1 John 1:1-4

THE FELLOWSHIPS OF THE HOLY LIFE

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1 John 1:1 are introductory, and may be compared with the prologue of the gospel by St. John. The subject of the epistle is “the Word who is the life”; and its purpose “to complete the joy of the disciples in the Lord.” Westcott thinks that St. John uses the plural we as speaking in the name of the apostolic body, of which he was the last surviving representative.

1 John 1:1. From the beginning.—ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, neuter. This is usually taken as referring to the existence of Christ from before the Incarnation. “The Being which existed from the beginning.” But it may be the simple assertion of the apostle’s competency to deal with a matter of which he had information at first hand (compare Luke 1:2). “From the beginning” may mean the beginning of Christ’s ministry. St. John was one of the first disciples, and the one who enjoyed closest intimacy with our Lord. The first-hand knowledge of the apostles gave them their special authority. Of the Word of life.—Concerning Him; related to Him. Genitive with preposition περί. The Word which is the Life. The Word of God, and Life of men. Or, the Word which was in a life. That human life which Christ lived was His word, His message.

1 John 1:2. Manifested.—A word has to be spoken if it is to be apprehended by others. A word that is a life must appear in mortal scenes if it is to be understood, and to exert a gracious influence. Manifested is made apprehensible by human senses. Shew unto you.—Better, declare. Eternal life.—Divine, spiritual life. The word “eternal” indicates a class or kind of life. The time figure in it only helps to the realising of quality or kind. R.V. “the life, the eternal life.” “St. John tells us over and over again that eternal life can be possessed in this world.”

1 John 1:3. Fellowship.—κοινωνίαν, participation, communion in privilege and blessing. The special theme of the epistle; the ruling word. “It generally denotes the fellowship of persons with persons in one and the same object, always common to all, and sometimes whole to each” (Canon Evans). “This is St. John’s conception of the Church: each member of it possesses the Son, and through Him the Father; and this common possession gives communion with all other members as well as with the Divine Persons” (Plummer). Our fellowship.—Our is emphatic. It is precisely that fellowship the apostles enjoyed which they wanted the whole Church to share. His Son.—Greek, “the Son of Him.”

1 John 1:4. Your joy.—Better, “our joy may be fulfilled” (compare Philippians 2:2; John 15:11; John 17:13). “That serene happiness which is the result of conscious union with God and good men, of conscious possession of eternal life, and which raises us above pain, and sorrow, and remorse.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 1:1

The Testimony of the Apostles.—It may be that, strictly speaking, the term “apostle” means no more than “sent one,” and is sufficiently represented by our term “missionary”; but it is evident that it was used in the early Church both in a general and in a special sense. It is applied to missionaries, such as Barnabas and Silas; but it is also the precise designation of twelve men who had been in daily personal relations with the Lord Jesus. The commonly received idea of an apostle was indicated by St. Peter in the upper room, when he suggested the filling up of the place of Judas: “Of the men therefore which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto the day that He was received up from us, of these must one become a witness with us of His resurrection.” And St. Paul rests his claim to apostleship on the fact that he also had actually seen the Lord Jesus, and had received direct communications from Him (Galatians 1:11). The writer of this epistle does not give his name; probably there was no occasion for him to do so, as he was well known in the Churches, and the harmony between the letter and his teachings was at once and fully recognised. He claims attention to his message not on purely personal grounds, but on the ground of his accurate and first-hand knowledge of the things of which he wrote.

I. The competency of the apostles for their witness and their work.—That witness concerned the earthly life of the Lord Jesus; that work was declaring the impressions which their direct relation to Christ’s earthly life had made upon them. They were to tell men that their personal experience had convinced them that Jesus was Messiah, Son of God, God manifest.

1. They were competent through their sense-apprehensions of Christ. Most of the twelve, and John was one, had known Christ, in personal discipleship, from the very beginning of His ministry, and all had been with Him in daily intercourse for three years up to the sudden and violent close of His life. They had the testimony of their senses, of their sight, and of their hearing. They watched their Lord in His varied daily labours, and nightly devotions and restings. They knew every characteristic expression of His face, and movement of His hand. They listened to His mutiplied teachings, and knew well the differing tones of His voice. They had been with Him in the many moods of His feeling—now tender and sympathetic, now intense and earnest, now mystical and dreamy, now reproachful and severe. If ever men knew a fellow-man through sense-apprehensions of him, those twelve men, and St. John more especially, must have known Christ And that sensible intimacy gave a peculiar force, exactness, and persuasiveness to their testimony. They spoke at first hand, and not what they had been told, but what they had themselves seen, and heard, and handled of the Word of life. In these days the verification of everything by actual experiment, or sense-knowledge, is demanded; and it is not sufficiently considered that precisely this personal, direct, sensible apprehension of Christ the apostles had, and that on our own conditions of acceptable testimony we are bound to receive theirs. They saw with their own eyes, they beheld, their hands handled. We do not deal fairly by the apostles if we either suspect or reject their testimony. But their relation to Christ brought them—

