Participatory Victory in 1 John

(avg. read time: 15–29 mins.)

As my project on the NT for this year turns to 1 John, the time has come for another epitome of one of my articles:

“Take Heart, We Have Overcome the World: Participatory Victory in the Theological-Ethical Framework of 1 John.” EvQ 88 (2016/2017): 305–19.

The process for getting this one was published was drawn out. It was not so much in the sense of my 1 Thessalonians article, but I was having trouble trying to put this article out there as another article to add to my short list of publications in an attempt to bolster my applications for PhD programs after I failed to get in the first year applying to Baylor and Duke. I had initially written my observations on what I saw of the notion I referred to as “participatory victory” in 1 John, and then I went back and saw what scholars had said, and I saw here a potential space for an article as I noticed no one had done a full-length study focused on the notion in 1 John. Although plenty of scholars had said something related to one aspect of the idea or another, no one, as far as I could tell, had synthesized the ideas and brought them together under a metatheme of participatory victory. Still, the journals I submitted to rejected it and gave me feedback that was too vague to be helpful. Evangelical Quarterly was the second journal I submitted to, but unbeknownst to me, the editor for articles on biblical studies was nearing the end of his time in that capacity, and despite multiple unanswered attempts to get confirmation that my article was received, I ultimately pulled my article from consideration after two non-responsive months. I then moved on to a third journal, where I obviously struck out. But interestingly enough, the next year on the day I came to my decision of where I would go for my PhD program (having been accepted into TEDS, Fuller, and Asbury), the theology editor (Richard Snoddy) notified me to say that there was new biblical studies editor (John Nolland) and that I could send him the article to be assigned for peer review if I wanted. And once the peer review was completed, that was how I got this article published.

Throughout this sermon sent as a letter, John attaches operative/action-oriented significance to identity statements about the people of God and about God (e.g., “God is light,” “we live in the light,” “those who do the will of God,” “we are children of God,” “God is love”). Deep coherence exists between who God is and what God does so that God’s actions are indeed revelatory. At the same time, 1 John comports with the common biblical expectation that God’s people have this same coherence, a fact that perhaps most fundamentally extends from the basic identity of humans as image-bearers of God. This logic entails the message of theological ethics in a nutshell: “become what you are.” An obvious problem is that these exalted identity statements often do not match up with empirical reality, whether in the time of this letter or the present day, but as Judith Lieu succinctly expresses the exhorter’s perspective, “If the words do not describe the reality of how things are then it is the reality that is flawed, not the words.”¹ The context in which John lays out his vision of theological ethics is one of cosmic conflict (i.e., one that engulfs the entire world).

In fact, each of the major Johannine works provides this vision of a cosmic conflict involving life and death, light and darkness, love and hate, truth and lies. All the former categories are from God, and John understands them according to an eschatological vision formed by Jesus and his resurrection. As such, the eschatological expectation is that the life of God (“eternal life”) conquers death and delivers people from it through resurrection (John 3:14–21, 36; 5:21–29; 6:27–40, 45–58; 8:12, 51; 10:10, 28; 11:25–26; 12:25, 48–50; 17:2–3; 1 John 1:1–3; 2:17, 24–25; 5:11–13, 20); the light of God conquers darkness and delivers people from it through union with God and sanctification (John 1:4–5; 3:19–21; 8:12; 9:4–5; 11:9–10; 12:35–36, 46; 1 John 1:5–7; 2:8–11); the love of God conquers the sin and hatred that separate from God and delivers people from them through new birth and transformation (John 3:1–21; 8:42–47; 15:15–24; 1 John 2:29–3:3; 3:8–10, 14–16; 4:7–12; 4:16–5:5); and the truth of God conquers the lies of the world and delivers people from them through the proclamation of the gospel and faith (John 1:14–18; 4:23–24; 8:31–51; 14:15–17; 16:7–15; 18:37; 1 John 1:8–10; 2:18–28; 3:18–22; 4:1–6; 5:6–12, 20). This victory is not yet fully realized, but believers experience it now in the time when the evil age and the coming age of the kingdom of God overlap. Present experience of eschatological benefits, such as the present possession of everlasting life, is possible only because of Jesus’s glorification—including his death, resurrection, and ascension—in a series of eschatological events that have happened already (i.e., these events are eschatological in that they are climactic in the communal metanarrative and are instrumental to the ultimate resolution of that grand story).

