“The message you heard from the beginning”

In 1 John 1:1 John opens with “That which was from the beginning,” the time in history when the “Word of life appeared” (1-2), referring to the arrival of Jesus and his message about “eternal life” (2).

From the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry this was his underlying message in everything he taught and did. All of it was meant to shed light on his Father’s plan to open up eternal life to us humans, because that’s what the Father had sent him to us for (1 John 5:11). 

Which is why John reminds his readers to stick like glue to the “old command you’ve had since the beginning.” (2:7). Go back to what Jesus taught and “See that what you heard from the beginning remains in you” (2:24) – which John spells out in chapter 3:11, when he writes, “This is the message you heard from the beginning: that we should love one another.”

Jesus had made that message super clear in John 13:34, when he said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” And in John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you,” the goal being that “we may be one as he and the Father are one” (17:22).

But why is loving one another – like the Father and Son love each other – so important to making Jesus’ message of eternal life come alive? To answer that, John takes us back again to “the message we heard from Jesus,” 1 John 1:5, but this time the message is: “God is light.” And why was that important? Because with Jesus’ arrival on this planet that’s when “Light came into the world” (John 3:19).

So with Jesus’ arrival a bright light would begin to shine on what God is all about. But it’s in HOW that light would shine that would make God visible. First of all, it would be in the life of Jesus himself, but John then makes this statement in 1 John 2:10, that “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light.” 

The “light,” therefore, that God is and lives in, and wants to share with us for eternity, has been made visible in the love that billions of Jesus’ followers have had for each other. Because that’s what God and eternal life are all about: love. No wonder, then, that John takes us back to the message of loving each other that Jesus began. But then he speaks of “A new command” too (2:8), so what’s that all about?….(next blog)