The Letters of John

By N. T. Wright, Dale Larsen and Sandy Larsen

In his letters, John expresses delight at believers who are "walking in the truth": behaving with that integrity which reflects the gospel. This involves not just correct doctrine and proper outward behavior, but also love for God and fellow believers. It's this love, John writes, that shows that the truth of the gospel has really been grasped, not as an abstract idea but as what it is, the very life of God himself at work in his people. These nine studies from Tom Wright help us become believers who are "walking in the truth" in our own day--people in whom the very life of God is at work for all to see.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP Bible Studies
• Release date: Jun 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780830869282

N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and one of the world’s leading Bible scholars. He serves as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews as well as Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air. Wright is the award-winning author of many books, including Paul: A Biography, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, The Day the Revolution Began, Simply Jesus, After You Believe, and Scripture and the Authority of God.

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Couverture : N. T. Wright, with Dale and Sandy Larsen, The Letters of John (9 Studies for Individuals and Groups)Illustration

THE LETTERS OF JOHN

9 STUDIES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS

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N. T. WRIGHT

WITH DALE AND SANDY LARSEN

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CONTENTS

Getting the Most Out of the Letters of John

Suggestions for Individual Study

Suggestions for Group Members

11 John 1:1–2:2

The Word of Life

21 John 2:3-14

The New Old Command

31 John 2:15-29

You Have the Anointing

41 John 3

God’s Children Now

51 John 4

God Is Love

61 John 5:1-12

Faith Conquers

71 John 5:13-21

The True God

82 John

The Sign of Life

93 John

Welcome the Family

Guidelines for Leaders

Praise for The Letters of John

About the Authors

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE LETTERS OF JOHN

I have seen the future; and it works." That notorious statement was made by an American journalist, Lincoln Steffens, in 1919. He had just returned from a visit to the recently established Soviet Union, formed on Marxist principles after the Russian Revolution had swept away the old aristocracy and its method of government. Steffens echoed the hopes of millions in Europe and America. Perhaps this entirely new ideal, this new way of ordering human society, was the answer to all the old problems of tyranny and oppression. Perhaps this was indeed the future, the thing that would come to the rest of humanity as a great revelation, a great display of enlightened progress. We would all catch up one day; but for the moment Steffens, at least, had had a glimpse into that future and declared that it worked.

Subsequent history has revealed, of course, that Soviet Marxism only worked in the sense of achieving certain ends at the enormous cost of human lives. The Soviet system, like other revolutionary regimes, found it necessary to imprison or kill millions of its own subjects, as well as enslave several adjacent nations. When it finally came crashing down under its own dead weight in the late 1980s, it became apparent that it had been rotten and hollow inside for many years, perhaps all along.

But that sense Lincoln Steffens had of a glimpse of the future, of an advance display of the new world waiting to be born, is exactly the picture the apostle John offers in his short but glowing letter we call 1 John. The ancient Jews believed that world history was divided into two periods or ages. There was the present age, which was full of misery and suffering, injustice and oppression; and there was the age to come, the time when God would sort it all out, would put everything right and would in particular rescue his people from the evil they had suffered.

Now, John says, God has provided an advance display of this future! God has kept the age to come under wraps, waiting to reveal it at the right time. But the secret at the heart of the early Christian movement was that the age to come had already been revealed. The future had burst into the present, even though the present time wasn’t ready for it. The word for that future was Life: Life as it was meant to be; Life in its full, vibrant meaning; a Life which death tried to corrupt, thwart and kill but a Life which had overcome death itself and was now on offer to anyone who wanted to come and take it. Life itself had come to life, had taken the form of a human being, coming into the present from God’s future, coming to display God’s coming age. And the name of that Life-in-person is of course Jesus.

John, the author of this and two other letters we will study in this guide (prepared with the help of Dale and Sandy Larsen, for which I am grateful), is most likely the same John who wrote the Gospel that bears his name. This would be the same John who was one of original twelve