1 John 2 1 John 2:1–2 Christ is our advocate with the Father, and a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:3–6 Rightly to know God is to keep his commandments, 1 John 2:7–11 the chief of which is, to love one another.

He endeavours in this to steer them a middle course, that they might neither presume to sin, nor despair if they did; and bespeaks them with a compellation, importing both authority and love; well becoming him as then an aged person, an apostle, their teacher, and who was their most affectionate…

And he is the propitiation for our sins: the adding of these words, shows that our Lord grounds his intercession for pardon of sin unto penitent believers, upon his having made atonement for them before; and therefore that he doth not herein merely supplicate for favour, but (which is the proper…

This faith is often in the Holy Scripture signified by the name of knowledge, Isa. 53:11, John 17:3, viz. an appropriative, transformative knowledge, by which we own and accept God in Christ, as ours, (expressed also by acknowledgment, επιγνωσις, Eph. 1:17, Col.

A liar; a false, hypocritical pretender, as 1 John 1:6.

His faith worketh by love, Gal. 5:6; his love is perfected, and attains its end in obedience, whereof it is the vital principle, 1 John 5:3, John 14:15.

And this proof we ought to give. For whereas our Lord Jesus Christ was not only our Lawgiver, but our pattern, and practised himself what he commanded us; if indeed we have an abiding, real union with him, we partake of his Spirit, Rom.

This commandment must be that which he insists on, 1 John 2:9–11, and which in different respects he calleth both old and new. Not new, he says, in opposition to their Gnostic seducers, to intimate he was not about to entertain them with vain novelties, as they did; all whose peculiar doctrines…

Yet also he calls it a new commandment, as our Saviour did, John 13:34, upon the subjoined accounts. Which thing is true; i.e. evident, or verified, fulfilled, exemplified. In him; viz.

To be in the light, signifies to be under the transforming, governing power of it, as the phrases import of being in the flesh, and in the Spirit, Rom. 8:9, being expounded by walking after the flesh, and after the Spirit, 1 John 2:1.

His brother, put indefinitely, must be understood universally, i.e. he that loveth not this or that fellow Christian, upon some personal or private reason, but all, upon one and the same common and truly Christian account.

Hath no principle to guide or govern him, but what is common to the unregenerate world, so that his whole life is a continual error; nor doth he understand or consider the tendency of his course, being still under the power of an affected darkness, that makes his eyes, or understanding, of no more…

He here uses an appellation before (1 John 2:1} applied to all in common, being put alone; but being now set in contradistinction to others, must be understood to intend a distinct rank of Christians, viz.

Unto fathers, because to such belong much experience, and the knowledge of ancient things, he ascribeth the knowledge of him who is the Ancient of days, from the beginning, and than whom none is more ancient, and whom they should be supposed so well to know by their long continued course in…

To the former sort he only repeateth what he had said before, supposing their greater wisdom to need no more; (see L. Brugens. Not. in Bibl. Sacr. of the insertion of this clause); only the repetition importeth his earnest desire they would again and again consider it.

What he here means by the forbidden object of our love, must be gathered from his own explication, 1 John 2:16. The love itself forbidden, in reference thereto, is that excess thereof, whereby any adhere to terrene things, as their best good; wherewith, as he adds, any sincere love to God is…

Here he explains his meaning, what, under the name of the world, and the things of it, we are not to love, or under what notion we ought not to love it, viz. the world as it contains the objects and nutriment of these mentioned lusts; either more grossly sensual, called the lust of the flesh, viz.

He sets the difference in view, of living according to the common genius, will, or inclination of the world, (which is lust), and according to the Divine will, that he who unites himself in his will and desire with the former, which vanishes, (objects and appetite altogether), must (which is…

The last time; the time here referred to seems to be the destruction of Jerusalem, and the finishing of the Jewish state, both civil and ecclesiastical. In the Greek, the last hour, the approaching period of Daniel’s seventy weeks, as Mr. Mede understands it, in his Apostacy of the Later Times.

If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: sincere and living Christians are so strongly held in with Christ, and the truly Christian community, by a union and bond of life, and by sense of pleasures which thereupon they find in that holy communion, with the expectation…

See Poole on “1 John 2:27”.

He prudently intimates his confidence concerning them, together with the pleasure he himself took (as any one would) in communicating the sentiments of holy truth to prepared, receptive minds; implying also, that any part of false doctrine doth so ill match and square with the frame of Divine…

Especially may the ill accord be discerned between Divine truth and a lie, when the lie is so directly levelled against the foundations upon which the whole fabric is built, as the denying Jesus to be the Christ strikes at all.

To have the Father and the Son, is, by faith, love, and obedience, vitally to adhere to the one and the other. The latter part of this verse, though it be not in the ordinary Greek copies, is in some of the versions, and said to be in some Greek manuscripts also, whence it is supplied very…

He only exhorts them to persevere in that faith which they at first received, whereby their union with God in Christ would be preserved entire.

Which perseverance they are highly encouraged to by the promise of so great a thing as eternal life at length.

So much he thought requisite to be said, in respect of their danger by seducers, though their safety was principally to depend upon what he next mentions… See Poole on “1 John 2:27”.

But the anointing which ye have received: it is evident, that the ancient anointing of persons to some eminent office, was not a mere empty rite of investiture, or authorization, but also a symbol of their qualification by another Spirit then coming upon them.

He condescendingly includes himself with them, that we may have confidence; intimating, for their encouragement, the common mutual joy they should have together at Christ’s appearance; he, that he had not been wanting in his endeavours that they might persevere; and they, that they had persevered;…

Lest he should be thought only solicitous to preserve among them the right notions of the Christian docrine, as if that alone would suffice them for their salvation and blessedness, (which was the conceit of the Gnostics, touching their own notions, that the entertaining of them would save men,…