WHEN I WAS in elementary school, I always dreaded Valentine’s Day. Our school, like many others, had a yearly tradition of all the students giving cute little Valentines to each other. We still had blackboards in the classroom back then, with trays running the length of each board to hold the chalk. Every Valentine’s Day, the teacher would write each student’s name on a brown paper bag and tape all the bags to the chalk tray. The kids would then go around the room, dropping their signed Valentines into the bags, so that each student got to take home a sackful of greetings.

At the time, unfortunately, there was no rule that said you had to bring Valentines for everyone in the class. You just gave Valentines to the kids you liked. The ritual, in other words, turned into a popularity contest. Pity the kid that only got a few Valentines, or heaven forbid, none. Some teachers made sure to give every student a Valentine themselves, just so no one would go home empty-handed.

The other problem, of course, is that there would always be a couple of kids in the class who would forget to write their names on the Valentines. You could always count on getting at least a couple of anonymous ones, like having pint-sized secret admirers. And if you were one of the kids whose bag was nearly empty, you really wanted to know who your benefactors were.

ONE OF THE first questions a diligent student of any New Testament letter asks is, “Who wrote it?” The letters of Paul, for example, typically follow the letter writing conventions of the day by identifying the writer and the recipient right up front. His letter to the Philippians is a good example: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:1-2, NIV). There are reasons why people might doubt whether a particular letter was actually written by the person named, but scholars generally agree that Philippians was indeed written by Paul.

But the letters we know as First, Second, and Third John don’t follow the same convention. The opening verses of First John, for example, use the pronouns “we” and “you,” as in “We proclaim to you” (vs. 3), but they neglect to mention who “we” and “you” actually are. Second and Third John are a bit more conventional but no less mysterious; the author is identified merely as “the Elder,” as if taking for granted that the recipients of the letter already knew who was meant.

So here we are, the recipients of three anonymous or almost anonymous letters filled with words of love. Who wrote them? Our Bibles call them First, Second, and Third John not because the apostle John wrote his name in them, but because early church tradition assigned them to John — and not without reason.

It’s hard, for example, to read the opening lines of First John without immediately thinking of the opening of the Gospel of John. Here are the first two verses of the letter:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. (1 John 1:1-2)

And here are the first four verses of what we know as John’s gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:1-4)

Both openings have such a unique stamp to them that it’s hard not to believe they were written by the same person, or at least two people who had some close connection. There are many more parallels between the letters and other passages from John’s gospel as well. But we have the same problem with the gospel that we do with the letters: the author doesn’t identify himself. And again, church tradition has generally taught that the author of the Fourth Gospel and the identity of the so-called “disciple whom Jesus loved” was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. That will be the tradition followed here.

BUT RECOGNIZING THE close ties between the Fourth Gospel and the three letters is important for more than just figuring out who wrote them. If the first question is about who wrote the letters, the next question is why: what’s the occasion? The New Testament letters were written for pastoral reasons. Something comes up in the church — a practical matter, perhaps, or a doctrinal dispute — and an apostle like Paul or John or Peter takes it upon himself to address the issue in writing.

Listen again to some of the language from the opening verses of First John we read earlier. The letter is going to be about things “we have heard” and “seen with our eyes,” things “we have looked at and our hands have touched.” “We have seen it and testify to it,” John insists. It’s as if to say, Listen up, people: this letter is based on nothing less than eyewitness testimony. Some error, apparently, has crept into the church, quite possibly on the basis of a misreading of the Fourth Gospel itself! John therefore asserts his apostolic authority as he tries to nip it all in the bud.

Wait: people teaching wildly different things in the church because they don’t read the Bible the same way? Shocking, right?

Much ink has been spilled over the centuries trying to figure out exactly what this different and heretical belief might have been. The main theories involves heresies about Jesus: that he wasn’t really fully human, or that he ceased to be divine at the crucifixion.

But it’s like only being able to overhear one side of a phone conversation. We can guess at what the other person is saying, but we can’t be certain. It’s clear that John was arguing against some kind of false belief, but it’s not necessary for us to know all the details to learn from what John says. He wants us to know that God is light, and God is love. In a world of darkness, we need to keep to the light. And even if we must confront and correct what we believe to be error, we must do so in love.