Jesus: The One We Proclaim

Chuckle: A child's comment on the Bible: "The first commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple."

Good Quote: "Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief in the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other." --Charles Spurgeon

JESUS: THE ONE WE PROCLAIM

"We are telling you about 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" (I John 1:3 NLT).

In verse 1, John speaks of Jesus as the "Word of Life." These words were the light of dawn that broke through to reveal the darkness of sin. But now the dawn has become the brightness of the noonday sun as John identifies the "Light of the World" and "Word of Life" as Jesus, God's Son. And this Christ is the one whom John saw with his physical eyes and the one we have seen with our spiritual eyes and heard through the living words of Scripture.

"In the beginning the Word (Jesus) already existed. He was with God, and he was God. He was in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he did not make. Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it" (John 1:1-5 NLT).

In our I John passage, John says something that shocked every God-fearing Jew who was fearful to even pronounce the name of God. He said, "Our fellowship is with the Father." How dare a sinful creature presume he can fellowship with the almighty God of creation! This was, and is, incomprehensible to someone who has not experienced God's saving grace through faith in Jesus Christ. How can a mere mortal actually have fellowship with the Father? Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father except through me." The positive side of this statement is that we can come into the very presence of the Father through the name of Jesus.

The secret of John's message rests in our blessed Intercessor, Jesus Christ himself. He introduces people to God as "The Father." Our fellowship with God as our heavenly Father comes through our relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the subject of our preaching and teaching. It is nothing short of heresy to teach that people can find favor and fellowship with God, the Father, by any other means other than by God's grace, through faith in Jesus. "God saved you by his special favor (grace) when you believed (in Christ). And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it" (Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT).

"Can you imagine the number of words it took to write a thirty-volume set of Encyclopaedia Britannica? It must be an awesome number, but an even more amazing thing is that only twenty-six different letters were used. The authors did not have to go outside of the alphabet to assemble that massive collection of knowledge. It provided for them everything they needed for this one task. Jesus Christ called himself the Alpha and Omega, and we do not have to go outside of him for anything that we need. He is God's 'everything' -- for all situations."

Love, Jerry & Dotse