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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. And again, we’re taking a little break from our study of the
book of the prophet Isaiah to consider the opening verses of the epistle of 1 John, my sermon text
this morning, 1 John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4, the title of my sermon, The Eternal Life Made
Manifest. You’ll find this on page 1210 in your Pew Bible if you’d like to follow along. 1 John
chapter 1 verses 1 through 4. Dear friends, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and
awe. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have 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.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for
God to bless the preaching of his word. Oh Lord and Father in heaven, we praise you for your
amazing grace. We thank you Lord that you have given us divine special revelation in the scriptures,
which is your word. We pray Lord that by your spirit you would illuminate us, help us to
understand this portion of your word and its relevance to us as a church and to us as individual
believers as well. We would ask our Lord and Father in heaven that you would set a guard over my lips
that I, your unworthy servant, may only declare that which is faithful and true to your word for
the glory of the name of Jesus and the edification of your saints and the salvation of the lost.
And we would pray Lord that you would make us open and receptive to your word this day.
May we give our full undivided attention to the word and may it bless us this day for your glory.
In Jesus name we pray and all of God’s people said amen. You may be seated.
If you have a sermon outline, you’ll notice that there are five words that young people
can be listening for in my sermon this morning. The words word, life, incarnation, fellowship,
and joy. How do I know that I’m saved? Have you ever asked yourself that question?
Have you ever struggled with the assurance of your salvation? Have you ever found yourself
anxiously wondering whether or not you are in a state of grace? Wondering whether God in mercy
smiles upon you in Christ or whether God in wrath frowns upon you? While I don’t have any
hard statistics at hand, my suspicion is that many believers struggle with the assurance of
their salvation. I suspect many find themselves robbed of that peace of conscience and that joy
of the Holy Spirit that are supposed to accompany and flow from the full and free salvation that
Christ has accomplished for his people and thus many believers are robbed of the joy of the Lord
that they could enjoy if they had that full assurance of faith. Well this is one of the
reasons why I would suggest to you that it is helpful to study the epistle of 1st John because
friends in this portion of God’s word what we find is a portion of scripture pulsating with comfort,
pulsating with hope, pulsating with encouragement for the weak, struggling, doubting believer
and it is an epistle that was actually written at least in part to strengthen the believer’s
assurance of salvation. In fact one of the purpose statements that is found
in 1st John is found towards the end in chapter 5 verse 13. I’d invite you to turn there very
briefly 1st John chapter 5 verse 13. John explains why he writes this epistle. He says,
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. So he’s writing to believers
and why does he write to them? I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God
that you may know that you have eternal life. Did you know that you could know that with absolute
certainty? Our Roman Catholic friends say no that’s the sin of presumption. The word of God says yes
if you are a believer you may know that you have eternal life. If you’re a believer who struggles
with a lack of assurance of salvation or if you have had the assurance of your faith destabilized,
perhaps destabilized by doubts, by uncertainties or perhaps by your own ongoing struggle with sin
and we all struggle with sin. Well then I believe that you will find potent healing balm for your
soul here in this wonderful epistle known as 1st John and I would commend its study to you. Now of
course I’m not beginning a new sermon series this morning but I thought it would be appropriate and
helpful to preach from this portion of God’s word because of the pastoral matters and matters of the
heart that it touches upon. But before we dive into the substance of our text for today I think
it would be helpful to give you a little background information about this epistle. The first question
that we need to ask as we approach this text of Holy Scripture is what kind of literature is 1st
John? Now 1st John has traditionally been understood to be an epistle that is to say a letter but if it
is to be understood as an epistle it is a very unusual one. It lacks for example any direct
reference to the author and the recipients of the letter. It’s technically an anonymous writing
and it also lacks the typical salutations and greetings that we usually find in other New
Testament epistles and this is why some Bible scholars classify 1st John as a theological
treatise for example or as a sermon like Hebrews is believed by some to be. Dr. Richard Lensky who
was a Lutheran Bible scholar takes another approach by suggesting that 1st John is to
be understood as an apostolic encyclical. But while 1st John is an unusual piece of literature
I think it is best to accept it as an epistle but an epistle with some unusual features to it.
