CHRIST, THE LIVING WORD OF GOD (1:1-4)

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Read John's Prologue (Jn 1:1-18) and the Upper Room discourse (Jn 14-16) first!

• Why does John start with the physicality of his experience of Jesus?

• What do you think was the most central thing about Jesus's identity, for him? And why?

• What is fellowship? How do you know (experience) God?

• Would you describe your relationship as 'fellowship with the Father and the Son'?

• Which member of the Trinity would you say you know best? And which, least?

• How far does your experience of God match what Jesus promised, in the Upper Room?

• What does John hope that his letter will achieve?

NOTES ON THE PASSAGE

Can you sense John's joy, as he starts writing about Christ? His wonder at having seen, heard and touched the eternal Word of God? That he, of all men, had been privileged to know, to watch and listen to God speaking through His Son? I imagine he felt very much like Zacchaeus would have felt: that he was the recipient of extraordinary grace.

He and his brother James had had the nickname, 'the sons of thunder', because they were prone to call down lightning bolts on those who they disliked (Lk 9:51-56). His ongoing communion with the risen Christ, who is now seated at the right hand of the Father? They came from a well-to-do fishing family, and had a pushy mother. But over the three years of discipleship, John's heart had been deeply changed by being loved by Christ. He obviously deeply loved Christ, and was the only one of the Twelve who kept vigil while Jesus was dying on the Cross. He has since been known over the centuries as 'the Apostle of love'.

But beyond that initial experience, he had come to realise that Jesus was the eternal Word of God - the I AM: the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. And over the decades following the Resurrection, his fellowship with the risen Christ and His Father, had gone deeper and deeper. Within a few years after writing this, he would experience multiple revelations from Christ, recorded in the Book of Revelation. Even as he wrote this letter, he was living in constant fellowship with Christ.

How real is Christ to you at present? Is He more than a historical figure, the ultimate spiritual teacher? Or is He seated at the right hand of the Father, enthroned in the glory of His utter purity, love, and justice?

John is here teaching the truth of the Incarnation: that the eternal Word of God, face-to-face with God in intimate fellowship and fully God in His own right, had taken flesh and become man so that He could be our perfect sacrifice. This truth, of Jesus’s hidden identity as the Son of God, is absolutely central throughout John’s Gospel. The Jews could not accept that Jesus was God incarnate; and the very same aspect of the gospel was being attacked vehemently by the heretics of John’s day.  It is still the focal point of doctrinal attack on Christianity today: think of Islam’s ‘God has no son’, Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘Jesus is the Angel Gabriel’, Unitarians etc.

In John’s time, the heretics taught either that (1) Christ was never truly man but rather, some sort of emanation from God: or that (2) the Messiah-spirit came upon the man Jesus at his baptism but left him just before the crucifixion, using him as a purely human sacrifice.

Later (2:22, 4:1,2) John will specify belief in the incarnation as the acid test of anyone claiming to speak for God: do they acknowledge that Jesus and the Christ are one and the same? And do they accept that Jesus the Christ became incarnate? If not, they are Antichrist’s spokesmen!

’That which was from the beginning’ evokes the Prologue to John’s Gospel, where John refers to Jesus as the eternal Logos of God. There, the Word was personal. Here, it seems curiously impersonal. Some therefore take ‘concerning the word of life’ as referring to the gospel, rather than to Christ Himself. (John would then be emphasising the unchanging nature of the gospel). But that view is difficult to reconcile with John’s statement that he has seen, heard and touched it; or that it ‘was manifested’ to them.

In any case the distinction is moot, in that Jesus Himself is the gospel. Paul says, ‘We preach Christ, and Him crucified’. Hebrews says, 'In these last days God has spoken to us in His Son'. To John, faith is ‘believing into Jesus’; faith in a Person rather than faith in a doctrine, and faith which results in loving union.

‘Which we have seen and heard’ is in the perfect tense, suggesting it refers to the three years of Christ’s earthly ministry. ‘Which we have looked upon and handled’ is in the aorist tense, implying a particular event - perhaps the sensory proofs of Jesus’s resurrection (Lk 24:36-43). ‘Was made manifest’ (passive) refers to the fulfilment of Jesus’s Upper Room promise (Jn 14:21).

Where English has only one word for life, John uses three distinct Greek words for bodily, psychological and spiritual life: bios, psyche, and zoe.  Whenever you read the word 'life' in John's writings, he is almost always talking of spiritual life, or zoe. The only major exceptions are when he refers to Christ, or us, laying down our lives: and then he is talking about our soul-life or psyche (Jn 12:25).

John's Prologue says ‘In Him was life’; and Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”; and again, “I am the resurrection and the life”. He has authority to give this zoe life to whomsoever He wills (Jn 5:21), and to raise them from the dead at the Last Day (Jn 5:26-29). He is the life-giving Word of God, the bread of life, the spring of living water. The metaphors just pile up.

John's Letter says 'He who has the Son, has life; he who does not have the Son, does not have life' (5:12). Christ was unique amongst men in that He had God’s zoe life inherent in Himself (Jn 5:26), whereas we can only have such life through connection to Him.