The Word of Life: 1st John Lesson 2

Last week we introduced the book of 1 John. We looked at the man who wrote this letter. He was the Apostle John. We also looked at his message. We learned last week that John is very dogmatic when it comes to truth and error. To John everything is black and white. John tells it straight, leaving no room for mistaken interpretation. He is authoritative, absolute, and clear. But we also know him as the apostle of love because he wrote more about the love of God and the need for love for one another than any other New Testament writer. John, is for us, the perfect balance of love and truth. He learned this balance from watching Jesus.

 The message of 1 John is designed “so you may know.” 1 John 5:13. “These things I have written to you who believe on the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” John frequently states his clear objectives in writing. He wants us to know. We saw that the various words translated “know” are used over 50 times in these five chapters. 

John has penned for us a polemic. He has provided for us the compelling testimony, the convincing evidence concerning the nature and character of Jesus Christ. He does this because he knows how critical this understanding is to salvation and eternal life. If you get it wrong concerning Jesus Christ, you miss salvation.

 John relates something indispensible to our understanding of man’s relationship to God. This is a fundamental premise we cannot fail to grasp. Man’s most common mistake is in failing to grasp this. Divine revelation stands in judgment of man’s ideas, not visa versa. Man does not have the right to stand in judgment of divine revelation. 

 Man’s ideas are always subjected to divine revelation. Divine revelation is never subjected to man’s ideas. All heresy is the result of subjugating divine revelation to man’s ideas. Every cult, every false religion, every doctrinal deviation is the result of man asserting his ideas ahead of divine revelation. John’s theme for this letter is what has been revealed from the beginning, what has been evident, what cannot be denied as true concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. The reason he is so dogmatic is because there is no room for discussion or dispute on this issue. We accept Jesus Christ as He is revealed in the Scripture, period. John writes this because there were some who had already began to question God’s revelation concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ.

This is a fairly unique way to start a letter. John does not start this letter like Paul, or Peter. John does not identify himself anywhere in this letter. Even without identifying himself we know he is the undisputed author. The testimony of all the early church fathers was that John was the author. The fact that he didn’t identify himself testifies to his authorship. He would be so universally accepted as the author that it wasn’t necessary for him to begin by identifying himself. He was the last man standing among the Apostles. He was the abiding voice for God, as one of the early church writers identified him. He was so well known and his words would be so universally recognized that he didn’t need to say “This is John.”

 From the very start John emphasizes this objective. John establishes the reliable nature of what he writes. When facts are to be established with the greatest degree of certainty, to whom do we turn? When the police are looking to determine exactly what happened at a crime scene, the first people they want to talk to are the people who were there. There is no better, no more credible, no more reliable information than the information that comes from the eyewitnesses. If you commit a crime and there are people there who see you do it, and the police can convince them to testify against you, you are busted. There is no better way to confirm what you want to know than to get the facts from an eyewitness.

 Even though John does not give us his name, he immediately asserts himself as an eyewitness concerning the things he is about to disclose. Look again at verse 1. “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life.” You get the clear sense from this that John was not only there as an eyewitness, he was certainly paying attention. He wasn’t distracted. He was tuned in.

 John was what researchers and investigators would call a “primary source.” In academic research, especially regarding history, the best sources are primary sources. A primary source is a document, first-hand account, or other source that constitutes direct evidence of an object of study. The writer of this letter is both an eyewitness and a primary source. John is giving us a first hand account. This is direct evidence. If you want to confirm the facts concerning this subject matter, there is no better resource. 

 We must also note that John is stating that he is not alone in this. He does not say “what I have heard, what I have seen with my eyes…” He says “we.” What is better than one eyewitness? Multiple eyewitnesses. How much more credible is testimony when it is corroborated by multiple witnesses. 

Who are the “we?” Remember, John is writing in the early 90’s. By this time Paul’s letters would have been widely circulated through the churches. Paul was an eyewitness of the resurrected Lord. Paul had four first person experiences with the resurrected Christ. Peter’s letters would have been circulated. Peter was the one closest to Jesus. The letter of James would have been around. James was the half-brother of Jesus and the full brother of Jude, who wrote the letter that bears his name. Jude’s letter was in circulation as well. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke would have been widely circulated through the churches. When John says “we” he is speaking of the testimony of multiple, credible witnesses. 

 What is John’s testimony. John says this testimony is about what we have heard. Implied here is that John heard this with his own ears. If he saw with his own eyes, he also must have heard with his own ears. This is not “hearsay” evidence. In a court of law, in most cases, hearsay evidence is inadmissible. Hearsay evidence is something that one person told another and the second person is testifying concerning what he heard. The second person has no first-hand knowledge of the events, therefore the testimony is suspect.

