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Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:1-7; 4:8
This chapter is the first in a series of several on the first Epistle of John.
The writings of John have a unique position in the Bible. He wrote one Gospel, three Epistles, and the book of Revelation. The New Testament writings as a whole can be similarly categorized: the Gospels, the Epistles, and Revelation. It is noteworthy that each of these three sections concludes with one of John’s writings. The final word, even in conversation, is generally the decisive word. Thus, in the writings of John we have the final word of the whole revelation of the Bible.
The Gospel of John deals with the matter of life and building. Life is wonderful and profound, but it is not the goal. It is the way to reach the goal, God’s building.
The first two chapters of the Bible deal with creation. The last two chapters picture for us the holy city, New Jerusalem. This city is a building. By considering the beginning and the ending, we can see that the goal of God’s creation is a building. In creation God called things not being as being so that He might have the materials for His building.
In between the beginning and the ending, the theme is life. You recall that on the final day of creation God created man (Gen. 1:27, 31). God was pleased with everything He had made, and He blessed man. In 2:8 we are told that God planted a garden in which He put the man whom He had formed. This garden was part of God’s creation; as yet, no city had been built. In the midst of this garden, among many other trees, there was the tree of life. What the fruit of this tree looked like we do not know. We can identify a peach from a peach tree, but to know what life is, is not easy. Nonetheless, we know that we have life; describing it may be difficult, but in our experience we know what it is. Let us rejoice that there is the tree of life, even though we cannot precisely define what life is.
Even our human life is too mysterious to be defined. A table has no life, but a man does. How to explain this mysterious element we do not know. The life referred to in the tree of life is far more mysterious than human life. As most of us know, in Greek there are three different terms for life. The physical life is called bios. In addition we have a psuche, a psychological life. The third kind of life is called zoe, the life of the tree of life.
In John 10:10 the Lord Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly.” The Greek word for life used here is zoe. In the next verse He said, “The good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” Life here is psuche. The Lord Jesus laid down His psuche life to accomplish redemption for us and thus to make the eternal zoe life available to us. Nothing can destroy the zoe life. Jesus as a human being died on the cross, laying down His human psychological life in our stead, in order to impart to us the zoe life.
This life, denoted by zoe, is the divine life; in actuality, it is nothing less than God Himself. It is not simply matter but the very divine person, the eternal Being. “(And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us)” (1 John 1:2). This very life was beheld and handled by the apostles (v. 1). From the context it is clear that the life is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the first verse the life is called “the Word of life,” and in verse 2, “the life” and “the eternal life.”
Life, then, is the eternal Being. This divine person is what lies between God’s creation in the beginning and God’s building at the end. This life is the means or procedure through which God will accomplish His purpose. In the New Jerusalem, God’s eternal goal, the tree of life appears again (Rev. 22:2). It grows on both sides of a flowing river. This vivid picture tells us that even in eternity the tree of life will be the process by which the city is maintained. By the time we reach Revelation 21, the city has been produced, but the keeping element for all eternity will be the flowing supply of this life. God’s eternal building will be maintained with the very life grown in the flowing river. Even in the New Jerusalem life is not the goal but the process by which the goal is reached and maintained.
Even now we are all in that flow! Furthermore, that flow is within us! From the day we accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior, there has been something flowing within us. Even in coming to a meeting, we are brought by a flow, not by ourselves. This river within is the source of our strength and joy. The flow within us, and the flow we are in, indicates that we are all in the process of God’s building. Whether we love the Lord or are careless, sooner or later we shall all be processed into the New Jerusalem. When we get there, some of us may be surprised that we ever made it. We may wonder how we managed to arrive along with so many others whose love for the Lord seemed so much stronger than ours. We may be assured that the flow we are in is not at a standstill! It is a process, which will someday take us all to the New Jerusalem.
This flow began in Genesis 2:10, where we are told that “a river went forth from Eden to water the garden” where the tree of life was. A river is mentioned again in Psalm 36:8: “You cause them to drink of the river of Your pleasures.” In Ezekiel 47 the river again appears. When we come to John 7:38, the one river has become rivers: “He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” At the end of the Bible the river is still flowing.
All of us are in this flowing river. Even if we want to sidestep it, we have been caught and have no way out. We have been ensnared by the hunter! We are the fish with the hook in our mouth! Gospel preachers are hunters. The Lord told Peter that he would be a fisher of men (Matt. 4:19). Surely that word was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when the fisherman caught three thousand fish (Acts 2:41)! I got caught on that hook fifty years ago. In spite of struggling my hardest to get free, I only became more and more trapped. This is the story of all of us. Even if we backslide, the hook will only sink in the more deeply. Our final destiny will not be the lake of fire but the city of water. We shall be in that city of living water.
