David L. Allen

Dr. David Allen is the Dean of the School of Preaching, Distinguished Professor of Preaching, and Director of the Southwestern Center for Expository Preaching
at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

1 John 4:12-21

Loving one another evidences two realities in our lives according to verse 12: God abides in us and his love is brought to completion in us. John is very fond of using this word “abide.” It is common in his Gospel as well as in this letter. In verses 12–... Read More »

1 John 4:7-11

The structure of this paragraph is as follows: Verse 7 contains the main point of the paragraph expressed in the exhortation “let us love one another. This is the first open exhortation to love one another in the letter. In vv. 7-8, John gives two grounds or... Read More »

1 John 4:1-6

The context of 4:1–6 concerns the source of true and false teaching. Note that the phrase “from God” occurs six times in these six verses; in every verse except verse 5 and twice in verse 6. The source of true Christian teaching is God through the Holy S... Read More »

1 John 3:19-24

The center of this passage is John’s appeal in verse 23: we should believe in Jesus and love one another. This appeal is flanked on both sides with a motivational basis. Verses 19–22 provide the first motivation: when our conscience condemns us, God is gre... Read More »

1 John 3:11-18

Verse 11 introduces a paragraph providing the grounds for John’s concluding statement in verse 10. In the previous paragraph, John reminds us of who we are: children of God. Our practice proclaims who and what we are. The “message” is another word for th... Read More »

1 John 3:1-10

First John 2:29 is a transitional verse in the letter. Notice the use of the word “begotton” or “born.” Prior to verse 29, that word does not occur in all in the first two chapters, but it occurs ten times from this point forward. John’s focus from t... Read More »

1 John 2:28-29

1 John 2:28–29 is a hinge paragraph in the letter.[1]That verse 28 is the beginning of a new paragraph is confirmed by Grace Sherman and John Tuggy, A Semantic and Structural Analysis of the Johannine Epistles (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1994),... Read More »

1 John 2:26-27

John has already written about false teachers and their characteristics. Because of this, it is difficult to discern whether verse 26 concludes the previous section or introduces a new section. Perhaps John intended both. Here he discusses another characterist... Read More »

1 John 2:18-25

John contrasts false teachers and true teachers in verses 18–21. The presence of false teachers is a sign of the end times (18) and their defection is proof of their true nature (19). The second mark of false teachers is they deny the faith. In verse 20, Joh... Read More »

1 John 2:15-17

The following are some exegetical and semantic analysis notes for this paragraph. I. How many sentences are in the text? 3 in UBS Greek Text:                      4 in KJV, NASB, NIV: S1 = 15a                       ... Read More »