Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
Fellowship, and Joy Made Full
1 John 1:3-4
3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us. Yes, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. · WEB
The purpose of the eyewitness claim is not to establish authority but to widen a circle, and the word for that circle lands four times in this chapter alone.
Verse 3 finally supplies the main verb the letter has been holding since its first word: what we have seen and heard, we declare to you. And the purpose given is not that the readers should believe the writer, which is what an eyewitness claim usually serves. It is that they should have fellowship with him.
The word is koinonia, and its distribution is worth noting. It appears twenty-one times in the New Testament, and four of those fall in this one chapter 1 John 1:3 1 John 1:6 1 John 1:7. A letter written to people whose congregation has just split opens by using the word for sharing four times in seven verses.
The sentence then extends the circle upward without a pause: and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son. Two claims are being made at once — that the readers share with the writer, and that the sharing is not merely horizontal.
Verse 4 gives the reason for writing, and it is disarmingly small after the height of what precedes it: that our joy may be made full. The writer does not say the readers' joy, or his own alone. Something is incomplete in him while they are unsettled, which is the first hint of a letter more pastoral than polemical.
settled What this mark means