How are we going to get there? There is no plane to take and no transportation charge to pay! We are being carried there in the flow of this river. Every day, with the passage of time, we are being brought closer and closer to that city. Just as an airplane brings us to our destination even while we are sleeping, so we may be unaware that this flow is carrying us nearer and nearer to the New Jerusalem. When we wake up, we shall be there!
Life is the process we are under. This life is fully unfolded to us in the twenty-one chapters of the Gospel of John. Why, then, did John still write the three Epistles, an additional seven chapters? Many basic factors are unveiled only in these Epistles and are not mentioned elsewhere.
No doubt we all have life, but the process of life does not happen overnight. We are not saved one day and in the New Jerusalem the next. Hundreds of chapters are sandwiched between the first two chapters of the Bible and the last two! Between creation and building, many complications arise in the process of life. There are joys and sorrows, songs and lamentations. Thus, after the Gospel of John, we need the Epistles of John.
Only here do we have a saying like this: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us); that which we have seen and heard we report also to you that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3).
The preaching of the gospel, these verses indicate, is the declaration of life as a person to people. It is not the passing on of doctrine or knowledge but the proclamation of a person who is life.
The purpose of this declaration is not that its hearers may have life, as is the case with the Gospel of John (10:10); rather, it is that they may have fellowship with the apostles, whose fellowship “is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” In this chapter we are considering the mystery of life. But in 1 John 1:3 we have another mystery, the mystery of fellowship. What does the term fellowship mean? It is not easy to come up with a satisfactory definition. Fellowship is the flowing of the life we have received. Life is a person, the Son of God. When we receive this life, it begins to flow within us. Like the blood flowing in our veins, it is never at a standstill. All the time that we are going about our daily living, the blood keeps circulating. Physical exercise keeps us healthy by further stimulating our circulation. If our circulation stops, we are finished. Fellowship is the scriptural term for circulation. Our eyes are in the “fellowship,” as are our shoulders and our feet. All the members of our body are in the fellowship; the blood circulates to all of them.
Fellowship is also like the current of electricity. When electricity is in motion, it is called a current. If you check your electrical meter when your appliances are operating, you will see that the current moves when you use the electricity. If you do not use any electricity, there is no flow of the current. The meter has nothing to register. When the appliances are switched on, however, they receive the current of electricity. That current is the fellowship. If you are not “switched on” and partaking of the flow of “electricity,” you are not in the fellowship. Like an appliance, your functioning results from your participating in the current.
The Lord Jesus as the divine person is life to us. When we receive Him, He comes into us, and we are put into Him. This life then circulates as fellowship. The life received issues in fellowship. The apostles declared life “that you also may have fellowship.” Many Christians do not realize that once they are saved, they are in a fellowship. Fellowship is simply the flowing of the divine life within us. When life stands still, it is life; when it flows, it is fellowship.
In the Gospel of John we are told that the incarnated Word tabernacled among us, “full of grace and reality” (1:14). When we receive this Word who became flesh, we receive grace and truth (reality). “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (v. 16).
In the first Epistle of John, however, the words grace and truth are replaced. Instead of grace, we are told that God is love (4:8). Instead of truth, we are told that God is light (1:5). Suppose we have a pair of chopsticks. One is called grace at the tip and love at the other end. The other chopstick is called truth at the tip and light at the other end. When we pick up the chopsticks and look at the tips from which we eat, we see grace and truth. If we look at the other end, however, we shall see love and light. Grace is at one end, the one facing us, and love is at the other end, facing God. The other chopstick has truth on the end facing us, while light is the tip pointed toward God.
When God came to us in the person of the Son, He brought grace and truth. After we receive these, we return to God in the Son and find love and light. The Gospel of John presents us with the issue, grace and truth. His Epistle brings us to the source, where the Father is, and there we find love and light. When we receive the Son, we receive life and enjoy grace and truth. This life flows in us as fellowship, bringing us back to the Father, where we enjoy love and light, the source of grace and truth.
We enjoy grace and find it most sweet. But we must go on to love, which is deeper and more hidden. Grace is the expression; its source is love. These two are one. If we enjoy love, grace is included.
