A brief note and correction from last month’s article. I wrote, “Denial of Jesus, obedience in repentance, and following the God’s commandments is fruit of true faith.” Instead, it should have said, “Denial of the false ideas of Jesus…” I assure you that I remain centered on orthodox Christian doctrine and have not strayed from the faith. Your salvation is from Christ alone, acknowledge Him and humble yourself before Him, and be saved.
Now, as we begin walking through this treatise of Christian doctrine, I want to explain a little of the format moving forward. We will be walking through this text the same way that faithful pastors/preachers should walk through biblical texts on Sunday mornings in sermons, verse-by-verse. Another name for this is expository preaching. While I am not preaching with my voice, there will be an explanation and application to our verses each month. In many churches today, we see topical sermons that use various scripture removed from context to examine and teach on a topic. However, the danger in this is misusing verses, pulling verses out of their context, and missing the glorious connections that the Bible has to itself. We may have our favorite verses or books of the Bible, but as God’s people, we love the Bible as a whole. The most faithful way to handle the Bible is to proclaim the full counsel of God’s word in context and without skipping sections of scripture that are difficult, weighty, or convicting (Acts 20:27, 2 Timothy 14-15).
Our author, the Apostle John, writes with the aim to teach about the basics of faith in Christ and help the audience reflect honestly on their faith. So, John begins from the beginning, the beginning there was before there was anything, when all that existed was God Himself. See the beginning of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This makes the beginning of John 1:1 profound: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John takes us back to this time in eternity past, to meet this One which was from the beginning. The eternal One is Jesus, friends. The second person of the Triune God, the King of kings, Lord over all. We know this from the whole of scripture, but John continues as he explains in verse 1 and 2, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us…” This indicates that this eternal being came to earth, and John (among many others) personally experienced Him. The idea is that this eternal subject of John has been audibly heard, physically seen, intently studied (have looked upon), and tangibly touched (hands have handled) would have enormous implications for his readers. The implications were enormous because they said that this eternal God became accessible to man in the most basic way, a way that anyone could relate to. This eternal One can be known since He has revealed Himself to us. Enormous because they proved that John’s words have the weight of eyewitness evidence. He did not speak of a myth or of a matter of clever story-telling. He carefully studied this eternal One and he knew whom he spoke about. Enormous because it debunked dangerous teachings that were creeping into the church, such as Gnosticism. Part of the teaching of Gnosticism was that though Jesus was God, He was not actually a physical man, but instead some kind of pseudo-physical phantom. Yet John declared, “I heard Him! I saw Him! I studied Him! I touched Him!” John identifies this eternally existent being, who was physically present with John and others (note the repetition of “our” and “we”), as the Word of Life. This is the same word, Logos, spoken of in John 1:1. The idea of the Word (Logos) was important for John and for the Greek and Jewish worlds of his day. For the Jew, God was often referred to as the Word because they knew God perfectly revealed Himself in His Word. For the Greek, their philosophers had spoken for centuries about the Logos – the basis for organization and intelligence in the universe, the Ultimate Reason which controls all things. It is as if John said to everyone, “This Logos you have been talking about and writing about for centuries – well, we have heard Him, seen Him, studied Him, and touched Him. Let me now tell you about Him.” This life was manifested, meaning that it was made actually and physically real. John solemnly testified as an eyewitness who has seen and now declare to you. As John calls Jesus eternal life, and adds, with the Father, John remembered the words of Jesus (John 5:26, 6:48, and 11:25). We can say that people are eternal, but we say this with the understanding that we mean they are eternal in the future sense only, not past tense like God. There was an eternal relationship of love and fellowship between the Father and the Son. Jesus referred to this in John 17:24: “For You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
So What?
John closes his first paragraph with an invitation to have fellowship with Christians and with the Father and Son, in order that our joy (everyone who has fellowship with God and His people) would be complete. You can enjoy this fellowship even though you do not understand all the intricacies of the Trinity. You can use your eyes even though you don’t know every detail of how your vision works. You can know God and believe in Him as He has revealed Himself, even though you can’t understand everything about His person or nature. The idea of fellowship is one of the most important ideas in this letter of John’s. It is the ancient Greek word ‘koinonia’, which speaks of a sharing, a communion, a common life. It speaks of a living, breathing, sharing, loving relationship with another person. This simple and bold statement means that one can have a relationship with God. This idea would surprise many of John’s readers, and it should be astounding to us. The Greek mind-set highly prized the idea of fellowship, but restricted to men among men – the idea of such an intimate relationship with God was revolutionary. This fellowship is shared life and is essential. This doesn’t mean that when Jesus comes into our life He helps us to do the same things better than before. We don’t add Jesus to our life. We enter a relationship of a shared life with Jesus. We share our life with Him, and He shares His life with us. The result of fellowship is fullness of joy. This joy is an abiding sense of optimism and cheerfulness based on God, as opposed to happiness, which is a sense of optimism and cheerfulness based on circumstances. Charles Spurgeon wisely said, “If any of you have lost the joy of the Lord, I pray you do not think it a small loss.” Come find the fellowship, joy, and life you’ve been looking for through Christ. Next month we will look closer at the text in Chapter 1, verses 5-10 & Chapter 2, verses 1-6. Until then – may you know JOY that only comes from Christ! As always, if you have questions, need prayer, a word of encouragement, or a cup of coffee, please contact me via my personal email: niloc1214@gmail.com
