As a Christian, do you ever find yourself wondering if you’ve backed the right horse? I do.
We’re so aware these days of all the world’s religions. Are we Christians by an accident of our birth, brought up in a Christian country or in a Christian home? Is the Christian faith better than any of the alternatives? Does it actually put us into contact with the real God? Or is it a phoney – a bit like a dodgy spiritualist who makes us feel better by pressing the right buttons but it’s all one big con? Does following Jesus actually do us any good at all?
Or perhaps you’re here this morning as someone who is not yet a Christian. If so, I could quite understand if you felt a bit lost in the marketplace of religion. You see shopping used to so easy, didn’t it? You want butter, you pick up the butter. Now you’ve got butter, margarine, low fat, rich in Omega 3, sunflower based, olive based, extra spreadable, extra soft or creamy texture. Where are we to start? And finding a religion can feel a bit like that. The Christian one sounds good. But with so many others to choose from, which one do you try first?
Today we’re starting a journey through the letter of 1 John together. John tells us why he wrote his letter towards the end. Look with me at chapter 5 and verse 13: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” John wrote his letter so that Christian people like us might be sure that what we have is eternal life.
He wants us to know that believing in Jesus really does give us the very best life there is.
We’re just looking at the first 4 verses this morning, and I want to draw out 3 things about the life that Jesus brings us. I want us to be sure that we really do have life.
1. Life from the very beginning
The first thing John tells us is that the life Jesus gives us is life from the very beginning. Life from the very beginning.
He starts off by saying: “That which was from the beginning”. John is talking about something that goes right back to the very beginning. And in starting his letter like that, he is deliberately echoing his own gospel. You may remember that John chapter 1 also begins: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” And both John 1 and 1 John 1 are deliberately echoing Genesis 1, the very first chapter of the Bible: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1 tells us that God made everything that exists. But John 1 and 1 John 1 would add that God was not acting alone. He always had his word with him, because it’s his word. God, and his personal word, together made everything there is.
Look back at verse 1. That which was from the beginning, … concerning the word of life. The word that was with God in the beginning was a life-giving word. It was God’s word that gave life to everything in the beginning. Or look at verse 2. What is it that John and the other apostles want to tell us about? We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father.
And from what John goes on to say, it becomes clear that this life-giving word was God’s Son, who was to be born as the person of Jesus.
What John is saying is that the story of Jesus does not start with his birth. It goes back before that. He goes back before that. Right back. Right back to the dawn of time. And before that. Before God made even one thing, God the Son was with his Father, as his life-giving word. When the time came for Father, Son and Spirit to make the world, God the Son was the one who breathed life into every living being.
It takes your breath away even trying to think of it. If you meet Jesus, you’re meeting the person who isn’t just alive – he gives the life that makes everyone of us alive. And this is the person, John says, that is offering to give us life. Not just the breath we breathe, but the chance to know God, the chance to be fully alive, the chance to be what we were always made to be.
And if we get that from the person who gave us life in the first place, who breathed breath into every species, we can be absolutely sure it gets no better than that!
When you buy a car, the manufacturer recommends that you get one of their agents to service it for you. The argument goes that if they made it, they also know who to tune it, tweak it, mend it, get the very best out of it. Now we all know that may not always be true, especially for a mass-produced ordinary car. Lots of other mechanics may have learnt the skill.
But if you had a custom-engineered, one-off piece, designed just for you – the kind of car that someone like me could only dream of – it’s certainly true that you’ll get the best out of it if the person who made it for you gets to look after it and put the best vroom into it.
The human race, the animal kingdom, the cosmos, your body and mine, are not off-the shelf pieces that just anyone can give you the best out of. All kinds of people may have some good tips, but if the one who designed you in the first place comes and offers you life with a capital L, the chance to be fully alive, you can be certain that what you’re being offered is the best there is.
There’s the first thing about the life that Jesus brings us. It’s life from the very beginning.
2. Life that can be touched
The second thing John tells us about the life that Jesus brings is that it’s life that can be touched. Life that can be touched.
