Being Captured by the Word and the WORD
John’s text thrust us from the center of this Divine Rose
of 1 John 1:3 to the circumference of 1 John 1:1. We now begin to travel back,
taking in the full view and scent of Christ the living WORD and the written
words of John. John not only was
captivated by the Word, He’d been captured by it. His obsession both with the Word and the
Living WORD stemmed from the fact he was captured and captivated.
What is meant by the word "word"?
In the opening of His Gospel he writes what
is perhaps the most profound stretch of verses in any of the four Gospels –
John 1:1-18. He writes about how the
Word became human flesh. The Word in
Jewish thought was quite literally the eternal mind and Eternal Power of God
which had been with Him from the beginning.
No doubt, in condensed form, John wrote about this in 1 John 1:2 “and the life was
manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life,
which was with the Father and was manifested to us”. Twice he writes how the “life was manifested to us”. What is significant about that
statement? How is it that what John
wrote demonstrates that He was captured by the life of the Word – and thus the
reason for His joy over it?
An Illustration: Being captured by the sun's light in a prism
Think of the WORD becoming flesh as being likened to a prism and
the sun. Let’s say if I claimed to be
able to bring the sun and all its radiance down to where you could hold it in
your hand and enjoy its radiance.
Perhaps you would doubt my claim.
But then let’s say I handed you an oddly shaped piece of clear stone,
and told you by that oddly shaped piece of stone you will be able to hold the
beauty and brightness of the entire sun in your hands. You may say that I’m crazy.
But you take it outside, and suddenly a rainbow of color appears
in your hand. That bright orb in the
sky, some 93 million miles away and 100 times larger than our earth, burning
with a surface temperature of 10,000 degrees, has been brought down into that
prism. All its beauty is displayed
before you. The properties of the light
have not been changed. If anything, your
eyes do not hurt by looking at it. You
become captured by what you are seeing. By
the prism you can enjoy the Sun.
Christ's humanity enables us to enjoy Him in His shared Deity with the Father and the Spirit
Likewise through the flesh of Jesus’ humanity we can enjoy, like
John, the radiating beams of the Deity He shares with the Father – i.e we can
enjoy “The Son”. We can have fellowship
with the Father and the Son who share in the eternal, unending light of
Deity. We can do this through the prism
of Christ’s humanity, in which He chose to enter and take upon Himself. This is what John is driving at. The Living WORD Jesus Christ has captured
Him. He has seen the refracted rays of
Deity shining through frail humanity.
The written words of scripture alone can explain what He saw.
May you and I be as John - captured by the WORD through the Word.
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