Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Eyewitness

I've been pondering the first chapter of John for the past couple of weeks now and have been impacted by his words. John is an eyewitness of Jesus and one of Jesus's most intimate disciples. He lived life with him for three years. He walked with him, saw him heal people, ate meals with him, and was there when he was crucified on the cross and later saw him resurrected. This is his petition to us to put our faith in Jesus, God in the flesh, so that we might know the same joy he has.

1 John 1

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning,whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.

This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us.

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.

So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth.

But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.

But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.