April 6, 2015
NOTE TO READERS: Today begins a new season on the Daily Text. We will get started with 1 John and go from there. Please consider inviting friends and family to join us.
1 John 1:1-4
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. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We 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. We write this to make our joy complete.
John still can’t wrap his mind around what happened. It is as though he speaks these words aloud so his own ears can hear them. The curious and almost cryptic trilogy of phrases, “the Word of life,” “The life,” and “the eternal life,” reach to grasp a heretofore unprecedented category of reality. When a human being passes through death and comes out on the other side even more alive than before, we have an indescribable situation.
“He is risen indeed,” just doesn’t do it justice.
Someone so completely human yet unutterably divine cannot be comprehended; one can only behold him. It leaves an eyewitness saying to himself as well as to his listeners something akin to, “If I hadn’t seen and heard and touched him with my own hands I wouldn’t believe it either.”
And this is the challenge of Easter. That Jesus was raised from the dead can never be proved; only believed.
You ask me how I know he lives? John. I believe John.
J.D. Walt writes daily for Seedbed’s Daily Text. He serves as Seedbed’s Sower in Chief. Follow him @jdwalt on Twitter or email him at jd.walt@seedbed.com. Get the Daily Text delivered to your inbox fresh every morning. Subscribe HERE.