GET REAL
Part 1
Chapter 1: The Divinity of Jesus
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”—1 John 1:1-4
A bit of history:
The Apostle John’s earliest writing is the Gospel of John, which was penned sometime before 66 A.D. He wrote his first epistle around 90 A.D. The books of 2 and 3 John were likely written soon afterward. John’s famous Book of Revelation was written last, around 95 A.D. John lived only a few more years after writing Revelation and died at around 100 years old.
The letter of 1 John has been described as a diamond in which not one facet could be changed. It is a little individual poem all by itself. Each thought presented is like a gem, perfect within itself, yet each thought also fits into a larger pattern, complementing a grand design.
The foundation of the book is found in the first four verses we just read.
John wrote his first letter in response to a diabolical false teaching by a group called Docetic Gnostics that was spreading through the early churches. Docetic comes from a Greek word that means “to seem.”
Gnostics comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge” or “to know.” Gnostics believed that all tangible matter was evil, but that spirit was good. They, therefore, claimed that God could not have created the material world.
Docetic Gnostics also taught that, since all matter was evil, Jesus as God could not have come in human form. He only appeared or seemed to be in human form and only appeared or seemed to suffer on the cross.
The Gnostics denied the entire message of a virgin birth, God becoming one of us, and dying for us on the cross.
So in answer to this heretical teaching, we see John stressing certain topics over and over in this letter, such as, “we saw Him, heard Him, touched Him” and “every Spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God and is the Spirit of the Antichrist.”
The truth that Jesus Christ is God’s Son manifested in human form is the golden thread woven throughout the entire book. Jesus shed real blood which was the propitiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world!
We’re also going to find repeated phrases like “light” and “darkness.” Truth is often compared to light. The forgiveness of sin is mentioned several times. “Liar” is used three times, and the phrase “his commandments” is repeated several times.
Love is a pivotal topic in 1 John. The phrases “sons of God,” “children of God,” and “born of God” repeat continually throughout the letter.
The concept of believing in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, is found four times. The letter ends with an appeal to stay away from idols.
John opens his letter with a statement about the beginning very much like the opening of the Gospel of John:
1 John 1:1 “That which was from the beginning,
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word…”
However, there is a difference between these two writings. In John’s Gospel, he starts with the beginning of created things and says, “he was already there.” That is, when all creation came into existence, Christ already existed. Since He existed before all of creation, He is uncreated. Since he is uncreated, he has no beginning. If he has no beginning, he is Deity.
So John reaches back into eternity, before the universe was brought into existence, and informs us that in eternity past, Jesus already was, and he was in fellowship with the Father.
However, in 1 John, he goes back only to the time when the created universe came into existence “from the beginning, or “at” the beginning, and speaks of that which was true about Christ since that time forward up to his incarnation as a human being—That time when John and the disciples personally saw, heard, and touched him.
So, “In the beginning” in John 1:1 puts us at the point of creation, looking back into eternity at he who already existed.
“From the beginning” takes us to the moment of creation and moves us forward, showing Jesus’ development in time up to his life on earth.
Jesus is, always has been, and always will be. When you look back, he has always been. When you look around you, he is. And when you look forward, he is eternal!
Let’s look at some of the things the Bible tells us are eternal:
• eternal God
• eternal excellency
• eternal life
• eternal damnation
• eternal power and Godhead
• eternal weight of glory
• eternal things
• eternal house
• eternal purpose
• eternal King
• eternal salvation
• eternal judgment
• eternal redemption
• eternal Spirit
• eternal soul
• eternal inheritance
• eternal fire
All these things are eternal. And how long is eternity? Imagine this: a vast planet of steel is floating in space. Every one trillion years, a mosquito slowly comes fluttering by, barely flicking the planet with its wing, and flies away. When a trillion more years go by, the mosquito comes again and flicks the steel until eventually, the mosquito has rubbed the entire planet away. Even then, eternity will have only just begun!
The first proof John gives us that Jesus truly became a human being is that he and the other disciples heard him speak in a human voice, saw him with their own eyes, and touched him with their own hands.
The words “heard,” “saw,” and “handled” are in the grammatical perfect tense, which refers to an event completed in the past but still having present results.
For instance, you won a trophy for athletics 20 years ago and are still moved by the experience today.
About 60 years had elapsed from the time John heard, saw, and touched the Lord, yet John is telling us that, after all that time, what he saw and heard of Jesus Christ was still indelibly planted in his mind’s eye.
The word “handled” comes from a Greek word meaning “to handle with a view to investigation”.
The same word was used when the Old Testament tells us that Isaac felt Jacob’s arm to investigate whether he was actually Esau.
Likewise, when Jesus told the disciples, “Touch me and see (handle me with a view to investigation) because a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
At the opening of his letter, John makes sure there is no question about Jesus Christ’s real humanity. He was here in flesh and blood. He was not a figment, an idea, or a spirit being. He was human; God made flesh.
