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Friday, June 22, 2012

Never get over Jesus Christ

1 John 1:1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life

In becoming captivated by the written Word and the Living WORD - we find the key to joy in the Christian life.  The Apostle John never got over Jesus.  For 60 years after having been called by Jesus Christ, John wrote his Gospel, three epistles and Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation). The freshness of his faith breathed with joy in the Lord. 

Today I want us to look closer at this man who never got over Jesus Christ - The Living WORD.
 
John never got over Jesus!
As he had walked with Jesus in His faith-walk for some 60 or so years, He got to know Him.  In 1 John 1:1 John unfolds the compelling nature of his experience and knowledge of Jesus Christ: 

The Eternal Christ - The Living WORD – “What was from the beginning”

The Experience of Jesus the man - The WORD in human flesh

a. The Teaching of Jesus – “what we have heard”

b. The miracles of Jesus – “what we have seen”

c. Personal knowledge of Jesus “with our own eyes”

d. The Passion of Jesus – “what we have looked at”

e. The resurrected Jesus – “touched with our hands”

f. Concerning the Word of Life – Jesus Christ Himself and also in reference to the scriptures about Him.

We should never get over "what" He worked in our lives
In the Greek text that word translated “what” is in the neuter, meaning that John is overtaken not only by the Person of Christ, but the event and accomplishments of the Master.  John could have very easily used the word “He” in the text, wherein he could had written: “He was from the beginning, He was the One we heard” and so on.  Yet John doesn’t do that.  The Holy Ghost had John write “what was from the beginning” to express the accomplishments and events surrounding the Person of Christ.  Christ did a marvelous work in John's life - something of which He never got over. 

We should never get over the wonder of the new life implanted in us by Christ
I feel the reason he did it this way was so that we could interpret his statement “word of Life” to refer to the scriptures and Christ Himself.  John never got over what He witnessed and heard from the Living Word Jesus Christ nor the living words He heard from Jesus Christ.  In four other places Jesus Christ is depicted as the “Living Word”. (John 1:1, 14; 1 John 5:7 (KJV); Revelation 19:13)  The Bible too is elsewhere described as being the living word of God. (Hebrews 4:12) 

We should never get over the wonder of Jesus Christ
John never got over the Word Jesus Christ, since it is Christ who called him forth from spiritual death unto spiritual life. (John 1:37; 5:24-25)  John never got over how the written word imparted to him eternal life at his conversion, which Jesus spoke and taught.  He was captivated. When Jesus, the Living Word, spoke the written word: “Come, and you will see”, the Apostle John (unnamed in John 1:39) and the other disciple, Andrew, began to follow Him.  He never got over that.  For six decades he had followed Jesus, and was still exhibiting an insatiable hunger for the written Word.  We know that centering our lives around the WORD and the Word is enjoyable because what takes place in our first saving encounter with the Word and the Word should never be something we get over.