 What John tells us that this is what he has heard. The next detail is “we have seen with our eyes.” The common word for “see” in the New Testament is the Greek word “blepo.” The word translated “seen” is “horao.” (hor-a-o) This word implies not the mere act of seeing, but also the actual perception of some object. It implies an understanding of what is seen. It means to see, not only physically, but also mentally. We have all had the experience where we have seen something but not fully understood what we were looking at. Then, with some help, we understand. John did not just see Jesus, he understood, he perceived the truth about Jesus.

 Then John goes on to say, “what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” The word translated “looked at” is “theaomai” (the-a-o-mai). This means “to contemplate.” It involves a wondering consideration involving a careful and deliberate interpretation of an object. This contemplation and wondering consideration involved not only what they were looking at but also what John says they “touched with our hands.”

 Turn to Luke 24:36-43. This is Luke’s account of the post-resurrection encounters with Jesus. You are all familiar with the story of the two men who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. As these two men were relating their experience to the apostles, Jesus appeared. Start reading with me in verse 36. In verse 39 Jesus said, “touch Me and see.” John looked at and touched with his hands the most compelling evidence man could have been privileged to see concerning the true nature of Jesus Christ. This was a man who had died who was standing there with the wounds visible, available to touch. There could be no doubt as to the identity of the One who was before them. This was God in human flesh.

 Imagine the wonder and amazement and confusion that must have gripped these men in those moments. With their eyes they had seen Jesus die. They certainly understood death as final. It was over for their movement. Their hopes were completely dashed when Jesus breathed His last on that cross. They went home and Peter was going back to fishing. Three days later He is standing in front of them very much alive. There is no doubt about who He is because the wounds are still fresh. They can see and they can touch the wounds. They know they are real. They can see that this is a man before them who has returned from the grave. He eats. He smiles. He talks. He teaches. He comforts. He restores hope. 

 All this, John says, is “concerning the Word of Life.” We know John is speaking of Jesus Christ. This is consistent with the way he began his gospel account. Look at John 1:1-18. Jesus is the Word of Life. In verse 2 we see John says, “we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life…” The Word of Life and the Eternal Life are the same. The Word was God, the Word was with God. John 1:4 says, “And in Him was life” – in Him was life.

There were many occasions in which Jesus referred to this Life. John 5:26, “Just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” That is to say He has an equal life with the Father. He is equal in essence. And then he says in 5:40 of John, “You are unwilling to come to Me that you may have life.” He is life; He brings life; He gives life. John 11:25 and 26, he says, “I am the resurrection and the Life, whoever believes in Me though he were dead yet shall he live.” In John 14:6 He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Me except by the Father.” He is life. That’s John’s conclusion. In 1 John 5:12, “He who has the Son has the life. He who doesn’t have the Son of God doesn’t have the life.”

Verse 1 sets the stage for us. We now see that John is presenting his testimony. Before we move on there is a question we need to answer. Why is John so set on declaring this eyewitness testimony? One of the keys to biblical interpretation is not just to understand what is written, but also to try to determine why it was written. John is clearly giving us first hand testimony of things he heard, saw, examined and understood concerning the Word of Life. Why did John feel the need to present this evidence?

John knew this testimony was needed because of the assaults being launched against the truth. I believe this is one of the reasons the Lord kept John alive so much longer than the other Apostles. Jesus purposefully left an eye-witness to provide credible testimony concerning the truth in the face of growing attacks on the truth. Man had begun to assert his ideas concerning Christ and salvation over the truth of divine revelation. John is left to write this to remind the believers of the importance of keeping man’s ideas subjected to divine revelation. Divine revelation should always trump man’s ideas.

We know who is ultimately behind the errors that bring divine revelation into question. It is always Satan. He is the father of lies. That is his business. That was what he did in the Garden. His question was, “Has God said…?” He introduced an alternative to divine revelation. Adam and Eve made the mistake of believing something other than divine revelation.

History tells us that it never takes Satan very long to attack the truth of divine revelation. As soon as divine revelation is presented, Satan immediately begins to try to destroy it or distort it. Jesus is divine revelation in human form. He is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. As soon as Jesus was born, Satan inspired Herod to try to kill the baby Jesus. Satan tried his tactic on Jesus in the wilderness, tempting Jesus to accept something other than divine revelation. Satan prompted the Pharisees to oppose Jesus and have Him killed. He surely thought it was game over when Jesus died on the Cross. He was wrong.

