1 John 1:1-4: “The Word of Life Was Made Manifest”1
By Rev. Brian T. Cochran
Introduction
The Puritan Thomas Watson once wrote, “What king would be willing to wear sackcloth over his
cloth of gold? but Christ did not disdain to take our flesh. Oh the love of Christ! Had not Christ
been made flesh, we had been made a curse; had he not been incarnate, we had been incarcerate,
and had been forever in prison.”2 Beloved, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is of the essence of
the good news. And it is this truth that was being attacked in John’s day. This week we begin a
new series on the letters of 1, 2 and 3 John and it is important that we know a bit of the historical
background of these letters if we want to understand it.
The case is overwhelming that these three letters were written by John the Apostle, the same
author of the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation, around the early 90’s A.D. 1, 2, and 3
John were most likely letters sent to multiple churches (and an individual) somewhere in the area
of Ephesus which is modern day Turkey.
The New Testament books were written for various occasions that had arisen within the early
church. John writes these letters with great earnest because false teachers had arisen within these
Ephesian churches and were seeking to lead the people of God astray. These men were making
boastful false claims about the truth. Most likely these men taught an early version of what
scholars would later call Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a name that comes from the greek word
gnosis, which simply means “knowledge.” And the reason they were called Gnostics is because
they claimed to have discovered a secret knowledge through some sort of religious experience
usually facilitated by an enlightened teacher. And you see this sort of knowledge had the
tendency to puff up in arrogance because the one who possessed it was one of the “insiders” who
supposedly had discovered the truth. And many Gnostics claimed to have discovered secret
teachings of Jesus and thus many apocryphal books were written shortly after this time, like The
Gospel of Thomas, which advanced Gnostic heresy under the name of an apostle, but they are
obviously forgeries. This is still prevalent today in books that claim to have discovered the
secrets of Jesus’ sayings or in the supposed secrets that Dan Brown reveals in The Da Vinci
Code.
Well what then were the central claims of the Gnostics? The central tenet of Gnosticism is that
there is an opposition between spirit and matter. Spirit is good and matter is evil. By spirit they
meant that which is immaterial and invisible. Those things which cannot be perceived through
sense perception such as hearing and seeing and touching. By matter they obviously then meant
all of the physical, material things in this world which can be perceived through the senses. Now
the reason this sort of claim is so at odds with the Christian faith is because it goes against the
1 This sermon may be copied and distributed as long as the content is not changed, due credit is given to the author,
and no money is made in the distribution. Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church
(URCNA), Regina, SK. More sermon manuscripts and sermon audio can be found at www.redeemerchurch.ca.
2 Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, (Reprint, Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 195.
2
Biblical doctrine of Creation, the Biblical doctrine of the incarnation and the Biblical doctrine of
the resurrection of the body. C.S. Lewis once said, “God likes matter, he invented it.”
And you see the Gnostic false teacher could not accept the incarnation of Jesus. Because for
them, how in the world could the eternal Son of God who is pure spirit take on an evil body?
And so Gnosticism explains the incarnation by saying that Jesus wasn’t really God. He only
seemed to be God. Thus, they separated Jesus the man, from Christ who was God. Christ came
down upon Jesus at his baptism and was with him until the cross where he then left him to suffer
and die as a mere man.
And in fact there is a man in John’s day named Cerinthus who taught this heresy and was known
as an opponent of John. We learn about Cerinthus from the historian Eusebius and from
Irenaeus, who quotes Polycarp as having said that, “John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe
at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing,
exclaiming ‘Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the
truth, is within.”3
John knew that men like Cerinthus were those ravenous wolves who Jesus spoke of in his day
that would come and attack the sheepfold. And John has some very strong statements about
them in his letters: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the
antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). John is the only author in the
New Testament who uses the name antichrist and on four occasions, all in 1 and 2 John he
applies the name antichrist to these Gnostic false teachers. The sad thing is that these false
teachers were once a part of the church. John says, “They went out from us, but they were not of
us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might
become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19).
Thus 1 John is clearly a polemical letter. But it is also pastoral. Some scholars believe that it is
in fact a sermon and that 2 and 3 John would have been cover letters to this sermon. And we see
it’s pastoral nature clearly throughout the letter. Throughout the letter he refers to the people in
these churches as his “Little children” (1 John 2:1, 12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4, 5:21). He looks at them
as a Father would his children. He is willing to fight for them and die for them for the sake of
their salvation and assurance. And the ultimate purpose of the letter is Christian assurance: “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” (1 John 5:13). In his gospel he has a similar purpose statement at the end: Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by
believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).
