Jesus Incarnated The Eternal

What Did Jesus Do?

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and touched with our hands…
1 John 1.1

In his Gospel John sought to explain the all but inexplicable mystery of the Incarnation of the eternal Word. The first of John’s canonical letters opens by mysteriously referencing to having heard, seen, looked upon, and touched “That which was from the beginning” (1 John 1.1)—namely, the life which had eternally been with the Father (1 John 1.2). It was because this life had been made manifest, that is, incarnated, that John and the other apostles had so seen and so heard, that they were enabled and empowered to testify and proclaim the word of life. And they had testified and had proclaimed, to the end that the fellowship the apostles enjoyed with the Father and the Son might be enlarged to include the Church to which the proclamation, and the letter, were addressed. The enlargement of this fellowship would accomplish nothing short of completing the joy the apostles had in Christ (1 John 1.3).

We must make no mistake, the mystery of divine fellowship, of koinonia, of the Church living in the love of God, even as the Son, the eternal word of life, lives in fellowship with the Father, is very much the theme of the epistles of John. The content of the Gospel which John and the other apostles proclaimed was that fellowship, and life, were to be found in none other than Jesus, himself the life (John 14.6).

Therefore, the life of the Church cannot be separated from her faith, and her faith is grounded both in the Scriptures which attest to the truth of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Living Word, and the testimony of eyewitnesses such as John, who had heard, seen, looked upon, and touched the very word of life which had been made manifest. When the Church so lives, and so believes, as to experience genuine fellowship with God, and with all believers, she enters into the matchless and ever increasing joy that is the very love of God.

John knew that the Incarnation did not stop short of the cross, but embraced it, and death, so that the sacrifice of Christ should be understood as solely and completely sufficient for our redemption. It is this knowledge of what Jesus did that ushers us into the surpassing joy of the love of God. And it is by incarnating, by living, this truth, that the Church helps others to receive the truth, enter her fellowship, and ever increase her joy in the Father and the Son.

Jesus came and manifested the joy and love that he knew from his eternal fellowship with the Father, and he invited his disciples into that fellowship. The Church he established, was birthed in that love and joy, and now lives, ministers, and grows incarnationally in the very same eternal fellowship/koinonia.


S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4