[Listen to an audio version here]
Humans are made to connect with God and other people. We need this fellowship, and it is hugely important.
If there is one thing that we have learned from this past year it is that people need fellowship. It’s easy to take it for granted. But when we lack it, we can really feel it. Last year, I went to the Billy Graham Training Center in October with my wife. Several people had not been in a public worship setting since March. They said, we didn’t realize how much we missed it, how good it is to be in fellowship with other people.
We need people, and we need to experience them face to face. It is fine to make calls and write letters and texts when we need to, but it is that face to face fellowship that is especially crucial and important.
The Proclamation of God Come in the Flesh
That’s the sort of fellowship that John had with Jesus. He proclaimed Jesus who was the one “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1). When I hear this, I am reminded of Jesus sitting with John at the last supper. At the last supper, John was reclining right next to Jesus. In the Middle East, people often eat sitting or reclining on the floor. John was right next to Jesus eating with him. That’s how real Jesus was and is. He says, “we have heard . . . we have seen . . . we have looked at and . . . have touched.” Jesus was and is a real human being.
The most amazing thing is that they believed that this Jesus was something much more than a mere man. He existed from the beginning. They believed that this Jesus whom they touched, saw, and heard had existed long before He ever became a human being. He had always been there. Before He became a human being, Jesus was “with the Father.” He did not begin to exist when He was born, but the one who already existed “appeared” in time and became a human that people could see, touch, and hear.
John has two words that He uses to describe Him here. The first is the “Word” or the logos. For many of the ancient philosophers, logos was the eternal principle of reason in the divine mind that every person shared in to a degree. It was the principle of creation. It was the pattern of everything. The Jews also used this word and had a similar concept. They saw the logos principle in that God spoke and creation came into being. So, when the early Christians looked for a way to think about who Jesus was, they realized that logos or “the Word” could be one helpful term to explain who Jesus is.