Tidings for Tuesday
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. 1 John 1:1
1 John is one of only two epistles in our New Testament that does not have an introductory greeting; the other is Hebrews. Just as he does in his Gospel, the apostle John begins this epistle by speaking about the Word, opening with a little sermon instead of a greeting. John has something extremely important to get across to his readers, so that he rushes right into the subject without pausing for greetings. All of the other epistles are important messages too, so what was so important about this one? John wastes no time in telling us what is so important: the reality of the incarnation of Jesus Christ!
Bible experts tell us that John wrote this first epistle to counter two dangerous false doctrines that were spreading at that time. The doctrine of gnosticism taught that those who were spiritual had a special experiential knowledge that surpassed that of normal Christians. The doctrine of docetism says all matter is evil, that God would not have anything to do with matter, and therefore it is incorrect to say that Jesus became flesh. They claimed that He only seemed to become flesh. Nobody knew better than John how wrong those false doctrines were. And his epistle gives Christians of his day, and of our day as well, a solid anchor by which to refute those errors. John had four solid personal proofs that the Word of life had come in the flesh. He was with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry, he had heard and seen Jesus throughout his entire earthly ministry, he had carefully studied the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and he had actually touched the Lord in the years before Calvary and in the days after the resurrection. So those early Christians could be confident that the false doctrines were wrong. And so can we.
There is a very real sense of awe in our text. Almost 60 years have passed since Calvary, and John still seems amazed at his part in the events of Christ’s ministry. He seems to be saying ‘We were actually there! We heard Him! We saw Him! We watched everything that He did! And He actually allowed us to touch Him and be with Him!’ If John never lost that sense of awe that the Word would become flesh and dwell amongst us (John 1:14), then neither should we. We cannot say that we had the same personal physical experience that John did. But we can certainly take John’s word for it. And John is not speaking just for himself; he uses the pronoun ‘we’, to indicate the other apostles and the other Christians who had actually seen and been with Jesus.
You and I don’t encounter gnosticism and docetism so much these days. But there is plenty of false doctrine around us that is just as bad. We have the evil doctrines of the cults, the tinkling cymbals of religion, the rank denials of the atheists, and the pervasive apathy of those who consider Christ and His Gospel irrelevant to them. We know better than that, because we know the Word of life. – Jim MacIntosh