After the Resurrection, after the church was born on the Day of Pentecost, Satan inspired those same religious leaders to arrest Peter and John and have them beaten to silence them from proclaiming the Word of Life, the gospel of Jesus Christ. They got it right when they said, “We must obey God rather than men.” Satan inspired the Jewish legalists who infiltrated the church and tried to mix and mingle the works of man with the divine revelation of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. These were all examples of man’s ideas trying to subject and trump divine revelation. The Apostle Paul was the perfect one to write in his epistles the great truths about the work of salvation and the doctrines of grace and faith.

Legalism was the first great threat to the divine revelation, or the Word of Life. Paul was the voice of God to defend divine revelation and defeat that heresy. But there was another threat. The second great threat to the truth of divine revelation was a heresy that would come to be known as Gnosticism. Because of the nature of this threat, John was the perfect one to lead the fight against this false idea.

At the time of John’s writing of 1 John this heresy was not yet known as Gnosticism. It would develop into this in the heresy of what later came to be known as Gnosticism. It was a couple of centuries before Gnosticism really got labeled. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnōsis and it’s based on the idea that some people had secret knowledge, that they had ascended above everyone else to high levels of secret knowledge. It’s 2 Corinthians 10:5 again, “It’s every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.” It’s all that high thinking by which man elevates himself. It is an example of the ideas of man being elevated above the revelation of God.

Gnosticism had in it as it developed a philosophical dualism. Philosophical dualism was an erroneous philosophy that all material substance is evil - that all material substance is evil. Because of this philosophical dualism, they believed that Jesus could not have come in the flesh because all flesh is physical and therefore evil. They are denying the incarnation. They are denying the basic tenant of Christian doctrine that Jesus was the God-Man who was fully God and fully man. To become a man God would have to have infected Himself with evil, so He could not have done that. They did not believe that God could have ever lived in a material body.

That’s why John says in chapter 4, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,” because these people in this sort of incipient Gnosticism were denying that Jesus came in the flesh because of this philosophical dualism in which they lived.

There was a group of people that showed up under the big banner of Gnosticism called Docetists. Docetists from dokeō, the Greek word “to seem.” And the Docetists said that Christ was God but He only seemed to have a body. The appearance of a body was an illusion. This is how some of these heretics explained away Jesus coming in a material body.

There was another group called the Cerinthians and the Cerinthians said that the divine Christ came on the human Jesus just for a brief time. That God didn’t dwell in his material body permanently because that wouldn’t be good, God would never do that. But He just sort of came down and hung around from His baptism to the cross and then left. These people said when Jesus - the Scripture says - yielded up His Spirit, that good God left and He came descending like a dove at His baptism and left at the cross because they couldn’t tolerate an actual incarnation because of this dualism.

Some in the early church said that Simon Magus was the father of all of this. You remember Simon Magus in Acts chapter 8 who tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit? Some church Fathers say Simon Magus was the start of this. It is also very possible that the Nicolaitans mentioned in Revelation 2:6 and 15, had some form of this kind of gnostic dualistic heresy. 

This dualistic philosophy was a carryover from the Greeks. This was a case in which some in the culture, who were strongly influenced by the culture, allowed their cultural influences to dictate what they would believe about God. Sounds familiar doesn’t it. I think that is the way the vast majority do it today. Most people today don’t allow their God to be defined by the Scriptures. They define God in terms of what is culturally acceptable. We see the problem of man’s ideas subjugating divine revelation is more widespread today than it has ever been.

Now, keep this in mind: If Jesus wasn’t God in human flesh, then that is an outright denial of the substitutionary atonement, right? Because if you don’t have Jesus as man dying for man, you have no substitute. If He is not God dying in man’s place, He is not a perfect sacrifice. There’s a lot at stake. There are all kinds of problems with Christianity if you somehow explain away Jesus as God in human form.

There are several other aspects of this heresy we will see addressed throughout this letter. You will kind of need to hang on to what I have explained about this heresy. There is a lot more. Understanding the attacks on Christ helps us understand why John has written what he has written.

This is why John writes what he writes. When John says, “What was from the beginning” he is saying that from the first days of His earthly ministry we heard and saw and evaluated and touched and there is no doubt as to the divine nature of this man. If you have any doubts about John’s understanding of who Jesus is, go read his gospel. He was God in human flesh. He was fully God and fully man. In Him was life and He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You come to Him for life, or you have no life in you. It is that simple, that straightforward, that black and white.

Thank God for John’s eyewitness testimony. We will come back next week and we will see that because John understood so much he could not help but proclaim the truth. The result of that proclamation was our fellowship with him, with our heavenly Father, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and with one another.

Let’s pray.