Loading…

The Epistles of John: Walking in the Light of God’s Love is unavailable, but you can change that!

The New Testament epistles that we know as First, Second, and Third John offer us an important glimpse into the life of the early Christian church, particularly as it struggled with teachers of false doctrine. Of the three, the only one which does not focus on false teachers is Third John, where the problem was an apparently orthodox church leader named Diotrephes, who had managed to become the...

are often referred to in the Commentary as “the Revisionists,” those who brought a new version of Christianity. I have refrained from calling them Gnostics because there is no trace of the later Gnostic mythologies in First John (with the possible exception of the reference to Cain, in 3:12). It is conceivable that the false teachers could be called Proto-Gnostics, but in the present state of our knowledge, the term Revisionists seems more appropriate. I admit to being influenced here by Brown’s
Pages 37–38