Theophylact of Ohrid — Commentary on Scripture

1 John 1:1

When John talks about having seen this life, he means that the disciples understood its meaning, and when he says that they touched it, he means that they had investigated it thoroughly.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 1:4

John says that having his hearers as fellow participants in the grace of eternal life will make him and the other disciples happy in the same way that a sower is happy to have the reapers alongside him on the day of harvest.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 2:10

Even the Gentiles have always accepted the law or command which appears to derive from nature, that we should do good to those who are of the same nature as we are. The reason for this is that man is a rational and social animal who cannot exist without mutual love. Ancient tales even relate that there were many people who were prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of others, and the Savior himself calls this the highest form of love: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.”

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 2:25

What is eternal life? It is that we should know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 3:3

Note that John uses the present tense when he talks about our need to purify ourselves. The practice of virtue is an ongoing thing and has its own inner dynamic. If we stop living this way or put it off until some future time, there is nothing virtuous about that at all.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 3:4

Sin is a falling away from what is good, whereas iniquity is transgression of the law. The first is a rejection of good as a general principle, the second is a particular violation of a law. The sinner therefore is someone who goes against nature, and it is the nature of human beings to live rationally. Sin is therefore something which must be regarded as absurd.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 3:22

If we obey God’s commands, then our obedience will bear fruit, for we shall receive whatever we ask for.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 3:23

The first point to be made here is that we must love one another according to the faith which we have in the name of Jesus Christ, for it is by this that we know that the grace of the Holy Spirit given to us will be firmly planted in us. The second thing to notice is the use of the word name, which is quite frequent in Scripture. It includes the will, the glory and the honor of the one who bears it, and his will is that everyone everywhere should be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 4:3

The antichrist will be a man who bears Satan inside him and who exalts himself above everything which is called God or which is worshiped. For that reason he will spurn idolatry and demand that people worship him instead.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 4:4

You have overcome the false prophets because the God who is in you is greater than the one by whom the false prophets have chosen to live. There is another sign of false prophets, which is that they make simple believers sad. There must be many who react very badly when they see the so-called prophets being given the highest honors while they themselves are treated with disrespect by the world.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 4:5

Those who teach what the world wants to hear will always find followers in it, for the perverted love each other. We on the other hand will never be accepted by them.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 5:2

If we love God, then we must also love those whom God has brought to birth and who have become our brothers and sisters. Loving one another is a sign of how much we love God.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 John 5:4

Once you have become brothers and sisters in love, you must go on to the next stage, which is to overcome the world. For those who have been born again in God must expel every kind of unbelief from their midst.

COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN

1 Peter 1:14

To be conformed to the things of this world means to be surrounded by them. Even today there are some weak-willed people who say that when they are in Rome, they have to do as the Romans do. But whether they do this knowingly or in ignorance, the message here is clear. We are to abandon this world and be conformed to the One who alone is truly holy.

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 2:14

Peter calls those magistrates who are appointed by kings “human creatures.” Sometimes Scripture describes appointments as creations [as in Ephesians 2:15]: “God’s purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two.”

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 3:20

Someone might easily ask: Who preached salvation before Christ, so that those who did not believe in him should be condemned? The answer to this, which Paul also adopted, is that those who lived before Christ had enough light given to them to enable them to distinguish good from evil. Because of this, if they chose to do evil, they are worthy of condemnation. Therefore Peter reminds us that they were rebellious, not merely from the time of the prophets but long before that, virtually from the creation of the world in fact. As he demonstrates, the way of salvation was proclaimed to them from the beginning, but they spurned it and preferred to go after vanities of one kind or another. The result was that of all the millions of people who lived at that time, only eight were saved, because they alone believed the message which they heard.

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 4:2

Compare this with what Paul wrote: “If we are dead with Christ, we shall also live with him” and “dead therefore to sin but alive to God.”

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 4:3

This is ironic, as if Peter were saying: “Have you not had enough of the pleasures which you once indulged in? Or do you still hanker after the Gentile life which you used to live?” It is in connection with this that he notes the various types of debauchery.

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 4:6

It was the habit of the Fathers to take this verse completely out of context. They therefore said that the word dead has two different meanings in Scripture, referring either to those who are dead in their sins and who never lived at all or to those who have been made conformable to the death of Christ, as Paul said: “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God.” But if they had paid the slightest attention to the context, they would have seen that here the “dead” are those who have been shut up in hell, to whom Christ went to preach after his death on the cross.

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER

1 Peter 4:9

Note that when Peter mentions love he immediately goes on to talk about offering hospitality without grumbling. That is a sure sign of what love is.

COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER