13 John

This book treats the three letters of John as a unified epistolary package. It proposes two new contributions to the study of 1-3 John. First, it presents new comprehensive chiastic structures for each of the three letters of John based on concrete linguistic evidence in the text. These chiastic structures serve as the guide for an audience-oriented exegesis of these letters. Secondly, it treats these letters from the point of view of their worship context and themes. Not only were 1-3 John intended to be performed orally as part of liturgical worship, but together these three letters exhort their audience to a distinctive ethical worship. In accord with the subtitle of this book, the three letters of John are concerned with giving their audience an experience of living eternally by the worship that consists of loving God and one another