1–3 John: Fellowship in God's Family

by David L. Allen

This commentary on 1–3 John is a great resource for pastors and laypersons alike, showing how John’s letters lay out the foundational nature of truth and love in the context of the local church, with teachings that overflow with theological depth and real-world wisdom. 

Part of the Preaching the Word series.

Genres: Christian

435 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 30, 2013

Reviews

[Jonathan Sussex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book, if you are interested in getting stuck into 1-3 John. As always in this series it delivers a very Gospel centred, Christ exalting, highly applicable study. Always good to consider some less well preached books, in this instance 2&3 John.

[Steve Croft · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've now completed most of the NT PTW series, and probably due to being spoiled with mostly Kent Hughes, and a few other class scholars, I felt this one wasnt quite up to their level. There was ofcourse a lot if good, I learnt a lot, but a few things pulled my rating down. The chapters were too long and a bit cumbersome in parts, and the ending felt rushed at the end. There was 5 or 6 chapters for a single chapter of 1 John, however a single chapter each for 2 John and 3 John.


The author, David Allan is clearly a calvinist, this is fine, so is Kent Hughes, but David has a pretty rigid view of the text (typical of calvinism) and doesnt display enough humility in his interpretation in my opinion. For example:


- p120. 'The openness movement is a false doctrine.' Is it? I think it would be better to say 'some consider open theism to be a false doctrine'


- p165 "No one can teach God anything; he already knows it all. In fact, God has never learned anything! If God had to learn something, he would not have been God before he had to learn it! God has never forgotten anything either. If he had, he would cease to be God!"

Really? Why would God cease to be God if he had to learn something, or if he forgot something (like my sins)? People that make these 'cease to be God' generally believe they are making intelligent statements because it comes from Plato and Aristotle, but some critical thinking should show them they aren't. I really despise these types of metaphysical 'philosophical' statements, can you tell? 😂.


-p214 '"Remember the sabbath, to keep it holy" Sunday is our sabbath now.'

He wrote this in a section regarding our duty to keep the 10 commandments. I dont agree, Paul taught there were no more sabbaths!


-p265 "If you do so, when the false teacher knocks on your neighbours door down the street he can say, "Well your neighbour Dr Allen, just a few doors down let me in, and we had a wonderful talk!" My disobedience could lead to someones spiritual distruction"

This was a quote that the author wrote after explaining that we should never provide hospitality to a false teacher such as a Jehovahs witness. Come on. He's quoting Paul way out of context. Would Jesus turn away a muslim or a mormon that knocked on his door to chat? Rubbish. Such a strange thing to preach in an exposition of the 'love' epistles.


Anyway, there was some great stuff too. Here is some notes I took:


- May God deliver us from trafficking in unlived truth. Howard hendricks


- In verse 6 John affirms that no one who “abides in [Christ],” meaning no one who is genuinely a Christian, “keeps on sinning.” The key here is the present tense verb expressing an ongoing sinful lifestyle. John has already affirmed the possibility that a Christian can sin. That is not his point here. He does not refer to an occasional specific act of sin but rather a lifestyle of sin. Such a lifestyle indicates someone who has neither “seen” nor “known” Jesus. The use of the word “know” here suggests knowledge based on experience. Not to “know” Christ here describes someone who is not genuinely saved.


- A Christian teenage girl was out with friends when the decision was made by the group to go to a particular place and do things there that she was uncomfortable with. She had just a few seconds of hesitation and then spoke out and asked to be taken home. People began to snicker. One of the boys said to her, “Why don’t you want to go with us? Are you afraid your dad will hurt you if he finds out?” “No,” she said. “I’m afraid if I go there I will hurt my father.” That should be the attitude and action of Christians today. It’s not that you are afraid God will hurt you if you sin, but you love him so much that you don’t want to hurt him.


- ...ever heard someone say something like, “If I believe such a doctrine, I would do as I want to since I would be saved regardless.” W. T. Conner, professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in a bygone era, had a good answer to such an egregious slur on God’s saving grace: “That’s right. I do what I want to do, but in regeneration Christ did something to my ‘wanter.’ I just don’t want to do the things that you are talking about.”


- And how am I assured . . . that I do not mistake the voice of the Spirit? Even by the testimony of your own spirit: by “the answer of a good conscience toward God.” By the fruits which He hath wrought in your spirit, you shall know the testimony of the Spirit of God. Hereby you shall know that you are in no delusion . . . the immediate fruits of the Spirit, ruling in the heart . . . And the outward fruits are, the doing good to all men; the doing no evil to any; and the walking in the light a zealous, uniform obedience to all the commandments of God


- A French proverb says, “There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.”

The benefits of a clear conscience are confidence before God and confidence that our prayers will be answered.


