1 JOHN 1:1-4 - A LIFE LIKE NO OTHER

Over the past month or so in our Christmas season we’ve been focusing on the Incarnation of Jesus—and rightly so, since His coming to earth in the flesh is the entire basis for our faith. As we’ve said before, if Jesus never actually came in the flesh, fully God and fully man in one person, then nothing else in the Christian faith makes any sense—how could Jesus’ death make any difference for anyone else if He was only a human being? And if He only looked like a man but wasn’t really human, then He couldn’t really have suffered and died on the Cross, and He couldn’t really have been raised from the dead, which means that He couldn’t have accomplished our salvation, and we are still in our sins.

But as crucial as it is for us to understand exactly who Jesus is, we live in a day and age when even people who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians are perilously confused on the nature of Jesus Christ. In the 2020 State of Theology survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries, for instance, 96 percent of Evangelical Christians who attend church at least once a week agreed that “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit”. Which is a true and accurate statement about the identity of Jesus Christ. But then in that same group—Evangelical, Bible-believing Christians who attend church at least once a week—a full sixty-one percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God”—a heresy known as Arianism, which denies the eternal existence of God the Son, a heresy spread by groups like Jehovah’s witnesses and Mormons (data retrieved 12/23/2021 from https://thestateoftheology.com/dataexplorer/).

And so we need to get this right—Christianity stands or falls on the person and work of Jesus Christ, on whether the Incarnation of Christ actually took place in space and time, and that Jesus Christ really was the God-Man, the eternal Second Person of the Trinity come in the flesh, one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man without confusion or separation.

This is exactly why the Apostle John wrote these letters that we are going to be studying here in the first several weeks of 2022—he saw dangerous and heretical teachings slipping into the church at Ephesus where he was living, and so he wrote these things to “set the record straight”. As we will see, the particular heresies that John was combatting were saying that Jesus didn’t really come in the flesh, that He only looked like a man, but was actually only a spirit (a heresy called Docetism). There was also a heresy that said that Jesus was only a man, but that the “Christ Spirit” descended on Him at His baptism and then fled from Him when He was on the Cross (when He cried out “My God, why have you forsaken Me?) But to believe these things is to believe lies about Jesus Christ. And if your belief in Jesus Christ is based on lies, then you have no assurance that you really belong to Him.

And so for the sake of your assurance this morning and for the sake of our witness to the truth of Jesus before an unbelieving world, I want us to hear what these verses say about who Jesus is, because

True BELIEF in Christ is the basis of our UNITY with Him and ONE ANOTHER

John wanted to make sure that his readers understood the truth about Jesus, in opposition to the heresies being spread by the false teachers in Ephesus and elsewhere. In particular, one man named Cerinthus (who we will study further in a few weeks) was teaching that Jesus never actually came in the flesh—that Jesus was just a man who had the “Christ Spirit” descend on Him at His baptism. And so John—who actually knew Jesus during His lifetime—wrote to set the record straight with

I. The TRUTH about Jesus’ LIFE (1 John 1:1-2)

John opens his letter by asserting that, when it comes to the truth about Jesus’ existence here on earth, he knew what he was talking about!

1 John 1:1–2 (ESV)

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—

John opens his letter here the same way he opens his Gospel (which was also written to fight against the same heresies about Jesus not being divine):

John 1:1 (ESV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John is deliberately reminding his readers of the opening of the first book of the Bible, Genesis 1:1

Genesis 1:1 (ESV)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

By saying that Jesus “was from the beginning”, and that “in the beginning” He was God, John is making his point clear, that

Jesus is DIVINE

He was not just a man who had Godlike tendencies, he wasn’t just a regular human being who had a “God consciousness” of some sort—Jesus Christ was and is the eternal Son who has always existed. There was never a time when He was not. John records in his Gospel that Jesus affirmed that very truth in John 8:58

John 8:58 (ESV)

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

And again in John 10:30

John 10:30 (ESV)

I and the Father are one.”

