The Contribution Of The Johannine Epistles
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES
Taken together, the epistles of John stand as a poised demonstration of the critical importance of testing all attempts to rearticulate the gospel by the immutables of the gospel revelation. Doubtless John’s opponents saw themselves as being on the leading edge of Christian reflection (2 John 9); by contrast, John reverts to what was "from the beginning,” to the testimony of the first eyewitnesses, to incontrovertible Christological givens, to the perennial newness of the "old” command to love one another, to the irrefragable connection between genuine faith and obedience. This stance has a bearing on what teaching a church will listen to (2 John). At the practical level, whether heresy stands behind 3 John or not, this holistic vision insists that there is no place for petty gurus in the church who will not bow to apostolic admonition and authority.
The Johannine Epistles make an important contribution to the doctrine of assurance (see 1 John 5:13). If other New Testament writings make it clear that the objective grounds of our confidence before God are in Christ and his death and resurrection on our behalf, such that Christian assurance is not much more than a concomitant of genuine faith, these epistles insist that a distinction must be made between genuine and spurious faith. Spurious faith does not have the right to assurance before God; genuine
faith can be authenticated not only by the correctness of its object (in this case, the belief that Jesus is Christ come in the flesh) but also by the transformation it effects in the individual: genuine Christians learn to love one another and obey the truth. Christian assurance is not, for John, an abstract good; it is intimately tied to a continuing and transforming relationship with the covenant God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
The Johannine Epistles open an unrivaled window onto at least one part of the New Testament church toward the end of the apostolic age. They afford us the opportunity to draw some lines, however hesitantly, between the church as reflected in the earliest documents of the New Testament and the church at the end of the first century.