What does John chapter 1 verse 4 mean?

Answer 1

John's teaching emphasises Jesus' role as God. Importantly, this verse and those preceding it establish the relationship and Jesus' presence at the beginning as mentioned in Genesis. It also emphasises God's power over all of creation and our own lives. It is further clarified in Acts 17:28. "In him we live and move and have our being." Christ and His work to save mankind is the light. Light in itself was not sacred to John or the early Christians, rather that it is the absence of sin and darkness in God.

Answer 2

A:

1 John 4:4: "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world."

Scholars say that 1 John 4:4 was written shortly after a distressing split in the Johannine community, the same community as that from which John's Gospel had recently originated. One group joined others who were more gnostic in their beliefs, while the group that wrote First John joined the centrist branch of Christianity that was to become the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.

The authors of 1 John wanted to disparage their former partners in the Johannine community, while assuring their own followers that they had made the right decision.

• Verse 4:1 warns not to believe every spirit, because there are many false prophets.
• Verse 4:2 assures the followers that those who believe that Jesus came in the flesh are with God - a general belief among many gnostics was that Jesus only seemed to exist in the flesh.
• Verse 4:3 condemns those who do not believe that Jesus came in the flesh - gnostics, including their former colleagues - and compares them to the antiChrist.
• And then verse 4:4 says that this group has overcome their former associates, because these people have Jesus in them, while the gnostics are alone in this world.

This is a highly pejorative passage, intended to have the author's followers break all ties with their former friends and henceforth treat them as spiritual enemies.

Answer 3

John 1:4: "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. "

This can only be fully understood in the context of the verses that precede it and those that follow. In verses 1-3, John describes the Word (Jesus) as being present at creation; he was God and in him was life.

An important motif of the early Gnostics was that light was sacred. Some scholars say that the community in which John's Gospel was written early in the second century was a moderately Gnostic Christian community, and we see many references in this Gospel to 'light' and other Gnostic concepts. Thus, John 1:4 bridges the creation, "In him was life", to this important Gnostic principle, "and the life was the light of men". the next few verses go on to mention John the Baptist, but then that John was "not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." Thus the reader can see that the allusion is to Jesus.