1 John 1:1

EXORDIUM.

The writer’s authority as an original personal witness, 1 John 1:1-4.

1. That A highly inverted sentence embracing the three verses. The commencing verb is in the third verse, declare we. Of this verb the which, thrice expressed and once implied in the first verse, are the objectives; and the true order is this: We declare unto you that (real, bodily personality) of the Word of life which was from the beginning, which… heard, which… seen, which… looked upon, and which our hands have handled. The reason why St. John uses the neuter that which, (which might as well have been the English compound relative what,) instead of the masculine him whom, is because the heretics questioned not that he, Christ, really appeared, but questioned his nature. He was, they said, a docetic, incorporeal phantom; or the Jesus was a mere man upon whom the superhuman Christ descended and rested.

From the beginning This phrase, in application to his readers, St. John uses in 1Jn 2:7 ; 1 John 2:13; 1 John 2:24; 1 John 3:11 of the beginning of the preaching of the gospel; but in 1 John 3:8 of an ante-mundane beginning of Satan. And so here we have the same ante-mundane beginning as in the first verse of St. John’s Gospel, where see notes. The same is the ante-mundane existence of the “Son” in Hebrews 1:3, where see notes. We John and the other apostles. St. John’s we (1 John 1:3) includes himself personally, and all the apostles representatively, whose office it was to be witnesses of what Jesus said, and did, and was. Note on Luke 1:2. We, apostles, are original authorities; whereas the heretics are strangers, basing their speculations on third or fourth hand testimonies, supplemented by their own fancies. And as we saw his miracles, heard his own account of himself, and handled his very physical body, so our account is original and ultimate, the first and last word.

Have The Greek uses the perfect tense of the first two verbs, have heard and have seen; but the aorist, without the have, of looked upon and handled. This is a significant change of tense, lost in our English translation. It indicates that the apostles are persons who have seen and have heard, and that remains in its effect the permanent fact. But they also specifically and at the moment looked upon, that is, contemplated and deeply studied, the inner nature, and also felt, so as to deeply cognize the bodily substance of the Lord. This specialty is increased from the fact that the first was done with our bodily eyes, and in no dream, and the last with our hands, the surest instruments of touch. Though he was from the beginning, and was truly the Word of life, he submitted himself to our most bodily perceptions that we might most surely declare his determinate personality. Of This preposition does not here represent, as usually, the Greek genitive, but the preposition περι , in the sense of pertaining or belonging to; as in Luke 22:37: Philippians 1:27; Colossians 4:8.

The Word of life That Word whose property was life so essentially that he truly called himself “the Life.” “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” John 1:4, where see notes. These first three verses are an essential reference to John’s Gospel, especially its first four verses. They evince that both Epistle and Gospel were by the same author; and John truly bases the doctrines of this Epistle upon the facts and declarations of the Gospel.