Since believers are people who participate in this conflict on the side of God’s life, light, love, and truth, this vision entails some sense in which the life of the believer is characterized as participation in victory. This vision is theological-ethical because John consistently upholds the belief that there is a way of life appropriate for victors characterized by the radiance of God’s love, the love that Jesus exemplifies, and the love that the abiding Spirit teaches, which the members of the victorious community share with one another (John 14:15–26; 15:7–17; 17:23–26; 1 John 2:29–3:3; 3:14–24; 4:7–5:5). The general lack of specific ethical instructions comports with this participatory vision because John is essentially relying on pointing to Jesus as the one who defines our way of life. These general statements thus serve as evocative cues to call the members of the community into ever-deeper participation in the foundational story of Jesus.

In 1 John in particular, the notion of participatory victory seems to be present at the framework level of thought (i.e., John’s set of assumptions/presuppositions that he shares with the audience in some measure), informing many of the identity statements for Christians and their ethical entailments. Scholars have often noted its presence, though they have generally not explored it. The notion never emerges as an explicit statement connecting the victory of believers and the victory of Christ, like it does in Rev 3:21; 5:5; 12:11; and 17:14. In fact, the terminology of victory in 1 John never has God and Christ as subject, though the only use of victory terminology in the Gospel is with Christ as the subject in John 16:33. However, this analysis demonstrates that, though John nowhere directly asserts it, he assumes everywhere that the victory of believers can only be an extension of divine (particularly christological) victory and that participation in this victory shapes the lives of believers according to the victory of God in Jesus (so that the use of victory terminology in 1 John is essentially an extension of John 16:33 to the believers, hence the title of my article). This analysis focuses on three kinds of passages. First are texts that declare the victory of God and the victory of believers through key terminology (νικάω, νίκη) as well as implicit conflict imagery. Second are texts that describe an active participatory union believers have with God through key terminology (κοινωνία, τελειόω, γεννάω, μένω) and through communal identity statements that “locate” the community as being in the love, life, and light of God and Christ. And third are texts that interweave both concepts into a theological-ethical tapestry of participatory victory that calls for believers to live into and live out the victory of God and Christ they have by virtue of their being partakers of salvation.

Victory in 1 John

The most direct expressions of the victory theme feature terms especially associated with the Johannine corpus. Νίκη is a hapax legomenon in 5:4 and νικάω appears twenty-four out of twenty-eight total times in the NT in this corpus, six of which are in this homily. These words, particularly the latter, appear in contexts of battle, athletic competition, debate, and courtroom situations, always involving a conflict or test with the words signifying that the subject has prevailed or overcome in the conflict or test.

The first appearances of νικάω are in 2:13b and 14c with the repeated declaration that the νεανίσκοι (“young ones”) have conquered the evil one. In both cases, this declaration is the climax of a triptych in which John addresses three groups and describes their situations. Interestingly, the second appearance immediately precedes the first use of the imperative in the homily (2:15), so that its function is to provide the last piece of the theological indicative prior to when the ethical imperative becomes explicit. However one understands the multiple ὅτι clauses, these texts still indicate that the message of victory occupies a central place in John’s proclamation to his readers/hearers.

In 4:4 the declaration of victory comes after the two imperatives about not believing and testing the spirits in 4:1, but here John assures his readers/hearers that they should perform these actions as an outworking of the already present conquest of the false prophets and the anti-Christ spirit who is in them by the one who is in and among the members of the community. The knowledge of the Spirit as the one who testifies to the gospel already received, rather than to the revelation promulgated by the secessionists, is thus essential to the experience of victory of the truth of the gospel over ersatz revelation.

