Authentic Joy

The apostle John loves the people of God enough to encourage and warn us when appropriate, and he does both of those in his first epistle, commonly known as "First John" or simply "1 John". To counter a poisonous heresy just starting to invade the church, he assures his readers that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, and that He genuinely came to the earth as a real man, something that John can attest to as an eyewitness. In fact, he names three senses that he used during Christ's earthly ministry: hearing, seeing and touching. Jesus was not an illusion of a human being, He was fully human! John explains in the first few verses of his epistle that he wants others to be part of the same fellowship with God that he enjoys, and he wants all of us to experience maximum joy through the ever-widening circle of that eternal, divine fellowship.