While it lacks some of the typical marks of an epistle it is clear from the personal tone of
this work that the author of this work and the original readers knew each other well which is
perhaps why the author didn’t feel the need to explicitly identify himself or to explicitly
identify his readers. Well if it’s a technically anonymous letter who wrote it? Who wrote this
epistle? Well friends the literary and stylistic similarities between the Gospel of John,
the three epistles of John, and the book of Revelation support the traditional view that
the same author penned all of these works. Whoever the author was it was the same author who penned
the Gospel of John, the epistles of John, and the book of Revelation. Internal evidence from the
Gospel of John along with the testimony of the early church supports the traditional view that
the epistle of 1 John was written by none other than the Apostle John, the beloved disciple of
our Lord, the beloved disciple who leaned upon our Lord’s breast on at the Last Supper. There’s no
really really no good reason to doubt the Apostle John’s authorship of this epistle that is ascribed
to him in spite of what the Bible critics and skeptics may say. Well that also raises the
question of what was the occasion for the writing of this epistle and to whom is it written? Well
the Apostle John wrote this portion of God’s Word with a tone of deep loving pastoral concern and he
wrote this epistle in order to confirm, to strengthen, and to settle the believers within
the church or the churches to which he wrote. He wrote this letter to a church or to a group of
churches that were under his apostolic care, churches which had been infiltrated by a dangerous
heresy that had already divided the church and which threatened to further destabilize,
unsettle, and draw away these believers and to further divide the church. What was this
particular heresy that John is addressing? He doesn’t spell it out directly or explicitly
in this first epistle, in this letter, but we can glean as we study First John, we can glean
from it the heresies and the issues that he’s addressing. And in terms of the heresy that he’s
addressing, well again we’re not told directly who the heretics were. We are not given an in-depth
description of the details of their particular heresy, but it would seem that the heresy that
John is confronting here in First John was an early form of the heresy that came to be known as
docetism, from a Greek word that means to seem. And basically, to put it simply, docetism was a
heresy which denied the full humanity of Jesus Christ. They said Jesus wasn’t really a man,
certainly the divine Christ would not take upon himself dirty, filthy human flesh. The idea is,
in their view, was a disgusting idea. And so again, they denied the humanity of Christ.
The earliest heresy that the church confronted, arguably, was this heresy, not the denial of
Christ’s deity, but the denial of his full humanity. And so again, docetism denied the full
humanity of Jesus Christ and therefore also denied his incarnation and his atonement for sin.
The docetists said that Jesus only seemed to die on the cross. He wasn’t a real flesh and blood man,
he only seemed to die on the cross. You can see, brothers and sisters, how this heresy would
undermine the very foundations of the gospel message itself. So with all of this in mind,
let’s dive into our text for today and let me direct your attention to verse one. And we learn
in this verse that Jesus Christ is from the beginning. This is the first main point
in your sermon outline. Jesus Christ is from the beginning.
The first John opens with these words.
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. Does that
language, that which is from the beginning, does that language sound familiar to you?
Have you heard that kind of language in other passages of scripture? Well, obviously,
this language here contains echoes from both Genesis 1-1, in the beginning,
God created the heavens and earth, as well as John chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God and the word was God. And so again, John is echoing the language
of Genesis 1-1 and the gospel of John, John chapter 1, verse 1. But why does John,
in echoing the language of Genesis 1-1 and John 1-1, why does John speak of Christ as that which
was from the beginning instead of he who was from the beginning? Why this unusual language,
this kind of unusual way of expressing this reality should cause us to think and contemplate
and ask questions. And that’s, by the way, that’s one of the, I know I’ve said this perhaps many
times before, but one of the keys to being a good Bible reader and a good Bible student is to ask
good questions. And if something seems unusual or seems to really stick out, maybe it’s sticking out
for a reason. So ask yourself, well, why does he use this kind of language? Why does he say that
which is instead of he who was? Likewise in verse three, why does he refer to Jesus
as that which we have seen, that which we have heard and so forth, instead of he whom we have
seen? Well, a possible solution to this unusual wording may be that in the mind of the apostle John,
whose mind was again by inspiration carried along by the Holy Spirit, in the mind of the
apostle John, the gospel message, the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ,
which is a that, is unavoidably interwoven with the person of Jesus Christ, the living word,
which is of course a he. In other words, friends, Jesus Christ, in a very real sense, Jesus Christ
is the gospel. He is the word, the message of life eternal. That is to say, Jesus, the eternal
