possess here and now a present cer tainty of the life they have received in Christ. They had been unsettled by the false teachers and had become unsure of their spiritual state. Throughout the Epistle, John has been giving them criteria (doctrinal, moral, social) by which to test them selves and others. His purpose is to establish their assurance. “This let ter is to assure you that you have eternal life” (NEB). Putting together the purposes of Gospel and Epistle, John’s purpose is in four stages, that his readers should hear, hearing should believe, believing should live, and living should know. His emphasis is im portant because it is common today to decry any claim to assurance of salvation, to dismiss it as presumptu ous, and to affirm that no certainty is possible on this side of death. But certainty and humility do not exclude one another. If God’s revealed pur pose is not only that we should hear, believe and live, but also that we should know, presumptuousness lies in doubting His Word, not in trust ing it.
mg' eternal life in the Son. Here he tells his readers the ostensible pur pose of his Epistle, now drawing to a close — and it is natural to con trast it with the purpose of his Gos pel in 20:31 to which we have just referred. The Epistle was written . . . “that ye may know that ye have eter nal life,” the last sentence of the verse in the AV being rightly omit ted in the RV, RSV and NEB. It does not occur in the best manu scripts and is clearly a gloss, whose intrusion destroys the evident mean ing of the verse. The Gospel was written for unbelievers, that they might read the testimony of God to His Son, believe in the Son to whom the testimony pointed, and thus re ceive life through faith. The Epistle, on the other hand, was written for believers. John’s desire for them is not that they may believe and re ceive, but that having believed, they may know that they have received, and therefore continue to have (pres ent), eternal life. That ye may know (eidete) means, both in word and tense, not that they may gradually grow in assurance, but that they may
Students and faculty members line up for their annual picture. This is just a portion of the large crowd of more than 1600 who participated together.
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