1 John 1

In a wonderful way God is brought before us in this epistle, as manifested in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s nature is revealed as in no other part of Scripture. You have the two names which present to us what God is: “God is light” (v. 5), and, “God is love.” (Chapter 4:8,16) Now all God’s actings are according to these two revelations of His nature, light and love. As someone has remarked, the difference between Paul’s writings and John’s is, that in the latter we have God presented to us, come down to us in a man; but in the epistles of Paul we have man presented to God, accepted in Christ; man gone up in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and accepted in Him. Just as He, on the cross, was the measure of our distance from God, He is now, at God’s right hand, the measure of our nearness to God. In John’s epistle we have Christianity pure and simple, and Christianity too as expressed in a person—Christ Himself.