Tag: Joy

Rest Assured! Life, Fellowship, and Joy

Leave a comment

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (1 John 1:1–4)

Jesus Is Our Eternal Life

The opening four verses of John’s first letter to the churches in Asia Minor (perhaps initially Ephesus) provide two of the five stated reasons John wrote the letter:  1) So that readers might have fellowship with God and one another and 2) So that the readers’ joy might be full (1.3-4).  The kernel thought in the passage may be reduced to the following sentence:  We declare to you that which we have seen and heard.  Of course, John speaks not of a concept but a person. 

Knowing Christ is eternal life.  Eternal life is more than a place or duration.  Eternal life is tied to a Person and His work on our behalf.  That Person is Jesus.  As a matter of fact, we cannot have fellowship with one another apart from Jesus. 

Jesus Is the Word of Life

Revelation 19.13 reveals that when Jesus returns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, His name will be called The Word of God.  He told Martha in John 11.25, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Thus Jesus is the Word of Life.  But He is also the true God and eternal life (1 John 5.20). 

The existence of Jesus as the God-Man was being denied by the false teachers of John’s day.  John clearly confronts it in these opening verses of the Letter.  John walked with Jesus before His crucifixion.  He saw Jesus after He arose from the dead and walked the earth for 40 days.  When terrified at Jesus’ sudden appearance, John heard the Savior say, “Why are you troubled?  And why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself.  Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24.34).  The Word of Life is Jesus. 

Jesus Is Our Fellowship

Our text reads, “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”  There is no fellowship without the Person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus said through John in his Gospel:  “I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”  That is the intimacy and fellowship John speaks of here.  How do we access this fellowship and rest assured together?  We do so through faith. 

The fellowship we enjoy as believers is a privilege we have received because we first received the testimony of God respecting His Son.  We believed that in Jesus is life.  We believed; we live.  This cannot be altered.  But the privilege of fellowship may be forfeited by sin and rebellion.

Jesus Is Our Joy

Verse four says, “And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”  The result of our trust in Jesus is full joy.  It really is inexpressible the joy Jesus brings into our lives.  Fellowship and access with God, fellowship with all the saints, and redemption and reconciliation – that is joy!  And we simply believed.  We ceased from our striving and believed.  Gary Derickson sums up the opening of John’s first letter in the following way:

We will see in this epistle that it matters what we believe about Jesus. Here we have been introduced to Him as life incarnate. A part of mature faith in Christ is recognition of Him as our life, not just life giver. At the same time, we remember we are not eyewitnesses, but among those more blessed than Thomas who believe without seeing (John 20:29). We are dependent on the eyewitness accounts to know in whom our faith is placed and to know the right things to believe. Thereby our faith is in the real Jesus, who saves, and not the invention of our minds or of the minds of others who would create a Jesus in their own image.  [Gary W. Derickson, First, Second, and Third John, ed. H. Wayne House, W. Hall Harris, III and Andrew W. Pitts, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2012). 1 Jn 1:4.]

Is Jesus everything?  Truly?

Winning Souls

1 Comment

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise. -Proverbs 11.30

The greatest joy in my life came on a warm Pennsylvania evening in July of 1990.  That is the day that I came to Christ and asked Him to take away my sins and give me the gift of everlasting life.  The subsequent unburdening that occurred will never be rivaled in this life.  But there is something that comes closely to it.  I cannot think of anything that brings as much joy in life as winning souls.

But the interpretation of Proverbs 11.30 has been disputed a bit.  Some see a contrast in the Hebrew.  The Hebrew word ḥāmās (violent) is substituted for the word wise (ḥākām).  The reason the substitution takes place is because the phrase win souls can be translated take souls as in killing or murder.  Therefore, the contrast is between the fruit of the righteous (life-giving) and the violence of the wicked (life-taking).

I think it best to read the verse with the word wise.  The phrase win souls could also mean take souls in the sense of captivating them or influencing them for righteousness.  This would mean that the two thoughts in this Proverb are actually parallel and do not form a contrast (as in the NKJV).  If I am correct in my understanding, then the idea of evangelism would be a legitimate application of the verse.

One Sunday a car had broken down in the alley behind a church in Arizona, and the driver had jacked up the car and crawled underneath to work on the problem. Suddenly, the pastor and congregation heard him scream for help. The jack had slipped, and the car had come down on top of him.

Some ran for a phone to call 911. Several of the men gathered around the large car and strained to lift it off the trapped man. Nurses from the congregation were rounded up and brought to the scene. Somehow the men were able to ease the car’s weight off the man and he was pulled free. The nurses checked him over. He was scratched up and shaken, but otherwise okay.

When this man was in danger, people acted quickly and decisively.  They recognized the urgency to save this man.  They were willing and wise to do so.  We need this attitude with the many at risk of losing life eternally!  Are you willing and wise to win souls?