Download discussion questions:  1 john 1:1-4 purpose

Table Talk:  Describe a time when you felt particularly close to the Lord.  How would that experience have been different if He had been physically present?
[“Table Talk” is an opening question or topic for discussion at the beginning of our time together.  The intent is to help group members (around tables, with four to six at each table) build connections with each other, as well as to guide thinking in a direction related to the passage.]

John’s letters are only a part, even the smallest part, of his contributions to the New Testament.  Our first exploration of 1 John began with a discussion of how those letters relate to the Gospel he wrote and the Revelation given to him.  What are our general impressions of all those books?  What can we infer about the relationship of very different works by the same author?  (As I mentioned in the group, our study assumes that the Apostle John was the author of the Gospel, the letters, and Revelation.  For more information about the date, authorship, etc., see The Letters of John – A Brief Introduction.)

The group offered several suggestions.  John’s Gospel account is quite different from the other three (“synoptic” or “with the same viewpoint”) Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  John wrote considerably later than the other three Gospels.  Revelation (sometimes called the Apocalypse, the Greek word for revelation, where we get the English “apocalyptic”) consists mainly of a variety of visions given to John while he was imprisoned on a remote, rocky island.  The letters (three of them) are just that:  letters written to a church or churches and to the leaders of those churches.  The Gospel is essentially a story, the eyewitness report of the ministry of Jesus.  One member described Revelation as “puzzling visions” and another added that the visions were often scary.  John’s letters were described by another comment as love letters, but often expressing “tough love” in his warnings.  Someone pointed out that the Gospel was about the past, the letters were about the present, and Revelation was about the future.  As usual, our discussion opened up all kinds of possibilities.

So how are a story, a book of scary puzzling visions, and a collection of love letters related to each other (or are they)?  There were a variety of opinions about the sequence of the writing of the different documents.  The order in the New Testament canon is not necessarily the order in which documents were written.  Since the first-century writings don’t include email date-time stamps, there is no absolute certainty about the order.  However, as described in more detail in the Introduction mentioned above, the following description may be helpful.

• After being released from Patmos, John was eager to record the extraordinary visions from his time on the island prison. That record, the book of Revelation, was circulating around A.D. 70.
• Then, as now, understanding those visions (“scary and puzzling”) was often challenging. To help others understand the earthly ministry of Jesus (and the visions of Him in Heaven), John wrote the Gospel as a more direct, orderly account.  His eyewitness observations displayed both the human and divine nature of Jesus, One who was God (John 1:1) and yet became tired and thirsty (John 4:6-7).  The written Gospel was available at about A.D. 80, and churches that had been started from or strongly influenced by John’s teaching grew.
• But once again, then, just as now, the idea of a real man who was also God caused confusion and misunderstanding. Cults today often emphasize one part of Jesus’ dual nature and downplay or deny the other. The churches under John’s influence had the same problem.
  • Believers with a Jewish background welcomed Jesus as Messiah and a prophet. But the biggest stumbling block during Jesus’ ministry were statements like “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58).  Accepting Jesus as divine was contrary to all their monotheistic upbringing.
  • Believers with a Greek background had no problem with a divine Jesus. They has a whole list of divine being, gods and goddesses, maybe even the Emperor.  But their whole philosophical education taught that matter (such as a human body) was corrupt and even evil.  The idea that a divine being even coming into contact with flesh and blood was incomprehensible.
• Such radically different views of who and what Jesus was must have caused friction and even conflict in the churches (think of our denominational divisions today over much lesser matters). How confusing it would be to new believers or seekers to hear such widely different descriptions of the One they were supposed to follow.  John wrote his letters around A.D. 90 to clarify and emphasize the truth of both aspects of the incarnate Jesus, the God-man, the divine in human form.  The theological clarity was critical for the health and unity the church.

And so we come to 1 John 1:  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes….”  One person pointed out the similarity to the opening of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word….”  At the end of 1 John 1:1 he refers to “the word of life” using the same vocabulary (“word,” logos, λόγος) as the Gospel introduction.  John, as someone commented, used creative language, word pictures (or Word pictures?), and metaphors throughout his writing, not just in Revelation.