So John’s gospel is written that they may believe and that in believing they might have life.
Now in 1 John he writes that those who do believe would know and be assured that they do
indeed have eternal life. The two books complement each other well.
And what could be more important for us today than to have eternal life and to know that we
have eternal life? This is why I chose this book to preach on. It possesses a simple and
3 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, iii. 28.6; iv. 14.6; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, iii. 3.4.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
3
foundational message that we all need to hear as we begin our journey through the Scriptures
together over the years. Well with all of this in mind, notice with me then the preface to 1 John
which is our text this morning.
Theme: The Essence of the Gospel
1. Its Message Manifested
2. Its Message Proclaimed
3. Its Benefits Produced
1. The Essence of the Gospel: Its Message Manifested
In the words of one commentator, “These verses take us from eternity past to eternity future,
summarizing the gospel’s teaching about the Lord Jesus. He is the good news of the gospel; he
is the essence of the message proclaimed by the apostles.”4 Notice how John describes Jesus
Christ and the message that he brings and the message that he embodies.
He begins by saying, “That which was from the beginning.” This phrase hearkens back to the
prologue of John’s gospel, where he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). And it hearkens back to Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning,
God.” You see before anything ever existed in this created universe, God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Spirit dwelled in perfect fellowship with one another. This opening statement
in 1 John affirms the pre-existence of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who was and is and ever will
be the complete and perfect Son of God. In the words of the Nicene Creed, he is “God of God,
Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made.”
Jesus said in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Jesus prayed in John 17:5, “[Father]
give me the glory that I had before the world began” John continues the opening of his Gospel
by saying, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without
him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:2-3). Therefore, Jesus is, the eternal God,
the second person of the Trinity, the Lord, the great I AM, the Creator of all things, the one who
gives life and breath to all and the one to whom we all owe our existence and our worship. What
comfort it is to know that our Savior, Jesus Christ is God Almighty!
But beloved, we would have never known of our Savior if he had not been made manifest. And
this is what John is eager to say. And so he jumps right into it by boldly proclaiming, “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, concerning the word of life— the life was
made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which
was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we
proclaim also to you (vv. 1-3). Remember how I said in our introduction that Gnostics say that
spirit is good and matter is evil and that evil matter is anything which we can perceive with the
senses. Notice how that is exactly the opposite of what John says. He says that in Jesus Christ,
4 Joel Beeke, The Epistles of John, (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2006), 19.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
4
the eternal Son of God took on matter. He took on a body. The eternal experienced the
temporal. He was located in history!
John says, we heard him, we saw him and we touched him! And notice the progression of these
statements. Hearing is one thing. The Old Testament saints heard the voice of God. This
doesn’t in and of itself prove the incarnation. But it is one evidence.
But then John says that we saw him. And to strengthen this appeal he says that he and the
apostles saw him with their own eyes. It was not a vision of the inner self, which was the type of
vision that Gnostics would have espoused. This is the most important for John since he mentions
it four times in the first three verses. Seeing the risen Christ is what qualified him and the
apostles to be witnesses (Acts 1:21-2; cf. John 20).5
Furthermore, he says that he and the apostles touched him with their own bare hands. This is the
most intimate of all of these sense experiences that John had is that he touched Jesus. He leaned
upon Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:23). Furthermore, John records the account of Thomas
another one of the disciples who touched Jesus’ hands and feet when Jesus invited him to saying,
“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” (Luke 24:39; cf. John 20:24-28). In the words of Joel Beeke,
“John knew from personal experience that Jesus was no phantom, no ghost, no mere spirit. He
was a real man of flesh and blood. If you pricked Jesus with a needle, he would bleed. If you
injured him, he would wince like any other man.”6
He had a human body and a human soul. Thus, He grew hungry and ate. He grew tired and
slept. He enjoyed food and drink, and was accused of being a drunkard, though he was not. He
experienced anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. He experienced sorrow, at Lazarus’ death,
where he even wept. Everything about him pointed to the fact that he was fully God AND fully
man. He was made like us in every way, yet without sin (Heb. 2:17; 4:15).