- 1 John 4.1-3 how to test a false prophet


- We who are exhorted to love are already loved by God. This is the ground for the command to love others. John is not speaking of our love as only an imitation of what we see in God, though that is true. Our love is not an imitation from a distance but participation from within. Nor is he speaking of our love as only gratitude or mere emotion. His concept of love goes much deeper than that. God’s love is creative! It actually produces its like in us! We love from God’s fullness and not for it as some ideal to achieve to quench the thirst of our own emptiness. Feelings come to us. Agapē comes from us. Feelings are passive and receptive. Agapē is active and creative. Feelings are instinctive. Agapē is chosen. We fall in love, but we do not fall into agapē. Our choice to love comes not from weather, digestion, good vibrations, heredity, or environment but from our own heart, the center of our being.


-How can we love others when we dont like them? Easy, we do it to ourselves all the time.


- You cannot believe in Jesus and then sometime later in your Christian life receive the Holy Spirit. This is, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “an utter impossibility” and is “utterly unscriptural.” The Holy Spirit comes to indwell the believer at the moment of conversion. At that moment we are baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ, the Church universal (1 Corinthians 12:13). Notice here that the Holy Spirit is the agent of baptism, not the one into whom we are immersed. There is one baptism of the Holy Spirit, but there are many fillings of the Holy Spirit. This is the clear teaching of the book of Acts as well as the Pauline epistles.


- John explodes all this doubt into the limbo of nonsense.¹ But God does not want his children to worry, doubt, or lack assurance about whether they are Christians or not. In this letter John provides some tests to determine if you are a believer or not. We have already seen some of those tests in earlier chapters. There is the test of love for the brethren. Do you love other Christians? There is the test of righteousness. Do you desire to live correctly and in a way that pleases God? There is the test of right believing. Have you believed that Jesus is the Son of God? If you pass those three tests, mark it down, you are a Christian.


- Spurgeon is correct to point out that it is our duty to obtain full assurance. “We should not have been commanded to give diligence to make our calling and election sure if it were not right for us to be sure. I am sure it is right for a child of God to know that God is his Father, and never to have a question in his heart as to his sonship.”²


- John’s purpose in his Gospel was evangelistic: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ.” Now he writes in his letter with a purpose of assurance of salvation: “that you might know that you have eternal life.” John’s Gospel was written to help us come to know Christ, and his letter was written to help us know that we have come to know Christ.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

First sentence: Tucked away at the back of your Bible is a little letter called 1 John. John the apostle, one of the original twelve disciples of Jesus, wrote it.

The Preaching the Word Bible commentary series is published by Crossway. I've a few of these in my collection. This was my first time to read the commentary on 1-3 John by David Allen.

What should YOU know? It is a Bible commentary. It is a Bible commentary that prints out the entirety of the Bible book being studied. It isn't solely just expository preaching, it allows room for application and stories. That being said, it does provide insight and context into studying the book of the Bible. It isn't 'just' stories and anecdotes. (It isn't even primarily that.) It does try to weave in pop culture references, references that may not have aged all that well in the years since it was published. Again the main thing of the commentary is Scripture itself. It definitely has its casual moments though perhaps not as casual as say J. Vernon McGee. So expect a few more degrees of seriousness than McGee but less than say a more scholarly commentary.

I definitely appreciated this one!

[Ian Minielly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allen is great at what he does. He provides the kinds of easily digestible information you would expect from someone who spent thirty years in ministry and then taught at seminary for another two decades. I have enjoyed the books from Allen I own and this is no different. He provides some great information and anecdotes for three very small New Testament letters that makes owning this book worth the cost and time investment to digest.

[Wassenario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid. I really enjoyed 1 John especially

[Erin Seeders · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love David Allen’s commentaries, and each book of 1-3 John was superb, but 1 John was my favorite!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. I appreciate the style of exposition/commentary that this is (Allen calls it a sermontary, I believe). It provides a good mix of background information and application. Allen gives solid analysis and interpretations (with a couple exceptions, particularly having to do with his non-Reformed theology) of the text of first, second, and third John, and his illustrations are excellent and even moving sometimes. Each chapter of the book addresses a section of Scripture, from a couple verses up to a whole paragraph. While the groupings of the verses make sense thematically, the only criticism I have stylistically is that the chapters vary wildly in length (some chapters are nearly 3 times as long as others), and not necessarily in relation to the length of the section of Scripture that is being discussed. But overall, this is a worthwhile read.

[Joe Haack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this helpful volume while preparing my sermons this summer in 1-3 John. I appreciated the heartfelt passion in his exegesis. As is usually the case with these "pastoral" commentaries, I gain more from observing the author's prudent and faithful exegetical decision-making, than anything else.

[Matt Maples · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy this commentary series. It is very practical and helpful for preaching, and it's reformed perspective gives it a strong theological foundation.