The Word of Life

1 John 1:1–4 NLT

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

Introduction

“Once upon a time …” Do you remember how exciting those words used to be? They were the open door into an exciting world of make-believe, a dreamworld that helped you forget all the problems of childhood. Then—pow! You turned a corner one day, and “Once upon a time” became kid stuff. You discovered that life is a battleground, not a playground, and fairy stories were no longer meaningful. You wanted something real.

The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history. Men have looked for reality and satisfaction in wealth, thrills, conquest, power, learning, and even in religion. There is nothing really wrong with these experiences, except that by themselves they never really satisfy. Wanting something real and findingsomething real are two different things. Like a child eating cotton candy at the circus, many people who expect to bite into something real end up with a mouthful of nothing. They waste priceless years on empty substitutes for reality.

This is where John’s first epistle comes in. Written centuries ago, this letter deals with a theme that is forever up-to-date: the life that is real. John had discovered that satisfying reality is not to be found in things or thrills, but in a Person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Without wasting any time, he tells us about this “living reality” in the first paragraph of his letter.

This Word of Life Is Revealed (1 John 1:1)

As you read John’s letter, you will discover that he enjoys using certain words, and that the word “revealed” is one of them. “And the life was revealed” (1 John 1:2), he says. This life was not hidden so that we have to search for it and find it. No, it was revealed openly!

If you were God, how would you go about revealing yourself to men? How could you tell them about, and give them, the kind of life you wanted them to enjoy?

God has revealed Himself in creation (Rom. 1:20), but creation alone could never tell us the story of God’s love. God has also revealed Himself much more fully in His Word, the Bible. But God’s final and most complete revelation is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Because Jesus is God’s revelation of Himself, He has a very special name: “The Word of Life” (1 John 1:1).

John makes no mistake in his identification of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father—the Son of God (1 John 1:3). John warns us several times in his letter not to listen to the false teachers who tell lies about Jesus Christ. “Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (1 John 2:22) “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2–3). If a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.

For example, there are those who tell us that Jesus was a man but was not God. John has no place for such teachers! One of the last things he writes in this letter is, “We are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

False teaching is so serious a matter that John wrote about it in his second letter too, warning believers not to invite false teachers into their homes (2 John 9–10). And he makes it plain that to deny that Jesus is God is to follow the lies of the Antichrist (1 John 2:22–23).

This Word of Life Is Experienced (1 John 1:2)

In these first 4 verses you will notice that John had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His was no secondhand “religious experience” inherited from somebody else or discovered in a book! No, John knew Jesus Christ face-to-face. He and the other Apostles heard Jesus speak. They watched Him as He lived with them. In fact, they studied Him carefully, and even touched His body. They knew that Jesus was real—not a phantom, not a vision, but God in human form.

Some of you may say: “Yes, and this means that John had an advantage. He lived when Jesus walked on earth. He knew Jesus personally. But I was born twenty centuries too late!”

But this is where you would be wrong! It was not the Apostles’ physical nearness to Jesus Christ that made them what they were. It was their spiritual nearness. They had committed themselves to Him as their Savior and their Lord. Jesus Christ was real and exciting to John and his colleagues because they had trusted Him. By trusting Christ, they had experienced eternal life!

Six times in this letter John uses the phrase “born of God.” This was not an idea John had invented; he had heard Jesus use these words. “Except a man be born again,” Jesus had said, “he cannot see the kingdom of God … That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again’ ” (John 3:3, 6–7). We can experience this “real life” only after we have believed the Gospel, put our trust in Christ, and been “born of God.”

Eternal life is not something we earn by good works or deserve because of good character. Eternal life, the life that is real, is a gift from God to those who trust His Son as their Savior.

John wrote his Gospel to tell people how to receive this wonderful life (John 20:31). He writes this letter to tell people how to be sure they have really been born of God (1 John 5:9–13). The assurance that we are in God’s family—that we have been “born of God”—is vitally important to all of us.

Certain characteristics are true of all God’s children. A person who is born of God lives a righteous life (1 John 2:29). A child of God does not practice sin (which is the meaning of the King James word “commit,” 1 John 3:9). A believer will occasionally commit sin (1 John 1:8–2:2), but he will not make it a habit to sin.

God’s children also love each other and their Heavenly Father (cf. 1 John 4:7; 5:1). They have no love for the world system around them (1 John 2:15–17), and because of this the world hates them (1 John 3:13). Instead of being overcome by the pressures of this world, and swept off balance, the children of God overcome the world (1 John 5:4). This is another mark of true children of God.

Why is it so important that we know that we have been born of God? John gives us the answer: if you are not a child of God, you a “child of wrath” (Eph. 2:1–3) and may become a “child of the devil.” A “child of the devil” is a counterfeit Christian who acts “saved” but has not been born again. Jesus called the Pharisees “children of the devil” (John 8:44) and they were very religious.

A counterfeit Christian—and they are common—is something like a counterfeit ten-dollar bill. Suppose you have a counterfeit bill and actually think it is genuine. You use it to pay for a tank of gas. The gas station manager uses the bill to buy supplies. The supplier uses the bill to pay the grocer. The grocer bundles the bill up with forty-nine other ten-dollar bills and takes it to the bank. And the teller says, “I’m sorry, but this bill is a counterfeit.”

That ten-dollar bill may have done a lot of good while it was in circulation, but when it arrived at the bank it was exposed for what it really was, and put out of circulation.

So with a counterfeit Christian. He may do many good things in this life, but when he faces the final judgment he will be rejected. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out demons? And in Thy name done many wonderful works?’ And then will I profess unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity’ ” (Matt. 7:22–23).

Each of us must ask himself honestly, “Am I a true child of God or am I a counterfeit Christian? Have I truly been born of God?”

If you have not experienced eternal life, this real life, you can experience it right now!

We have discovered two important facts about “the life that is real”: it is revealed in Jesus Christ, and it is experienced when we put our trust in Him as our Savior. But John does not stop here!

This Word of Life Is Shared (1 John 1:3–4)

And once youhave experienced this exciting life that is real, you will want to share it with other people, just as John wanted to “declare” it to all his readers in the first century. John tells us that we must share our spiritual experiences with others—both by the lives that we live and by the words that we speak.

When we share our spiritual lives with those who are in the same fellowship we are fulfilling Jesus’ last prayer for His disciples, to be one. As a result of the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters we will have joy. Fellowship is Christ’s answer to the loneliness of life. Joy is His answer to the emptiness, the hollowness of life.

Faith in Jesus Christ gives you a joy that can never be duplicated by the world. I have experienced this joy myself, and I want to share it with you.

Most people are dissatisfied today because their total personality has never been controlled by something real and meaningful. When a person is born of God through faith in Christ, God’s Spirit comes into your life to live there forever. As you have fellowship with God in reading and studying the Bible and in prayer, the Holy Spirit is able to control your mind, heart, and will. And what happens then?

· A Spirit-controlled mindknows and understands truth.

· A Spirit-controlled heartfeels love.

· A Spirit-controlled willinclines us to obedience.

John wants to impress this fact on us, and that is why he uses a series of contrasts in his letter: truth vs. lies, love vs. hatred, and obedience vs. disobedience. There is no middle ground in the life that is real. We must be on one side or on the other.

If any of you are out of fellowship with God, it is usually for one of three reasons:

1. You have disobeyed God’s will.

2. You are not getting along with fellow believers.

3. Or you believe a lie and therefore is living a lie.

But friend you have time today to make it right. God’s invitation to all of us today is, “Come and enjoy fellowship with Me and with each other! Come and share the life that is real!”