And on the night He was betrayed, He said to Philip,

John 14:9 (ESV)

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

As one author puts it:

Clearly Jesus believed Himself to be God, and John confessed the same. This life is the life of undiminished deity made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. There never was a time when the Son was not, and there will never be a time when He will not be. Akin, Daniel L.. Exalting Jesus in 1,2,3 John (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary) (Kindle Locations 132-134). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

But it is not enough to affirm that Jesus was fully God—because if He was only God then He could not have suffered and died for our salvation. And so John goes on in our text to just as fully insist that

Jesus is HUMAN

as well. That this divine, eternally-existent life that Jesus lived was a life

1 John 1:1–2 (ESV)

...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—

John is as forceful and insistent as can be here that this eternal life, which was with the Father from all eternity, fully divine, was made manifest—they saw Jesus, they touched Him, they heard Him speak. John says, in effect, “You can’t tell me that Jesus wasn’t fully and completely human—I spent three years with Him, living with Him, seeing Him in every kind of situation and condition a human can be in—He was absolutely, fully, and completely human! The heretics claiming that Jesus was only a god appearing as a man, or only a man appearing as God had no idea what they were talking about, because they weren’t there!

True belief in Christ is the basis of our unity with Him and one another—and that true understanding of who Jesus is in his full divinity and full humanity is the basis of

II. True FELLOWSHIP together (1 John 1:3)

1 John 1:3 (ESV)

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.

John says it clearly here, doesn’t he? He tells his readers that he wants to proclaim this truth about the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus for the sake of their fellowship. Agreeing together on this truth is the basis of our

Unity with EACH OTHER

If we do not have agreement on who Jesus is, unity is actually impossible, isn’t it? Because as we have noted before in other contexts, agreement on the nature of Christ in His deity and humanity is a First Order issue. This is the basis of all of our fellowship as Christians, and this issue is actually the defining characteristic of who can even be called a Christian.

This is also why, in our regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we often read together one of the historic (or modern) Christian “creeds” (the word “creed” comes from the Latin word “Credo”, which means “believe”. (You’ll find in your bulletin another of the historic Christian creeds, the Nicene Creed, which we will read together during our observance of the Lord’s Supper today.) The reason that we do this before our communion observance is to underscore the fact that our unity around this Table is defined by our common agreement on who Jesus is in His divinity and humanity. And so we give the proclamation of that truth a prominent place in our observance of our unity with each other around that Table.

John says here that true belief in Christ is the basis of our unity with each other, and he says that it is the basis of our

Unity with GOD

If you deny that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, fully God and fully man, you have no way of belonging to God—we will see in a few weeks that John says this explicitly in 1 John 2:23:

1 John 2:23 (ESV)

No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

It’s a package deal—if you believe the truth about Jesus, you have God for your Father as well. John records in his Gospel that Jesus said something very similar in John 3:36:

John 3:36 (ESV)

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

This is why it is so crucial that we have a right understanding of who Jesus is—so many people are perfectly happy to admit that Jesus was a good human teacher, but they will not acknowledge that He was both fully God and fully man. Because to admit that truth is an admission that He must be obeyed and worshipped. As one preacher puts it:

This is the stumbling block of the incarnation— when God becomes a man, he strips away every pretense of man to be God. We can no longer do our own thing; we must do what this one Jewish man wants us to do. We can no longer pose as self-sufficient, because this one Jewish man says we are all sick with sin and must come to him for healing. We can no longer depend on our own wisdom to find life, because this one Jewish man who lived for 30 obscure years in a little country in the Middle East says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When God becomes a man, man ceases to be the measure of all things, and this man becomes the measure of all things. (John Piper, quoted in Akin, Daniel L.. Exalting Jesus in 1,2,3 John (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary) (Kindle Locations 164-169). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

The only way to have unity with God is to confess the truth about the nature of Jesus Christ. And we see in verse 4 of our text that this confession of Christ is the source of

III. True JOY in this life (1 John 1:4)

1 John 1:4 (ESV)

And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

John was writing this letter because he wanted to

Promise FULLNESS of JOY

for his readers, the church in Ephesus and across the Roman Empire. The joy that could only come from knowing the truth about Jesus in His full divinity and full humanity.

You see, John knew from personal experience what joy there was in knowing the truth about Jesus as the God Man. He was there with Jesus on the night when He was about to be betrayed to the Roman authorities and crucified, and he heard Jesus promise His disciples:

John 15:11 (ESV)

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Just a few hours after Jesus promised that His joy would fill and complete them, John stood and watched as Jesus suffered the cruel agony of the Cross; he watched as the Roman soldiers broke the legs of the thieves on either side of Jesus and watched as they thrust their javelin into His side to pierce His heart and guarantee that He was dead. At that moment, it had to seem as though every promise Jesus ever made to John died that day along with Him. But three days later, all of the joy that Jesus had promised John was revealed to him when Jesus demonstrated by His resurrection that He was exactly who He said He was—fully God and fully man, and able to keep every one of His promises to save us and grant us eternal joy with Him in this life and the next!

John knows--from personal experience he knows—that Jesus can guarantee your full and perfect and lasting joy when you believe in Him and submit to Him as your Savior. And because He is the perfect, all-powerful Son of God in human flesh, fully God and fully man, He can

Promise ASSURANCE of SALVATION

for all those who put their trust in Him. John writes this letter to set the record straight about who Jesus is because knowing Jesus rightly gives you confidence to know that you are saved! John says this very thing in 1 John 5:13:

1 John 5:13 (ESV)

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

Now, we have to be careful here, lest we fall into the trap of saying that our salvation depends on “achieving” a certain level of comprehension about Jesus’ divinity and humanity—that’s just another form of works righteousness, as if there will be an entrance exam to Heaven, and you have to score at least an 85 on the Christology section in order to be let in!

It is possible to know Christ as Savior and have doubts—and if that is you this morning, take heart: You are not saved because you have a perfect understanding of Jesus’ human and divine natures, you are saved because He is both human and divine! And even though you don’t know Him as well as you want to, you belong to Him because you have come to Him by faith to repent of your sins and trust in His death, burial and resurrection for your forgiveness from all your guilt and guarantee of your eternal joy—and the more you come to know Him and rightly understand who He has revealed Himself to be, the deeper your fellowship grows with Him and His people, and the greater your joy in Him grows in this life and the next.

It is possible to know Christ as Savior and have doubts—and it is also possible to confess Christ and be a liar. It is possible to piously nod your head along with everything the Scriptures say about the nature of Jesus Christ the God Man, the eternal Second Person of the Trinity enfleshed as a man, dying for our sins and rising for our justification—and inwardly you don’t believe a word of it. And if that is you today—you let everyone around you go on believing you are a Christian but in your own heart of hearts you reject the notion that He is God incarnate who has ultimate authority over your life, then let John’s words here call you to the repentance that you desperately need—because if you do not obey the Son, you shall not see life, and the wrath of God abides on you.

There is infinite joy offered to you this morning—there is deep and abiding fellowship with God through Jesus Christ, there is belonging and unity and fellowship and family among the saints offered for you today. The eternal life that we have seen and heard and touched and been touched by, we proclaim to you so that you may have this fellowship with us and with God Himself through your Savior, the God Man, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Jude 24–25 (ESV)

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

*QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

How are the person and work of Jesus central to Christianity? What alternative ideas have you heard someone propose about the heart of Christianity?

Read through the book of 1 John. Where do you see the themes of right belief about Jesus, right obedience to God’s commands, and right love for one another?

Why does John emphasize both Jesus’ humanity and His deity at the beginning of this letter? How might we go astray if we do not affirm both truths?

How is the doctrine of the incarnation offensive or threatening to those who have not understood and embraced the gospel?

*Adapted from Akin, Daniel L.. Exalting Jesus in 1,2,3 John (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary) (Kindle Locations 271-272). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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