The verbs in the passage emphasize John’s main concern:  we have heard, seen, looked upon, touched in v. 1, with “seen” repeated twice more and “heard” once more.  The repeated “we” and “our” add credibility to this firsthand report.  This was no disembodied spirit or angel pretending to be human.  “Our eyes” and “our hands” confirmed the reality of Jesus’ genuine flesh and blood. At the same time, the One John is describing was from the beginning (eternal), and was with the Father (divine).  He was much more than a good teacher or even a prophet.  John wastes no time (not even a friendly greeting at the beginning of his letter).  He immediately, and even abruptly, confronts the issues causing problems.

One person pointed out that John uses the phrase “so that” twice in the passage, offering the purpose for his letter:

• “so that you too may have fellowship with us” (v. 3)
• “so that our joy may be complete” (v. 4)

Since one of our goals in an inductive study is to get the most possible from a passage, we should pay attention to the writer’s stated purpose.  In spite of his abrupt “theologically dense” opening, John does not give his purpose as “so that you will be doctrinally correct.”  Orthodoxy, right belief, is critical, but not as an end in itself.  John’s purpose in promoting theological accuracy is not an academic exercise.  His goal is fellowship (koinonia, κοινωνία) with “you” – plural – you all, y’all – the believers from both Jewish and Greek backgrounds.  For that koinonia to happen, we must have a common, correct understanding of the foundation of our fellowship, the person and nature of Jesus the Christ, the Man who is divine.

John is not through (not even close).  He is not just promoting harmony among bickering believers, “can’t we all just get along?”  John’s definition of fellowship is far beyond that.  “And indeed [notice his emphasis] our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (v. 3b).  John’s vision of fellowship goes all the way up, to participating in the fellowship of the Trinity.  The eternal, perfect relationships among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the model for our fellowship, as Jesus prayed to His Father, “that they may be one just as We are one” (John 17:22).  That perfect fellowship is also the ultimate destiny of our fellowship:  “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us” (John 17:21).

The fellowship that John describes is not a vague, generic idea of knowing God.  If vague ideas were adequate, then John’s concern about the Jewish and Greek misunderstandings would be irrelevant.  Each group could worship their own version (“My God is like this…”).  But John is much more specific.  The fellowship that he and his companions (the repeated “we” in the passage) have is distinct with each Person:  “with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (v. 3b).  The preposition “with” (meta, μετὰ) is repeated in Greek as well as in most English translations.  John is not satisfied to describe that fellowship even as “with the Father and the Son.”  He makes it clear that knowing God is both fellowship with the Son (the divine Man) along with the Father.  (John Owen, a seventeenth-century Puritan, wrote a helpful book on the distinct communion with each Person of the Trinity.[1])

The Father and the Son are clearly emphasized in this brief passage.  A natural question (which someone naturally asked):  “Why doesn’t John mention the Holy Spirit?”  Several ideas surfaced.  Perhaps the problems John was addressing were primarily about defective views of the nature of Jesus, and he limited his instruction to that topic.  Perhaps the dual nature of Jesus Christ was confusing enough to the young churches.  Adding a discussion at this point on the threefold nature of the Godhead would not have contributed to the clarity.  One member of the group pointed out that John uses the word “manifest” twice in verse 2.  Maybe that is an indirect reference to the Spirit who manifests God’s presence to us.  John will have more to say about the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit whom He has given us” (1 John 3:24), “the Spirit of God” (1 John 4:2), “the Spirit of Truth” (1 John 4:6), etc.  First, he wants to clarify the theological issue of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, and (as we will soon see) the ethical and behavioral implications.  How we understand our fellowship with the Father and with His Son will affect how we understand our fellowship with one another.

The fellowship that John the Apostle describes sets the condition for his second stated purpose in writing:  “so that our joy may be complete” (v. 4b).  Once the fellowship on the human level (“with us” in v. 3) is established, the “our” includes the recipients of the letter.  The fellowship with the Triune God is the complete joy, the fullness, the ultimate experience of joy.  C. S. Lewis describes that joyful fellowship as a dance:  “The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”[2]

In God’s providence, the Sunday we started this study, the pastor of the church started a new series on Philippians entitled “Happy:  Embracing the Unshakable Joy of the Kingdom.”  John was not the only one who taught that fellowship and joy are intertwined.  Paul wrote:  “always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership [koinonia] in the gospel” (Philippians 1:4-5a).  What a great underscoring of the theme of fellowship and joy as central to our Christian life, now and forever.

[1] John Owen, R.J.K.Law, ed., Communion With God (Edinburgh:  Banner of Truth Trust, 1991).

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York:  HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle Electronic Edition:  Location 2196, page 176.