living word is the living embodiment of eternal life. To put it in simpler terms, if you have Jesus,
then you have eternal life because life eternal is found in the Son of God through faith in Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. As Dr. Glenn Barker states in his commentary, the epistle, that is 1 John,
centers on the life heard and in turn proclaimed. This message, the gospel, is from the beginning
because it is of God. It precedes creation, time, and history. But in God, the message of life also
draws near to humanity and finds its culmination in Jesus. In him, the word of life becomes
incarnated, manifested, and hence can be seen, touched, and even handled. And so again, that
which was from the beginning, that’s talking about Jesus, the eternal living word, the one who embodies
life eternal because he is the source of life eternal to all who by grace believe in him for
salvation. And it goes on to say in verse 2, of Jesus, of this life eternal, the life was made manifest
and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was
with the Father and was made manifest to us. Again in this verse, verse 2, Jesus Christ is here
described as the eternal life. This too is evidence of our Lord’s deity. Eternal life is
eternal because it’s divine life and this implies the deity of Christ. Eternal life, by the way,
refers not merely to time. It doesn’t just mean living forever in heaven with Jesus, although
that’s part of what eternal life entails. But eternal life also indicates a quality, the quality
of that life. Eternal life, beloved, is a supernatural life. It is a divine life,
for it is a life of union and communion with God himself. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is
the living embodiment of eternal life and eternal life is found through faith union
with him and him alone by trusting him and him alone as your Savior and Lord.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is life eternal. To know him is to have eternal life. This implies again
that Jesus is the eternal life because he is the divine source of this life. We believers have the
gift of eternal life in union with the one who is himself the embodiment and source of eternal life,
namely Jesus Christ our Lord. And notice here again, let’s go on to verse 3 where it says,
that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you. Why does he and the other, why do
he and the other apostles proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ, the word of life that they have seen with
their own eyes and heard with their own ears and touched with their own hands and studied carefully?
Why does, why do they proclaim him? That which was we have seen and heard, verse 3, 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. Again Christ is here described as the son of the father. This
too implies his full deity. My friends, the gospel message, the word of life is from the beginning
because it reveals and proclaims the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal living word who was from the
beginning as pre-existent and divine. Is your faith, your trust looking unto him and him alone
for your salvation? Salvation is found not in your good works for it is by grace that we’re saved
through faith and not of works lest any man should boast as we’re told in Ephesians 2.
It’s not of our works. It’s not of our law keeping. You’d have to keep the law perfectly in order to
be saved by the law of God because God is perfect and heaven is a perfect place and you need a
perfect righteousness to get into heaven and I don’t know about you folks but I don’t have that
perfect righteousness but Jesus does and he is my righteousness. He is my redemption. He is my
sanctification and my wisdom and it is to him alone that we must look for salvation. Are you looking
to the Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man in one person? Are you looking to Christ alone
for your salvation? If you are, then be assured of your salvation as you rest in him in true
faith and repentance alone. And so we see that Jesus Christ is from the beginning meaning the
absolute beginning. He was pre-existent. He was divine. He was even before creation but notice
also, and this leads to my next main point, Jesus Christ is God incarnate. We learn here
that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. Again, looking at verses one and two, that which was from the
beginning, which we’ve heard, which we’ve seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched
with our hands concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest. It was not hidden. It was
revealed. It was made manifest. It was made manifest in the person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal
life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. Now, again, the language here
that John uses is very telling. Not only does John reveal Christ to be pre-existent and divine,
he also reveals that our Lord to be incarnate, manifested as a man, which is, again, that was
what the heresy was denying. The heretics were denying the full humanity of Christ but John says
that he was made manifest. He became incarnate, in other words, and he goes on to say that which we
have heard, that which we have seen, what’s he talking about there? He is talking about apostolic
eyewitness testimony. Brothers and sisters in Christ, our faith does not rest upon some religious
fantasy cooked up in the fevered imaginations of religious men who decided to get together and
create a new religion. No. No. Biblical Christianity is grounded in and based upon eyewitness
testimony to the real incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. The apostles saw him. They spent years with him.
