The Epistles of John, Part 3: The Joy of Fellowship

And so we come at last to the beginning of John’s epistles.  Previously we have considered how we should approach our study of these books in terms of both mindset and methodology.  We also examined the life of the author and what can be learned from the amazing transformation of his character that is evident in Scripture.  Now it is time to sink our teeth into the text itself.

Immediately an anomaly is apparent.  Most correspondence of this era followed certain best practices and norms of custom, just as we do today.  A letter would usually include an introduction, greeting, and a concluding salutation.  But John doesn’t do that.  1^st John 1:1 simply launches directly into the meat of the message: 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.  There is no mention of the author’s name or who the intended recipients are.  It could be that as the last surviving Apostle and a man of considerable fame, respect, and authority John felt no need to provide the customary elements.  Yet in 2^nd and 3^rd John as well as Revelation we do see these features present.  So he clearly didn’t always do this which causes me to wonder why it’s different with this book.

I believe the answer is that John intended this first epistle to be a continuation, an extension, or a sequel if you like to his gospel account of Christ’s life.  There are a few clues that lead me to this conclusion:

1. Both books were written around the same time.  Most scholars date the Gospel of John c. A.D. 80-90.  The accepted dating for 1^st John is c. A.D. 90-95.  The relatively close proximity of these works would have led John to a familiarity and easier remembrance of what had previously been written.
2. Both the gospel and the letter seem to be addressed to a general audience rather than a specific congregation or group.
3. Both books open in a similar manner:
• John 1:1 – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
• 1^st John 1:1 – 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.
4. The author’s purpose in writing seems to be a logical flow or progression from one book to the next:
• John 20:31 - but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.
• 1^st John 5:13 – These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

I think these clues point very strongly to John’s intention for both books to be read, studied, and understood together.  I think he viewed them as pieces of the same whole.  Furthermore, I think John viewed his first epistle as an essential part of Christian education.  I think he intended for students to read the Gospel According to John and then, having come to faith in Christ, to follow it up with a firm foundation of solid assurance and practical Christian living which can be found in 1^st John.  This means that the letter we are about to explore is critically important to our modern daily lives in the 21^st century.  And it is just as relevant now as when it was written 20 centuries ago because the issues that face us today are the same as those of the past.  The names and the places may have changed.  But the principal actors, Jesus Christ, His bride the church, fallen human hearts, and Satan the god of this age, are still on the marquee and selling out shows every night of the week.

With that being said, let’s get back to the text of this letter.  Again, it opens rather abruptly with a reference to something being from “the beginning”.  I am of the mind that John has a two-fold purpose in using this terminology.  I think he is pointing to the beginning of creation as the causal agent in all that has come to exist as well as the beginning of Christ’s public ministry as the vehicle through which the glory of God has been displayed.  Now granted we have not yet clearly identified Jesus as the object of John’s description here.  So technically I’m jumping the gun a bit.  But I felt it necessary in order to explain what I think he is getting at.

The Greek word that is translated here as “the beginning” is transliterated as "arche" (ar-khay).  It can mean either beginning or origin, but also first place, principality, or ruler.  It is the same word used in Jude 9 in reference to Michael the archangel.  This is not an uncommon occurrence in translation, to have multiple definitions for a single word, not all of which may be applicable to the text at hand.  The trick of a good translator is to sift through the available data, utilize the context of the passage, and determine which meaning should be applied. 

There are two clues that point to “the beginning” as the preferable rendering.  The first is the preposition "apo" (ah-pah) which proceeds it.  This word means “from” or “away from” and indicates a temporal or spatial relationship between two things.  The second clue is the reference to something being made manifest, or revealed in verse 2.  This points the attention of the reader, having hopefully (in John’s mind) just finished the Gospel of John, right at the incarnation of the Christ, which certainly had a definable beginning.

 

Remember that John’s gospel opens very similarly.  In fact, it is so similar that the only difference is the preposition employed.  Instead of "apo" that we find here in 1^st John, He uses "en" (in, on, or among) in his gospel account.  Thus we have the rendering familiar to most of us; “In the beginning was the Word.”  In that context John is clearly referencing God’s eternal nature.  But in 1^st John he is using the beginning to point to his own first-hand experience with what was revealed.  Thus I think we can take his use of “the beginning” here to mean both the pre-incarnate existence of Christ as well as the start of His ministry.  It is doubtful that John has “ruler” or its similar definitions in mind even though that definition could certainly be applied to Jesus if so desired.

After establishing the point of origin for what he wants to discuss, John now takes great pains to describe his own familiarity with it: what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.  This is really quite interesting.  Although John uses language that points to multiple senses of the human body, there is a similarity of meaning hidden behind the scenes.

Heard is "akouo" (ah-koo-ah) in the Greek.  It can mean “understand, learn, find out, or comprehend”.  Christ used the same word many times in His famous exhortations to hear, such as Matthew 13:9: he who has ears, let him hear.  Jesus is not just talking about sound waves that the human ear captures, get transmitted into the brain, and are converted into concepts.  He is referring to comprehension.  He wants people to listen to and understand His teaching.

