Volume IV
The First Epistle General of John
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. IV, p. 499
Was probably written about twenty years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and chiefly to the Jewish Christians. The scope of it is to establish their faith in Christ, as the eternal Son of God, and promised Messiah; to lead them into affecting views of his and his Father's love in the work of our redemption, and thereby engage their love to God and to one another, and sweetly constrain them to depart from all iniquity, and yield a cheerful obedience to all his commandments, answerably to their high privileges, hopes, and obligations;—and, in fine, to exhibit a system of infallible marks for trying the reality of our grace.
[Although the name of the writer is not found in this epistle, yet, by the consent of all ecclesiastical history, it has been uniformly ascribed to John, the author of the Gospel; and the similarity of thought and expression between the epistle and Gospel, especially in the inculcation of love, points to 'the disciple whom Jesus loved,' and affords an ample confirmation of the acknowledged authorship. The date of the epistle is uncertain, and conjecture is useless. From ch. 2. 14, however, it would appear that there were, when the apostle wrote, several 'fathers' still alive who had 'known him that was from the beginning,' and that, consequently, the epistle was written previous to the destruction of Jerusalem.
It is worthy of special and constant remark that, besides its community of subject with the other books, every book of Scripture has its own peculiar subject and object. This epistle, accordingly, while it opens with the fundamental topics of the divine perfections, man's depravity, and Christ's propitiation; and while it interweaves throughout its whole texture many other great truths of the gospel, yet steadily keeps in view one special object—the evidences of a personal and saving interest in the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby believers may judge, and are enabled to 'know that they have eternal life, and that they may (should) believe on the name of the Son of God,' ch. 5. 13. These evidences, originating as from a fountain, in 'fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ,' ch. 1. 3, 7, run continuously throughout the whole epistle, so that it forms a personal test by which every sincere inquirer may be able 'to examine himself whether he be in the faith, prove his own self, and know (if a believer, however weak and fearful) that Christ is in him'—'the hope of glory.' The following Scriptures are more or less directly referred to throughout the epistle:—Ge. 4. 4-8; De. 13. 13; 1 Ki. 8. 46; Job 19. 26; 42. 8; Ps. 16. 11; 41. 9; Ec. 7. 20; Is. 9. 6; liii.; 54. 5; 55. 7; 61. 1; Je. 31. 33, 34; Mi. 6. 8; Ro. 3. 24. C.]