So let’s restate this first verse as literally as possible from the Greek language:
“That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard and at this present moment is still ringing in our ears, that which we have seen with discernment with our eyes and which is at this present moment in our mind’s eye, that which we have gazed upon as a spectacle, and our hands have handled with a view to investigation, concerning the Word of the Life.”
Chapter 2: Fellowship with God
1:5-10 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
We’re going to see in this study that John spends most of his letter separating truth from error and fact from fiction.
So right off the bat, after attacking the false teaching of Gnosticism, John comes out swinging at two more errors: FIRST, the notion that there is evil with God, and SECOND, that you can live in sin and still have fellowship with God.
Vs. 5 “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”
John testifies that both he and others had heard Christ say this, and he uses the perfect tense to inform us that some 60 years later, it was still “ringing in his ears.”
James echoes the same truth: “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.”—James 1:13
Why can’t God be tempted with evil? Because he is fully light, and in him is no darkness! In James 1:17, he is also called “the Father of lights.” You can’t “father” lights unless you are light yourself.
As believers, we must understand God’s character. He acts only with utterly pure and holy motives in all His dealings with us.
David declared, “The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.” (Psalms 145:17)
Why does this matter? Because we become like what we worship, so it is crucial that we worship a righteous, holy God!
Back to verse 5, straight from the Greek it would read: “And it is this message which we have heard from Him and at present is ringing in our ears and we are bringing back tidings to you, that God as to His nature is light, and darkness in Him does not exist, not even one particle.”
Then reading vs 6-7 the same way: “If we say that things in common we are having with Him, and thus fellowship, and in the sphere of darkness are habitually ordering our behavior, we are lying, and we are not doing the truth. But if within the sphere of the light we are habitually ordering our behavior as He himself is in the light, things in common and thus fellowship we [the believer and God] are having with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son keeps continually cleansing us from every sin.”
Fellowship means “to have joint participation with someone else in things possessed in common by both.” It can also mean, “comradeship” or “companionship.”
The person in fellowship with God claims to have things in common with God, common likes and dislikes, and a common nature where fellowship and companionship take place.
But the person who walks in darkness is conducting his life in the darkness of sin. The verb tense used for “walking” means habitual action. John says that no one who is continually walking in the sphere of sin with no acts of righteousness could possibly be in fellowship with God. John calls that person a liar. So, we can restate these verses this way:
“If we say that fellowship we are having with Him, and in the sphere of darkness are habitually ordering our behavior, we are lying, and we are not doing the truth. But if we (practice) walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another…”
Here John is not talking about fellowship with other believers but rather with God. Right living brings us into fellowship with God, and he reciprocates by fellowshipping with us.
Not only that, but the blood of Jesus continually cleanses us from sins of omission, sins of ignorance, sins we do not even recognize in our lives, and sins that we do not yet have the maturity to recognize as sin. The blood on-goingly cleanses all these as we walk in the light.
“And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Literally restated, this verse would read: “But if within the sphere of the light we are habitually ordering our behavior as He himself is in the light, things in common and thus fellowship we [the believer and God] are having with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son keeps continually cleansing us from every sin.”
Then John addresses what some were claiming, “If we say that we have no sin…” (vs. 8)
Here John is not talking about an act of sin but rather a sinful nature. He is again addressing the Gnostics who taught there was no sinful nature passed down from Adam. In verse 6, John says we are lying to others and in verse 8 he tells us we are lying to ourselves.
“If we say that [indwelling] sin we are not having, ourselves we are leading astray [nobody else], and the truth is not in us.”—vs. 8
But good news! “If we confess our sins…”—vs.9
Confess means “to come into agreement with another.” To confess a sin means to say the same thing that God says about the sin. The word “confess” is in a verb tense that speaks of continuous action.
This teaches us that the constant attitude of the believer toward sin should be one of a contrite heart, ever eager to have any sin in our lives discovered by the Holy Spirit and ever keen to confess it and put it out of our lives by the power of that same Holy Spirit.
And God’s promise is: “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins…”—vs. 9
Forgive is the word that literally means “to dismiss” as a debt. But in this verse it doesn’t refer to a debt between a lawbreaker and a judge, like when we are first saved. It’s more of a debt between a father and his child, where forgiveness immediately restores fellowship!
God promises to…”cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”—vs. 9
Cleanse means “to wash away the defilement incurred by sinning.” When you play in the mud you get covered with mud. When we sin we are covered in the dirt of the sin until God cleanses us thru the shed blood of Jesus.
The chapter ends with a repeat of the false profession, “If we claim we have not sinned.”—1 John 1:10
In verse 8, John dealt with the denial of our sinful nature. Here in verse 10 he deals with the denial of sinful acts themselves.
There is no healing of our soul and no restoration to fellowship with him without the admission and confession of sin. If we say we don’t have any, it means two things: We’re calling God a liar, and His word is not in us—we’re not saved!