They witnessed his miracles. They heard his teaching. They were catechized in his teaching
and learned it by heart, and they also were witnesses to his resurrection. They saw him after
he rose from the dead, and so they saw him. They heard him, and this is true even of the apostle
Paul. Paul was not with Jesus as an apostle during our Lord’s earthly ministry, but Paul did
encounter the resurrected Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, and that was an objective
that wasn’t a subjective vision. That was an objective eyewitness event that he saw,
and the other apostles agreed with that. And so again, notice that right out of the gates here,
the beginning of his epistle, John is refuting the heretics who denied our Lord’s human nature,
and it says that he was made manifest. He was seen. Again, this clearly affirms our Lord’s full
incarnate humanity. We love our Shorter Catechism because it’s a wonderful summary of Bible truth,
and our Shorter Catechism question 22 answers a question that is often raised by skeptics. It’s
raised by our Muslim friends, our Jewish friends, our Unitarian friends, and Jehovah’s Witnesses
friends who say, well, how is it that God could become a man? Does it mean that he stopped being
God when he came to this earth? No. As our Shorter Catechism, in summarizing the Bible’s teaching on
this, puts it, question 22 is how did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? The Bible-based
answer to that question given by our Shorter Catechism is very helpful. Christ, the Son of God,
became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. Jesus has a human body and a
human soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
and born of her, yet without sin. So Jesus, with respect to his human nature, is like us in every
way except for sin. He is the second or last Adam. He was without sin, and therefore he could represent
us and fully satisfy for all of our sins. And friends, the reason that I focus on this point
here from our text is that having a biblically informed Christology is a great aid to having
assurance of salvation. To put that in simpler terms, Christology is a fancy theological term
that means the person of Christ. In other words, who is Jesus? In order to understand the Gospel,
the good news, you have to understand some basic truths about who Jesus is. That’s the doctrine of
Christ or Christology, and what Jesus did for us. That’s soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation.
And friends, when you understand who Jesus is, that is foundational to your assurance of salvation.
You see, friends, it’s important to understand that Christ had to be both God and man in order
to serve as our Redeemer, our Savior. Because our sin is so enormously offensive to God,
only God himself could carry the weight and burden of our sin. So our Savior had to be God in order
to fully satisfy for our sins on the cross, but he had to be a man in order to represent us and die
in our place, in our stead. And when you understand that Jesus is the God-man, that Jesus, your Redeemer,
is the God-man, that gives you the foundation for the assurance of your salvation. For you didn’t
climb your way up to God, he came down to you. He clothed himself with our humanity, and he
represented you. Brother, sister, and Christ, he lived for you, he died for you, he rose for you,
he ascended for you, he reigns at the right hand of the Father, where he intercedes as our great
high priest. It is him and him alone who saves us because of who he is and because of what he did.
Jesus Christ is God incarnate, and that truth, when you embrace it, when you believe it,
when you take it into yourself and let it impact your life, that truth will strengthen
your assurance of salvation. But finally, my final point as we study this passage,
we see here that faith in Christ brings us into the apostolic fellowship of the church. Faith in
Christ, who is life eternal, brings us into the apostolic fellowship of the church. John writes in
verses three and four, that which we, we apostles, that which we have seen and heard, we’re not keeping
it to ourselves, we’re not just enjoying the wonders and glories of the gospel all by ourselves
and keeping it from others. No, that which we’ve seen and heard, we proclaim also to you. And why
are they proclaiming it? Why do the apostles proclaim the gospel? Why do we as the church
proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to those outside the church as well as to those within?
Well, that which we’ve seen and heard, we proclaim to you so that you too may have fellowship with us.
With us. Notice the us. It’s not me, my, me, me, my, I. It’s us. It’s us. We’re in this together,
brothers and sisters. We’re in this together. So that you may have fellowship with us. And indeed,
our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Again, the we and the us,
that refers to the apostles. The apostles were Christ’s personally appointed, chosen, official
spokesmen and witnesses to Christ’s resurrection. But what does it mean to have fellowship? What does
John mean when he says, I’m proclaiming this to you so that you may have fellowship with us, us
apostles? What’s fellowship? This word could also be understood or translated as communion,
participation. It indicates a share in common life, a partnership. And this fellowship is
expressed in scriptures in the New Testament often by the language of the body of Christ.
You see, when you come to faith in Jesus, when you trust him as your Lord and Savior,
you not only are connected to Christ, you’re connected to your brothers and sisters in the
body of Christ. Remember, the apostle Paul uses this imagery of the body in first Corinthians,
chapter 12. And, you know, he uses the illustration, you know, what happens, children,
what happens if you lose your hand? Can that hand function again? No, because it’s detached from the
body. And we are all different parts of the body, but we’re meant to be connected together. We’re
meant to work together, for we are a fellowship, an apostolic fellowship in Christ. Notice, by the
way, that 1 John, like most of the New Testament epistles, was written to either a local church
or a group of local churches. It’s not written to merely, merely to isolated, disconnected
believers. And again, this underscores the truth. And I know I’ve said this before and I’ve,
maybe I’m beating this horse to death, but it needs to be said again and again.
