1 John 1:7

7. After Ἰησοῦ omit Χριστοῦ with [443][444][445] against [446][447][448] with Syr. and Vulg.

[443] 4th century. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1859 at the monastery of S. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and now at Petersburg. All three Epistles.
[444] 4th century. Brought to Rome about 1460. It is entered in the earliest catalogue of the Vatican Library, 1475. All three Epistles.
[445] 5th century. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it. In the National Library at Paris. Part of the First and Third Epistles; 1 John 1:1 to 1 John 4:2; 3 John 1:3-14. Of the whole N.T. the only Books entirely missing are 2 John and 2 Thessalonians.

[446] 5th century. Brought by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria, and afterwards presented by him to Charles I. in 1628. In the British Museum. All three Epistles.
[447] 9th century. All three Epistles.
[448] 9th century. All three Epistles.

In all these six cases [449][450] have the right reading.

[449] 4th century. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1859 at the monastery of S. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and now at Petersburg. All three Epistles.
[450] 4th century. Brought to Rome about 1460. It is entered in the earliest catalogue of the Vatican Library, 1475. All three Epistles.

7. A further inference from the first principle laid down in 1 John 1:5 : walking in the light involves not only fellowship with God but fellowship with the brethren. This verse takes the opposite hypothesis to that just considered and expands it. We often find (comp. 1 John 1:9) that S. John while seeming to go back or repeat, really progresses and gives us something fresh. It would have enforced 1 John 1:6, but it would have told us nothing fresh, to say ‘if we walk in the light, and say that we have fellowship with Him, we speak the truth, and do not lie.’ And it is interesting to find that the craving to make this verse the exact antithesis of the preceding one has generated another reading, ‘we have fellowship with Him,’ instead of ‘with one another.’ This reading is as old as the second century, for Tertullian (De Pud. XIX.) quotes, ‘si vero,’ inquit, ‘in lumine incedamus, communionem cum eo habebimus, et sanguis &c.’ Clement of Alexandria also seems to have known of this reading. Another ancient corruption is ‘with God’ (Harl.). This is evidence of the early date of our Epistle; for by the end of the second century important differences of reading had already arisen and become widely diffused.

περιπατῶμεν, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔστιν. We walk; God is. We move through space and time; He is in eternity. We progress from grace to grace, becoming sons of light by believing on the Light (John 12:36; Ephesians 5:8-9). Of Him who is absolute Perfection, and knows no progress or change, we can only say ‘He is.’ That which is light must ever be in the light: comp. ἀναβαλλόμενος φῶς ὡς ἱμάτιον (Psalms 104:2), and φῶς οἰκῶν� (1 Timothy 6:16), which embodies the same thought. Αὐτός, as commonly, but not invariably (see on 1 John 1:5 and 1 John 2:12), in this Epistle, means God, not Christ. Imitatio Dei, criterium communionis cum illo (Bengel).

It is very possibly from this antithesis of walking in light and walking in darkness that the figure of “The Two Ways,” called in the Διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα Ἀποστόλων (i–vi) ὁδὸς τῆς ζωῆς and ὁδὸς τοῦ θανάτου, and in the Epistle of Barnabas (xviii–xxi) ὀδὸς τοῦ φωτός and ὁδὸς τοῦ σκότους, took its rise.

κοινωνίαν ἔχ. μετʼ ἀλλήλων. It is quite clear from 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:7; 1 John 4:12; 2 John 1:5 that this refers to the mutual fellowship of Christians among themselves, and not to fellowship between God and man, as S. Augustine, Calvin, and others (desiring to make this verse parallel to 1 John 1:6), have interpreted. But such barren repetitions are not in S. John’s manner: he repeats in order to progress. Moreover he would scarcely have expressed the relation between God and man by a phrase which seems to imply equality between those united in fellowship. Contrast ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’ (John 20:17). He would rather have said ‘We have fellowship with Him, and He with us.’ The communion of Christians with one another is a consequence of their walking in the light. In that ‘thick darkness’ which prevailed ‘in all the land of Egypt three days, they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days (Exodus 10:22-23): i.e. there was an absolute cessation of fellowship. Society could not continue in the dark: but when the light returned, society was restored. So also in the spiritual world; when the light comes, individuals have that communion one with another which in darkness is impossible. In a similar spirit Cicero declares that real friendship is impossible without virtue (De Amic. vi. 20).

καὶ τὸ αἶμα Ἰησοῦ. Comp. Revelation 5:9; Revelation 7:14; Revelation 12:11. The καί indicates that this is a further consequence of walking in the light. One who is walking in spiritual darkness cannot appropriate that cleansing from sin, which is wrought by the blood of Jesus, shed on the Cross and offered to God as a propitiation for sin. It is by His death that we participate in His life, and the sphere in which life is found is light. The addition of τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ is not at all redundant: (1) it is a passing contradiction of Cerinthus, who taught that Jesus was a mere man when His blood was shed, for the Divine element in His nature left Him when He was arrested in the garden; and of the Ebionites, who taught that He was a mere man from His birth to His death; (2) it explains how this blood can have such virtue: it is the blood of One who is the Son of God. Early Christian writers used very extreme language in expressing this truth. Clement of Rome (II) speaks of the παθήματα of God; Ignatius (Eph. i) of αἶμα Θεοῦ, (Rom. VI) of τὸ πάθος τοῦ Θεοῦ. Tatian (ad Graec. XIII.) has τοῦ πεπονθότος Θεοῦ, Tertullian (de Carn. Christi, v.) passiones Dei, and (ad Uxor. II. iii) sanguine Dei. See Lightfoot, Appendix to Clement, p. 402.

καθαρίζει. Note the present tense of what goes on continually, that constant cleansing which even the holiest Christians need (see on John 13:10). One who lives in the light knows his own frailty and is continually availing himself of the purifying power of Christ’s sacrificial death. ‘This passage shews that the gratuitous pardon of sins is given us not once only, but that it is a benefit perpetually residing in the Church, and daily offered to the faithful’ (Calvin). Note also the ‘all’; there is no limit to its cleansing power: even grievous sinners can be restored to the likeness of God, in whom is no darkness at all. This refutes by anticipation the error of the Novatians, who denied pardon to mortal sins after baptism. Comp. ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ … cleanse your conscience’ (Hebrews 9:14), and ‘These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ (Revelation 7:14). And ‘apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’ (Hebrews 9:25). For ἁμαρτία in the singular, sin regarded as one great plague, comp. 1 John 3:4; John 8:21; John 16:8; and especially John 1:29. But the addition of πάσης without the article shews us that this plague has many forms: ‘from every (kind of) sin.’ Winer, 137. Comp. Matthew 12:31. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III. iv.) quotes 1 John 1:6-7 (with the formula φησὶν ὁ Ἰωάννης ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ) and omits πάσης.