Seen is the Greek word "horao" (hor-ah-o), which means perceive, know, or experience.  1^st John 3:6 is instructive here: No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Although the word is translated “seen” once again the implication is quite obviously getting to know someone intimately.  As with the reference to hearing, we are not strictly talking about physical sight.  The seeing of the thing is only a means to the end of knowing it fully and completely.

Looked at comes to us from the Greek "theaomai" (the-ah-o-my), meaning to view attentively or contemplate.  Consider its usage in Acts 1:11: They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”  The Apostles were most certainly not merely casually glancing skyward.  They were staring rigidly, every fiber of their being trained on the last spot they saw their Lord.  If you have ever let a helium filled balloon rise into the air on a clear summer’s day then you know their posture in this situation.  As the balloon rises higher it becomes increasingly difficult to see.  Eventually, your perception of it begins to fluctuate.  Now you think you can make it out, now you can’t.  Your eyes begin to water as you continue to stare long after the point at which it is well and truly lost to view in the vain hope that you catch just one last glimpse of it.  This is the sense in which John “looked at” this thing that was from the beginning.

Finally we have the word for touched, "pselaphao" (psay-lah-fah-o).  This word means to seek after, handle, or grope.  Turn your attention once again to Acts, this time chapter 17 and verse 27, for a usage example: that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.  What Paul has in mind here is a human mind, endowed as it is with a sense of the supernatural and mysterious, yet lacking the faculties or tools with which to satisfy the inner craving to know and understand.  This mind strains outward, beyond itself, desperately seeking answers to a question it only partially understands.

All of these sense driven elements add up to and orbit around the same basic idea.  Whatever John is going to be talking about is something that transcends the surface level of sensory perception.  It extends deep into the consciousness and the psyche and becomes something that is not just heard but understood, not just seen but perceived, not just looked at but contemplated, and not just touched but sought after.  I believe John wanted to convey the depth of comprehension that comes with being an eye-witness.

In addition, these pieces describe a thing that is very definitely concrete and real and temporal.  When this letter was written, in the last decade of the first century, the first rumblings of Gnosticism were already being felt by the church.  This was one of the most predominant heresies that would plague Christianity for the first few centuries of its existence.  Gnosticism teaches, in part, that spirit is inherently good and flesh is inherently evil.  To support this belief while not being so flagrant as to call Christ evil, the Gnostics came up with the notion that Jesus was not truly human.  There were several adaptations of this core heretical concept.  But they all stem from the original idea: flesh is bad and therefore anything related to the flesh automatically shares in its depravity and must be squelched without mercy.  So it is quite revealing that John makes such an effort to say “NO!  I have touched this thing that I am describing.  I have felt it, understood it, and comprehended it as a tangible fact.  This is not just hearsay for me.  I am an eye-witness to these things.”

And so we finally come to the object of John’s descriptions to this point.  He has given us several clues to this point and I’ve already let the cat out of the bag earlier in this essay.  But let’s take it one step at a time and allow the text to confirm our suspicions.  First, John said “It” was from the beginning.  As stated above this parallels the opening of his gospel where he is clearly talking about God the Son.  Further, John has understood, perceived, contemplated, and sought after this thing.  He has told us in no uncertain terms that his senses were overwhelmed and his mind was blown by what he observed.  This dovetails very well with the effect that Jesus had on people who came into His presence.  Remember the response of the guards who had come to arrest Him in John 18:6: So when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

We have excellent evidence already that John is talking about Jesus.  But he wants to make it plain.  So he pens the following words in verse 3 of 1^st John 1: concerning the Word of Life.  All of the major English translations render this construct the same way: the word of life.  The NASB and the KJV capitalize it to give the reader a clue as to their interpretive opinion of what the word of life is.  And I don’t think we can do any better than this and still maintain proper English as well as consistency with other New Testament writings such as the Gospel of John.  But I want to sidetrack a moment and look at this from the perspective of the Greek language because I think it will add a fascinating and critically important nuance to our understanding.

The form that John uses here is called the Genitive case.  It is the construct in Greek that shows ownership or possession.  It is the equivalent of our modern English rule of placing an apostrophe and the letter s on the end of a word.  In this form the word that comes last is the one that gets the ownership.  Therefore the word for life is the recipient of this possessive characteristic because it follows everything else.  Thus a literal rendering of what John wrote would be “the life’s word”, or even better “the word that belongs to the life”.

I think this is important because it takes the emphasis of the phrase off of “the word” and places it instead on “the life”, which is probably opposite of how most of us tend to see this. Our minds tend to trigger on “Word” due to familiarity with John’s gospel.  But it is the life that is the key here.  John is describing something that is life giving, a source of sustenance, and a fountainhead of nourishment.  When we consider the way Jesus was both described by John (John 1:4 – In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.) and described Himself (John 14:6 – Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”) it becomes crystal clear who the object of John’s sensory description is.  It is none other than Jesus Christ Himself.

