When the apostle John wrote his epistles, he was eighty-five/ninety years of age. He was exiled to a rocky isle of Patmos, in the Aegean sea, together with many other criminals, his crime was for being a disciple of Christ and a preacher of the gospel. Patmos, is a small rocky island off the coasts of Turkey, it now belongs to Greece. As I stated previously, He was an old man, who was the spiritual father to most of those he was writing to, an assembly of people from two or three generations. He wrote: ‘And now dear children, continue in Him, so that when He (Jesus) appears we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right (or righteous) has been born of Him. (2: 28-29) Birth is when life begins, by faith in Christ a believer begins eternal life.

John was writing at a time, near the end of the first century, when many false teachers were creating havoc in the Christian churches, some of them were trying to bring the Christians back under the yoke of the Old Covenant, and continue the right of circumcision! So, he found it necessary to write to them epistles, letters, to state that under the old covenant and by obedience to the ten commandments no one could become righteous – for the old covenant, called the Law, was not given for that purpose; it was given to bring people aware of sin, how it manifest itself, and its destructive power which leads to condemnation and eternal death. As one reads the four gospels and the epistles, of all the apostles of the Lord, one discovers that Jesus and the apostles believed the same things, and prove to this day, by many statements which they made, that through Christ alone, God justifies a sinner by faith in Him. It is written: ‘How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called ‘children of God!’ And that is what we are. (John 3: 1) The fact is that Christians are a family, so, he writes to children, brothers, fathers, of which God, of His own will is the Father!  

This great gathering of children, sons, really started by Jesus. As  the Son of God, God incarnate in human body, He began to reveal that the Godhead is a Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His teachings were revolutionary to the Jews, and are to these days, for it is only in the New Testament that the Holy Trinity becomes clearly declared/defined. The Father Himself was the first to introduce Jesus as His Son, for He says on the day of His baptism in the Jordan river, that Jesus was as His Son, for it is written, that ‘As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he (John) saw the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) descending like a dove and lightning on Him. And a voice from heaven said: This is my Son, Whom I love, with Him I am well pleased.’ (Matthew 3:16-17)

As for Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, went all over Palestine preaching the Gospel, never ceasing to declare that God was His Father. At one point He said to His disciples: ‘When you pray say: ‘Our Father in Heaven.’ Through Christ’s teaching, in the New Testament, the Holy Trinity is clearly revealed. Three persons, equal in every way. I mention this, because with Christ’s initiation of a New Covenant, the relationship between God and His Children is completely different in every way to the previous one, for the Christians, through Jesus Christ His Son, relate directly to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! As their Father, for they were born of Him.’ (John 1: 12-13) Such a close relationship with God, was unknown under the old covenant, so John was right to burst into praise when he says: ‘How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called ‘children of God!’ (John 3: 1) Lavished means giving without stint, profusely, very, or too abundantly!