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Passage Research

1 John 1 — Sermon Preparation

The apostolic proclamation of the Word of life is set forth, and walking in the light with honest confession of sin is presented as the basis of true fellowship. Below is a research summary for 1 John 1, drawn from openly licensed scholarly databases — original-language morphology, classic sermons from the church fathers through the Puritans, and ancient geography data.

10
verses
207 / 69
Greek words / lemmas
16
classic sermon excerpts
7
preachers & commentators

1 John 1 in the Greek

Distinctive vocabulary of this chapter, based on original-language morphology.

GreekTransliterationStrong'sCountKJV renderings
κοινωνίαkoinōníaG28424communicate, communion, distribution, fellowship
ἁμαρτίαhamartíaG2664offence, sin
φῶςphōsG54573fire, light
ζωήzōḗG22223life
καθαρίζωkatharízōG25112clean, purge, purify
ἀπαγγέλλωapangéllōG5182bring word, declare, report, shew
φανερόωphaneróōG53192appear, manifestly declare, manifest, shew

How preachers through history handled this text

16 public-domain excerpts on 1 John 1, from the church fathers to the Puritans.

Spurgeon6Calvin3Matthew Henry3Augustine1Abraham Kuyper1Alexander MacLaren1John Wesley1

“A message from the Lord Jesus, the Word of life, the eternal Word, we should all gladly receive. The great God should be represented to this dark world, as pure and perfect light. As this is the nature of God, his doctrines and precepts must be such. And as his perfect happiness cannot be separated from his perfect holiness, so our happiness will be in proportion to our being made holy. To walk in darkness, is to live and act against religion. God holds no heavenly fellowship or intercourse with unholy souls. …”

— Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Concise), on 1 John 1:5–25 (Public Domain)

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