{"id":5066,"date":"2025-11-26T09:10:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5066"},"modified":"2025-11-26T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:10:48","slug":"i-john-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/i-john-11\/","title":{"rendered":"I John 1:1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books.<\/em>

\u201cThat which was from the beginning,\u00a0which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,\u00a0which we have looked at and our hands have touched\u2014this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.\u201d

This seems like an odd way to begin a letter.

The author \u2013 traditionally assumed to be John the apostle \u2013 immediately begins describing his relationship with Jesus as something physical.<\/em> We\u2019re used to hearing about Jesus\u2019 miracles and parables and travels and teachings. John goes a different direction: \u201cWe actually heard <\/em>him, saw<\/em> him, and touched<\/em> him.\u201d

Yes, he\u2019s the Word of life (\u201cword\u201d being the Greek word \u201clogos\u201d). But I\u2019m here to tell you, John says, that he was actually there<\/em>.

Why this overwhelming emphasis on Jesus\u2019 physical presence?\u00a0

Scholars have long believed that John was writing sometime late in the first century (which makes this one of the last New Testament books to appear). His readers had apparently come under the influence of some teachers who are nowadays known as Gnostics.

\u201cGnostic\u201d is a tricky label. It\u2019s an umbrella term for certain intellectuals who had begun to use Christian terminology to preach non-Christian ideas. The name comes from the Greek word gnosis<\/em>, which means \u201cknowledge.\u201d\u00a0The Gnostics were convinced that if you learned \u201cthe real story\u201d about the nature of God and the universe, you might become one of the \u201cpeople in the know.\u201d

And if you were an insider \u2013 one of the spiritual Wise Guys \u2013 you were on your way to salvation, unlike the vast majority of the world\u2019s population.

What was this inside story that formed the core of Gnostic teaching?

The Gnostics\u2019 signature conviction was that all spiritual things are good, while all material things are evil. Therefore the existence of the universe itself must be considered a terrible mistake.

According to the Gnostics, God never intended to make meadows and waterfalls and three-toed sloths and quasars and jogging paths through beautiful stretches of woods. A second-rate spiritual being called the Demiurge somehow trespassed on the True God\u2019s territory and messed everything up by creating a world.

This was the Gnostic solution to the problem of evil. Why is there suffering in the world? The world was never God\u2019s idea to begin with, so he is clearly off the hook!

Human beings, unfortunately, are now trapped inside physical bodies. The Gnostics saw the human body as a kind of wretched outer wrapper afflicted by unruly appetites, bad breath, and bodily fluids. \u00a0Some Gnostics even had a catchphrase, a kind of first century bumper sticker: SomaSema<\/em>.

\u201cSoma\u201d is the Greek word for body. You might remember somatic cells from high school biology. \u201cSema\u201d means grave. For the Gnostics, Soma Sema<\/em> meant \u201cyour body is a tomb.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s a prison.\u00a0And you\u2019re trapped inside.

Your lifelong job is to break free. True spirituality means abandoning the constraints of your body and everything else here on earth, so you can go to heaven (God\u2019s realm) as a pure spirit.

Interestingly, some Gnostics became hyper-vigilant about bodily maintenance. Others ignored their bodies altogether. \u201cWho wants to mess around with that old thing?\u201d

Most Gnostics gravitated to the view that earthly preoccupations are irrelevant. That would include politics, going to college, feeding hungry children, playing sports, healing the sick, shopping for Christmas, writing poetry, seeing that justice is done, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Such things are a colossal waste of time.

To which the earliest Christian teachers responded in unison: That\u2019s absolute rubbish<\/em>.

The Apostles\u2019 Creed \u2013 the earliest known Christian statement of faith \u2013 begins with these words: \u201cI believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth<\/u><\/em>.\u201d God made the world. Which means God is seriously into stuff<\/em> \u2013 like knee joints and sparrow hawks and chocolate-covered cherries. God loves the world so much, in fact, that God the Son lived here as a human being for something like three decades, and still retains a human body.

John hammers home that point in the very first sentence of his letter.

He and the Gnostics at least agree on one thing: Jesus is the divine Word. But, according to John, Jesus\u2019 body was entirely real<\/u><\/em>, not a mirage (a favorite Gnostic perspective). He ate and drank and sweated and slept just like everyone else, so that if you bumped into him, it would ultimately occur to you that God himself must be genuinely serious about bodies. \u00a0

What does all this mean for us?

It means your body is most certainly not a tomb. So, stop treating it like one. Don\u2019t despise its limitations and impulses. Exercise and eat well (OK, maybe tomorrow we can all bend that rule a bit).

Make peace with your height, your shape, your frailties, and your age.

Our culture blares all kinds of messages about our bodies, and many of them are right out of the Gnostic playbook: You\u2019re too fat. You\u2019re too thin. You have too many wrinkles. You don\u2019t have enough hair, or maybe too much hair in the wrong places. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself because your body is a hot mess.

Have you ever hoped that one day you might see an actual miracle? Take a look in the mirror. The author of Psalm 139:14 writes: \u201cI praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.\u201d

The Good News is that a good and beautiful God has made a good and beautiful world in which creatures like us can experience deep joy.

Even with less-than-perfect bodies.


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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books. \u201cThat which was from the beginning,\u00a0which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,\u00a0which… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1029,221],"class_list":["post-5066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-11-series","tag-gnostics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5068,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066\/revisions\/5068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}