02.01.01. 1John 1:1- 4 The word of life . .

THE EPISTLES OF ST- JOHN § 1. 1 John 1:1-4 THE WORD OF LIFE
EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS

St. John strikes the key-note of his Epistle by declaring his intention of communicating to us an experience of his own and of his fellowdisciples which concerns what he calls “the word of life” What is the meaning of this expression? It is something of this kind.

Mankind finds itself living and struggling to live doing things and suffering things in order to live. As soon as it gains leisure and capacity to think, it finds itself asking the question — What is the meaning of life? Is there any purpose in all this striving and struggling? Has it any adequate end? What kind of life is a good life? We are asking these questions to-day as vigorously as ever. To the good Jew, however, there was no doubt about the answer to these questions. The Jew was intensely practical. He had none of the artistic or intellectual gifts of the Greek. But he understood, or was capable of being made to understand, the meaning of life and of religion as a way of life. The ’ most impressive utterances of the Old Testament are about religion as a way of life. “Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding?
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living...

God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof... When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: then did he see it, and declare it; he established it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” “ He that would love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile, and let him turn away from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their supplication.’’

Here is indeed a clear doctrine of the good of life, and of morality and religion as alone showing the way. Now, the Jew’s conviction of the good of life and of the way to blessedness was based upon what seemed to him to be the surest ground— upon the divine word. Through countless prophets and commissioned teachers God had assured man of His good purpose and taught him how to co-operate. Thus ’’the word of God” in the Old Testament is emphatically a “word of life.’’ And St. John was a devout Jew. In his Gospel he shows us, even in minutest details, his sense that Christ came not to destroy or even to originate, but to fulfil what was written in the old Scriptures. But in his Epistle he never quotes or refers to the Old Testament. His mind is wholly fixed on the disclosure of God’s purpose for man in Jesus Christ, which had fulfilled and superseded all that went before it. This, to him, had given “ the word of life “ a quite new meaning and distinction. The teaching of Jesus Christ had indeed been, like that of the Old Testament prophets, a “word of life.” “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth”; “The life is more than the food”; “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”; “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” St. John’s Gospel in particular is full of teaching about the true life. But it was much more than a message about life delivered by word of mouth. It was more even than a perfect example of human life. The disciples had been led to believe that under the conditions of a true human nature, in the intelligible lineaments of a human character, Jesus of Nazareth, there had been disclosed to them the life which is eternal and indestructible, the very life of God. This is the note which is struck at once in our Epistle. They had heard Him with their ears, they had seen Him with their eyes, through all the phases of His struggling mortal life. They had been witnesses of His death. Under the shock of this seemingly disastrous failure their faith in Him had failed. But under the experience of His resurrection it had been restored and more than restored.

They had gazed upon Him and handled Him with their hands. after He was risen. And the summary result of all this great experience is what had given its meaning to St. John’s phrase “the Word of life.’’ In the man Christ Jesus slowly but surely John and his fellows had been led to see the manifestation of the eternal life of God, Men had always been disposed to believe that behind the transitory veil of nature and the manifold types of evanescent life, there was something eternal. But of what sort who could say? “No man had seen God at any time.” But now “the only begotten Son” or “God only begotten which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” He with whom in familiar intercourse they had had converse, and of whom they were commissioned to be witness, was eternally with the Father, His own very life. This is St. John’s “message of life”, and because it is of such incomparable importance to every man, so he and his fellows who had enjoyed this original experience could find satisfaction in nothing except in imparting it. For the fellowship with God in Christ into which they had been admitted was not to pass away. The Church, indeed, of which they were the first members, existed for no other purpose than to perpetuate both their witness and their experience. It was to invite men through its open doors into a human fellowship which they would find to be not human only but divine — the fellowship of very God — the fellowship of the Father and the Son. That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ: and these things we write, that our joy may be fulfilled.

Notes

1. “The word of life.’’ — “In the prologue to his Gospel St. John used “the Word” — “that is, the utterance or self-expression of God — as a personal name for the eternal Son, who was incarnate in Jesus Christ. But elsewhere in the Gospel “the word’’ is used in its more ordinary sense of the message (John 2:22, John 4:41, etc.)i and it is, I think, so used here in the Epistle, in spite of the fact that the prologue of the Epistle is so full of reminiscences of the prologue to the Gospel. I think it is so because “the word or message of life “ (cp. Acts 5:20, “the words of this life”) is a much more natural expression than “the Word of Life,” meaning the divine person who is the Life. I have already explained the significance of the expression as a description of the divine message which constitutes the substance of the Bible-which ’’in divers portions and divers manners’’ had been in old times spoken by God through prophets and now in the end had been fulfilled through one who was more than a prophet, even the only-begotten Son.

