I DON’T KNOW for certain, but I suspect I’m a little notorious among my colleagues for long emails. Nobody’s ever expressed such annoyance to me directly. But I know that with some folks I have to send multiple messages before I get the information I need. I can’t send one email with three questions, even if I bullet them; I have to send three emails with one question each. And even then, the answers I get back sometimes miss the point.

I know that people are busy. And I know that in this day of electronic messaging, people expect emails and texts to be short and sweet, paring things down to essentials. What are you saying? What are you asking? Let’s get right to it and spare me the details. But when I write a long email, it’s because the situation I’m addressing is complicated. I want the person reading the message to understand the context, and that takes some doing. So I often begin those emails the way one might begin a letter. I start with a friendly greeting: “Hi! I hope you’re doing well.” But then comes my statement of purpose and intent: “I’m writing to you because…”

We are now nearly at the end of John’s first letter. I hope that as we’ve gone through the study, it’s been clear how important it is to read 1 John for what it was intended to be. There is much theology in 1 John, but the book is not a theological treatise. It’s a letter to friends who are in need of some authoritative pastoral reassurance.

His main message is almost done, and as happens with other letters, there’s a postscript afterward containing an assortment of final comments and bits of advice. Think for example of the letters of Paul, which often end with things like Here are my travel plans, or I’m sending so-and-so your way, or So-and-so is with me here and says “Hi.” John’s postscript, as we’ll see, is different; it carries on with the theme and purpose of the letter by offering some final fatherly words of spiritual counsel.

But before we get there, we need to look at a tidy little summary statement that brings everything to a head. Here it is, in verse 13 of chapter 5:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:13, NIV)

“These things” may refer back to the preceding argument about all the witnesses that testify to the truth about Jesus: not just the water, but the blood; not just the Spirit, but God the Father. The verse just before this one pronounced a damning verdict on the secessionists who had riled up the community:

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:12)

John is reassuring his readers that they do in fact have eternal life; they believed and held onto the apostolic teaching about Jesus as the Son of God come in the flesh, even when the secessionists tried to talk them out of it. The secessionists, unfortunately, do not have eternal life, because they don’t believe that Jesus is who God says he is. They do not have the Son of God.

But the words “these things” may also refer back even further to the letter as a whole by circling back to John’s opening words. We’ve already seen, for example, how the earlier verses in chapter 5 that emphasized the blood of Jesus echoed something he said all the way back in chapter 1: that we as sinners must be purified by the blood of Jesus (1:7). These verses act like a frame around the letter; by beginning and ending the letter with references to the blood, John highlights the difference between his readers and the secessionists.

And that frame sits within a still larger one. When in 5:13 John says, “I write these things to you,” those words echo what he said in the very first words 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. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:1-4)

As we saw early on, it’s not a conventional way to begin a letter; John’s opening has more in common with the prologue to his gospel than to other New Testament letters. But one convention at least remains: he gives the reason for writing the letter in the first place. In chapter 1, the reason is “to make our joy complete.” In chapter 5, the reason is “so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

But of course, these go together. In both places, his subject is the gospel of eternal life in Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ, and the importance of the testimony that points to that good news. But that proclamation also creates a fellowship among those who believe — indeed, a fellowship of believers together with the Father and Son.

John wants his readers to be confident in knowing that they have eternal life. It’s not because he’s a theological quality control inspector running around making sure everyone believes the right things. It’s because he loves his fellow believers and knows how much their confidence has been shaken by the controversy. The solidarity of the fellowship itself needed to be restored. Thus, John writes with loving concern and apostolic authority to help his readers find their feet again.

Did the letter achieve its purpose? I like to think so. And if so, it would have made John’s joy complete.