The text of 5:4–5 is particularly saturated with victory terminology as the νικ- root appears four times. Here, being born from God—another Johannine emphasis—entails conquering the world by the conquering power of faith that Jesus is the Son of God. The assumption of this terminology is that there is an adversarial relationship between the believing community and the world because of the adversarial relationship between the world and God (cf. 2:15–17; 3:1, 13, 16–17; 4:1, 3–5, 17; 5:19; John 16:33). Believers come through it on the victorious side of God via the participation of their faith in—and faithfulness to—the one who wins the victory over the world in its current state. Peter Rhea Jones summarizes well what this victory includes for believers: “(1) freedom from the love of the world and its things, including the desires of the flesh and the eyes (2:15-17), (2) liberation from the domination of the Evil One (5:19), the powers of darkness, and (3) freedom to love and believe and obey.”² This freedom via the conquering power of faith would not be actual but for the victory of the one in whom they have faith over the world that bound them (John 8:32–36).

John also portrays conflict and victory with imagery involving the aforementioned participants in the conflict within a framework of emphasizing the “already” of eschatological life. The true light is already shining in the midst of the passing darkness (2:8)—implicitly a condition of the new creation emerging in the midst of the present one—and the one who does the will of God has already begun abiding forever in the midst of the passing world and its lust (2:17), a passing away that is an already present eschatological condition (cf. Isa 58:10–11; 60:1–3; John 1:1–10; 1 Cor 7:31; 2 Cor 4:4–6; Eph 5:8–9, 13–14; Col 1:12–14). The double purpose of Jesus’s appearance (which is an amplification, given the beginning of 3:8) was to take away sins (3:5; cf. Heb 9:26) and to destroy the works of the devil (3:8; cf. Matt 12:38; Luke 10:18; John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 33; Heb 2:14). The evidence John gives for this victory is the existence of the community itself, which Jesus unites to himself in order to reproduce his righteousness. John describes this union as the community’s crossing over from death into life (3:14; cf. John 5:24; Col 1:13–14), thereby changing sides in the conflict as people characterized by love for one another rather than by hatred. This love is an extension of God’s delivering love, embodied in sending Jesus to be the Savior of the world that is otherwise adversarial to God (4:14; cf. 2:2). Because of this relationship in which believers become like Jesus by means of union with him, John assures his audience that they can have boldness in the coming day of judgment that God will vindicate them and further envelop them in the divine victory (4:17; cf. 2:28; 3:21). These descriptive images, with their emphatic notes of discontinuity between the conditions of believers’ lives in the past (before they were believers) and the present—as well as between the world and the community—surely did not always match empirical reality, which involved the secession of some members of the community, as well as the presence of deceivers and the consequent waywardness and conflict these factors could cause within the community (2:18–27; 4:1–6; 5:14–19). But John has made clear that these theological facts transcend observable reality and the present circumstances that trouble the community. If John’s theological indicatives do not match what his audience observes, then, to rephrase Lieu’s statement quoted in the introduction, John is issuing an implied imperative to seek change in the observable reality and their present circumstances.

Participation in 1 John

What this analysis calls the theme of “participation” encompasses several different aspects. The first key term John uses to describe it is κοινωνία. This word typically implies participation as it often appears in contexts of communal life with active sharing that properly characterizes that common life. It is thus both a state of union and a performance in participation of the shared life. In the opening, John reminds his fellows that the testimony that is the foundation of their common unity is what enables them to have κοινωνία with John and with the Father and the Son, the source and substance of that testimony (1:3). This dual relationship undergirds everything John says from this point, even though the word itself only appears twice more. In 1:6–7 there is a connection between the theological and ecclesiological state of being in κοινωνία, walking in the light, and receiving the cleansing of sins because of the likeness of God embodied in those who walk in the light as God is light. This sense of imitatio Dei shapes what it means to be part of this κοινωνία whose fundamental message is that God is light (1:5).

