1 John 1:1-5

                Scripture 1 John 1:1-4 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— 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. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete¹

Introduction and Devotion

Today we start to work through the letters of John. These letters were most likely written by the Apostle John from Ephesus at the end of the first century. They were probably written to churches in Asia Minor, now Turkey. It was written to combat heresies that had begun to infiltrate the churches causing division and strife among the believers there. There is debate whether this should be considered a letter or whether it is a tractate or a sermon. The piece begins without a greeting and ends without a conclusion seemingly in mid thought. The other 2 letters of John contain both. It has been proposed that 2^nd and 3^rd John were written as cover letters for 1^st John although that was not a common practice in the 1^st century.

The first verse of the letter (I will call it a letter for convenience sake) is an echo of the Gospel of John. “In each prologue (the Gospel and 1 John) the logos or Word of God is central, and yet the two paragraphs do not run parallel to each other. Instead they are complementary”.²

The logos or word is central to the message of both the gospel and the letter of John. Why does John use the language he does?  It is because he wishes to draw attention equally to the “Word proclaimed” and the “Word as person.” The message and the person ultimately cannot be separated. Each explains the other. “The message about Jesus is intimately related to who Jesus is. In other words, John and other eyewitnesses saw this deity, who has life in himself from eternity, incarnated in time/space/history.³”

John next turns to fellowship. Since the churches he was writing to were being torn apart by false doctrine Establishing fellowship with the Father and the Son is crucially important. It was necessary to link the apostles’ teaching with the divine so that the words of the apostle would be considered authoritative.

^{1The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 1:1-4.}

²Burge, Gary M. The Letters of John (The NIV Application Commentary) (p. 51). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition

³Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 53.