The Apostle John's Writing

The Gospel

"...John's view was extremely profound, mystical and spiritual. And yet it was not a doctrine, a teaching, or a practice of any kind....." 

John's focus in the gospels and in his epistles was to reveal the all the items of what the Lord is for our experience. John’s emphasis is that everything the Lord is was not just to be appreciated objectively, but to be experienced. He is the Word of Life that was from the beginning with the Father, and was manifested to the Disciples as the eternal life. They heard him, saw him with their eyes, and beheld Him in His glory. They Handled Him. John stressed that the Word is a Person. This Person is a tangible, touchable, approachable One. He was manifested. He was present. He is to be sought after. Remember, it was John who quoted Jesus saying “you search the scriptures thinking that in them you have life, but you do not come to Me…” He is the Life. He was the very Word of Life, explaining and expressing God to reveal and fulfill God’s purpose to give Himself as Life to His believers and make them His Church.

John's line of thought through the first chapter of his gospel was profound.  He spoke of the Word, who was in the beginning, was with God, and was God. (John 1:1) John says “in Him was life, and the life was the light of man.” (John 1:4). This word was full of the life of God, and this life was the light of men.  Not only does this light expose who we are and what we are, but it acts as a beacon shining in the darkness to make God clear and draw us to Him. Jesus came to give us Life. Life operates in us to shine on us, so that we can know God and draw near to Him. The more we have Life, the more we are drawn to God Himself.

Through this word of life, all things came into being. (John 1:10) This is a much more profound way of speaking than to merely say that He created things.  We have to realize that as believers, we weren't just created, we came into being through Him. Furthermore, nothing that has come into being has come into being apart from Him. Everything that has come into being is for His purpose and plan. Since Christians are the ones on the earth who live for His purpose, we have to realize that everything we encounter is really for us. We don't occupy a low place in the universe, we occupy the central place with Christ.  We were chosen by Him and are destined to partake with Him of His glory and His destiny. This is what the universe was created for, and apart from Him, and apart from this purpose, nothing in the universe has any meaning!  We can even say that the school we go to, or the stores we shop in, didn't have any meaning except that a person for Gods purpose and plan was going to make use of them.

Not only did everything come into being through this word, but eventually this word became flesh and tabernacled among us. (John 1:14) As the tabernacle He was God dwelling in the midst of men:  not attractive on the outside but inside full of all the riches of what God is for man. (Represented by the ark of the testimony, the incense altar, the showbread, the lampstand, the laver, and the brazen altar.)

These things all represent experiences of God that only Christ can bring us into, because the realities of what God is in these things are uniquely contained in this Person. Yet He brought all these things to us in Himself by becoming a lowly man.  There was all of this profound content in this Person. Yet His intention was not that these profound things would be something high above us that we could not reach. He did not want to show us something merely to admire from afar. Instead, by giving us Himself, he brought us into these things maybe even subconsciously.  By enjoying Him, we have everything God wants us to have and to experience.

John presented Him as the Lamb of God who took away our sins. Not only did he tabernacle among us, but He went to the cross to take away our sins. In God's eyes our sins are gone. He also became the heavenly ladder. In the conclusion of the first chapter of John, Jesus referred to Jacob's dream, saying "... you shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man." (John 1:51) After His death as the lamb, He resurrected and ascended, and then descended into man as the Spirit. After all of this process He became be the fulfillment of Jacob's dream, the real heavenly ladder. (Gen 28:17-19).  This ladder connects the heavens to the earth. This means that He has opened up the heavens for us and connected us to the heavens even though we dwell on the earth. Wherever Christ is, the heaven is opened and heaven and earth are joined.

All of this shows that John's view was extremely profound, mystical and spiritual. And yet it was not a doctrine, a teaching, or a practice of any kind. It was simply who Christ is in His purest form and all of it is for our enjoyment and experience.  This is the kind of Christ that can be enjoyed in fellowship, and this kind of fellowship can restore believers from any kind of damage and cause them to be full of joy together.

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