Second, John links human conduct with divine action by making the former participatory in the latter through the verb τελειόω, thereby implying the sense of reaching a goal or becoming complete. Interestingly, love is the only subject and object consistently associated with this word in 1 John. He states that in whomever keeps the word, presumably of Jesus, the love of God (ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ) has become complete (2:5). Whether ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ is an objective or a subjective genitive—people’s love for God or God’s love for people—God is the source of the love believers are able to express. Perhaps the phrase is deliberately ambiguous and could express both the subjective and objective senses, even if the context favors the latter as an emphasis. The referent is less ambiguous in 4:12, where loving one another is the evidence of God abiding in the community and of his love becoming complete in them (4:10). Believers are to have confidence for the day of judgment because their faith in Jesus and love for God and one another is the evidence that the love of God has become complete with them; it is not complete (τελεία) if one fears judgment (4:17–18). What punctuates this whole theme is the instruction to love one another because God first loved them and that the one who does not love a sibling in Christ cannot love God (4:19–21). In this participation of image-bearers, love reaches its divinely intended telos because the human bears the image of the one who is love (4:8). Such is the virtuous circle of love that defines the relational life of the believing community.

Third, John envelops the theme of participation by not only describing its goal, but describing its origin as well with γεννάω. Everyone who lives in righteousness has been born from the righteous one (2:29; cf. 4:7). Such is the fulfillment of the character and identity that birth initially defines, as John communicates with the perfect tense in which this verb appears in seven of nine instances. In contemporary terms, John presents righteous conduct as the equivalent of a DNA test by which the believer demonstrates divine parentage. The negative version of this thought appears in 3:9 as people who have been born from God do not sin (as in not being characterized by sin), because the seed (or Spirit) of God abides in them (cf. 5:18). This image conveys that what gave them their new birth into righteousness continues to sustain them so as to maintain continuity and growth in the time between origin and completion. Raymond Brown describes the logic of this birth language as being related to the claimed inability of the faithful to sin:

But in this last hour he recognizes that we are not yet all that we shall be, and so there is a growth in God’s children. The divine seed abides and continues to transform the child of God into the image of God’s Son which is the image of God Himself, until at the final revelation we are like God Himself. The more that this divine seed transforms the Christian, the more impossible it is for the Christian to sin.³

These two texts and their respective analogs present two sides of the same logic that stems from the claim that believers are born from God. On the one hand, 2:29 emphasizes conduct as evidence of origin because it is the visible sign of the invisible reality of divine birth. On the other hand, 3:9 emphasizes origin as the determiner of conduct because the focus in context is on the sinful conduct that should not be in evidence given the assumed origin. One text that combines both of these emphases with a dense concentration of birth terminology is 5:1, as here John identifies having faith that Jesus is the Christ and loving both progenitor and offspring as the evidence of one’s origin of birth, the proper participation in the life which one receives as a gift in this divine birth. Similarly, the faith that characterizes the ones born from God makes them heirs of God’s victory in which they participate by faith. As Brown suggests, this language is a further development of covenantal language, a primary frame of reference for theological ethics (cf. John 1:12; 3:5).

