Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
Let What You Heard Remain
1 John 2:24-25
24 Therefore, as for you, let that remain in you which you heard from the beginning. If that which you heard from the beginning remains in you, you also will remain in the Son, and in the Father. · WEB
The instruction to a congregation shaken by advanced teaching is to stay where it started, and the verb for that is the letter's favorite word.
Verse 24 begins with an emphatic pronoun — you, as against them — and the command is a single verb repeated three times in one sentence. Remain. What is to remain is not a doctrine they must go and learn but what you heard from the beginning.
The verb is the letter's signature. It runs through every chapter, and it is worth noticing what kind of word it is: not advance, not attain, not achieve, but stay. To people told by departing teachers that they had further to go, the letter's instruction is to hold position.
The conditional structure of the verse is exact and should not be flattened. If what you heard remains in you, then you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. The letter is not saying the readers must generate something; it is saying that the message staying put and the person staying put are the same event described twice.
The order of the last clause is worth a glance. In the Son, and in the Father — the same order as the previous verse 1 John 2:23, and the same route: there is no access to the second that bypasses the first.
Verse 25 then attaches the promise, and it is stated with striking economy: this is the promise which he promised us, the eternal life. One promise, named once, with the article. Nothing is added to it because the letter thinks nothing needs to be.
settled What this mark means