The Word of Life

1 John 1v1

17^th January 2020

John begins his first letter with these words:

1 John 1v1-4
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

The text of this letter doesn't tell us who wrote it, when he wrote it, or to whom he wrote it. However, by reading documents written by other early Christian writers, a consensus has formed that it was written by the apostle John, who was the pastor of the church in Ephesus in what we now think of as western Turkey, in the last few years of his life. Many believe that this letter was written between 90 and 95 AD, more than 60 years after the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord, in which case John would probably have been in his nineties when he wrote it. Do not write off elderly Christians.

In 2 John and 3 John, John's other letters that we have in the Scriptures, he calls himself "The elder", not as if there was only one elder in Ephesus, but because John was the senior elder, and the oldest elder, the elder with the most spiritual authority. When he described himself as "the elder" every Christian in that part of the world knew who he was.

The book of Revelation speaks about "the seven churches". Chapters 2 and 3 contain letters written to each: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Colossians 4:13 also speaks about Christians in the city of Hierapolis. All these cities are very close geographically, and it seems that the church at Ephesus, the major city in the region, had a responsibility for the care of the other churches, which were probably smaller. As the pastor, or senior elder, of the church in Ephesus, and – of course – as one of the original 12 apostles, John would have had spiritual authority and responsibility for all these churches. He probably wrote this letter to all the churches in his care.

As we study this letter, we see why John wrote it. Several members of the churches had broken away and formed their own churches. They had abandoned the truth as taught by the apostles, and had developed a theology which denied the truth about who Jesus Christ really is, and which took a very liberal view of sin. The same is happening in our country in our generation.

John wrote to the Christians who had stayed in the original churches, urging them not to be deceived, not to desert the true faith, and not to abandon their brothers and sisters, but to continue in Christian love together.

Some time before, when writing his gospel, John began with the words, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". The heart of his gospel, as written down and, I'm sure, as preached in Ephesus and the surrounding cities for decades, was Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Word who is God, and who was with God the Father from before the beginning of time. The central truth of our religion is Jesus.

John called Jesus "the Word", which could be translated as "the Message", or "the Communication" because He is God, and He is the ultimate revelation of who God is. Jesus is the second Person of the Holy Trinity. He is Emmanuel, God with us, as we're told in Matthew 1:23.

Now, writing this letter, John describes Jesus as "the word of life". Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is, and of what eternal life is. Eternal life is life with God. Jesus personifies and exemplifies this eternal life: perfect relationship with His Father. And faith in Jesus enables us to share that eternal life.

It's sometimes said that Paul wrote long sentences, but John was no slouch when it comes to long sentences either. In the original Greek, the first three verses of this letter are just one sentence. The NIV has broken that single sentence into four sentences to make it easier to read in English although, inevitably, some of the original meaning is lost. This week we're going to look at the first verse:

The first words of this letter are "That which was from the beginning". John is referring not only to Jesus, who is from the beginning, but also to the truth of the Christian message. John begins by emphasising that what he teaches is the true faith, the same faith that has been preached from the beginning of Christianity. Beware any teaching that is completely new. If it was true, the church would have found it before now. Beware any religious teaching that is not found in the Bible. The apostles spoke the truth, and wrote the truth. Do not deviate from it.

And, of course, the beginning – the founder - of the Christian religion is Christ. John proclaims, almost boasts, of his personal experience of Jesus: His life, His words, His miracles, but most of all His Person. John says of Jesus, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched".

John was there in the room when Jesus told the disciples:

Matthew 13:16
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

In fact, John was Jesus's closest friend. In his gospel, he describes himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 13v23, 19v26, 20v2, 21v7, 21v20). John witnessed the miracles first hand. He heard the Sermon on the Mount live. He saw the dead raised to life. He ate with Jesus, walked the roads of Galilee and Judea with Jesus, slept in the same room with Jesus. He touched Jesus. He even touched the risen Jesus:

Luke 24:38-39a
He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see"

Can any of us imagine what it must have been like to hear Jesus preaching, to see Jesus shining with the glory of God on the Mount of Transfiguration, to watch Lazarus walk out of his grave, to see the tenderness with which Jesus healed lepers and the disabled, to see the folded grave clothes in Jesus's grave, and then to meet and touch the risen Christ, and watch as Jesus ascended into heaven? What a life John had led with Jesus!

60 years later, John was preaching the same message: the message of Jesus. And I hope that 2,000 years later your church and mine are still preaching the same message.

The reason that John writes "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched" is to establish his authority to talk about the true faith. The Christian religion is fundamentally not about us but about Jesus Christ, His Person, His incarnation, His work, His Crucifixion, His Resurrection and His Ascension into Heaven. John knew what He was talking about. He was there. Others knew about Jesus, but John spent three and a half years as Jesus's closest friend. At the foot of the cross, Jesus asked John to look after His mum (John 19v25-27).

John tells his readers in advance that he's writing about that which was from the beginning. He's uniquely qualified to do so, as the only original witness of the incarnate life of Jesus who was still alive. Judas Iscariot had committed suicide and the other 10 apostles had been martyred by this time. Only John had survived, and he was still preaching. And John was uniquely qualified because he and his friends had heard Jesus, saw Jesus with their eyes, looked at (or gazed at, or studied) Jesus and touched Jesus with their hands. They were there when Jesus took the bread, broke it and said, "This represents my body, which is for you" (1 Corinthians 11v24).

And John says "this we proclaim concerning the Word of life" because Jesus is the Word of life. He Himself is the truth about eternal life, and He is eternal life.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.