Fourth, by far the most pervasive term of participation in 1 John is μένω, which defines the believer’s life between the new birth and consummation with continuity. The use of this word both defines how believers inhabit the sphere in which they exist—or how that sphere inhabits them—and emphasizes continuation and perseverance, like the branches that must remain connected to the vine (John 15:1–11). Their status as those who abide or dwell in God shapes how they are to live (2:6; cf. 3:6, 9, 14–15, 17) and thus how they live in loving one another defines where/in whom they abide (2:10; 4:12). They inhabit this sphere because the sphere inhabits them, whether John describes it as the word of God (2:14c, 24), God’s seed (3:9), or eschatological life (3:15). As the victorious heirs of the age to come, believers—the ones who do the will of God—abide forever (2:17). Coterminous with abiding in God is abiding in the believing community dedicated to the apostolic testimony of the gospel as referenced in the beginning (2:19; cf. 1:1–5). The command to abide is predicated on the enabling anointing (or Spirit) already abiding in them (2:27–28). The Spirit is also the one who establishes the union of mutual indwelling and enables believers to obey God (3:24; 4:13). Believers manifest this mutual indwelling through confessing that Jesus is the Son of God (4:15), and the fruit of this indwelling is love because the God who indwells is love (4:16).

Finally, there are several communal identity statements (usually involving ἐν phrases) that articulate the basis for exhortation (i.e., they are able to live in a certain way because of who is “in” them and who they are “in”). The foundation of the communal identity is the truth that God is light and ἐν God there is absolutely no darkness (1:5). Therefore, there is a conjunction of fellowship, walking, doing, and being ἐν the light (1:6–7; cf. 4:6). Truth is ἐν the ones who keep the divine commandments, and thus they are able to keep them (2:3–4; cf. 2:8). The one who loves the family of believers is the one who is ἐν the light of God (2:9–10; cf. 2:15). The references to the anointing of believers (2:20, 27) echo the honorific of “Christ” and may give the sense that believers are “christed,” evoking further new covenant imagery (cf. 5:11–12; Jer 31:31–34; Luke 4:18; Acts 4:27; 10:38; 2 Cor 1:21–22; Heb 1:9). Like Jesus, believers are heirs to the victory of God because the one who is ἐν them is greater than the one who is ἐν the world (4:4; cf. 4:13).

Passages Combining Participation and Victory

The final set of passages analyzed here shows more directly that participatory victory is part of the framework of this discourse by weaving together the two aforementioned themes. The three groups addressed in 2:12–14 most likely represent the community as a whole (since τεκνίαand παιδία address the whole community in 2:1, 18, 28, 3:7, 18, 4:4, and 5:21) and two sub-groups distinguished by relative maturity. John only directly ascribes victory over the evil one to the νεανίσκοι, but one could infer that John thought their older counterparts—and thus, the entire community—also shared in this victory since it would seem odd for the younger counterparts to have victory over the evil one (particularly over temptations), but for the elder members to have missed or lost this victory in their time of abiding in God and having the word abide in them.⁴ In this case it is possible that John has emphasized victory for the young ones because of their especially strong temptation to love the world as ruled by the evil one (2:15–17). Due to their seemingly greater vulnerability, they have a greater need for John and the other members of the community to remind them of their victory in Jesus and of affirmation when they demonstrate that victory through faithfulness to Jesus. Where there is disparity between John’s words and the experience of the young, there is an implicit challenge to harmonize their experience with John’s words. Still, the reader should not lose sight of the fact that participatory victory is the share of all members of the believing community, since they have the gospel of victory (3:8) abiding in them. They have conquered the evil one because of all that John has said about the one in whom they abide and who abides in them by this word (1:6–7; 2:3–10). This summary of the results of abiding in God and in the community as a declaration of victory—one that already happened in the past and that defines their state of life—is a fitting culmination to the double triptych and to what John has written to this point.

This assurance of victory they experience in God through the word of God shows a need for the community. Whatever the precise character of the temptations they were facing, and whatever the exact situation of the division with the ones they had previously considered siblings in Christ, the challenges must have seemed vexing and troubling for this likely small (now smaller) group in a hostile environment. The world offered seemingly immediate gratification to the ones who yielded to its lust and arrogance, but only hatred to the ones who resisted the lies of transient pleasures (2:15–17; 3:13; 5:19). Despite the message John had taught the community since the beginning and the assurances he had given them of vindication over the world, the power of the much larger opposing forces of the world proved to be too much for some. False teaching of some sort had taken root in the community and led some to deny that Jesus is the Christ and that he had come in the flesh, which in turn meant that they denied the Father whence he came (2:18–27; 4:1–6). As these people could not reconcile this teaching with what they had received from John, they went out from the community. That the secessionists consisted of people the abiding members had known and loved succumbing to darkness could have left the latter feeling weakened and questioning if they would ultimately lose in this cosmic struggle, or if the end result was worth the struggle.

