like a rock, or a slip on ice. Put in the context of love for a fellow human, and it takes on a very special meaning, that there’s nothing in us that would cause a brother to trip, or slip, and fall. 

In other words, God’s love removes all hindrances and pitfalls in our relationships with others. There’s nothing in us that would even think of causing another person to trip and fall. That’s the light of God’s love that we walk in, where we’re so sure footed in our love for others that we get really good at avoiding situations that could cause hurt. And love does that, it sharpens our senses to possible pitfalls and awkward situations.   

And in this world that’s an amazing gift to have, because as John goes on to say in verse 11, “whoever hates his brother is stumbling around in the darkness, with no clue where he’s going because the darkness has blinded him.” All around us, then, are people we’re in contact with who stumble and fall very easily, where situations constantly arise that make them feel angry, offended, anxious, frustrated, jealous, bitter and hateful, causing many a hurt relationship, and lasting damage to their own state of mind too, especially when hounded by grievances that never heal. 

There are two opposite states of mind, then, and John makes it clear in these two verses that when it comes to relationships with our fellow humans we’re either walking in the light or in the darkness. It’s either love or hate. And with God’s love there’s no room for hate, because it not only causes others to stumble, it messes up our own minds too.

And “the truth of this” is now being made plain for all to see, because, verse 8, when God’s love is in us, it can be seen that “the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” And that’s the gift for others that we carry with us wherever we go. Which is kept alive in our minds by “Remembering who we are”….(next blog)

The first thing God created was light, because in his eyes “light was good,” Genesis 1:3-4. But then he “separated the light from the darkness,” creating an opposite to light, and a clear distinction between the two, which he must’ve had reason for. 

John gives the reason in 1 John 1:5 when describing God, that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” So in God himself there is a clear separation between light and darkness as well – which John sees special significance in, because he sees that separation between light and darkness in God describing us too – as either “walking in the darkness” or “walking in the light,” verses 6-7. So there’s a clear distinction made between light and darkness in us too.

And because light and darkness are such total opposites by God’s design, it’s obvious, then, if we’re walking in the light or in the darkness. Which John touched on back in John 3:19, when he wrote that “Light has come into the world” – referring to Jesus (1:1-9) – “but men loved darkness instead of light.” So when Jesus came into our world it was like another Genesis creation, where light and darkness were separated again, but this time describing the two opposites in us humans, those who “hate the light” (20) and those who “come into the light” (21).

The difference between the two can “be plainly seen” too, verse 21, in “whoever lives by the truth,” because living by the truth is so noticeably and extraordinarily different that it can only be of God’s making (21). And that’s John’s point in 1 John 1:6 too, that “living by the truth” we’re “in fellowship with God,” and being in fellowship with God means we’re “walking in the light as he is in the light” (7). We’re “lit up” like him. So, obviously, it can “be plainly seen.”  

But how do we know we’re walking in the same light as God? It’s when we’re “walking as Jesus walked,” 1 John 2:6, because, verse 5, “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.” God’s love “lights up” in us. So anyone who recognizes that Jesus is the Light sent by God to open up the way to “eternal life” (1:2) and sets out to walk in that light by walking as Jesus walked, obeying his word, will come to love as God loves. 

And there’s our proof we’re walking in the light – and especially in where that love is shining at its brightest in us too: it’s in “Whoever loves his brother”….(next blog)

“Now that we’re children of God,” 1 John 3:2, we’re in the process of being “purified from every sin” 1 John 1:7. And being purified is our great hope, so that “when he appears we shall be like him,” 1 John 3:2. 

So when we finally get to “see him as he is” (2), and we meet Jesus face to face, there’s no fear, no guilt, and no thinking we’re not good enough. Instead, being purified means we’ll be just “like him,” so we’ll be totally comfortable in his presence as family and friends forever. 

It’s not surprising, then, that “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself,” 1 John 3:3. And in so doing start experiencing now what it’s like being in “fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ,” 1 John 1:3, and “with one another” (7), because, according to John in verse 4,  that’s what “makes our joy complete.” Purification, then, is the source of fellowship, and fellowship is the source of joy. Experience that now and we’re getting a head start on experiencing eternity. No wonder purification is our great hope.

So what is purification? John explains in 1 John 2:1, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” Purification means we stop sinning all together. That’s John’s aim. But how is it possible, when “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1:8)? We’ll never be “without sin” in some form or other in this life now, so how on earth can we be purified from sin – while still sinning? 

John’s answer? 1 John 2:1 – “if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” So “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). In Greek, “purify” here mean cleanse, and “unrighteousness” means wrong doing. On forgiving us, then, Jesus also wipes our slate clean. 

This is how, then, “we walk in the light as God is in the light,” 1 John 1:7. God being “in the light” means he can see everything clearly, so he never takes a misstep. And that’s the light John is saying we can be in too, even as sinners, the aim being that there’s “nothing in us to make us stumble” or take a misstep either (2:10). And when we stumble we have forgiveness, but it’s right back to walking we go, because purifying is about “Walking in the light”….(next blog)