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One of the things that folks tend to overlook in the forest of biblical interpretation are the trees of the words used by the writers.  Further, we don’t appreciate what Milton Terry calls the usus loquendi, or current usage of the times.  Words mean something to the people to whom spoken at the time spoken.

John is said to be an apostle to the circumcised (the Jews) as was Peter (see Galatians 2:7-9).  If John was writing to a situation where there were problems of a Jewish nature, we would expect his language to be grasped by the Jewish mind and have special significance to them.

I was taught early on that John was writing to a situation that was seeking to deal with encroaching Gnosticism.  For instance, I. Howard Marshall says, “The false teachers were forerunners of the heretics who were responsible for the developed Gnostic sects of the second century” (The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistles of John, p. 15).

Stephen Smalley suggests a mixture of parties in the church, both Gnostic and Jewish Ebionites (those who held that Jesus was a prophet and upheld Jewish laws, but that He was not divine.  They did not accept Him as the Messiah; see The Word Biblical Commentary: 1, 2, 3 John, pp. xxiii-xxv).  

I would like for us to consider that John was chiefly -- if not exclusively -- written to counter the attacks on Christians by those Jews who continued to hold tightly to the established temple worship and ritual which, according to John, was “passing away.”  In this brief treatise, I want us to consider two things:

1.  Many of the terms that John uses can be traced back to the Old Covenant language of the Torah.  Here is a chart that notes some of the parallels.

John’s Words
Old Covenant Roots
Cleansing from Sin (1:7, 9)
Lev. 7:19; 10:10; 12:7: 13:7; 14:2; 15:13
Forgiveness of Sin (1:9: 2:12)
Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13; 16:18
Propitiation (2:2; 4:10)
(Atonement) Lev. 1:4; 14:20; 16:24
Keep His commandments, lawlessness (2:3-8; 3:4; 3:22-24; 4:21; 5:1-3)
Exod. 15:26; 16:28; 20:6; Lev. 22:31; 26:3; Deut. 4:2; 28:9; 30:10
Abide (2:6, 10, 24, 27, 28; 3:6, 9, 14, 17, 24; 4:12, 13, 15, 16)
Exod. 25:8; 29:45, 46; Lev. 16:16; Num. 5:3; Ps. 27:4
Darkness & Light (1:5-7; 2:8-11)
Exod. 10:23; 13:21; 14:20; 25:37
Anointing (2:20-27)
Exod. 28:41; 29:7, 29; 30:30; 40:13-15
Purify, Purity (3:3)
Lev. 12:4; Num. 19:9, 12-13, 19-20; 31:19-20
Practice Righteousness (3:7, 10)
Deut. 6:25; 16:18, 20; 24:13; Ps. 4:5; 18:24
Passed from Death to Life (3:14)
Deut. 30:15, 19; 32:39
False Prophets (4:1-3)
Deut. 13:1-5; 18:15-22
Day of Judgement/Punishment (3:2; 4:17-18)
Deut. 28

2.  John takes these Old Covenant terms and applies them in a New Covenant setting.  It is interesting to note, for instance that John does exhort his readers to “keep the commandments,” but the commandment-keeping of his readers means to keep Christ’s commandments, not Moses’.

The false prophets are no longer those who would seek to cause a person to depart from the commandments of Moses (Deuteronomy 13:1-5), but one who would lead people from the belief that Jesus is God’s Messiah (1 John 4:1-3).  

The practice of righteousness is no longer based on looking back to the Mosaic torah to follow them, but the practice of righteousness is to be righteous as He (Jesus) is righteous (1 John 3:7).  Jesus has become the standard of New Covenant conduct, not the Old Covenant torah.

John was writing in a very tumultuous time when his flock was being bombarded with two messages.  The first was from John and the apostles that eternal life was found in Jesus Christ alone.  The second was from those who considered it an abomination to seek righteousness from God on the basis of anything other than the established laws of Moses as exemplified in the temple system (see Acts 15).

John’s first epistle is his effort to provide comfort to his flock that they can have full assurance of eternal life in Jesus, God’s Messiah, alone without having to depend on the ritual of the temple system (which was about to pass away).  John’s application of Old Covenant terms to the New Covenant life in Christ was certainly radical for his day!