Similarly, in 2:24–25 John instructs all members of the community to let what they heard from the beginning—the gospel—abide in them so that they would abide in the Son and in the Father. The fruit of this participation is the reception of the promise of eternal life (or the life of the age to come), the life that is the Son.⁵ In other words, the telos of abiding is the life of God’s everlasting victory over death, the life of resurrection (cf. John 5:24–29; 11:24–25) that is the partaking of divine life from God by living in the Son (1:2; 5:11–12, 20). Believers currently have access to this victorious life—the life which the world cannot take away from them—and can have confidence in this fact in anticipation of the παρουσία, the consummate fulfillment of the promise of eternal life.

They know that eternal life is their goal because their origin is from the righteous one, and thus they are righteous and should act righteously (2:29). What causes this state is the love of God because it is what gives birth to the children of God and declares them as such (3:1). One possible reason for being designated as ‘children’ is that the goal of maturity has not yet been reached, a possibility borne out in 3:2. The exact nature of the transformation is purposefully unclear—since God has not revealed it—and the goal of this familial participation is debatable. Is Jesus the one who believers will be made like or is it God? Whatever one’s conclusion, it seems that all interpreters can be confident in two points. First, the foundation for this expectation is participation in the glorious victory of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the substance of the gospel (cf. 1:1–3; 2 Cor 3:18; Phil 3:21). Second, in Johannine logic this foundation is the means of access to this hope because Jesus is the perfect revelation of God in God’s glory, particularly in the kerygmatic events (John 1:14; 7:39; 11:40; 12:16, 23–28; 13:31–32; 17:1–5). For the present, believers express this likeness and participatory victory by living righteously and not sinning because Jesus himself is the one who came to remove sins and to destroy the devil’s work (3:5–10; cf. John 16:33). As noted above, believers participate in the life of Jesus, that life being what defines their righteous character and righteous conduct with his specific holy shape. Their lives as people whose faith unites them to Jesus are to be lives of victory over the sin Jesus has already defeated.

They partake of Jesus’s resurrection life because he has enabled them to pass from death to life (3:14–15; cf. John 5:24). The love the members of the family of faith have for each other embodies this victorious transition to life. Like the delivering love of God in Christ that gave them a salvific birth and formed them as a community, their love for one another is an extension of that same delivering love expressed through sacrifice (3:16–17; cf. John 10:11, 15–18; 12:23–26; 15:12–14). Love is God’s salvific bond of union with believers and the bond believers have with each other because of their common union with the God who is love. Believers participate in deliverance by laying down their lives for one another in love, particularly when one is in need of resources (perhaps implying that laying down life leads to taking it up once again in resurrection, as in John 10:17–18). With the connections made here, it is unclear if the “love of God” in 3:17 is a subjective or objective genitive. Perhaps the most immediate sense is objective, but there would be no love in the objective sense without the love of God in the subjective sense, so it seems appropriate to see both senses as being in view here. In any case, love for one another is once again an extension of God’s love, the love that gives life, enabling people to cross over from death to life.

