1 John : Day One : The Word Of Life

Day One: The Word of Life

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 complete.

1 John 1:1-4 (ESV)

These four verses are powerful.  John is defending the incarnation of Christ.  At this time, the Church was dealing with a heresy called Dolcetism.  These teachings claimed that Jesus was not actually human, but only looked human.  But if you look in verse one, we see words like “heard,” “seen,” “look,” and most importantly “touch.”  These verbs here indicate personal interaction with another human being.  Yet, here John reuses “word” from the opening of his Gospel account.  In some translations it is capitalized because it often believed that it is title for Jesus, just like in John 1:1.  The word used here is Logos.  According to R.C. Sproul, there is no accurate English word to describe this.  But in his definition, he states, 

The Logos is the eternal Word in action. But it is no irrational action or sheer expression of feeling. It is the divine Actor, acting in creation and redemption in a coherent way, who is announced in John's Gospel.  That the Word became flesh and dwelt among us is the startling conclusion of John's prologue. The cosmic Christ enters our humanity. It is the supreme moment of visitation of the eternal with the temporal, the infinite with the finite, the unconditioned with the conditioned.

So why is this important?  Because salvation depends on Christ’s nature.  In 431 AD, the term hypostatic union was coined at the Fist Council of Ephesus.  Here, it was agreed that Jesus is fully God and fully man.  When man sinned, a debt had to be paid to God, and that penalty was death.  Man needed to pay that debt, but couldn’t because he is sinful.  Jesus was able to pay that debt because He was human and by being fully God as well, He was perfect.  Through this, Christians can have fellowship with each other and with the Father.