2. Competency through their mental apprehensions. What they thus daily saw and heard became food for thought. Thought fitted the new facts and impressions to previously possessed knowledge, and the apostles gradually made up their minds that Jesus was the promised Messiah, though by no means the sort of Messiah that they expected. That otherwiseness of Jesus became increasingly impressed upon them as they came to know Him better; and gradually they came to fill with their deeper meanings the names, “Son of man,” and “Son of God.” Those thinkings were genuine, unbiassed, the natural workings of the sensible impressions made upon them in their daily intercourse with Jesus. It should be clearly seen that there were, in the apostles’ days, no doctrines concerning the person of Christ which could possibly bias their minds. They thought simply and genuinely. Indeed, their thinking even surprised themselves. And when they testified that Jesus is the Son of God, they uttered the personal conviction to which twelve men had been led by thinking on a series of facts of which they had direct and exact knowledge. Surely if any men ever were competent to make a testimony about anything, these apostles were concerning the person and mission of the Lord Jesus. Yet this is not all.

3. These apostles had an unusual and direct spiritual illumination, and the competency to render their testimony which belongs to men Divinely inspired. It is well for us to see first their natural competency as men, and then their supernatural competency as inspired men. Their Lord promised them the power of the Holy Ghost for giving their witness concerning Him, and the sign that the promise was fulfilled is found in the baptism of the Day of Pentecost. In all the records of history, can any man, or any body of men, be found who were more efficiently and satisfactorily fitted for their life-work than the apostles of the Lord Jesus? St. John has a perfect right to claim competency in dealing with the Christian truth.

II. The one truth which is the centre of the apostolic testimony.—Perhaps most evidently of St. John’s testimony, but as really of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. It was the double truth of the Deity and humanity of Christ. “Declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” It is not with sufficient distinctness seen that the double nature of Christ is no more capable of proof, satisfactory to the human intellect, than is the being of God. The apostles reached the conviction of the Divine humanity of Jesus through their close personal intercourse with Him; it was the impression made upon them by what they saw, and heard, and felt. And the conviction of the Divine-humanness of Christ never comes to any man in any other way. Let any man now come into close personal relations with Christ, let him feel the impression which Christ always makes, when He is permitted to come fully into the sphere of a man’s thought, and heart, and life, and he will surely be drawn to the “Man Christ Jesus,” and will bow before Him, saying, “My Lord, and my God.” “St. John gives a twofold utterance concerning the object of his publication: that He in His nature is eternal, and therefore Divine; and also that He descended into the domain of human, yea sensible, experience, and thus became manifest, so that He became known in a perfectly assured manner.” “The eternal life is described as something enfolded in Christ and inseparable from His person” (Eric Haupt).

III. St. John has one great aim in rendering his witness.—“That ye also may have fellowship with us” (1 John 1:3). Fellowship with us in our fellowship, he means. “Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” What appears to be in St. John’s mind is this—the spiritual apprehension of Christ which he had gained, had not only brought him closely near to Christ, but had also brought him closely near to God, nearer than anything else ever had, or ever could. Realising the Sonship of Christ glorified God to him; it revealed him as the eternal Father. Realising his sonship in Christ brought him the delightful realisation that God was his Father, and so put him in closest and dearest relation and fellowship with Him. And then St. John exclaims, that he writes this epistle because he wants his friends to share his joy. He would have them know Christ as he knew Him; then they would share with him the fellowship of the Father and the Son, and their joy would be full. St John’s testimony as an apostle then is fully trustworthy; he was competent to the work of giving it. It concerned the possibility of fellowship with God. It declares that he enjoyed the fellowship. It explains how he came into it. He had personal intercourse with Christ. He learned the mystery in Christ. Through His humanity he discovered His Divinity. He saw Him to be the Son of God. The vision drew him close; and when close to, for communing with the Son, he found he was communing with the Father. St. John’s was the typical experience of believers: they apprehend the “Man Christ Jesus”; they find in Him “the Son of God with power”; and the vision of the Son brings the vision of the Father—the fellowship of the Son, the fellowship of the Father.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1 John 1:1. The Power of Personal Experience.—There are some things that can only be effectively known through a personal experience of them, or in relation to them. That must be so, because some things cannot be apprehended by the intellect alone; they must be known through feeling. The highest truths of religion cannot be grasped save by intellect fused in feeling. It has often been pointed out that a man cannot know evil save by doing it, and feeling its results. And it is certain that no man ever can know Christ until he has come into personal relations with Him, and has experienced what He, by His grace, can do in and for him. St. John claims to have that peculiar power to declare truth, and to persuade others, which comes from knowledge gained through experience. It is a power which, in one sense, no Christian teacher can have had since the apostles’ days; yet it is a power which, in another sense, every Christian teacher may have, and must have for efficiency, in every age.

1 John 1:2. Manifesting the Eternal Life.—Manifesting means bringing an unseen, spiritual thing into the realm of the human senses, so that it may be apprehensible to beings who are placed under the limitations of sense-conditions. But manifesting does not mean that the spiritual changes its nature, and becomes material. What is meant is, that the spiritual accommodates itself to our sense-conditions, by using and showing itself by means of a medium which makes due appeal to the senses. Christ is a spiritual and unseen Being, but He is manifest to us through the medium of the “Man Christ Jesus,” who is the material veil through which we can discern the spiritual Being that He is. He, the life, the spiritual, the eternal life, was manifested, and we have seen it. Man can only think with words which are really figures apprehensible by the senses. So it is said, God, who cannot be seen, is seen, is “manifest in the flesh.” We see God in the human Christ.

“Ver.

3. Fellowship with the Father.—There are three stages in what we may call the higher Christian life.

1. Baptism with the Spirit.

2. Conscious vital union with the Song of Song of Solomon 3. Fellowship with the Father. Coming to God, reconciliation with God, loving God, praying to God, hoping to be with Him, are all blessed, but they are not fellowship.

I. The access to God which is possible to the believer is that of close and abiding fellowship.—The sense of the Divine reality and nearness was a constant experience in Eden. But sin altered all that. It cut us off from God. Our Lord came to bring us back to God. The possibility of human fellowship with God is shown—

1. In the earthly life of Christ. To Him the spiritual world was always near.

2. By God’s presence and relationship.

3. By the plain statements of His word.

II. This fellowship is the supreme Christian blessedness—

1. Think of it as unspeakable honour.
2. As permanent satisfaction.
3. As progressive holiness.

III. This supreme blessedness is to be enjoyed in Christ.—

1. In Christ we have the right of approach to God.
2. In Christ we have the personal purity needed for Divine communion.
3. In Christ we have the spirit that ever rises to the Father.
4. In Christ we have the welcome with God that He has.—Charles New.

The Mystery in Christ.—The following profound thoughts struggle for expression in these four opening verses. There is a Being who has existed with God the Father from all eternity: He is the Father’s Son; He is also the expression of the Father’s nature and will. He has been manifested in space and time; and of that manifestation I and others have had personal knowledge; by the united evidence of our senses we have been convinced of its reality. In revealing to us the Divine nature He becomes to us life, eternal life. With the declaration of all this in our hands as the gospel, we come to you in this epistle, that you may unite with us in our great possession, and that our joy in the Lord may be made complete.—A. Plummer, D.D.

Our Fellowship in Christ.—“Fellowship” is the key-word of this epistle. St. John’s prevailing idea was that Christianity brings men together in brotherly helpfulness by bringing them to God. He, in effect, says: “You and I may be in fellowship with one another, if we are in fellowship with the Father and the Son. I would help you to get and to keep in that fellowship.” When sin entered into the world, it spoiled man’s sonship to God, and his brotherhood with his fellow man. He who truly loves God will be sure to love his brother. He who loses the love of God will be sure to find his human fellowships breaking up. God made fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters; but the result of the Fall was a sort of separation between Adam and Eve, the parents, in the first generation, and between Cain and Abel, the brothers, in the second. Gustave Doré represents Adam and Eve, when they have sought the thick shade of the trees to hide away from God. They are sitting apart from each other, self-conscious and ashamed, and a huge, hideously shaped trunk of a great forest tree is between them, a fitting symbol of that dreadful thing, self-will, and self-indulgence, which had come between them and God, and therefore separated them from each other. The evil grew with the generations. Men built cities to protect themselves from each other. Brothers made much of “mine” and “thine”; each man lived for himself; and then man’s ruin was complete. Christ came to restore the fellowship of man with man, and He could only accomplish this work by doing another work first—restoring man’s fellowship with God. Christianity brings men together as nothing else does. And it attains its end by restoring God’s family idea for man. Parents and children must help each other. Brothers and sisters must help each other. Each member of the family must live for the other members: “By love serving one another.” No redeemed man “liveth unto himself.” He is redeemed from that very thing. Dr. George Macdonald has a very queer and dreamy character, who thinks and imagines most weird, and quaint, but suggestive things. In one of his dreams he seemed to be in heaven, and it was just like earth. There were shops, and buying and selling were going on, only there was no money. Everybody simply did his best to serve his neighbour for nothing. The wholesale house was served by the manufacturer, and the retail tradesman was served by the wholesale house, and the private customer was served by the retail tradesman. The Christ-spirit was triumphant. There was no need for money to buy service, for it was freely given. It is a striking thing that, in the first enthusiasm of the early Church, an effort should have been made to realise this fellowship of mutual service. They kept together, and lived on a common fund.