Furthermore, John is speaking to the fullness of Christ’s existence as “the life”.  He is not just the Incarnate Word that reveals the character and nature of God.  That would be enough in and of itself.  But Christ is more than that.  He is the source of all life in the universe, both physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal.  John expresses it this way in John 1:3: All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  Not only is He the source of life but He is the sustainer of life, as Paul reveals in Colossians 1:16: He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.  If it wasn’t for Christ’s work nothing would have been made.  And if it wasn’t for His ever present vigilance all things would…cease.  Also, the very nature of eternal life is bound up in who He is.  All life is given and sustained by as well as sourced from Him and Him alone.  Looking several weeks ahead to 1^st John 5:11-12 we read the following: And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

Now consider how John continues his letter in verse 2: and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. We looked at this two weeks ago, but it is important enough to go over it again here.  We must see the importance of what John is saying: this Life and the Word that belongs to it was made manifest.  A manifest is that which exposes something to view so it can be plainly recognized.  In customs, a manifest is a detailed list of the cargo, passengers, and crew of a ship, aircraft, or vehicle.  In the same way, the incarnation of the Son of God is a fully detailed listing of all that can be temporally and materially known about God, or at least those elements He wishes to make known.  He is the perfect record of what is contained inside the Father.  This is exactly why Colossians chapter 1 says of Christ that: He is the image of the invisible God.  Irenaeus, writing in the 2^nd century A.D. as he composed his seminal work, “Against Heresies”, says it this way: And through the Word Himself who had been made visible and palpable, was the Father shown forth, although all did not equally believe in Him; but all saw the Father in the Son: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father.  Are you getting the idea that to say Jesus “reveals God” or “shows us the Father” is an understatement stemming from the inability of language to convey the fullness of what is going on here?

As if all that wasn’t enough to chew on, consider the following.  This eyewitness experience that John was privy to.  This unfathomable unveiling of the wellspring of life that is Jesus Christ.  This complete and total sensory experience that borders on information overload.  John wants us to partake of that.  His fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and he wants us to be involved in it as well.  Consider the text of verse 3: what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

The word for fellowship here is koinonia (koy-no-nee-a).  It has an extensive list of definitions, including communion, participation, intercourse, intimacy, and a share of something.  What John has with the Father and the Son and that which he wants us to partake of is far more than social interaction.  It is a unifying oneness, harmony, and solidification of purpose, preference, and pleasure (the 3 ‘P’s?).  It is nothing less than a model of the Trinitarian existence of God Himself.  And quite frankly, if we are honest with ourselves we must admit that this is a bit of a mystery.

Jesus refers to this oneness two times in His high priestly prayer in John chapter 17.  The first occurrence is in verse 11: Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.  The “them” in this verse refers to the Apostles.  He was praying for them and their ministries after He departed to Heaven following His impending death.  So at this point, technically speaking, those of us believers who came after the Apostles are not included in the bargain here.  But then wonderfully, beautifully, and mind-bogglingly, Christ expands the image in verses 20 and 21: “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 

We are the “those also who believe in Me through their word”!  In fact, all believers who have ever lived are included in this sort of umbrella category because anyone who has ever come to faith in Christ can trace the roots of their salvation, their spiritual family tree if you like, all the way back to one of the original twelve Apostles, or at the very least one of the 120 who were in the upper room in Acts chapter 2 on the Day of Pentecost when the church was given birth.

And notice what Jesus is saying here.  We all are to be one.  We are to be unified.  This unity is not just with each other.  It’s not just with those in our specific local church.  It is a concrete and tangible union with all believers everywhere in the world.  And it’s not even limited by temporal boundaries.  The picture Jesus is painting here is one that transcends generational barriers and enfolds the entire history of the Christian church into one massive community of mutual harmony and shared love of Christ.

But hang on a minute.  It’s not even just a union of humans with fellow humans.  Jesus said that as He was in His Father and His Father was in Him, in that same way all Christians across all of time and space are also to be somehow, some way, mysteriously and majestically grafted into the oneness of the God-head that has always existed.  If that doesn’t blow your mind, then quite frankly you have become numb to the wonders of the gospel of God and the joy of the Christian life.  It’s time to recharge your spiritual batteries and open your eyes, because John and the Holy Spirit through him are calling us to a life of utter and absolute joy.

This is why John refers to having this fellowship as something that will make his and our joy complete in verse 4: These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.  To be blunt, if we truly enter into this fellowship with whole hearts as authentic disciples and followers of Jesus, how in the world could our joy not be full to bursting?  What does it say about your view of your own personal unity in the oneness of the Trinity if you tend to mope around and view everything as negative?  What does it say about your appreciation of being united with the body of Christ in this fellowship if you tend to keep your brothers and sisters in Christ at arm’s length?  What does it say about your priorities in life if you place material possessions or biological family members on a pedestal of greater significance in your life than the Lord Jesus and His bride, the church?

If you are satisfied being a defeated Christian who is not contagious with enthusiasm for the glory of God then by all means continue your self-destructive pattern of excluding yourself from the fellowship John is talking about here.  But if you would like to actually be victorious in Christ then I suggest you do as John did and give yourself over wholeheartedly to both the service and the joy of the Lord.