“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” (1 John 1:1)
For the next few days, we’re going to listen to the eyewitness testimony of the apostle John. He will make, as he does in other parts of the Bible, an outrageous claim about the man called Jesus – that he is the Son of God, the path to a relationship with the Father, the one hope for forgiveness and eternity in heaven.
He opens with his strongest piece of evidence: “I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I heard him with my own ears. I touched him with my own hands.” Jesus’ biography in the gospels tell us that John saw Jesus dying on the cross and that he saw him alive again after death. In fact, John described himself as the disciple Jesus loved, maybe Christ’s closest human friend.
John isn’t just a lawyer making the case for Christianity; he’s the witness in the stand. He tells us what he saw and what it means – why his glimpse of that key moment in the history of the world makes him qualified to proclaim the message of eternal life.
Stay tuned.
Think: How much more credibility do you give to an eyewitness than to somebody who is telling about something they heard from someone else? Why?
Pray: Thank God for John’s first-hand account of Jesus, the Savior.
Do: Read through 1 John 1 once or twice to get ready to think about the chapter this week.