1 John ends on a slightly odd note. The author writes, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." The last word of the book is the first time "idolatry" is mentioned anywhere in the book itself. Is this ending just a strange coda, or does it offer another interpretive key as we seek to live within the story John is telling?

The early church makes an astonishing claim: that Jesus of Nazareth—born of a woman, living as an ordinary human, suffering under brutal occupation, subjected to state-sponsored execution—was, as a matter of fact, God. What does this union of divinity and humanity mean for us?

Our annual outdoor worship falls near the unofficial end of summer. So as summer draws to a close, we think through the criteria that makes summer "good." Then we take a wider view, asking what makes a life "good."

The third chapter of 1 John offers some remarkably positive and promising insights: "see what love the Father has give us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are." At the very time, the author presents us with some puzzling ideas. 

The term "Antichrist" carries enough rhetorical force that it's not exaggerating to say it has shaped human history. But do we really understand what the author of 1 John intended to call to mind when he coined the phrase?

If John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world...") is the most famous Biblical passage, then 1 John 2 offers a confusing contrast: "Do not love the world." What do we make of this tension?