The
Christian Life and the Incarnation; 1 John 1:1-2
logos isn’t the subject of verse 2; life is the subject of verse
2: “and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to
you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” That
tells us that the life John is talking about is infinitely connected with Jesus
Christ because it was with the Father and was manifested to us. In the case of
our Lord Jesus Christ the man in the message and the message is the man, and we
can’t talk about the man without talking about the message, and we can’t talk
about the message without talking about the man. But we can talk about either
the man or the message but the other is always present. John’s focus here is on
the message. It is the message of life which was exemplified for us at the
first advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was in His perfect and sinless life
that He was qualified to go to the cross, and in His life He not only fulfilled
the obligations of the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament but He also set the
precedent and pattern for the spiritual life of the church age. 1 John is
John’s commentary and his expansion of the themes in the upper room discourse.
It is addressed to believers to teach them how live that abundant life which
was exemplified by Christ, That is the message of life. It was exemplified by
the one who was life.
In
Greek, word order is not important to the meaning of the sentence because the
meaning is defined by its syntactical ending. The object of the verb is in the
accusative case in the Greek. What we have in verse 1 are four relative clauses
that are neuter accusative and therefore cannot refer to a person, so we know
they are not talking about the person of Christ, they are referring to a thing
which would be the message. They are accusative which means that is where the
object of the verb lies. So, “we proclaim to you what was from the beginning.”
We have also seen that there is this difficult phrase at the end, “concerning
the word of life,” which uses the preposition peri,
and peri is associated with a
verb, translated “concerning the message,” but you can’t see, behold and handle
a message. So concerning doesn’t relate to what John just said, it has to
relate to what he is going to say.
By
taking a more strict translation of 1 John 1:1-4 it comes across as a little
complex in the English and its meaning can be missed. So we could retranslate
this differently in order for us to catch the main thrust in English of what
John is saying: “We proclaim to you [that is bringing right up to the front the
main clause] concerning the message of life.” You can proclaim something
related to a message, and that is what he is talking about. He is talking about
its content, the doctrine. He is not talking about the man; he is talking about
the message. He is talking about how crucial the message is to having
fellowship. If you don’t have the content right, if the doctrine isn’t right,
there can’t be fellowship. Remember, that is the purpose clause: “so that you too
may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and
with His Son Jesus Christ.” The point is that if you want to have fellowship
with God you have to have right doctrine.
The
point of all this is that John is talking about how we understand the abundant
life. That is, the message of the upper room discourse: abiding in Christ.
Abiding is a key word in this epistle. If John is talking about living the
Christian life and the Christian life is exemplified for us by Jesus Christ’s
life during the period of His incarnation, and he really wasn’t a man but an
illusion, then that destroys the whole witness of His life as an example
setting the precedent for the spiritual life and it is a subtle assault on the
unique Christian life for the church age. That is the underlying issue here,
and he is basically saying we can’t abide in Christ, can’t have fellowship with
God, can’t fulfil the highest commandment which is to love others as Christ
loved the church, of we deny the reality of the humanity of Jesus Christ. So
the humanity of Jesus Christ is foremost in His thinking and he starts off by
using these relative clauses because he is emphasising the empirical knowledge
the disciples had of Jesus Christ and His message.
Translation:
“We proclaim to you concerning the message of life [the doctrine of the
spiritual life], what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have
seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, and the
lift was revealed [phaneroo,
which
means to reveal, to illuminate], and we have seen and give our testimony and
announce to you the eternal life which is with the Father, and was manifested
to us. What we have seen and heard we announce to you also that you might have
fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His
Son, Jesus Christ.” That is a re-translation and it gives us in English a
better understanding of what John is emphasising, what he is saying, in these
first three verses.
He
is making three points in this introduction. The first is that the man is the
message and the message is the man, they are intrinsically and inseparably
connected. The second is that the empirical evidence of the apostles’ witness
during the life of Christ, and specifically John’s own personal contact,
substantiates the message. Third, it is the message, content of the gospel,
that is the object of belief necessary for salvation and ongoing fellowship
with God, and it is also necessary to have right doctrine to maintain fellowship
with God.
During
the incarnation Jesus Christ faced every category of testing in every area just
as we do and yet He never sinned. How did He do it? It wasn’t just in His
deity. He doesn’t rely on His deity to solve the problems of life. He does it
as a man relying upon the Holy Spirit and on Bible doctrine. That is what sets
the precedent for the church age. During the time of the hypostatic union on
the earth Jesus Christ is doing two things. First, He is fulfilling all of the
requirements of the law. Bu His reliance upon the Holy Spirit He lives a
perfect life, thus fulfilling the law and qualifying Himself to go to the
cross. So He fulfils all of the mandates in the Old Testament. Second, by doing
it on the basis of the Spirit of God plus the Word of God he sets the precedent
for how the believer in the church age is to live the spiritual life. It is on
the basis of the filling of the Holy Spirit plus the Word of God that the
believer grows to spiritual maturity in the church age. So in His life He
fulfils the Old Testament mandates and He sets the pattern and precedent for
the church age. If He is not true humanity, facing those problems just as we do
as a genuine human being, then it is all fraudulent and there is no precedent
for the spiritual life in the church age. The spiritual life of the church age
is not based on the spiritual life of the Old Testament; it is not based on the
Mosaic Law. Christ fulfilled the law and He is the end of the law, Romans says.
The church age spiritual life is based on the precedent of Christ living the
spiritual life during the incarnation on the earth when He faced all the trial,
all the testings in His life under the power of God the Holy Spirit.
