God’s word is Truth. If we are to follow Christ and become more like him, then we are to follow and obey the Truth of His Word. Within His Word, you will find many truths, one of which is a warning against false teaching. 1 John 4:1-6 is a dense portion of John's writing that details how the church was to identify and safeguard themselves from false teaching and false teachers. Today I'll give a brief history of some false teaching within the history of the Christian church and current iterations, beliefs, and statements that reflect contemporary false teaching. We will look at Antinomism, Adoptionism, and Marcionism, and see how these false teachings are relevant in today’s churches.

Today we'll examine how John calls special attention to themes via literary cycles. Biblical writers often use descriptions, illustrations, concepts, and statements to introduce an aspect of truth which will then be further narrowly focused on or further expanded up in subsequent statements. John as a biblical writer does this masterfully and repeatedly throughout 1 John. 

1 John is filled with cycles and repetition. Yesterday we talked about what those two terms mean and gave some examples throughout the Old and New Testament of both cycles and repetition. Today we're going to look at some of the eye-catching repeated words throughout 1 John.

While today we have a wide variety of digital methods for conveying importance or grabbing attention, writers in the Bible also employed means of emphasis. Two of the most easily recognizable means for calling a reader's attention to a particular theme or message were cycles and repetition. Cycles are often repetitive thematically, while repetition may be as simple as an author using the same word use again and again.

One of the unique aspects of John as a person is the period of time over which we see his faith lived out. While some New Testament writers only contributed a single letter to the New Testament, like James, Jude, Matthew, and Mark, John contributed multiple writings over multiple decades. While the Apostle Paul was used by God to write the greatest number of New Testament letters, John was used by God to write over the longest period of time.