The same is true of truth and light. At one end, the end of expression, it is truth, which means reality or realization. At the other end, the source, it is light. When we are holding the truth, by implication we are also holding the light. If we go on in the fellowship back to its source, we shall see that there is not only truth or realization but light as well. To be in the light means that we have the source of truth or reality.
The Bible does not say that God or Christ is grace. Nor does it say that God is truth, though it does tell us that Christ is the truth (John 14:6). But that God is love and light 1 John clearly states. We are also told that God is Spirit (John 4:24). Love, light, and Spirit are all common terms, yet how can we explain the difference in their usage here? Spirit refers to God’s essence; God is Spirit just as a book is paper. That God is love means that God’s disposition is love.
God is love. Even if you beg Him to hate, or tell Him that you do not want His love, He cannot be other than love. That is the way He is.
That God is light denotes His function in expressing Himself. Light is what shines and illumines. Without it, we are in darkness, deprived of any positive realization. Once the light comes, however, this shining issues in realization. We can see people, distinguish colors, and identify objects. How do we realize the truth of God? It is by His being light. When He shines in us, we realize Him as reality. Reality comes from the light’s shining.
When we read the Bible, we find the truth. In Romans 6, for instance, we read that our old man has been crucified with Christ in order that we might be freed from sin. This is the truth, or the reality. Our reading, however, does not bring us the experience. We were taught to reckon that we were dead so that we might experience the truth of Romans 6. Reckoning resulted only in our being more alive than before. We felt that our efforts to know and experience this truth were futile.
There is another way. If we are in the fellowship and allow that fellowship to bring us into God, there in the source God as light shines over us. Under His shining, we have a realization. This is the genuine reality, resulting not from reading the Bible but from being enlightened.
Suppose a sinner hears the gospel and believes in the Lord Jesus. The Lord comes into him as a living person. This newly saved one immediately senses the life flowing within him. His formerly unbearable situation seems to have faded away. The life flowing within sustains and strengthens him, making him feel joyous and free from any problems. This is the experience of grace. Along with it is the realization that the Lord Jesus is real and living. The thought of Jesus fills him with delight. He enjoys what the Lord is to him, and he has the realization of the reality of Jesus.
While we are in this happy condition, we find our prayer spontaneously going out to the Father: “O Abba, Father! You are so good! How I thank You for forgiving my sins! Now You are with me. You are my life.” We were not intending to address the Father, but there was an inner directing that brought us to Him. As our prayer continues, the sense increases that we are in the Father’s presence. We wonder if we are in heaven or still on earth. There comes a sense of being sustained by something even finer, deeper, and sweeter than grace.
We have touched the source of grace, which is love. The grace which strengthens and upholds us is the expression of that love. Through prayer we have been brought into God. Not only has He entered into us, but we have been brought back into Him through fellowship. Abiding here in God we taste not only grace but love, the root of grace, as well.
The New Testament, strictly speaking, nowhere says that this love, which is God Himself, does anything for us. When Paul entreated the Lord to take away the thorn in his flesh, the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:7-9). Whatever Paul’s suffering, grace kept and sustained him. He tells us further how grace operated in him and for him in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain, but, on the contrary, I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I but the grace of God which is with me.” Grace is spoken of as accomplishing things on Paul’s behalf, but we do not find love referred to in this way.
Most of us are content to remain in the expression rather than come to the source. We testify to others how gracious the Lord is to us. We used to get angry with our wife if she simply looked at us in the wrong way. Now, even if she yells and screams at us, we are still happy and can praise the Lord. What grace He has given us! Yes, this is His grace, but we can go deeper and be brought into God, the source. Here we shall touch love, which is deeper and sweeter than the grace that sustains us.
As we are under the shining, God penetrates our very being. We are enjoying not the truth but God Himself as the light shining over us. Here we realize all that God is to us. We are in the hidden place, the secret place of the Most High. Here we are rooted in nothing less than God Himself. God as the source of grace is love to us. God as the source of all realization is light to us. We enjoy Him as the source. Unlike most Christians, who are satisfied with the outward expression as grace and truth, we are at the source enjoying love and light, no longer limited to their external manifestation as grace and truth.
This shining occurs within the fellowship, which is the flowing of Christ as life within us. It is this flowing that brings us to the source of grace and of truth. Here God shines whatever He is into us. This brings us the realization. We enjoy God as love, the source of grace. We participate in God as light, the source of truth. This enjoyment and participation is the outcome of the fellowship, that life which is always flowing within us.