John
uses phrase like “from the beginning” and “logos”
to cause our thinking to automatically go to the Gospel of John chapter one:
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God…” This is because he
wants us to be thinking about the person behind the message, and that you can’t
take the person away without destroying the message. John makes it clear to us
that life is intimately, intrinsically and inseparably connected with the
person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and
the life, no man comes to the Father but through me.” He makes three
statements; He identifies Himself with life. This is confirmed by John 1:4, “In
Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” It is His life that
illuminates us; it is what reveals God to us. John 5:26 NASB “For
just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have
life in Himself.” 1 John 5:20 NASB “And we know that the Son of God
has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true;
and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life.” Jesus Christ is the true God; that is the clear statement of
the deity of Jesus Christ. So John concludes the epistle with what he begins
the epistle, and that is the identification of life with Christ and that we
must be in Him.
The
phrase “in Him” is a phrase that is particularly unique to John. It is not to
be taken as “in Christ,” that is a Pauline term. In John’s writings “in Him” is
not talking about positional truth. “In Christ” for Paul is positional truth,
our eternal reality in Christ, but John’s writings “in Him” is used and it is a
relational term. “In Him” is relational; “in Christ” is legal. When John talks
about being “in Him” he is talking about being in fellowship or not in
fellowship. This emphasises for us the whole doctrine of the hypostatic union.
The word “hypostatic” comes from the Greek word hupostasis which means essence or
substance. So it is talking about the essence of God, that there is a union of
essence, union of being, two things united together. It describes the union of
two natures: undiminished deity and true humanity in the one person of Jesus
Christ. These natures are inseparably united without loss or mixture of
separate identity—when Jesus became man He didn’t lose any divine
attributes; when Jesus was incarnate on the earth there was not a mixture of
human and divine attributes, they do not bleed into one another; they are
distinct natures, they maintain their distinction, so He is true humanity and
undiminished deity—without loss or transfer of properties or attributes,
the union being personal and eternal. Jesus Christ will always be in hypostatic
union with humanity. The second person of the Trinity is united with true
humanity forever and ever and ever, and thus He can be seated at the right hand
of God the Father in heaven right now. We see this exemplified in Hebrews 1:3 NASB
“And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His
nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification
of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Only true
humanity sits down.
An
aside: Because He is seated at the right hand of God the Father in His
humanity—His humanity is what went to the cross and died for us—He
is localised in His humanity on high and He cannot become localised in an
ongoing communion service, therefore there is no physical presence of Christ in
the Lord’s table (or the Mass, which is the Roman Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation). He cannot be localised in Heaven and then each time the
Mass is celebrated have His body become ubiquitous on earth.
The doctrine of
the incarnation
Definition:
“Incarnate” comes from the Latin carne, meaning flesh, matter, and it means to
be made in flesh, that God became human flesh.
The incarnation was not some
afterthought of God, the incarnation was determined by God in eternity past at
the council of divine decrees. It was first prophesied in the Bible in Genesis
3:15 NASB “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on
the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” Here we see that the Messiah
would be “her seed,” the seed of the woman, true humanity. Genesis 12:1-3, we
find out that the Messiah would come through the line of Abraham. Genesis 49:10
NASB “The scepter [sign of a ruler] shall
not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from
between his feet, Until Shiloh [Messiah] comes, And to him {shall be} the obedience
of the peoples.” It is further clarified in 2 Samuel 7:12 in the Davidic
covenant NASB “When your days are complete and you lie down with
your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth
from you, and I will establish his kingdom.” We get a further indication of the
miraculous quality of His birth in Isaiah 7:14 NASB “Therefore the
Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear
a son [genuine humanity], and she will call His name Immanuel [God with us].”
So here there is a clear indication in the Old Testament that God would be
united with humanity in the person of the Messiah. Isaiah 9:6 NASB
“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government
will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father [Correctly, Father of
eternity, a designation of His eternal attributes], Prince of Peace.” There are
four titles in that verse and they are only applied to deity in the Old
Testament. Further, the prophesies in the Old Testament define the birthplace
of Messiah. Micah 5:2 NASB “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, {Too} little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His
goings forth are from long ago, From the days of
eternity.” The fulfilment of these prophesies is given in Matthew 1:18 NASB
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been
betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child
by the Holy Spirit. [19] And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not
wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. [20] But when he
had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,
‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the
Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. [21] She will bear a
Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their
sins.’ [22] Now all this took place to fulfill what
was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: [23] ‘BEHOLD, THE
VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME
IMMANUEL,’
which translated means, ‘GOD WITH US’.” John 1:14 NASB “And the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
Father, full of grace and truth.” 1 Timothy 3:16 NASB “By common
confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the
flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels,
Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.”
Hebrews 2:14 NASB “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and
blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He
might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.”
Philippians 2:5-9 NASB “Have this attitude in yourselves which was
also in Christ Jesus, [6] who, although He existed in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied Himself, taking
the form of a bond-servant, {and} being made in the likeness of men. [8] Being
found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross. [9] For this reason also, God highly
exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, [10] so
that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on
earth and under the earth, [11] and that every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The incarnation had two purposes. The
first was salvation. Jesus Christ had to be true humanity to die as our
substitute. But what is more important for this epistle is that Jesus Christ
was true humanity not just to die for our sins but in order to exemplify for us
and set the precedent for the spiritual life of the church age. If He is not
true humanity than He could not handle the problems, the testings, the
temptations, the adversities in life on the same resources that we do. But
Jesus is true humanity in order to demonstrate for us the power of God the Holy
Spirit, so that no matter what we face in life, no matter what the problem is,
Jesus Christ has faced it all, and on the basis of the filling of the Holy
Spirit and the application of doctrine from the Word of God Jesus Christ was
able to face that, yet without sin.