First Episodes
Episode 1: With love, anonymous
Reading the letters of the apostle John is a little like listening in on one side of a phone conversation. Even if you can hear what John is saying, he often speaks in...
Episode 2: But that's not what I meant...
We have to read between the lines of John’s letters to get at his reason for writing them. We might think of him as the lead pastor of a community of house churches. I...
Episode 3: Beginnings
Anyone who reads the four Gospels can easily see how different John’s gospel is from the other three, in both style and content. Much of John’s first letter reflects s...
Episode 4: Making common cause
When we write messages to other people, it’s common to use pronouns like “I” and “you.” But in the opening four verses of 1 John, the apostle repeatedly says, “we.” Wh...
Episode 5: A tangible love
One of John’s purposes in writing his letters is to correct the false ideas about Jesus that people in the community had heard. To that end, he sometimes seems to emph...