The Life Was Made Known
The Life Was Made Known
Sunday, October 28, 2007
“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.”
1 John 1:2
1. Christianity began by God’s revelation of himself in Jesus and continues by the authoritative testimony of the apostles to that revelation. It follows that without Christ there can be no Christianity! “It is Christ or nothing.”
2. The Lord chose to have many eye witnesses, but He has a special group called apostles that received their authority from Him to write down the sure testimony of His Word which we call the New Testament.
3. His apostles are eye witnesses as well as ear witnesses of Him. (Acts 1:21-22; 2 Peter 1:16)
4. There were also more than 500 other eye witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. But these were just eye witnesses to the resurrection and not Apostles. (1 Corinthians 15:6)
5. To proclaim Christ, as John does, is not the same thing as proving that the word proclaimed is true. So in the same verses in which John speaks of Jesus as the essence of Christianity, he also indicates the grounds of his convictions which are two - objective and subjective.
6. John’s objective evidences are centered in the firsthand knowledge of Jesus possessed by himself and the other apostles. The “we” must be taken as this apostolic band, for it is distinct from those Christians to whom John is writing. (“you,” vv. 2–3).
7. John tells of his own conversion which came by seeing. “Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed” (John 20:8)
8. Our Lord took care to satisfy (as far as might be) all the senses of His apostles, that they might be the more authentic witnesses of Him to the world. (John 20:18-28)
9. As objective and tangible as the revelation of God in Christ was, this nevertheless would have gone unnoticed by John and the others had God not intervened to reveal Christ to them subjectively.
10. In the prologue to the Gospel John tells us that the true light “was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10).
11. No one today can repeat the objective experiences of Christ possessed by the apostles. That is why we need their testimony to Christ as preserved in their writings. Nevertheless, we can and must repeat their subjective experience for it is the Holy Spirit which makes Christ alive and real both to our minds and hearts today. (Romans 8:16-18)
12. After He affirms all of the apostles senses He gives the generations of believers until His return a blessing. (John 20:29)
13. For without Christ there can be no Christianity! “It is Christ or nothing.”
Contentment
Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.
- Jeremiah Burroughs
Christian Life
The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise. - Richard Sibbes
Assurance
“Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying "I am saved" is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.” - Charles Spurgeon
GracePointe Baptist Church
2209 N Post Road
Oklahoma City, OK 73141
Phone: (405) 769-5050