I. Our fellowship in Christ is based on relationship.—It is “with the Father.” To have fellowship with the Father clearly means that we are, in all the joy of the home life, fully entering into all the privileges of our relationships. Where a father dwells is a home; by his presence it becomes a home. He keeps all the members together. When he is gone, the family is scattered. We may take these earthly associations, and let them help us to apprehend our relationships with God. We are, as Christians, not a separated, scattered family; we are all with our Father. We are at home. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in the actual relations of family life; and our Father is with us. This is no mere doctrine or sentiment. “Because we are sons, He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,” and in the home life we are to be as brotherly and helpful to one another as Christ is to us.

II. Our fellowship in Christ is based on character.—When our attention is directed to it, we can plainly see that the joy and unity of an earthly family, in an earthly home, depend on goodness. Not on love, or on numbers, or on abilities; but on character. The one thing that breaks up homes is lost characters, not calamity, not sickness. We can neither have fellowship with the Father, nor with one another, unless we have fellowship with the Son, oneness with Him in thought, feeling, spirit, purpose, character. God smiled out of heaven upon His Son, and said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; and it was Christ’s character with which He was pleased. Christ bade His disciples “follow Him,” and He did not merely mean, “Attend upon Me; come after Me; step in My footprints”: He meant, “Be like Me; do like Me; have My mind; breathe My spirit; work My work; be changed into My image; be the Father’s sons, acceptable to Him, even as I am.” St. John says, “Fellowship with the Son,” to remind us that the spirit of sonship is the essential to fellowship with the Father, and with each other. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God perfects praise. A story is told of an old coloured woman in Michigan, known as Sojourner Truth. Some one had spread a report that she had left the fellowship of the Church, and joined the spiritualists. One of the village pastors went to question her. “Who tole you dat, chile?” said the old lady. “It is so stated in the newspapers, and I wanted to know if you had joined the spiritualists.” Straightening herself up to her full height, and bringing her arm down like a blacksmith, the old woman exclaimed, “Bress your soul, chile, dahs nothen to jine! You may tell all the people that ‘ole Sojourner” long to Jesus these many years. She’s as true to de Master as de anvil to de hammer. I nebber give up my faith in Jesus for anything else.” The fellowship of Jesus carried with it the fellowship of the Church.

1 John 1:4. Joy in Higher Truth.—A.V. “That your joy may be full.” R.V. “That our joy may be full.” We may perhaps combine the two, and read, “That the joy may be full, yours as well as ours.” It is in the fuller and worthier apprehension of the person of Christ that St. John expects to increase his own joy, and the joy of those to whom he writes. It is often pointed out that the increase of knowledge is usually an increase of sorrow. It is apt to shake down confidence in long-cherished beliefs, to separate us from the friendships and associations of early life, and to bewilder us with ever-gathering and ever-thickening mysteries. And if that is in any sense true of increasing knowledge of the material world, and of the mental and social life of humanity, it is certainly much more true of those things which concern man’s spiritual nature, and man’s relations as a spiritual being to God the great Spirit. Apprehension of the higher philosophical, theological, and spiritual truths brings with it a great strain on feeling, which may even be called “sorrow.” Yet this is only one side of the truth. Advance into all higher truth is attended by delightful excitement, surprise, and joy. Positive pleasure, and pleasure of the purest and best kind, is felt by those who learn more, deeper, and surprising things concerning the phenomena of life upon the earth, and concerning the marvels of the heavens. A Newton, a Faraday, a Darwin, have positive joy, a fulness of joy, in the higher truth of fact in regard to the material world which they attain day by day. And the same may be said of the masters in philosophy, and in history, and in art. But a curious idea has come to be established in relation to religion. It is boldly assumed that a man’s religious joy will be in proportion to the simplicity—the childishness—of his grasp of the eternal verities that centre in the person and manifestation of Jesus Christ. Men are deterred from growing into the higher truth by fear of losing their joy. St. John unfolds the higher mysteries of Christ, in order that, thus, men’s joy might be filled up full.