Fellowship With God / Part 2

Thru the Bible Radio Network
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There’s another beginning that makes the one in Genesis look like it happened yesterday:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

That is the beginning which is the beginning, because you and I can go back in our thinking as far as we want to. You can move creation back billions and billions of years and put down your pegs, and wherever you put them down He comes out of eternity past, the Ancient of Days, to meet you. He’s already past tense. “In the beginning was [not is but was] the Word” – imperfect tense, continued action. He moves out of eternity to meet you anywhere you want to go into eternity past. He is the God of eternity.

But John also said that in time “the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14), and that’s the beginning that we have in 1 John. That is the incarnation. He’s referring to when the Lord Jesus Christ came down to this earth about 2000 years ago and took upon Himself our humanity.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness…). (1 John 1:1, 2)

Essentially, John was saying, “For three years I knew Him. I listened to Him, and I saw Him.” It is quite obvious that here John is meeting the first heresy that arose in the church, which was Gnosticism. The question of the Gnostics was not so much about the deity of Christ as about the humanity of Christ. They were sure of the deity of the Lord Jesus, but they questioned when He became God and when He deleted it. So John said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes.” We get most of our information through the eye-gate – that’s the reason television is so potent. Through the eye-gate and the ear-gate you and I get our information, so John said, “We heard Him and we’ve seen Him with our eyes.”

But he didn’t stop there:

…Which we have looked upon… (1 John 1:1)

The word “looked” is an altogether different word from the word for “see.” It is theao, and we get our word theater from that. The theater is a place where you sit and look, not just with a passing glance but with a steady gaze for a couple of hours. John was saying that they not only saw Him, but they gazed upon Him.

He said, “For three years we looked upon Him. We know who He was. We know that deity didn’t come upon Him at His baptism and didn’t leave Him at the cross. We know that He is God, that He was born yonder in Bethlehem, and even as a little baby lying helplessly on Mary’s bosom, He could have spoken the universe we live in out of existence at any moment.”

I like the way the earliest creed has it: He is very God of very God, and He is very man of very man. He is not any more man because He is God, and He is not any less God because He is man. He is the God-man, the theanthropic Person who is unique in the history of this world. May I say that He is the One John was talking about when he said, “We gazed upon Him.”