Biblical historic Christianity is primarily corporate and covenantal. It’s not merely about
having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, though, of course, of course, there are personal
and individual aspects to our faith. And it’s, you must have a personal relationship with Christ
if that means saving faith in Christ. The New Testament, the Bible doesn’t use that kind of
language. It talks about being in Christ and trusting in Christ and so forth. But again,
we trust in Christ and we come together and we live out our faith in Christ together. My friends,
the Christian life is centered on Jesus Christ in the church, and it is meant to be lived out
in the apostolic fellowship of the church. It is a fellowship in union with Jesus Christ and in
communion with the body of Christ. This is important to understand because today there are
a lot of so-called Lone Ranger Christians. In fact, a number of years ago, there was a church
growth expert out there who wrote a book advocating for this idea of the self-feeding Christian.
And the idea is that, well, the goal of discipleship is to get believers to the point
where they don’t need the church anymore, where they can be self-feeders. They can read their own
Bibles and pray on their own and maybe listen to sermons online, but they don’t really need
connection with the body. And friends, pardon my French, but that’s hogwash. That’s just
nonsense. It’s ridiculous. Nowhere in the Bible is that taught. We are a fellowship in Christ.
We’re the family of God. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are meant to walk together
in union and communion with Christ. But this true Catholic or universal and apostolic church
is built upon the rock of a true biblical doctrine of the person and saving work of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the word incarnate, the God-man. And this opening section of 1 John
comes to completion in this wonderful verse, verse 4, where John writes and he gives us
one of the reasons, one of his purposes in writing. He says, and we are writing these things so that
our joy may be complete. I believe that, you know, some ancient manuscripts say that your joy may
be complete, but whichever is the case, the apostolic truth about the person and work of Jesus Christ
brings gospel joy to those who believe. And that’s the goal. That’s one of the goals. I mean,
the goal of the Christian life is by the grace of God being conformed into the image of Christ.
But what does that conformity and sanctification and growth in the grace of Christ lead to? It
leads to joy. It doesn’t mean happiness, because happiness is based on happenstance.
And Christians grieve, Christians struggle, Christians suffer. Sometimes they struggle
with losses, they struggle with grief, and sometimes they struggle with persecution and
rejection. But nevertheless, through it all, there is a joy in the Lord that can sustain us
as we live in light of that joy. The apostolic truth about Christ is meant to bring us
joy. God is not a cosmic killjoy. Brother or sister, he wants you to know his joy,
because the joy of the Lord is our strength. There is joy in knowing Jesus, and there is joy
in making Jesus know. So in conclusion, beloved, just a couple closing applications.
Let us be confident in the apostolic testimony to the person and work of Jesus Christ, because it
is true, because it is God’s word, and because it is grounded in that which the apostles like John
had heard, had seen, had studied, had touched with their own hands. So believe, be confident.
This is the word of God. The gospel is the truth of God. Believer also be joyful in knowing that
through faith in Christ, you have eternal life in Christ and fellowship in the body of Christ.
You belong. You belong to Christ, and you belong to your brothers and sisters in Christ. I remember
one of you saying once, these are my people. You are my people. You are my family. I have a natural
family I’m grateful for, but we are the family of God together, and we are meant to walk together as
brothers and sisters in Christ. We’ve been redeemed for that. And finally, reject the
liberal theology and any heresy that separates the so-called Jesus of history from the Christ
of faith. The Jesus of history is the Christ of faith. The Christ of faith is the Jesus of history.
There is no other Jesus than the Jesus who is revealed in God’s inerrant, infallible,
authoritative word. As Simon Kistermacher puts it, we readily reject the liberal teaching
that separates the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith, for we hold to the scriptural
doctrine that Jesus is the Christ. The man Jesus is the divine Christ who is made manifest,
who lived for us, died for our sins, rose from the dead, reigns at the Father’s right hand,
and promises that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Won’t you
repent and believe in him today? And if you struggle with assurance of salvation, may you
go to the source of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, who promises that whoever believes in him
will not perish but have everlasting life. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and
thank you, Lord God, that in Christ we have life eternal. We pray that we might know that joy,
which is inexpressible and filled with glory. And we pray, Lord, that we would walk in stability
and security in Christ, bringing glory to your name. And may the joy that we experience in Christ,
may we seek to share that joy with others, that they too would have fellowship with us
in the apostolic company of the faith and in the joy of the Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray,
and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time of worship, let’s rise and we’ll sing
together. Number 530, teach me thy way, O Lord. 530.