New Testament · General Letters · World English Bible
1 John
"By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
— 1 John 3:16 
The Reading LensEvery verse pulled to the top of a book is chosen by three questions: Where is God’s heart here? Who is He protecting? Who is being saved by the action? It marks the place where those answers come into clearest focus — a “look at this, in this book.”
About the Letter
It has no greeting, no named sender, no named recipients and no farewell — which makes calling it a letter a convention rather than a description. It opens the way the Fourth Gospel opens: from the beginning.
It circles rather than advances. Light and darkness, love and hatred, truth and the lie, the children of God and the children of the devil — the same oppositions return again and again from slightly different angles.
Behind it is a split. People have left the community, and this is written to those who stayed. Much of its insistence on what was seen and heard and handled is aimed at a teaching that denied Christ had come in the flesh.
5 Chapters
What We Have Seen and Heard
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, seen with our eyes and touched with our hands. Then the first opposition: God is light, and claiming fellowship while walking in darkness is a lie.
The Old Commandment That Is New
The advocate, and keeping his commandments as the test of knowing him. Do not love the world. Then the warning about those who went out from us — which shows, he says, that they were not of us.
Children of God
See what manner of love. Then the definition, given twice: he laid down his life for us, and we ought to do the same — and whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart, how does the love of God remain in him?
God Is Love
Test the spirits. Then the letter’s centre — love is from God, God is love, and the one who does not love the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not. Perfect love casts out fear.
The Testimony
Faith as what overcomes the world. The testimony of the Spirit, the water and the blood. Confidence in prayer, including prayer for a brother — and the closing assurances, written that you may know.