Welcome to the 10-Minute Bible, where we look at one book of the Bible in 10 minutes. Well, give or take 10 minutes. In this session, we're going to look at the book of 1 John. As I have explained throughout this series, going through the 66 books of the Bible one at a time, in order to understand a biblical book, you need to start by asking three questions. You need to understand three subjects, and the first is the subject of the book, which is the answer to the question, what is the author writing about? The second thing you need to ask is, what is he saying about that subject? I call that the structure. Now, as you've heard me explain in this series many times, A secular book gives you a table of contents, and that table of contents gives you some idea of what the author is going to do. There is no such thing in the Bible. However, a good study Bible will have an outline, and that outline is trying to capture what the author is doing with the subject. The third thing you need to ask is, what's the situation? Now this is particularly important. In virtually every book of the Bible, something happened to cause the author to write that book. A simple illustration is that Paul is in jail and the church at Philippi sent him support, financial support, and he writes the book we call Philippians as a thank you note. So that basically is what provoked that book, although other things are going on in it. Well, you need to ask, why did that author write on that subject to those people? That's I call the situation, and if you understand that, you're a long way down the road to understanding that book. Now let's apply that to the little book of 1 John. What is the subject of 1 John? And the answer is fellowship. Then you need to ask, what is the structure? How does he develop that subject? Now, I've been saying while we've been in the epistles that the epistles are following the format of an ancient letter. Paul's epistles do that, and so do Peter's. That form included a salutation, a thanksgiving, a prayer, the body of the book, and it concludes with a personal greetings and a benediction. Well, 1 John doesn't do that. It doesn't follow that format at all. It's more like an essay than an ancient letter. So I would outline it like this. I think there's a prologue in the first four verses. And then he's going to talk about fellowship. And it seems to me, and it's difficult to outline this book, but it seems to me that he mentions several things about God. So he starts out saying God is light and in him is no darkness at all. You know that verse in chapter one, verse five. which is another way of saying that God is light and we have fellowship with this God who is light. Then later in the book, in chapter 2, verse 28, he talks about God being righteous. And then even later, he talks about the fact that God is love in chapter 4, verse 7. So I would outline the book by saying that we have fellowship with the God who is light, we have fellowship with the God who is righteous, and we have fellowship with the God who is love. Now, that's the broad outline of the book. You can subdivide each of those parts, but it seems to me that that's the overall outline of the book, and it closes with an epilogue in chapter 5, verses 18 to 21. All right, who's the author? Well, it's anonymous. He never identifies himself, except he claims to be an eyewitness of the life of Christ. And he virtually calls himself an apostle in several verses. And by the way, if you read this book, you'll notice pronouns are very important. It uses the word we and you and them. We are the apostles, you are the readers, and them are the antichrists that are trying to deceive the readers. They are the false teachers. So, I take it that the apostle John wrote the book and it's because people are being threatened by false teaching. That puts the date, and we really have a hard time dating this book. It gets dated all the way from 67 A.D. to 90. I just arbitrarily picked a date in the middle and said 80. So I suspect it was written after 70, and so any time after that, before 90, would probably fit the bill. All right, who are the recipients? Well, this gets greatly debated because some people think that it's Christians and we need to make sure they're Christians, but I'm of the opinion that the book is very clear that it's written to believers. He calls them brethren. He calls them beloved. As a matter of fact, there are hints in the book that they'd been believers for a long time. It says you have an anointing and you don't have a need that anybody teach you. So those things seem to indicate that they've been believers for a while. As a matter of fact, some have gone so far as to suggest that the book may be addressed to teachers because of some of those things that are said about the readers. At any rate, what's going on here is that I mentioned they're being challenged and so It's clearly addressed to everybody that's being challenged with this form of false teaching. They were being confronted by false teachers who said Jesus didn't come in the flesh and that's what he is combating. It's basically a denial of the incarnation. Those false teachers probably claimed that they had the father, but they denied the truth of the son. And that's what he's grappling with in this book. So the question then becomes, what is the purpose of the book? And there are multiple purposes, as he states throughout the book. I would summarize them by saying he's trying to promote fellowship. prevent sin, proclaim forgiveness, protect the saints against these false teachers, and to provide assurance of them that they know the Lord and they're in good shape. Now, if I were gonna summarize this whole book in a sentence, I would say the overall message is that believers should maintain their fellowship with the Lord and manifest their faith through correct doctrine, righteous living, and wholehearted love for the brethren. Remember what I said a minute ago about God is righteous and God is love and God is light? Well, that's the point of the book. Just maintain your fellowship with that by loving and living a righteous life. So I think the takeaway for us is believers are to abide in what they have heard from the beginning to maintain their fellowship with the Lord and just go love one another. That is a great spiritual truth to be taken from this book.