This letter was written to a congregation that John was responsible for near the end of the first Christian century. His congregation, as it turns out, was pretty much a mess. He describes them with words and phrases like lie (1:6), hate (2:11), and children of the devil (3:10). He points out their failure to love their fellow Christians (3:10), how they “deceive” themselves (1:8), and how they refuse to help people in need (3:17). He mentions the antichrist three times (2:18, 22; 4:3), a scary word if there ever was one. And John uses forms of the word sin more than twenty times in five short
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