You can’t miss this can you? Verse 1: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands.” Verse 2: “The life was made manifest, and we have seen it.”
This life, God the Son, with the Father for all eternity, has now appeared. He’s become visible. And he’s done so in the person of Jesus.
Which means that the eternal life we’re being offered has texture, size and shape. It’s eternal life with a shoe size. Eternal life with an eye colour that almost certainly was not blue.
The Christian faith is not just a set of ideas, a way to think about life, some principles to guide you. It’s nothing less than the eternal life-giving God becoming a human being, walking about amongst us, and offering us the chance to know him.
And Jesus chose 12 men who could be with him throughout this time. They were all there right from the moment Jesus was baptised, and they all witnessed the resurrection first hand. In Luke chapter 24, Jesus appeared to them. And in verse 38 he said: “‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marvelling, he said to them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.”
The life that is offered to us is a life that has been touched, looked at, gazed on, listened to, poked and prodded. Life that can be touched.
You see, you can’t beat first-hand experience can you? Who here went to the opening ceremony for the Olympics? We watched it on the telly, but it’s just not the same as hearing the songs live, watching the fireworks light up, smelling the cordite, feeling the exhilaration every time the crowd cheered.
Jesus apostles had that first-hand experience. A life that can be touched.
3. Life that we can enjoy
And third, John tells us that Jesus brings us life that we can enjoy. Life that we can enjoy.
Those first apostles had a unique privilege. They ate, drank, walked and talked with the eternal Son of God. That gave them the chance to have fellowship with God the Son, and through knowing him to know God the Father also.
What did they do with that privilege? They didn’t keep it to themselves. It was far too exciting for that. Verse 3: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
They didn’t keep it to themselves. They proclaimed it to us, so that we might share in what they enjoy. And then they wrote it down so that there might be a permanent record down the ages, so that people in all periods of history can have the same kind of life-giving relationship with the triune God that they enjoyed so much. That is why we have the New Testament.
And nothing would give that band of disciples greater joy than knowing that people like us can share what they had.
There is no joy like knowing God. Nothing like it. The end of our paragraph says that the destination of all this is nothing less than completed joy. Total joy. We can’t have this yet, because we don’t know God perfectly. But one day Jesus will return, and then we will know God fully. When that happens, our joy will be complete, perfect and full.
But in order for us to have the exhilarated joy of knowing God perfectly, we needed the people who witnessed this first-hand to pass it on to us.
If they hadn’t done so, we would not be able to know God. The Christian message is not that those of us who are clever enough can have some good thoughts about God. It’s not that life is like some kind of Easter egg hunt, where we can go through life looking for the ingenious clues left for us by the master crossword setter, and if we find enough we might get close to meeting him.
Some people say to me that they don’t need to come to church to know God; they can go for a walk on the hills to meet him. Well it’s quite true that you don’t need to come to church to know God. But you won’t find him on the hills either. You need to come to Jesus, the Son of God, the eternal life who was with God in the beginning. We do not have the chance to touch, listen and see, but those who did have reliably passed that experience onto us. We can know God the Father as surely as if we’d met his Son on earth for ourselves.
A life that we can enjoy.
Conclusion
John has taken us on a sweeping journey from eternity past to eternity future.
In eternity past, God the Son was the life, and he gave life to everyone and everything that now has it. If only we could know him for ourselves!
And then over a period of 30 years, some 2000 years ago, God the Son lived on earth as a man. He was seen, heard, touched and witnessed by a band of 12 man.
That group then proclaimed all this, and they wrote it down, so that people like us might know God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ as well.
But that’s not the end of the story. One day Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will live on this earth again, and we will see him for ourselves. Then our joy will be complete, because we will have life itself, life that we never dreamt possible.
We don’t need to be anxious about backing the wrong horse. We don’t need to worry about choosing the wrong religion. We can follow life himself that came into reach so that he could be touched, and we can have an unrivalled joy for all eternity.