Monday, November 23 –
It is
the beginning of a new week, and we also begin reading new books in John’s
letters – 1, 2, & 3 John. This
morning we begin with 1 John 1:1 – 10. After
reading, please come back. Our second look is a little longer than normal, but
I wanted to share some background to this challenging letter.
John has lived a long life, much longer than the rest of his friends among the
twelve Apostles. Peter and Paul have
been dead for fifteen to twenty, or more, years. John has lived through the first waves of
Roman persecution, and spent most of his years pastoring the church in Ephesus. The fourth-century St. Jerome, the translator
of the Latin Bible, recalled that “when the aged apostle John became so weak
that he could no longer preach, he used to be carried into the congregation at
Ephesus and content himself with a word of exhortation. ‘Little children,’ he
would always say, ‘love one another.’ And when his hearers grew tired of this
message and asked him why he so frequently repeated it, he responded, ‘Because
it is the Lord’s command, and if this is all you do, it is enough”. [1]
We know that John died as an old man in approximately 98-100 a.d. There are three letters in the New Testament
that are ascribed to John, the Apostle.
The first is the lengthiest, and the second and third are more like
postcard letters. All of these letters
would have been circular letters – that is, letters that were sent from church
to church, from Ephesus. John’s chief
disciple was a man named Polycarp, and Polycarp’s chief disciple was the famous
early church theologian Irenaeus (I ra nee us).
It was in Irenaeus famous “Against Heresies” that a note is
referenced that John died in the reign of the Emperor Trajan (98-117
a.d.). That would have made John
(assuming he was a very young man when Jesus called him), a man of about 90
years old.
Why
did he write these letters? By the end
of the first century a heresy (that in different forms is still present today)
began to threaten the truth of who Jesus Christ was. We already noticed by the end of John’s
Gospel that the Apostle was very clear about the physical nature of Christ’s
death, burial, and resurrection. False
teachers had begun to enter the various Christian churches teaching false
teaching we know as “Gnosticism”.
Gnosticism took Greek (Plato) philosophy of the immateriality of the
being, and the “higher knowledge” (gnosis) that was available to the
truly spiritual people. In short, they
denied the physical human aspect of Christ Jesus, saying he only “seemed” to be
physical. It is a false teaching that is
still present in modern heretical movements that identify with Christianity
including Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Science.
The
nature of 1, 2, 3, John are – as many commentators admit – difficult to
understand. Paul’s letters move along in
logical order, arguing from one issue to a conclusion. Peter’s letters are down to earth – like
talking about the Gospel with a farmer – nothing fancy, but you certainly
understand they know Christ. John’s
letters are – as one writer said – more like a dance in which there is
movements that change every few verses.
I liken it to a symphony – beautiful, but not simple – each instrument
adds to the overall beauty, but no one instrument can stand alone. Therefore, as you read 1, 2, 3, John keep in
mind that the larger overall picture is of greater value than the individual parts,
and, I add, don’t let the individual parts get you bogged down in trying to
make sense. Keep the big picture in
mind.
What
is it that 1 John is trying to communicate?
John’s epistle written at the end of the first century is so valuable to
us because he is aware that being a Christian is difficult in a spiritually
confused world? Like our world today,
John’s world threatened to engulf the church in a morally confused and
intellectually false worldview. It is not
unusual to hear from people today, “there are many roads to God – if there even
is a God”. The proclamation of the
Gospel, the exclusivity of Jesus as the only way to salvation, and eternal
life was abhorrent to the Romans, and their massive culture, as it is to
our western world today. John had
written in the Gospel (we just finished reading) that to know God is to know
Jesus Christ who God sent (John 17:3), and John made it clear knowing Jesus is
the only way to God for Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life (John
14:6). It takes a lot of courage to
stand in the river that flows massively and strongly against you. What is more, as in John’s world, in our
world the tide is turning against Christianity and the Gospel with each
generation. Which is all the more reason
to be absolutely sure of the message of Christ, in the Gospel.
“That
which was from the beginning, 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— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to
you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is
with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these
things so that our joy may be complete” (1:1-4).
The
first three verses are one sentence in the original language and the first verb
does not appear until verse 3 when he says “we proclaim also to you”. The language is similar to the way in which
he began the Gospel, “in the beginning”.