These points come out even more vividly in 4:7–13. This text is a special concentration of the love language that is more frequent in 1 John than in any other New Testament work. The opening sentence stresses love and its divine source three times while addressing the community as “beloved”: Ἀγαπητοί ἀγαπῶμεν αλλήλους, ὃτι ἡ ἀγάπη ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν, καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἀγαπῶν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγέννηται καὶ γινώσκει τὸν θεόν. John’s identification of God as the progenitor of love at once identifies the link of participation that John has constantly stressed, since love is from God, and identifies the means of victory. The rest of the passage follows suit in proclaiming that those who love one another partake of the love of God by which God sent Jesus in order to take away sins, destroy the work of the devil, and enable people to live through him (4:9–11). Indeed, the love of God completes the divine intention when the family of God loves one another because it is the fruition of God’s abiding action (4:12). Lives of love in the community of faith serve as a testimony to who God is, what God has done, and the victory God has won over that which sinfully divides. Or, in the words of John Painter, “God is the source of love just as God is the source of life. The life God gives is life that loves.”⁶ They are able to have this life and make this testimony because of the presence of the primary testifier: the Holy Spirit (4:13).

God’s abiding through the Holy Spirit gives the resulting love a particular character; the passage does not refer to a generalized sense of love. It is most likely John’s assumption that all love is ultimately from God and all humans have the capacity to love insofar as they are image-bearers of God. However, the kind of love that comes only with the new birth and the knowledge of God that Jesus reveals is the union of the love of God and love of one another (focused on the internal love of the community) that only exists when both are present. The capacity for this love and the exercise of it are the evidence for one’s share in the participatory victory of Jesus, who sealed the victory of love over hate.

These points are more evident in 5:1–5, where John emphasizes the connection between faith and love. Both faith and love are specifically relational and thus involve specific cognitive content about the common recipient of faith and love. The members have this faith in common and have thus each been born of God and there is no way to disconnect loving God from loving the ones to whom God gives birth (5:1). When the believers love in this way, they keep God’s commandments (5:2–3). This link between believing that Jesus is the Messiah/Son of God, loving God, and loving one another is the proper function of being born of God. Everyone who has this birth attains a victory that they would not have but for God, like their love (5:4–5; cf. 3:8; 4:4). They participate in this victory by the same bond that enables them to participate in this love; namely, the union they have with God forged in faith so that John can say the conquering power that conquers the world is faith (5:4: αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ νίκη ἡ νικήσασα τὸν κὸσμον, ἡ πίστις ἡμῶν). Conversely, the one who does not have this messianic faith does not have this victory.

Conclusion

This analysis has demonstrated that the notion of believers participating in the victory of Christ—participatory victory—is never explicit in 1 John, but it is present at the conceptual framework level and it influences the shape of much of the exhortative material in the text. This particular form of theological ethics makes sense in 1 John because of the context of cosmic conflict that shapes Johannine thought and the context of a community that has recently experienced fracture. The Johannine emphasis is on victory already achieved, though full realization of the victory lies in the future. To show the particular ways this belief in participatory victory works in 1 John, this analysis has examined places where John uses the language and imagery of victory (such as the use of νικάω as well as imagery expressing triumph of true believers over the world that is passing away), where he uses the language and imagery of participation (particularly the use of terms like τελειόω and μένω), and where he interweaves both kinds of language to indicate what participatory victory means and how it works (especially in the ways John describes believers’ life and love as the fruition of what God has done). Through it all, John has portrayed what it means to live a victorious way of life, primarily through the means of love, faith, and general obedience to God’s commandments. The means/mediator of this victorious life is also the reality in which the victors participate: Jesus Christ. Thus, the victory of Jesus—and the victory of God through him—becomes the victory of the faithful.

1. Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 140. Cf. Bruce G. Schuchard, 1–3 John, ConcC (St. Louis: Concordia, 2012), 130.

2. Peter Rhea Jones, 1, 2 & 3 John, SHBC (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2009), 209.

3. Raymond Brown, The Epistles of John, AB 30 (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 431.

4. Note that none of the appearances of the terminology of victory after 2:14 are predicated on only one group in the community.

5. Possible referents for this promise include John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 6:40, 47; 11:24–26; 15:4, 7; 17:22–23.

6. John Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John, SP 18 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002), 268.