Writing That You May Know

The Apostle Peter closed his second epistle with a charge to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18), a charge given against the backdrop of false teachers who endangered the church with heretical doctrine and immoral living. As we turn this month to 1 John, we find another Apostle confronting a parallel crisis.

The Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, ministered for many years in and around Ephesus after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Toward the end of his life, he wrote the letter that has come down to us as 1 John. It was written to address a set of doctrines that had been brought into the churches around Ephesus by false teachers. These doctrines bore some of the marks of what would become, by the second century, the heresy of Gnosticism, including the denial that the eternal Son of God had truly become flesh and a belief that personal holiness was unimportant for those who possessed superior spiritual knowledge. Though the faithful resisted these errors and the false teachers eventually departed (1 John 2:19; 4:4), the disturbance shook many believers. They began to question whether their own faith was genuine. Could they really be sure that they belonged to Christ?

John writes to address these concerns. In today’s verse, he states his purpose clearly: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” John intends that his readers should not merely hope they are saved but actually know it, with the settled confidence that can sustain the soul through doubt and trial alike.

Some Christians have wondered whether the pursuit of assurance is itself a kind of presumption, as though true humility requires perpetual uncertainty about one’s standing before God. John takes the opposite view. He treats assurance as the proper inheritance of every believer, and he shows us in his letter how it may be cultivated. The means he provides have sometimes been called the “tests of life.” Throughout this epistle, John lays out the marks of authentic Christian faith—belief in the incarnation, holiness of life, and love for the brethren—and invites his readers to examine themselves accordingly. Those who discern these qualities at work in their lives, however imperfectly, may take comfort that they are indeed children of God.