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— 2 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— 3 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. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
1 John 1:1-4
Some people think Jesus Christ is a myth, along with his teachings and miracles. Maybe this describes you. The Apostle John was addressing a similar understanding with the gnostics of his time in Ephesus. They had a problem with the concept that Jesus was both fully man and fully God at the same time. Today, there are still groups of people who cannot believe what the Bible teaches about the nature of Jesus Christ. Christianity is unique among the world’s religions in that it is verifiably historical. Jesus was a real man who lived in Israel. He was crucified and rose from the dead, as attested by more than 500 people with whom he interacted after his resurrection. John was sending this message in the introduction to his first letter. Check this out.
“Which we have heard…we have seen with our eyes…we looked upon…have touched with our hands…the life was made manifest…we have seen it…was made manifest to us…that which we have seen and heard…” John was making his point that Jesus was human, a real man in the flesh. You know he was serious by the exaggerated repetition of the same ideas over and over again, so his readers would get it. As we proceed through 1 John, we will see that this Jesus-in-the-flesh is one key to recognizing the antichrist through history, not just at the very end of the age.
Somehow, recognizing the physicality of Jesus is essential to fellowship with the Father and the Son. This fellowship is at the core of the gospel. God wants to be our God, and we, his people, i.e., he wants to live in our midst and have fellowship with us. This principle has been with humanity from the very beginning. In the garden, Adam and Eve had fellowship with God. The garden was a temple of sorts. When they sinned, that fellowship was interrupted. The building of Noah’s ark came about as a result of fellowship between God and Noah, with whom God communicated the message of the ark. Centuries later, God made another attempt at fellowship when he called Abram out of Ur and began fellowship with him and his descendants. It was ramped up with Moses when God established fellowship with the entire tribe of Israel, gave them his law, and manifested his presence in various ways: the glory cloud during the day, which was replaced at night by a pillar of fire, the shining face of Moses through the wilderness, the Angel of the Lord to lead Joshua in the battles to overtake the promised land, and God’s glorious presence at the dedication of Solomon’s temple. The final picture of this fellowship is in the New Heaven and New Earth.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
Revelation 21:2-3
John writes that he is writing these things so the readers, us, can have fellowship with “us.” Who is “us?” John is the author of the letter and should be writing as “me” or “I.” Instead, he is using the first person plural. It’s not clear who “we” is, but many believe it refers to the apostles and other early church leaders. John is writing around 85 to 95 AD. John is probably the only apostle still alive. The rest have been martyred.
At any rate, the “us” is some group of people with whom John identifies who are well-established in Christian truth. John wants his readers to have the same fellowship that this group experiences. He goes on to say, “and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” The common denominator in the fellowship John wants his readers to experience is fellowship with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. There is a fellowship that humans cannot have apart from fellowship with the Father and the Son. This kind of fellowship requires both a love-one-another community and a worshipping community. It doesn’t happen for lone ranger Christians. There is an amazing richness to life in a loving and worshipping community of believers.
John has a somewhat selfish motive expressed as “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” John’s joy won’t be complete until all of his spiritual relatives are experiencing fellowship with the Father and the Son and tangentially with their fellow worshipping community. His joy will be made complete by his spiritual progeny, also knowing the joy of true fellowship.
There is some dispute over the proper translation of the word “our” as it appears in verse 4. Some translations translate it as “your” joy. In either case, the values are the same: fellowship with the Father and the Son and the consequent joy that abides in this completed circle of truly right relationships with God and our fellow believers in a worshipping community.
I write from personal experience that there is no joy quite like the joy of knowing that you have discipled someone and they are now discipling others as you have trained them. Add to this the many new believers that are two or three spiritual generations down from you and are multiplying new disciples and new churches. This is the completeness of joy that John is writing about.
Roughly forty years ago, Jack and Joyce were members of a small congregation in which I was lead Pastor. Jack became an elder, and Joyce had a gift for teaching, which she unleashed on the women of our congregation and, later on, the many women of our larger community. They loved her. Joyce developed a love for the Spanish-speaking community around us and began to teach in Spanish. Word spread and she was invited to come with Jack and teach in a small town in Mexico called Tepic, inland from Puerto Vallarta. While on one of their trips, Jack learned there were indigenous tribes atop the mountains to the East. He was compelled to get to these people. There were no roads, so it was a hearty hike to the top of the mountain range.
When Jack and his guides reached the top of the mountain, and the first village, lots of the locals came out to greet them. The tribal chief came and welcomed them. He told of a tradition in their village that one day, a white man would come (and Jack was about as white as you can get), and they were to listen and do what he said. Jack didn’t miss the opportunity to share the gospel even though it was tough since Jack didn’t speak Spanish, and neither did the Indians. Jack’s guide spoke Spanish and very little of the native language, but enough to get the message across. These new indigenous disciples took the message to heart and began to spread it from village to village across the mountaintops. As of a few years ago, it was reported to me for the first time that there were seven thousand believers on those mountains in Mexico. The lead guide who took Jack to the mountaintop asked him and Joyce to thank me. I was shocked. Why me? I hadn’t gone to Mexico. The message was if I hadn’t discipled Jack and Joyce, then they would not have been prepared to disciple the indigenous people on the mountaintop.
I heard this report from Joyce in a restaurant in Camarillo, CA. I nearly fell out of the booth when I heard this. It did complete my joy from ministry forty years earlier.
In a large portion of the church around the world, we have two different kinds of regular gatherings. Some of our gatherings are heavily fellowship-oriented on the horizontal plane. It is where we love one another as a primary focus. The other kind of gatherings are more worship-oriented, where we are focused on receiving the preached word and expressing ourselves in corporate singing and verbal worship to God. I love them both, but I will have to say my joy is greatest when I leave the gathered time that is focused on the word and worship.
The church to which I belong has switched things up in our Sunday gatherings. The typical Sunday morning in most churches follows a liturgy that focuses first on singing and prayer, then receives the preached word and, on some schedule, receives communion. At Bridgeway Church, the church to which I belong, we start with the preached word, followed by communion, and then worship via singing to the Lord. I have found this liturgy has been leaving me more deeply fed. I am able to receive the word preached first and respond to God’s message with robust worship with my fellow members. It’s like putting fertilizer on a planted seed, it grows better. I have found greater joy.
Deep joy and fellowship require both kinds of gatherings,
Is there an action item in this passage of Scripture? For those who may be doubting what Scripture has to say about Jesus being fully man and fully God, this is a call to repentance from unbelief. Turn from your enlightenment mindset and believe God in his word. Then you will have the opportunity to know the fellowship and joy to which John refers.
For those of us who do believe the Scripture but have not been disciple-makers, the action item is to repent and turn to be one who looks to the Lord for opportunities to disciple others into Christ and on to maturity and multiplication in making more disciples. If you begin now, one day, you will hear stories of new disciples that are three or four spiritual generations down from you in your spiritual genealogy. Then, your joy will be made complete.
