40 Fun Facts About 1 John

According to 1 John 4:18, perfect love drives out which emotion, one the verse ties to punishment?

Fear has no place in love, the verse says, and the next line explains how believers can love at all: God loved them first.

Which word, found in the Bible only in 1 John and 2 John, names those who deny the Father and the Son?

Antichrist is absent even from Revelation, and 1 John 2:18 uses it in the plural, saying many of them had already come.

Which Old Testament figure does 1 John 3:12 hold up as a warning, saying his own actions were evil?

Cain killed his brother Abel, and 1 John gives the motive: Abel's conduct was righteous while his own was not.

According to 1 John 3:15, everyone who hates his brother already counts as which kind of criminal?

A murderer is the blunt verdict, recalling the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus sets anger at a brother beside the commandment against killing.

According to 1 John 4:8, which says God is love, what does anyone who does not love fail to do?

Know God is what the unloving cannot do, the verse says, and the same three-word description of him returns eight verses later.

The final verse of 1 John ends the letter abruptly with a warning to stay away from what?

Idols get the last word because 1 John has no farewell or closing greeting, and the 'Amen' printed in the King James Version is absent from critical editions.

Which image does 1 John 1:5 use for God, adding that in him there is nothing of its opposite?

Light is the letter's first big claim about God, and a condition follows: nobody can claim closeness to him while living in darkness.

Which act does 1 John 1:9 say leads God to forgive sins and cleanse people from all unrighteousness?

Confession is all the verse asks for, and the promise rests on God's character: forgiving, the verse says, is what a just God does.

What does 1 John 4:20 call anyone who claims to love God while hating a brother he can see?

A liar is the charge, and the reasoning is simple: someone who cannot love the brother in front of him cannot love a God he has never seen.

1 John 3:1 marvels that the Father's love lets believers be called what, unrecognized by the world?

Children of God is the title, and the next verse looks ahead: what they are yet to become has not been revealed.

Which kind of proof does the opening of 1 John add to what the writers heard and saw?

Touch completes the list: the writers say their own hands handled what they proclaim, which reads as a claim to have met Jesus in person.

1 John 1:4 gives one reason for writing: so that which feeling might be full, or complete?

Joy is the first of several stated purposes, though manuscripts differ on whose it is: the King James Version says 'your', many modern Bibles 'our'.

1 John 1:3 says the writers report what they saw and heard so that readers may have what with them?

Fellowship is the aim, and the verse widens it at once: the bond is also with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

In the King James Version, 1 John 2:1 says anyone who sins has Jesus Christ as what with the Father?

An advocate translates the Greek parakletos, a word the New Testament uses only five times and otherwise for the Holy Spirit.

1 John 2:16 lists the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and which third worldly thing?

The pride of life completes a trio that the letter says comes from the world rather than the Father, straight after telling readers not to love the world.

Which group does 1 John 2:13 address separately from fathers, saying they have overcome the evil one?

Young men are told twice that they have beaten the evil one, and the repetition adds why: they are strong and God's word abides in them.

In the King James Version, 1 John 2:2 uses which word for Jesus as the sacrifice that atones for sins?

Propitiation returns in 1 John 4:10, and both verses use the Greek hilasmos, which many modern Bibles translate as 'atoning sacrifice'.

1 John 2:6 says whoever claims to abide in Jesus must do what in the same way he did?

Walk is the verb, a picture of everyday conduct, so the claim to belong to Jesus is checked against behavior rather than words.

The King James Version of 1 John 2:20 gives believers what from the Holy One, a word modern Bibles replace?

An unction is an anointing, the word modern Bibles use, and verse 27 says it teaches believers so well that they need no other teacher.

1 John 5:13 says the letter was written so that believers in the Son of God may be sure they have what?

Eternal life is the assurance the letter wants readers to hold, and two verses earlier it says exactly where that gift is found: in God's Son.

According to 1 John 3:8, the Son of God appeared for the purpose of destroying what?

The works of the devil are the target, and the same verse explains the charge: the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

1 John 3:16 says that because Jesus gave himself for believers, they ought to do what for one another?

Lay down their lives is the call, and the next verse makes it concrete: someone with possessions must not ignore a brother in need.

The King James Version of 1 John 3:17 says ignoring a needy brother shuts up one's what of compassion?

Bowels sounds odd today, so modern translations have the person close his heart, or simply withhold compassion, from the brother in need.

1 John 3:18 urges love not merely in word or tongue but in which two ways?

In deed and in truth is the standard, and the letter says living this way lets believers set their hearts at rest before God.

The King James Version of 1 John 3:4 defines sin in one phrase as the transgression of what?

The law is what sin breaks in the King James wording, while modern translations compress the same Greek into a single word, lawlessness.

1 John 4:1 warns believers not to trust every spirit but to do what with the spirits first?

Test them is the instruction, 'try the spirits' in the King James Version, and the reason given is that many false prophets are at large.

1 John 4:17 says love made perfect gives believers boldness, or confidence, on which coming day?

The day of judgment can be faced boldly, the verse reasons, because believers are already like Jesus here and now.

The King James Version of 1 John 4:6 says refusing to hear the letter's writers shows the spirit of what?

Error has an opposite in the same verse, and the dividing line is simple: those who are of God listen to the writers, the rest do not.

1 John 4:14 gives the writers' eyewitness testimony that the Father sent the Son to be what?

Savior of the world is the same title the Samaritan villagers give Jesus in the fourth Gospel, after the woman at the well brings them to him.

1 John 3:2 says that when Christ appears believers will be like him, because they will do what?

See him as he is, the verse promises, and it draws a present-day consequence: everyone holding this hope keeps himself pure.

1 John 5:4 names what as the victory that has overcome the world?

Faith gets a precise definition in the next verse: the one who overcomes is whoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

1 John 5:8 names three that bear witness and agree: the Spirit and which two others?

Water and blood appear two verses earlier as well, where the letter insists Jesus came by both and not by the first alone.

1 John 5:3 says loving God means keeping his commandments, which the verse insists are not what?

Burdensome is the modern rendering of what the King James Version calls 'grievous', and the letter ties obedience directly to loving God.

1 John 5:14 gives believers confidence that God hears whatever they ask, provided it accords with what?

His will is the one condition, and the next verse presses the promise further: being heard means already having what was asked.

1 John 5:16 sets one sin apart from the rest, for which prayer is not urged, as leading to what?

Death is where that one sin leads, yet the letter never identifies it, and it urges prayer for a brother whose sin is of the other kind.

The disputed clause at 1 John 5:7 in the King James Version, missing from early manuscripts, backs which doctrine?

The Trinity seemed spelled out in its line about the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost being one, but most modern translations now drop the clause or move it to a footnote.

By tradition, 1 John was written in which city of Asia Minor, where its author is said to have grown old?

Ephesus is the traditional setting, though the letter itself names no place, no author and no recipients.

1 John is counted among which group of seven New Testament letters, alongside James and Jude?

The general epistles, also called catholic in the old sense of universal, were seen as written to the church at large, not to one congregation.

Which early teaching, that Jesus only seemed to have a human body, does 1 John 4:2 appear to reject?

Docetism takes its name from a Greek verb meaning 'to seem', and against it the verse holds that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

Which bishop of Smyrna, martyred in old age, shows familiarity with 1 John in his letter to Philippi?

Polycarp, said by Irenaeus to have been a disciple of the apostle John, was put to death in Smyrna around the year 155.