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The essence and undoubted truth of the gospel of the Word of life (1-4). God is light (5). The nature and conditions of Christians’ communication with God and Christ (6–10). 1 John 1:1. About what was from the beginning, what we heard, what we saw with our eyes, what we looked at and touched with our hands, about the Word of life - 1 John 1:2. For life has appeared, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father and was revealed to us - 1 John 1:3. what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you, so that you also may have fellowship with us: and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:4. And we write this to you so that your joy may be complete. Expressing his thought with a somewhat difficult period, the Apostle begins the letter with testimony: we proclaim (απαγγέλλομεν) or write to you about the Word of life (περί τού λόγου τής Ζωής), which was from the beginning (ό ήν άπ᾿ αρχής), which we heard, which we saw with our eyes and which our hands touched. As we have seen, already in ancient times the close similarity of this beginning of the epistle with the beginning of the Gospel was noted, and this similarity, in the opinion of ancient church teachers, shows the identity of the subject of the scriptures and the teaching about God the Word or the Divine Logos. “Words about life” here, contrary to the opinion of some commentators (Westcott, Duesterdick, etc.), does not mean only the divine teaching that Christ the Savior proclaimed to people (cf. Phil 2:16), but is precisely the name of God the Word, as the construction shows (περί - in Apostle John is usually used with the genus, see John 1:15, 22, 47, 2:25, etc.), and the context of the Apostle’s speech: only about the personal Divine Word or the God-man could the Apostle say about himself and the other apostles: “we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, we have looked at, we have touched with our hands,” and in Art. 2 The Apostle testifies that this life - the eternal life of the God-man - was with the Father and appeared to us, which is quite reminiscent of the words of St. Apostle John about the Divine Word-Christ in the Gospel: “in that life is, and life is the light of man” (John 1:4). The Apostle’s use in the epistle of the same words and expressions as in the Gospel, such as: λόγος, ζωή, ήν, πρός, even more similarity or identity of concepts and their relation to the same main subject - God the Word. Without repeating here what was said in the notes to the Gospel of John John 1, we only note that the naming of the Son of God Logos both in the Gospel and in the epistle was not a matter of independent speculation by the Apostle, but was revealed to the Seer in a deliberate supernatural revelation (see Rev. XIX:13). The eternal existence of God the Word is expressed in the place in question in the epistle with the words ήν απ᾿ αρχής, as in the Gospel: εν αρχή ήν, “from the beginning,” as in “in the beginning” means before the beginning of time, otherwise beginningless and infinite, therefore, eternal. In the same way, “the word: was does not mean temporary existence, but the independent existence of a known object, the beginning and foundation of everything that has received existence, such, without which the latter could not have come into existence” (Blessed Theophilus). Showing the complete authenticity of the gospel preaching of the apostles about God the Word, St. The apostle points to completeness, excluding the possibility of any doubt in the knowledge of the apostles about the God-man, based on the comprehensive spiritual-sensory experience of the apostles: all the external senses and all the internal spiritual powers of the apostles participated in the experimental comprehension of God the Word, who appeared in the flesh: “touched both by mental touch and at the same time by sensual touch, as, for example, Thomas did after the resurrection. For He was One and indivisible, One and the same - visible and invisible, encompassed and immense, inviolable and tangible, speaking like a man and working miracles like God” (Theophilus). The Divine Word of the Apostle is here in Art. 1st, is called the Word of life, and in Art. 2nd - Life (ή ζωή), which was with the Father and appeared to people, eternal life (τήν ζωήν τήν αιώνιον), which is proclaimed by the apostles, including the one writing this letter to St. John. In Art. 3 and 4, the purpose of both preaching in general and this epistle is that Christians, through the preached and written word of the apostles, have fellowship (κοινωνίαν) not only with the apostles, but through them with God the Father and Jesus Christ: “through the word we accept you as fellow members of what we have seen and heard, so we have you as fellow members of the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and having received this, we, as those who cling to God, can be filled with joy,” (Blessed Theophilus). Thus, in the epistle, the teaching about the Divine Word is revealed mainly from the side of the imperishable, eternal blessed life, which has its source in God the Word, and from the side of the communication of Christians with this original source of all life. If the Gospel of John reveals the actual teaching about the person of God the Word of Jesus Christ, then the message gives the application of this teaching to life; on the basis of true knowledge of God and faith in Jesus Christ, as the incarnate Word of God, it creates the life of each individual member of Christ’s Church in order to lead everyone to eternal life, to eternal bliss in communion with God. 1 John 1:5. And this is the gospel that we have heard from Him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in Him there is no darkness. The essence of the gospel brought to earth by the Incarnate Word of God, heard from Him by the apostles and proclaimed to people by them, is expressed by the Apostle John here in the form of a short aphorism with the opposition of positive thoughts and negative thoughts (antithetical parallelism): “God is light, and in him there is no darkness.” Judging by the aphoristic nature of this expression, and even more by the direct testimony of the Apostle: “we have heard from Him,” one can think that the exact saying is reproduced here, the Savior’s own words - one of those numerous agrapha (άγραφα) - the sayings of the Lord not recorded in the Gospel, which were preserved only in the writings of the apostles (this is what Apostle Paul cited in his speech to to the Ephesian shepherds the saying of the Lord: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” Acts 20:35) or in later monuments of Christian church tradition. It is possible, however, as some interpreters suggest, that the saying in question is a generalization, abbreviation or reminder of several similar sayings of Christ the Savior about Himself as light (John 8:12, 9:5), expressed by the Apostle himself in an aphorism. In any case, the proposition: “God is light” is one of the expressions used by Ap. John, which describes God’s own being, are: “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) and “God is Love” (1 John 4:8): if other New Testament writers speak about the properties and actions of God, then St. John says that there is God in his being. The main concept given by the name of light in application to God is the concept of absolute moral perfection, cf. James 1:17, most perfect holiness. Just as in the visible world light is the most excellent and beneficial element, illuminating, warming, reviving everything, so in God “light” is the totality and fullness of His Divine perfections - holiness, wisdom, omniscience, grace, etc., by which God illuminates, enlightens, enlivens, leads to bliss. And there is no deficiency in any of these properties of God, there is no shadow in the ever-present light of God’s being. “So He is light, and there is no darkness in Him, but a spiritual light, attracting the eyes of the soul to see Him, and turning away from everything material and arousing the desire for Him alone with the strongest love. By darkness he means either ignorance or sin, for in God there is neither ignorance nor sin, because ignorance and sin take place (only) in matter and in our disposition... And that the Apostle calls sin darkness is clear from his Gospel saying: “and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5), where he calls darkness our sinful nature, which In all his inclination to fall, he yields to our envious devil, who leads us to sin. So, the Light, united with our very perceptible nature, became completely elusive to the tempter, for He did not create sin (Isaiah 53:9).” From the teaching about God as Light, the Apostle further draws two moral and practical conclusions: a) about the need for Christians to walk in the faith of truth and purity, to acknowledge and confess their sins and to be cleansed by the blood of the Redeemer (1 John 1:6, 2:2) and b) about their duty to keep the commandments of God, especially the commandment of love (1 John 2:3–11). 1 John 1:6. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, but walk in darkness, then we lie and do not act in the truth; 1 John 1:7. if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. Every Christian, as a member of the Kingdom of God, must be in living communion with God. But a necessary condition for this is the Christian’s walking in the light of truth and holiness. In the absence of these conditions, a Christian would be mistaken or would admit a conscious deception, considering himself to be in communion with God - the Light of truth and holiness. The harshness of the tone apparently suggests that the Apostle is referring to some false teachers who distorted the true concept of the essence of Christian life and communication with God. “So, when we accept you into fellowship with God, who is light, and in this light, as shown, there is no darkness and cannot be; then we, as fellow members of the light, must not accept darkness into ourselves, so as not to be punished for lying, and, together with the lie, not to be rejected from communion with the light” (Blessed Theophilus). True communication with God, true walking in the light according to the law of likeness to God, is necessarily manifested in communication with neighbors, in brotherly love. But the source of grace-filled power to walk in the light of communion with God and others lies solely in the redemption of the whole world by the Blood of the Son of God. “No one who loves the truth and tries to be true will dare to say that he is sinless. So, if anyone is overcome by this fear, let him not lose heart: for whoever has entered into communion with His Son Jesus Christ has been cleansed by His Blood, shed for us” (Blessed Theophilus). 1 John 1:8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:9. If we confess our sins, then He, being faithful and righteous, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:10. If we say that we have not sinned, then we represent Him as a liar, and His word is not in us. Already in the last words of Art. On the 7th, the Apostle expressed the idea that sin also operates in Christians, and that they all need the cleansing power of the Blood of Christ. Now, having in mind, perhaps, the false teachers who rejected this truth, the Apostle with particular insistence proves the need for all Christians to have an awareness of the depravity of their nature and propensity to sin. The lack of this consciousness, and even more so its complete absence, leads not only to destructive self-delusion (v. 8), but further - in the end - to the denial of the redemptive work of Christ, to the recognition of even God Himself as a liar (v. 10), for if people themselves can be without sin, then redemption and a Redeemer are unnecessary, and the Words of Scripture about the need for redemption for all would turn out to be false. But, denying and condemning with all decisiveness self-delusion and the claim to perfect sinlessness, the Apostle at the same time resolves the naturally arising question: how to reconcile the sinful state of a Christian with the necessary requirement of communion with God, Who is the light? The Apostle gives the answer to this perplexity in Art. 9 in the sense that a necessary condition for our communication with God in the presence of our undoubted sinfulness is confession, that is, open, decisive and persistent recognition of our sins: εάν ομολογώμεν τάς αμαρτίας ημών - confession not only of general sinfulness, but of specific sins, known as works of darkness. That confession of sins cannot be limited to internal consciousness alone, but must be accompanied by external confession or open self-judgment before God and before the witness appointed by God to bind and decide the sins of men (John 20:22–23), this is already presupposed by the meaning and New Testament use of the term ομολογεϊν, which contains the idea of ​​external utterance or expression of one or another before people (cf. Matt. X:32–33; John 1:20). “How great a good is born from confession is evident from the following words: “Tell first your sins in order to be justified” (Isaiah XLIII.26) (Blessed Theophilus). If we fulfill the required condition - confession of sins - God, according to the Apostle, will certainly forgive the sins of the repentant (glory: “forgive our sins”) and internally cleanse the sinner from unrighteousness (“cleanse us from all unrighteousness”). In this both the faithfulness and the righteousness of God are realized. “God is faithful, which is the same thing as true; for the word faithful is used not only about the one to whom something is entrusted, but also about the one who is himself very faithful, who, by his own faithfulness, can make others so. In this sense, God is faithful, and He is righteous in the sense that He does not drive away those who come to Him, no matter how sinful they may be (John 6:37) (Blessed Theophilus). You might be interested in: