Yesterday, we learned that there are three themes in 1 John 1, Relationship, fellowship and joy. Now, let us go back to the opening verses in 1 John 1 and see what the LORD has to say to us.
First, he is talking about having a relationship with Him.
1 John 1:1 reads, "We write you now about what has always existed, which we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, we have looked at, and we have touched with our hands. We write to you about the Word that gives life."
It is evident he is talking about a person, whom, he says is "from the beginning." This is the same One of whom the Apostle John wrote in John 1:1-5.
1 In the beginning there was the Word.The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him. 4 In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.
There are at least three "beginnings" in the Bible: The Bible opens with the phrases, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," {Gen 1:1}. That is the beginning of the material creation, of matter.
Now, in the Gospel of John there is another "beginning." That Gospel begins with these words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," {John 1:1}. That beginning goes back before creation. That is the unbeginning beginning, the eternal beginning. Before there was anything at all, there was the Word. That Word was a Person, and he was with God, and he was God. That is the farthest point backward that we can go.
But now, in this letter, there is still a third beginning,"that which was from the beginning." Here John does not mean either the time of creation or the unbeginning beginning. Here we learn of the contemporary beginning. John uses this phrase many times. (2:7, 2:14, 2:24, 3:8, 3:11). This is what we might call the contemporary beginning. That simply means "the beginning I am experiencing right now."
John is really referring to the continuous experience of the Christian life, which is contemporary all the time. It has been available for all time, but you only began it when you came to know Jesus Christ. The disciples began it when they came to know him. It relates to him who is from the beginning. Now that is about as far as we can go in understanding that, for this is a timeless beginning that is right now, an eternal now. John warns all through this letter that we must cling only to that which is "from the beginning." If someone comes to you with something new, he says, don't believe it. It must be from the beginning.
Now he says this One from the beginning is a Person, and he has been seen and heard and handled. In other words, Christian faith rests upon great facts, the acts of a human being in history. Our Christian faith does not rest simply on ideas, or doctrinal statements. That is why becoming a Christian is not simply a matter of joining a church, or believing a certain creed, or signing a doctrinal statement. John points out that becoming a Christian is to be related to a Person. All of us are related to someone. We live in families. Why? Because they share the same life. And that is what makes a Christian, to share the life of God by relationship to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the close of this letter John tells us, "Whoever has the Son has life, but whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."(1 John 5:12). It is that simple. No matter how religious you may be, you do not have life if you do not have the Son. That which was from the beginning, he says, is a real Person. We looked at him, we heard him, we touched him, he actually appeared in history. He is an historical person. The forces which seek to overthrow the Christian faith try to undermine our confidence in the facts of Scripture, these great historical truths about a Person who appeared in time. That is why it is not at all unimportant that we should believe the story as it is recorded in the Gospels.
We must believe these facts. We cannot believe them merely as facts, ideas, or doctrinal statements. We must come down at last to factual acts of God in history. Now, that is where John begins. He tells us what he himself experienced and what we must experience, as well
Let me close with this. In the Gospel of John, John 20:29 to be exact,"Jesus told him,
'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'”The disciples knew the Lord Jesus with their five senses and they believed. In John 20:29, the Lord Jesus is saying that you and I are more blessed than they. Why?, you ask? Because we see Him through the eyes of faith. And why is that so important?, you ask. Because seeing Him with the heart is much deeper than just merely seeing with our five senses which are limited to time and space.
