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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 John 1:1 - 1:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
That which (ho). Strictly speaking, the neuter relative here is not personal, but the message “concerning the Word of life” (peri tou logou tēs zōēs), a phrase that reminds one at once of the Word (Logos) in Joh 1:1, Joh 1:14; Rev 19:14 (an incidental argument for identity of authorship for all these books). For discussion of the Logos see notes on John 1:1-18. Here the Logos is described by tēs zōēs (of life), while in Joh 1:4 he is called hē zōē (the Life) as here in 1Jo 1:2 and as Jesus calls himself (Joh 11:25; Joh 14:6), an advance on the phrase here, and in Rev 19:14 he is termed ho logos tou theou (the Word of God), though in Joh 1:1 the Logos is flatly named ho theos (God). John does use ho in a collective personal sense in Joh 6:37, Joh 6:39. See also pan ho in 1Jo 5:4.
From the beginning (ap' archēs). Anarthrous as in Joh 1:1; Joh 6:64; Joh 16:4. See same phrase in 1Jo 2:7. The reference goes beyond the Christian dispensation, beyond the Incarnation, to the eternal purpose of God in Christ (Joh 3:16), “coeval in some sense with creation” (Westcott).
That which we have heard (ho akēkoamen). Note fourfold repetition of ho (that which) without connectives (asyndeton). The perfect tense (active indicative of akouō) stresses John’s equipment to speak on this subject so slowly revealed. It is the literary plural unless John associates the elders of Ephesus with himself (Lightfoot) the men who certified the authenticity of the Gospel (Joh 21:24).
That which we have seen (ho heōrakamen). Perfect active, again, of horaō, with the same emphasis on the possession of knowledge by John.
With our eyes (tois ophthalmois hēmōn). Instrumental case and showing it was not imagination on John’s part, not an optical illusion as the Docetists claimed, for Jesus had an actual human body. He could be heard and seen.
That which we beheld (ho etheasametha). Repetition with the aorist middle indicative of theaomai (the very form in Joh 1:14), “a spectacle which broke on our astonished vision” (D. Smith).
Handled (epsēlaphēsan). First aorist active indicative of psēlaphaō, old and graphic verb (from psaō, to touch), the very verb used by Jesus to prove that he was not a mere spirit (Luk 24:39). Three senses are here appealed to (hearing, sight, touch) as combining to show the reality of Christ’s humanity against the Docetic Gnostics and the qualification of John by experience to speak. But he is also “the Word of life” and so God Incarnate.