What it is that was “from the beginning”? It is “the word of life”. This “word of life” was made “manifest”,
i.e., visible, and is the source of eternal life. This “word” was “with the Father”
and John saw him, heard him, and it is Him – Jesus Christ – the “word”
he proclaims. The word is the “logos”,
the word that John proclaimed at the beginning of the Gospel of John
(1:1-4). As Chuck Swindoll makes note,
“logos” was a very significant word to the Greeks and Romans. “In Greek philosophy, logos referred to
the uncreated principle of reason that gave order and structure to the
universe. In the Old Testament, the “word” was both God’s means of
revelation—His message to humanity—and, on occasion, a divine presence that took
some kind of physical form, indistinguishable from God (Jer. 1:1-14). In the
early first century ad, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria seemed to
merge these Greek and Jewish concepts. One author notes, “Philo of Alexandria
puts a great deal of emphasis on the notion of logos, making it the mediating
principle between God and the world.” By the end of the first century a.d.,
when the apostle John was writing, Christians had no doubt about who this one
mediator between God and men was—not an immaterial logos, but the Word made
flesh, “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).[2] John had “seen”, recalling that John entered the tomb to “see and
believed” (John 20:8).
He
is stating the issue in reasoned form:
We proclaim “what we have seen”, “who we looked at and touched”,
“what we heard”, and “who was from the beginning”. This is John, the Apologist, refuting the
Gnostic heresy that Jesus was not a human, but only “seemed” to be a
human. It is in Christ Jesus that John
and the church have “fellowship” (1:3), even as the Father and the Son
share in that fellowship in the church. Referring
back to Jesus’ own words in the Upper Room, it is only in Christ
Jesus that this fellowship can exist, and it is in Christ Jesus that our Joy
may be full (1:4).
Shifting
metaphors, and again, borrowing from
Christ Jesus’ teaching, he explains the truth in terms of “darkness and
light”.
“This
is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light,
and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5).
He had said that “God is life”, now the metaphor
shifts to “God is light”. God is
not merely the creator of light, or the source of light, He IS light! What he is saying is that there is “no
darkness”, no evil, no sin, or untruth in God.
As the Roman culture developed their system of “gods” from the Greek
gods, there was no perfection in the gods, just power. The false gods of the Greeks were not worthy
of being compared to the one true God.
The Romans kept their gods at arm’s length. Their gods were never personal, and always
capricious in their responses, but the God of the Bible revealed in both the
Old and New Testament was personal, always loving, kind, good, but also full of
justice, unwilling to overlook the sin of fallen mankind.
Now
in a series of “If we say” statements, John keeps us focused on the
reasoned faith that Christianity proclaims and further makes it clear why Christ Jesus had to
physically come in the flesh, die on the cross, and be raised from the dead.
“If
we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us
from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us” (1:6-8).
Fellowship
with God, in Christ, is not possible in lies, deception, and unwillingness to
acknowledge the truth about our Sin.
Putting it another way, it is in confessing our Sinfulness, our fallen
nature, that fellowship with God in Christ is made possible. It is not possible in denying our sin - that
only leads to self-deception, and the lies of the enemy that we don’t need a
Savior. We live in a culture that openly
denies the substitutionary atonement of Christ.
Religion accepts the idea of the spiritual, even the next world, but
does so apart from any acknowledging of Sin.
“I’m okay, you’re okay” … “God is a God of love, and everyone will find
their way to Him, regardless of how to try”…
“God looks at our goodness and sees that as the grounds of our being worthy
of eternal life”. They are all popular,
but in fact, all are wrong!
God has made “the way” in Jesus through his death
on the cross. There is “life” for all
who acknowledge their need for Christ Jesus as their Savior. “If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and
his word is not in us” (1:9-10).
Think
about this. “If we confess our sins”,
the word for “confess” is the Greek word, “homologeo”, translated
it means, “to say the same thing”.
When we honestly come to God acknowledging what he has
said…acknowledging that we need a Savior for our Sin…acknowledging that Christ
Jesus is the one and only way… then, “he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins”. That is good news…better
yet, that is “great news”! This is the
antidote to dead religion…to self-deception…and hollow faith.
Peace
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