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The First Epistle of John Chapter 1 The Message of the Gospel 1Jn 1:1-3 This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and our hands have touched (concerning the word of life --and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us). What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ). In his first epistle, the apostle John has a message to share with his readers; and if a message is to be conveyed, one might well wish to know who the message is from, who is the originator of it. As an apostle of Christ, John had no doubt as to the origin of the message which he had believed and which he preached. It was not the invention of a new religion or a message about a new God. Rather it was the manifestation of Him who was from the beginning. The New Covenant has continuity with the Old, for the Creator is also the redeemer. He who was from eternity, the creator of all things (Gen 1:1) is the same one who had recently appeared among men and whom the apostles proclaimed. The ancient of days is the baby of Bethlehem. Nowhere in his writings does John directly refer to Christ being born of a virgin – yet again and again he emphasises the result of that virgin birth; for John wishes to introduce his readers to a man, Christ Jesus, who had no human origin. Jesus did not derive his descent from any man, but was God’s son by eternal generation. Later in his epistle, John spells out the way in which this eternal creative Word was manifested – i.e. in the flesh (1 John 4:2), that is, in human form, as a man. It was as a man this Word who is God (John 1:1) was heard, seen, looked at and touched by the apostles – and yet at all times He remained the everlasting Word. John proclaims a Jesus who is both fully human and fully divine. As D. Martin Lloyd Jones puts it ‘In Christ is the fusion of two natures without confusion’. Jesus did not empty himself of divine attributes in order to become a man – the fullness of God dwelt in him in bodily form (Col. 2:9) and to see him was to see the father (John 14:9). At the incarnation Christ’s glory may have appeared veiled, but it was not diminished. Nor did Jesus the man attain to Godhead after his death and resurrection, for he was the Word from the beginning, that is, prior to creation. John could claim a personal experience of Christ, a close proximity to the Lord – yet he said that the reason he proclaimed the gospel was that others might share the same personal relationship with Jesus Christ which he himself had. Although we have not known Jesus walking, talking, eating and drinking with us in the way that John knew him, this is no barrier to our knowing him just as intimately as John at the time he wrote his epistle, for: