Hope is conspicuous in captivity. There’s no place for it in prison because hope forbids a person to accept their condition. And, you must come to terms with your condition to survive captivity. Strangely, in prison, hope leads to despair because hope has nowhere to focus and gets stuck in a loop. The sooner one gives up and stops trying to escape, the quicker despair will give way to meaninglessness. Only then will a prisoner accept their condition. Only the hopeless make good prisoners.

So goes the standard explanation of John’s First Epistle. I've heard it explained this way so often over the years I've assumed (without a question) that it’s the only possible explanation, or valid angle on the letter. The epistle is put forward as a sort of salvific “disc assessment.” It’s an assurance quiz applied to John’s audience. Score high and you can have assurance. Score poorly and you've no basis for it. Some would go so far as to say the letter is specifically designed to create doubt in the lives of false believers within the church

Interesting that Paul’s unwillingness and deliberate resistance in accommodating our fear of Sola Fide bothers us so much. In a twist of Irony, evangelicals – especially the pietistic branches - have read Romans eight verse one with a footnote under their breath.