346 APOLOGY AND POLEMIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT



of believers. Hence the initial emphasis, 1, 3-7, on fellowship wi'
those who preach the Gospel of the incarnation and the moral
walk in light. For in this fellowship is fellowship with the Father
and the Son, based upon the propitiation of Jesus Christ for the
sins of the whole world, in contrast to the exclusiveness of the
false teachers. And all through the Epistle this fellowship is
manifested in the love of the brethren. The interest of the writer
to counteract the divisive influence arising from the several denials
of the system of error, is to be seen in the fact that fellowship is the
unifjnng topic of the Epistle. Following Moffatt, Inlrod., p. 584,
who regards its plan as unstudied, as variations on one or two
simple themes, we notice that Christian fellowship is the subject,
whose definition is given in 1, 1 ff. Its conditions are outlined
the antitheses of light and darkness, as a sense of sin and forgive-
ness and as obedience to the law of brotherly love, 1, 5 ff. The
dangers which threaten the existence of any fellowship with God
or man, are shown to inhere in the heretical view of Christ's
person, 2, 18 ff. The characteristics of fellowship as sinlessness and
brotherly love are developed in 3, 1-5, 12; and the epilogue, 5,
13 ff. 'specially notes the danger of lapsing and the treatment of
the lapsi ' i. e. , from the Christian fellowship.
