At the conclusion to yesterday’s study, we saw that the first word used to describe how the Gospel is shared is martyrein, which originally denoted the bearing of testimony in a court of law.
Second, John says, we “proclaim” what we have seen and heard to you. On the surface this verb seems much like the other, involving a verbalized testimony to what has been seen and heard. But it also suggests something else. It suggests a commission from Christ, and therefore authority. Thus, as John R. W. Stott says, Jesus “not only manifested Himself to the disciples to qualify them as eyewitnesses, but gave them an authoritative commission as apostles to preach the gospel.”1 Finally, as John says in verse 4, we “write” these things that our joy might be full.
This then is the way in which the Gospel has come to us and must be passed on. The apostles bore witness to what they had seen and heard of Jesus, proclaimed it authoritatively on His commission, and finally preserved it in the writings which have since become our New Testament. Today believers are to take their writings and, having through them entered into the experience of the apostles, proclaim the Christ of the apostles to the world.
But why is this done? Why this enormous effort, beginning in eternity past, prepared for in the Old Testament writings, focused in Christ, seen by the apostles, preached by them, and recorded by them in the New Testament? And why should we be a part of it? John concludes the preface by stating as this objective: “that ye also may have fellowship with us” and that “your joy may be complete.”
John speaks of fellowship rather than salvation in these verses, perhaps because the fellowship had been so recently broken by the Gnostic schism. Properly understood, however, the word includes the full meaning of salvation, as the accompanying phrases indicate. There is salvation on the horizontal dimension. It is an overcoming of hostility between man and man. There is also salvation on the vertical dimension, between God and man. Indeed, John indicates that it is only when the latter is established that the first becomes possible. Why is it that human beings experience friction with one another? The answer, as James writes in his Epistle, is sin (James 4:1ff.). And how can sin be conquered? Not by men certainly, for all are sinners. It can be conquered only by Christ, who died once that fellowship might be restored between man and God and who now lives in order to communicate the power of God in overcoming sin to those who follow Him.
Those who are already Christians must take the words of John seriously. John says that the purpose of this great plan of God for the revelation of Himself to men and for their salvation is fellowship, and that on the horizontal level. How then can believers be content with that which disrupts their fellowship? Or how can they be content with an evangelism that wins men to God but fails to draw them into a vital and visible relationship with one another?
Finally, says John, we have written that “our joy might be complete.” There is a textual variant at this point in which “your” is substituted for “our” in John’s statement. Either would be correct, and in fact there is not much difference. Yet “our” is dramatic; for it is John’s way of saying that his joy is their joy—it was also John the Baptist’s testimony (John 3:29)—and that the apostles will have full joy only when the Christians to whom he is writing, as well as all who would come after, enjoy fellowship. This is real joy, but it will not be perfected in our or any other lifetime. Therefore, verse 4 may rightly be understood as pointing forward ultimately to heaven.
If believers will ultimately be one in heaven, however, why should they not be one while here on earth? And why should there not be a joy in true Christian fellowship, as there certainly will be later? Clearly Christians are to recognize and work toward a vital fellowship here as well as to pray for and anticipate that day when that which began with the revelation of God in the historical Christ and which was preached and believed on by millions in this world will be consummated.
1John R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 62.