Westminster Bible Companion: The Epistles of John
Overview
David Rensberger shows here how the Epistles of John spoke to the emerging concerns of an early Christian community that cherished John's Gospel. The Epistles apply many of the themes of the Gospel to new situations. In particular the elder, who writes these epistles, reminds his readers that their love of God must be made concrete in the love they show their fellow Christians. At the same time, Rensberger shows how these letters face the problems of theological disagreement and church division, and how they can help Christians today better understand theological diversity and the struggle for church unity.
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- Contains concise introductions to the Epistles of John
- Unfolds the various contexts and principles found in Scripture
- Helps prepare pastors, students, and laity relay the Bible's teaching in a clear way
Top Highlights
“The elder also insists that belief in this Savior, divine and human, is inseparable from a life of love for one another. This insistence may imply that the opponents did not regard material acts of mutual love as essential to the Christian life; they are certainly unlikely to have seen the sacrifice of Jesus as a model for their own daily lives.” (Page 14)
“The opponents of 1 John perhaps also hoped for a salvation that would be purely spiritual, an eternal life that would make them not only immortal, but nonphysical as well. For the Savior to give them this life, surely he would have to have overcome all that is physical and limited; he might be the divine Son of God sent from heaven, but he could not really have been mortal, bodily human flesh.” (Page 12)
“In some way the opponents denied that Christ shared that reality with us; or at least they denied that his humanity was meaningful for the salvation that he brought. This teaching is not very surprising when we realize that in the cultural context of early Christianity, the spirit or mind was often valued much more highly than the flesh or body.” (Page 12)
“Refusal to love, refusal to show active, material care for our brothers and sisters, would then also lead to death, since it would keep us from eternal life. What 1 John means by the ‘sin that leads to death,’ then, is probably rejection of the human Jesus as God’s Son or failure to love one’s brothers and sisters, or a combination of the two.” (Page 97)
“They were called ‘docetists,’ from a Greek word that means ‘to seem,’ since their idea was that Christ only seemed to be human. The earliest clear references to them are in letters written by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, in a time and place not far removed from 1 John and its readers.” (Pages 12–13)
- Title: The Epistles of John
- Author: David Rensberger
- Series: Westminster Bible Companion
- Publisher: Westminster John Knox
- Print Publication Date: 2001
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Pages: 130
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible. N.T. 1 John › Commentaries; Bible. N.T. 2 John › Commentaries; Bible. N.T. 3 John › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 0664258018, 9780664258016
- Resource ID: LLS:WBCS83JN
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-10-05T17:25:53Z