Inductive Study of 1 John began with the reading of the letters of John. Below is the link for the observation chart and the overview video from the Bible Project.
Questions:
- Who: John son of Zebedee (Mk 1:19-20) – the apostle and the author of the Gospel and Revelation
- What: it was a circular letter sent to Christians in a number of places
- When: Probably between A.D. 85 and 90
- Where: from Ephesus
- Why: To reassure Christians in their faith and to counter false teachings (1 John 1:4, 2:1, 12-14, 21, 26; 5:13)
- How: a sermon/letters
Key words and phrases:
- Fellowship:
- Heard:
- Life:
- Light:
- Seen:
- Darkness:
- Father:
- Jesus:
- Manifested:
- Proclaim:
- Sin and sins:
- Truth:
- Walk:
Next week: More about the key words found in chapter 1.
Logos [G3056] is used in 1 John 1:1 as a sort of title for Christ. But when I look up logos in Strong’s concordance, I have a very difficult time trying to figure out which of the many definitions of Logos applies to Jesus. At best, all I can come up with is that Jesus is the personification of the spoken word of God but I cannot find anything that alludes to that. To put it simply, I would like to know why “logos” was used in reference to Jesus.
From The Word Study Dictionary: The word Lógos in Joh 1:1, Joh 1:14; 1Jn 1:1; and Rev 9:13 stands for the preincarnate Christ, the spiritual, divine nature spoken of in the Jewish writings before and about the time of Christ, under various names, e.g., Son of Man (Dan 7:13).
From the John Gill commentary: “Now as this is said of Christ, the Word of life, who is so called, because he has life in himself, as God, as the Mediator, and as man, and is the author of life, natural, spiritual, and eternal, it must be understood as he, the Word, is made manifest in the flesh; for he, as the Word, or as a divine person, or as considered in his divine nature, is not to be seen nor handled: this therefore is spoken of the Word, or of the person of Christ, God-man, with respect to his human nature, as united to the Logos, or Word of God; and so is a proof of the truth and reality of his human nature, by several of the senses.”
Hope this helps.
Thank you for the resources.
No problem. Happy to do it!