Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. Tonight, we’re going to be continuing our study in 1 John by looking at the third verse of the first chapter. Before that, I wish to thank everyone for their prayers and their continued praying. I believe that I am making progress as I came to some conclusions tonight concerning my own thought processes. Still, I do ask for continued prayer in this area. I also ask once again for prayer in my current financial situation. Finally, I ask prayer for God’s action to be present in the situation that I am going through in whatever way is best. He knows the details. I’m not necessarily asking for a miracle, but for his providential hand. For now, let’s go to the text.
3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
A lot of people know that one of my favorite verses to go to to prove the deity of Christ is John 1:3. However, it is quite interesting that a passage of Scripture that is also quite good at showing the deity of Jesus is 1 John 1:3.
We have spoken about John telling the testimony openly, as opposed to the teachers who were counting on initiates to have an experience before they could have the full message. The message of the gospel is not hidden however. John is proclaiming it. While John certainly had a unique experience in seeing the resurrected Christ and being an apostle of his, he did not require others to have an experience. He chose to share his experience with others.
Now he is telling his listeners that because of this testimony, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we can have fellowship with the Father and with the Son. What is interesting for our purposes today is how an idea like this shows the deity of Christ.
Consider a Jehovah’s Witness coming to see you. Ask him if he can pray to the Father, or Jehovah as he will say. Ask him if a friend who is a Witness in another state can. How about a friend who is a Witness in another country? Can you all pray at the same time and the Father hear all of you?
The answer will be yes. Why is that? It is because the Father is omnipresent and if that is the case, then it is possible to have fellowship with him. It is also because he is eternal and not bound by time so he can hear all the prayers being prayed at once.
But this passage also says that you can have fellowship with the Son! How is that possible? There is no distinction made between the type of fellowship. The way that that can be is if the Son is omnipresent and eternal as well and if he is, then he is God. If being that does not make him God, then it does not make the Father God either, putting him in an awkward position.
We Trinitarians have no problem. We know what it means to have fellowship with the Father and the Son at any time in any place and we know how this is possible. It is such because they share the same nature, both being fully God.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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