So against what these Gnostic false teachers were saying, the essence of the Gospel is “the Word
of life. . .was made manifest.” Twice John says that life was made manifest to us. In the words
of one pastor, “We do not find salvation through some sort of quest to discover the hidden
mysteries which Jesus came to reveal to a few “enlightened ones. John’s whole point is that
salvation comes to us publicly in the Word who was made manifest.”7
Notice also that John uses the first person plural seven times in this passage. It wasn’t just John
who witnessed these things. It was he and the disciples and countless others. And this public
message is so important because Jesus came to bring us new life in him, which is why it is a
message that needs to be proclaimed.
5 I take John, the author of the Gospel, to be the unnamed disciple.
6 Beeke, Epistles of John, 21.
7 Kim Riddlebarger, “He Was Made Manifest,” Available at http://kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com/ (accessed
3/9/10), 5.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
5
2. The Essence of the Gospel: Its Message Proclaimed
You see apart from Jesus Christ coming in the flesh, the message is one of death. Paul says, “all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 3:23; 6:23). And John refers to him as the
life three times. He is “the word of life,” “the life,” and “the eternal life” which was with the
Father. This is the good news of the Gospel, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
And if you abandon the central message that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God who came in the
flesh, you cannot receive the life that is in Him alone. You are on your way to eternal death.
And so I plead with you this day, repent and believe. Look to Jesus Christ by faith and trust in
his perfect life, his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection and you will be saved.
And John’s connection of this life to the word ties this not only to Christ’s person, it also is tied
to the Christian proclamation of that Word, in other words the preaching of the gospel.8 You
see the implication is that Christ not only embodied the message of life, he also proclaimed the
message, and furthermore commissioned apostles to proclaim it as well. And those apostles then
commissioned preachers in all ages to continue to preach Christ.
This is why Paul says, “For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But
how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him
of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And
how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those
who preach the good news!” (Rom. 10:13-15).
And it is so incredibly sad and terrible that in many pulpits today, Christ is not proclaimed week
in and week out from the pulpit and thus it is not good news. Instead we have life coaches who
don’t bring us good news, they bring us good advice. They tell us how we can live a “purpose
driven life” and have our “best life now,” rather than proclaiming to a world who is dead in sin
and under the wrath of God, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. This is the essence of
the Gospel. This is what is foreign to us, this is what you won’t hear from the television you
watch, the books and magazines you read, the podcasts that you listen to, the day time talk shows
and any of the other voices of the world. You can get good advice from any of those things.
Good advice is not the heart of the Christian message, which is why it is so terrible that this is
most of what you hear in pulpits today and from Christian bookstores.
But beloved the heart of the Christian message is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and was
manifest among us, bringing life through his death to all who trust in him. The apostle Paul said,
For I decided to know NOTHING among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2;
emphasis added).
8 Riddlebarger, “Manifest,” 5.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
6
Children: If you can’t remember anything from this sermon, at least remember this, we are
sinners and deserve death, but Jesus Christ is God and man and he died for you so that you might
have life in his name.
Well notice finally then the essence of the gospel and its benefits produced.
3. The Essence of the Gospel: Its Benefits Produced
John says that the purpose and goal of this proclamation is “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.” The preaching of the Gospel produces
eternal life, eternal fellowship and eternal joy.
Salvation in its widest sense is not just living forever, it is living in fellowship and joy. The
fellowship that we experience is with the apostles themselves and all who have received their
message in all ages, and with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now he doesn’t
mention the Holy Spirit simply because he wants to focus on the Son whom the heresy he is
targeting dishonors.9
But the idea is this: The goal of Christ coming was to bring life in his name and that having life
in his name we might experience the same love and fellowship that he had eternally with the
Father and the Spirit. Jesus prayed in John 17: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” And it is upon this basis of our
fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we then have fellowship with each other.
Jesus goes on to pray: “[I ask] for those who will believe in me through their word, that they
may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that
the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21).
You see it is our common communion with God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit
which makes us one. And the more we grow in our love and communion with God the more we
will grow in our love and communion with each other and the more we will be a witness to the
world of the love of God. This is why it is so important that we participate in the life of the
church. We need to grow together in our love for God and in doing so we will come to love
even the ones among us whom we normally wouldn’t be able to stand otherwise. The more we
hear the Gospel of God forgiving us who were his enemies the more we will love even our
enemies and pray for them.
