What We Have Seen and Touched

An old man holds up his hands. They are wrinkled now, spotted with age. “These hands,” he says, “touched him. I am not telling you a story I read somewhere. I was there.”

Most Christians since the early centuries have believed this letter was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, near the end of his long life, probably in or around the city of Ephesus. Sixty years or so have passed since he first walked with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. Most of the other apostles are gone. And some new teachers are going around the churches saying something strange: that Jesus was not really a flesh-and-blood man. That God would never truly become human. That the Christ only seemed to have a body. John, who was there, cannot let that stand.

So he begins his letter almost breathlessly, piling up the evidence. That which was from the beginning. Notice how that echoes his Gospel: in the beginning was the Word. Then: which we have heard. Which we have seen with our eyes. Which we have looked upon. And our hands have handled. Heard, seen, looked at, touched. Four ways of saying the same thing. This was real. The Word of life, the one who was with the Father from the beginning, was a man you could listen to, watch, and reach out and hold.

Think of the memories John must have carried. A carpenter's hands helping haul nets full of fish. A voice calling across the water. Leaning against Jesus at supper. Holding his feet in the garden after he rose from the dead. And going back further still, to a baby in Bethlehem, wrapped in cloths, small enough to be held. The eternal life that was with the Father, John says, was revealed to us. It was shown. It came near. And we are telling you what we have seen and heard.

Why does John tell them? Not to win an argument, but to share a friendship. We declare it to you, he writes, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. Fellowship means sharing life together. John wants his readers to share what he shares, a real friendship with God through a real Jesus. And he ends with this: we write these things so that our joy may be full. John's joy will not be complete until they share it too.

We know about teachers like the ones John opposed. Irenaeus, a bishop writing around the year 180, described a man named Cerinthus who taught that Jesus was an ordinary man and that the Christ came upon him only at his baptism and left before the cross. Irenaeus also passed on a story that John, at Ephesus, once rushed out of a bath-house when he learned Cerinthus was inside.

What We Have Seen and Touched. You'll find it in First John chapter one, verses one to four. At Christmas, Christians celebrate exactly what John insists on: that God really became a man, close enough to touch. So here is a question to carry with you. John shared what he had seen so that others could share his joy. What have you seen of God that you could share?