2. The experience of St. John and his fellowdisciples is described as “that we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld [or gazed upon], and our hands handled.” This is what constitutes the record of the Gospels in general, and of the Fourth Gospel in particular. In view of the fact recorded by St. Luke that our Lord gave Himself to be “ handled “ by the disciples on the evening of the resurrection (“handle me and see”), and eight days afterwards similarly, as St. John records, offered Himself to St. Thomas, who had been absent on the first occasion, that he might feel His hands and thrust his hand into His side; in view also of the stress laid upon the repeated sights of the risen Lord vouchsafed to the disciples, it is probable that the last two phrases which are coupled together, “that which we beheld [or gazed upon], and our hands handled” refer specially to the appearances of the risen Christ. And the conclusion reached as a result of all these experiences is that in Jesus of Nazareth they had to do not with any transitory or partial phase of life— not merely with an exceptionally good man— but with something eternal and universal, “’ the eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.”

3. He does not say the “eternal life of the Father,” but the “eternal life which was with the Father” as he says in the prologue of the Gospel “the Word was with God.” The life which they had beheld in Jesus was the life of a “person” distinguishable from the Father, but in eternal fellowship with Him, one in whom the Father, before ever the world was, found His joy and satisfaction — who was and is the Father’s very life. The doctrine of distinctions of persons in the unity of the Godhead was based upon the experience of the disciples.

4. This momentous conclusion about God’s self-disclosure in Christ is, so to speak, articulated into its various meanings and aspects in the Epistle, and its grounds are recorded in the Gospel The grounds consist in a temporary experience of a few men extending over a few years; but the experience of divine fellowship, into which the original witnesses were thus admitted, is to be permanent, and it is the function of the Church, or of the Holy Spirit in the Church, both to declare it and to perpetuate it. This is what St. John means when, some sixty years after the Resurrection, he expresses his desire to admit to the full apostolic fellowship those for whom he is now writing. The world in which St. John was now living was utterly different from the Jewish world of his youth. He was at Ephesus, not at Jerusalem or in Galilee. And Ephesus Greek and Asiatic, was as different as could be from the towns of Galilee or from Jerusalem. None the less, the old apostolic fellowship is as fully meant for his present associates as for those of old times. The Church of Jesus Christ is to bear its old witness in new surroundings; it is to exhibit a human fellowship into which all men are to be made welcome (“that ye may have fellowship with us”); and therein to make the glorious discovery that the human fellowship into which they have been admitted is also divine — “yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.’’ The distinctive note of St. John’s mysticism, as has been already remarked, is that it is an internal intuition of spiritual truth based upon and moulded by external experiences or facts.

It can, therefore, be a corporate and not merely individual conviction, because the facts were common to all. It can be the conviction of a whole society; and it is only through fellowship in the society that the witness to the facts can be realized in its true meaning. Thus the comment of the Venerable Bede — cited by Westcott — is noticeable: “Blessed John shows plainly that all who desire to have fellowship with God should first be united to the fellowship of the Church/’ St. John or St. Paul would hardly have understood our latter-day fear of “putting the Church in place of Christ.” We must indeed recognize with all sadness how the sins and shortcomings of the Church — in a word, its worldliness — have led to this fear and in great measure justified it. But, as I say, St. John and St. Paul would hardly have understood it. For what is the Church but the human fellowship in which, by the Spirit, Christ is found — what it but His body? And how can you put the body in place of the person? or how can the fellowship of God be realized except in the brotherhood of men — the particular brotherhood which He has appointed as its instrument?

5. I cannot doubt that some of those whom I should most wish to help to feel the force of St. John’s witness will say, on studying the opening words of his Epistle, that they are not ready for it — that its assumptions are too many or too great for them. I would remind such hesitating believers that St. John’s witness is the result of a prolonged experience, of which he is here contributing to us the conclusion. The grounds of this conclusion are to be found in the Gospels taken together. It is a question for examination whether those Gospels do really give an authentic account of the apostolic testimony, and whether, if so, that testimony can be accepted as true. But the study of this Epistle can do much for us, even before we have reached the solid ground of Christian conviction. It can make us feel how truly the Christian conviction is a message of life, and how deep and enduring its answer is to the profoundest needs and questionings of men. And it is in this spirit that I would invite still sceptical minds to the thoughtful and, if it may be prayerful consideration of its contents.