Thus, this shows us the importance of the church fellowship. One commentator writes, “This
statement of the apostolic objective in the proclamation of the gospel, namely a human
fellowship arising spontaneously from a divine fellowship, is a rebuke to much of our modern
evangelism and church life. We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the
drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church life whose principle of cohesion is a
9 Stott, Letters, 69.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
7
superficial social camaraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with his Son
Jesus Christ.”10
And so we must aim in our evangelism to bring people into the church, which is not very
common today. We just want to get people saved. But Jesus called us to make disciples and to
baptize them and to teach them all that he commanded (Matt. 28:18-20).
And when it comes to our fellowship we cannot aim for a superficial fellowship of a social club
as the basis of our fellowship. Some of us might like to have all sorts of clubs in this church.
What club would you like to have? the knitting club? the snowboarding club? the fishing club?
the cooking club? the wine tasting club? the book club?
Now these might all be fun things for us to participate in with each other, but they cannot be the
basis of our fellowship with each other. The tendency to miss the point of the church is always a
besetting temptation for Christians. You see, we may not be all that interested in each other
outside of church. We may not share common interests. Furthermore, people might visit our
church who like things that we don’t like, does that mean that we would refuse them into our
fellowship? No, because the basis of our fellowship is our fellowship with the Triune God. We
love each other because we all share in one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father
of us all. Some of us might share a few other things in common, but we all share this in
common.
And it is as we hear the proclamation of the Gospel that we experience fellowship with God and
with each other and thus experience true joy in this life. There is no doubt that joy can be found
in many things: possessions, personal achievements, music, recreations, and many other things.
But John has in mind a joy that is greater and more lasting than all of these. It is a joy found
only in God, a joy that is unique to the followers of Jesus Christ.11 Jesus said, “These things I
have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). This
joy comes to those who abide in Christ, experiencing God’s love in Christ by the Holy Spirit and
responding with a life of gratitude and love for the Triune God.
Yet we cannot experience complete joy in this life because perfect fellowship is not possible in
this world due to sin. And so, while we have a foretaste of this fellowship and joy now, verse 4
looks beyond this life to the life of heaven, where consummated fellowship will bring about
completed joy.12 Jesus Christ came from the joy of eternity past, entered into the misery of
fallen history and suffered and died in order to bring us into the joy of eternity future.
This is the essence of the Gospel. Its message is that eternal life was manifested in the flesh of
Jesus Christ, and it is Him that we proclaim calling on all men everywhere to repent and believe
in him for eternal life, eternal fellowship and eternal joy.
10 John Stott, The Letters of John, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 69.
11 Beeke, Epistles of John, 29-30.
12 Stott, Letters, 71.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
8
Conclusion
We must ask ourselves then are the purposes for which John is writing these things the purposes
and experiences of our life? Are you experiencing fellowship with God and with your brothers
and sisters? Are you experiencing joy? If not, well then my only suggestion is that you return
again and again to the essence of the Gospel And as you meditate on Jesus Christ, and his
person and work, looking to him by faith, the more you will bear the fruit of true fellowship and
joy in this life. It is imperfect now, but it will be perfect when Jesus Christ is manifested again at
his return, and we all will enter into the joy of our Maker.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.
9
Bibliography13
Beeke, Joel. The Epistles of John. Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2006.
Boice, James Montgomery. The Epistles of John: And Expositional Commentary. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.
Carson, D. A. and Douglas J. Moo. An Introduction to the New Testament. 2nd Ed. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.
Kostenberger, Andreas J. A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters. Biblical Theology of the
New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009.
Kruse, Colin G. The Letters of John. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2000.
Marshall, I. Howard. The Epistles of John. The New Testament Commentary on the New
Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978.
Riddlebarger, Kim. “Sermons on the Epistles of John.” Available at
http://kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com/ (accessed 3/9/10)
Smalley, Stephen S. 1, 2, 3 John. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, TX: Word, 1984.
Stott, John R.W. The Letters of John. Tyndale New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1988.
Yarbrough, Robert W. 1-3 John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.
13 This bibliography represents the regular works consulted throughout this series though not always quoted in
every sermon. Stott’s commentary I highly recommend as the best balance between technical and pastoral
commentary.
Copyright 2010, Brian T. Cochran and Redeemer Reformation Church (URCNA), Regina, SK.