“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, …,
and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1, NKJV) 

God is spirit and has no body. John makes that point in the closing verse to his Gospel prologue: “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). He reinforces that fact in his epistle: “No one has seen God at any time" (1 John 4:12). But that does not mean we cannot perceive God. 

Scripture makes it clear that God has revealed Himself, both in creation and His word (e.g., Psa. 19). Paul will make the case that the essence of God is conspicuous in what He has made (Rom. 1:19-21). As the existence of an exquisite painting reflects the glory of talented painter, so the evidence of a vast, ordered, complex, majestic creation displays the glory its Creator. 

John, however, points to another way in which the invisible God reveals Himself. After telling us that no one has ever seen God, he goes on: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). When Philip asked Jesus to show His disciples the Father, Jesus pointed to Himself: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). 

John begins his first epistle by speaking of Him who was from the beginning, God the Son, who became manifest by taking to Himself true and full humanity. The invisible became visible. The Word that was with God and was God “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). 

Jesus as God incarnate could be perceived with senses. John conveys what he has himself surveyed. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you” (1 John 1:1–2). 

Why does John begin his epistle this way? For two reasons. One, he wants to make it clear that Jesus was not just some spiritual being but was fully and actually human. Later he will draw this as a line in the sand for what we believe. “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2–3). Flesh speaks to Christ’s real and discernible humanity. 

The other reason John begins his epistle by speaking of Jesus’s humanity is to testify to what he and others had witnessed. In other words, the message he will go on to declare and the hope of eternal life he will offer to faith are reliable and verifiable. Seeing is believing. Believing is seeing. John wants us to understand both aspects. 

 Why is it necessary that the eternal Son became truly human?