Day 326: 1 John 1:1–4

What we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship along with us . . . with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (v. 3).

Years passed. John’s beard grayed. The skin once leathered by the sun’s reflection off the Sea of Galilee bore the deeper creases of age. His voice rasped the telltale signs of a fiery evangelist. The calluses on his feet became thick with age and country miles. The wrinkles around his eyes folded and unfolded like an accordion as he laughed and mused. While some scholars believe that John’s Gospel and his letters were written within just years of one another, few argue that the epistles slipped from the pen of anything other than an aging man. Most believe 1 John was written around ad 85–90.68

John had celebrated many Passover meals since the time he leaned his head against the Savior’s strong shoulder. So much had happened since that night. He’d never get the picture of Christ’s torn frame out of his mind, but neither would he forget his double take of the resurrected Lord. The last time John saw those feet, they were dangling in midair off the tip of the Mount of Olives. Just as quickly, clouds covered them like a cotton blanket. The fire of the Holy Spirit fell . . . then the blaze of persecution seared. One by one the other apostles met their martyrdom. Just as Christ had prophesied, Herod’s Temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world, was destroyed in ad 70.

Along the way, the winds of the Spirit had whisked John from all that was familiar—to the city of Ephesus. Decades separated him from those early days of water turned to wine and fishes turned to feasts. For most of us, age means sketchy memories and vague details. Not John. He recorded his clear memories with indelible words. He didn’t climb gradually to a pinnacle in writing these epistles. He started at one. His letters seem to open with the mouth of a crescendo as if he had waited until he was about to explode to write it all down. I’m not sure the Holy Spirit as much fell on John as leaped.

Yes, you would think John’s certainty might have waned or weakened with time and distance, but perhaps the most distinguishing mark of a true partaker of the riches of God and Christ is that the partners cannot hoard the treasures. They want everyone else to enjoy them too. Authentic partners and partakers of “fellowship”—koinonia in the Greek—simply cannot be selfish. Their joy is only complete as others share in it.