can be discovered without too much difficulty.
Finally, the ‘Further Reading’ lists at the end of each volume have been removed. Many new commentaries and individual studies have been added to those that were the basis of William Barclay’s work, and making a selection from that ever-increasing catalogue is an impossible task. It is nonetheless my hope that the exploration that begins with these volumes of The New Daily Study Bible will go on in the discovery of new writers and new books.
Throughout the editorial process, many conversations have taken place – conversations with the British and American publishers, and with those who love the books and find in them both information and inspiration. Ronnie Barclay’s contribution to this revision of his father’s work has been invaluable. But one conversation has dominated the work, and that has been a conversation with William Barclay himself through the text. There has been a real sense of listening to his voice in all the questioning and in the searching for new words to convey the meaning of that text. The aim of The New Daily Study Bible is to make clear his message, so that the distinctive voice, which has spoken to so many in past years, may continue to be heard for generations to come.
Linda Foster
London
2001
The Letters of John
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST LETTER OF JOHN
A Personal Letter and its Background
The First Letter of John is called a letter, but it has no opening address nor closing greetings such as the letters of Paul have. And yet no one can read it without feeling its intensely personal character. Beyond all doubt, the man who wrote it had in his mind’s eye a definite situation and a definite group of people. Both the form and the personal character of 1 John will be explained if we think of it as what someone has called ‘a loving and anxious sermon’, written by a pastor who loved his people, and sent out to the various churches over which he had charge.
Any such letter is produced by an actual situation apart from which it cannot be fully understood. If we wish to understand 1 John, we have first of all to try to reconstruct the situation which produced it, remembering that it was written in Ephesus a little after AD 100.
The Falling Away
By AD 100, certain things had almost inevitably happened within the Church, especially in a place like Ephesus.
(1) Many were now second- or even third-generation Christians. The thrill of the first days had, to some extent at least, passed away. In ‘The Prelude’, Wordsworth said of one of the great moments of modern history:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
In the first days of Christianity, there was a glory and a splendour; but now Christianity had become a thing of habit, ‘traditional, half-hearted, nominal’. People had grown used to it, and something of the wonder had been lost. Jesus knew human nature, and he had said: ‘The love of many will grow cold’ (Matthew 24:12). John was writing at a time when, for some at least, the first thrill had gone and the flame of devotion had died to a flicker.
(2) One result was that there were members of the Church who found that the standards which Christianity demanded were becoming a burden and who were tired of making the effort. They did not want to be saints in the New Testament sense of the term. The New Testament word for saint is hagios, which is also commonly translated as holy. Its basic meaning is different. The Temple was hagios because it was different from other buildings; the Sabbath was hagios because it was different from other days; the Jewish nation was hagios because it was different from other nations; and Christians were called to be hagios because they were called to be different from other men and women. There was always a distinct division between Christians and the world. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says: ‘If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you’ (John 15:19). ‘I have given them your word,’ said Jesus in his prayer to God, ‘and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world’ (John 17:14).
All of this involved an ethical demand. It demanded a new standard of moral purity, a new kindness, a new service, a new forgiveness – and it was difficult. And, once the first thrill and enthusiasm were gone, it became harder and harder to stand out against the world and to refuse to conform to the generally accepted standards and practices of the age.
(3) It is to be noted that 1 John shows no signs that the church to which it was written was being persecuted. The peril, as it has been put, was not persecution but seduction; it came from within. That, too, Jesus had foreseen. ‘Many false prophets’, he said, ‘will arise, and lead many astray’ (Matthew 24:11). This was a danger of which Paul had warned the leaders of this very church of Ephesus when he made his farewell address to them. ‘I know’, he said, ‘that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them’ (Acts 20:29–30).
The trouble which 1 John seeks to combat came not from people who were out to destroy the Christian faith but from those who thought they were improving it. It came from people whose aim was to make Christianity intellectually respectable. They knew the intellectual trends and currents of the day, and felt that the time had come for Christianity to come to terms with secular philosophy and contemporary thought.
The Contemporary Philosophy
What, then, was this contemporary thought and philosophy with which the false prophets and mistaken teachers wished to align the Christian faith? Throughout the Greek world, there was a way of thinking to which the general name of Gnosticism is given. The basic belief of all Gnostic thought was that only spirit was good and that matter, the material world, was essentially evil. The Gnostics, therefore, inevitably despised the world since it was matter. In particular, they despised the body, which, being matter, was necessarily evil. Imprisoned within this body was the human spirit. That spirit was a seed of God, who was altogether good. So, the aim of life must be to release this heavenly seed imprisoned in the evil of the body. That could be done only by a secret knowledge and elaborate ritual which only true Gnostics could supply. Here was a train of thought which was written deep into Greek thinking – and which has not even now ceased to exist. Its basis is the conviction that all matter is evil and that spirit alone is good, and that the one real aim in life is to liberate the human spirit from the vile prison house of the body.
The False Teachers
With that in our minds, let us turn to 1 John and gather the evidence as to who these false teachers were and what they taught. They had been within the Church, but they had withdrawn from it. ‘They went out from us, but they did not belong to us’ (1 John 2:19). They were people of influence, for they claimed to be prophets. ‘Many false prophets have gone out into the world’ (1 John 4:1). Although they had left the Church, they still tried to disseminate their teaching within it and to deceive its members and lead them away from the true faith (1 John 2:26).
The Denial of Jesus’ Messiahship
At least some of these false teachers denied that Jesus was the Messiah. ‘Who is the liar’, demands John, ‘but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?’ (1 John 2:22). It is most likely that these false teachers were not Gnostics in the true sense of the word, but Jews. Things had always been difficult for Jewish Christians, but the events of history made them doubly so. It was very difficult for Jews to come to believe in a crucified Messiah. But suppose they had begun to believe this, their difficulties were by no means finished. The Christians believed that Jesus would return quickly to vindicate his people. Clearly, that would be a hope that would be specially dear to the hearts of the Jews. Then, in AD 70, Jerusalem was captured by the Romans, who were so infuriated with the long intransigence and the suicidal