1 John 1:1-10

1 We have an important message to tell you. We want to tell you about the person who was already there before the beginning of the world. We have heard Him speak. We have seen Him with our own eyes. We watched Him and we touched Him. He is the Word * that gives us life with God.

2 He showed himself clearly when He lived on this earth. From long ago He was together with God the Father, and He lives for ever. We saw Him and we are telling you what is true. He is the one who has shown Himself to us. 

3 We also want you to share this new life with us. We share this life with God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son. That is why we are telling you about everything that we have seen and heard. 

4 We are writing to you so that together we all may be completely happy.

God is pure like light

5 We are telling you the good news that Jesus Christ spoke to us. This is the message: God is completely pure, like light. There is nothing dark in Him. 

6 Do you say that you share in the life that God gives? If you say that, but if you still live in the dark, you are telling a lie. You are not living in God's true way.

 7 But when we live in a right way, it is like living in the light. God is always in the light. So, if we live in the light, we share together in the life which God gives. And when Jesus, the Son of God *, died on the cross, He saved us from all our sins *. The blood of His sacrifice makes us clean.

God forgives our sins if we ask him

8 If we say that we never do any wrong thing, we are deceiving ourselves. Even though we may think it is true, it is a lie. 

9 Instead, we should agree that we have done wrong things and tell that to God. Then God will forgive us for our sins. He always does what He has promised to do. He always does what is right. He will forgive us and He will make us clean again, whatever bad things we may have done. 

10 God says that all people have done wrong things. So, if we say that we have not done any wrong thing, we are saying that God tells lies. It shows that we have not accepted His message at all.

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Important Vocabulary to Learn

(Some of these words come from the reading, and some come from the questions below.)

1. Words from the first 1000 high frequency General Service Word List

accept(ed), act(ed), agree, already, always, another, bad, become, beginning, blood, clearly, completely, cross, dark, heard, important, lie, life, long (ago), nature/natural, paid, power, pretty, promise(d), price, purpose, quality, relationship, save(d), share, show(ed)/shown, speak, together, touched, true, watched, world, wrong  

(And all the other words in the reading that are not listed in numbers 2, 3 and 4 below.)

2. Words from the second 1000 high frequency General Service Word List

angry, band, clean, deceiving, forgive(s), fruit, holy, message/messenger, pure, rubber, sacrifice, string, 

3. Words from the Academic high frequency word list

authority

4. Off List words

candy

5. Glossary of Special Terms (these words are marked with a *)

Anointed - Chosen by God for a special purpose. 

Divine (adjective) - The quality of being God.

Messiah - This term is used in the Bible to talk about the person God sends to Earth to save his people (that is, those who trust in Him).

sins - The things we do or think that are wrong. The things that break God’s law. 

Son of God - This is a special title used in the Bible to refer to Jesus. 

- It describes His nature as being divine (that is, He is God). The Jewish leaders in Jesus time understood that Jesus was saying He is God. This is why they became so angry with Him.

- The title also means He acted as God, with the full authority of God. 

- The title ‘Son of God’ does not have a ‘biological’ meaning (that is, having a natural, blood relationship, like the son of a human father).

- This is also a title given in the Old Testament to the promised Messiah * (In Psalm 2:7, God says of His ‘Anointed *’ one (the Messiah), ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’.) The New Testament teaches us more clearly that Jesus is that promised Messiah.

The Word - This is another special title given to Jesus. This title describes Jesus as the living message. He is God and He came to us. That is, Jesus is not just the messenger, He IS the message.This title is also used to describe Jesus as the creator of all things. He is God who spoke and everything and everyone that is, was made. He spoke and gave all things life. 

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Learning Questions and Activity 

1. Remembering - What are the special titles of Jesus in this Bible reading? Where was Jesus before He came to Earth? What did He come to give us? (Check your answers in verses one and three.) 

2. Understanding -

1. Who was John writing about? (That is, who was ‘already there before the beginning of the world’, and who was the one that was ‘watched’, ‘touched’, and ‘heard’ by John and others?)  

2. Who were the people that John calls ‘we’ in verses 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5? 

3. Who is the ‘you’ in verse six? 

4. Who are the people called ‘we’ and ‘us’ in verses seven to 10? 

(You can check your answers to these questions below, at the end of this lesson.)

5. What is the difference between having life as a human being and having ‘new life’? When you think about this, what does John really mean when He says that Jesus gives us ‘life with God’ (verses one and three)? Where does this new life come from? (Look at the end of verse one and the middle of verse seven.)

6. What had to happen so that Jesus could give us this new life? (Check your answer at the end of verse seven.) 

3. Applying - What does John tell us that we (all people) need to agree to? Do you agree that you have done wrong things in your life? Why do we (all people) need to tell God about the wrong things we have done? What do you think we should say to Him? How should we think of God, as we speak to Him?

Have you spoken to God about the wrong things you have done? Have you said to Him that you are truly sorry for doing those things? Have you asked God to forgive you?

What does God promise to do for us because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross? (Check your answer in verse nine.) Do you feel thankful for what Jesus did for you on the cross? Does it make you ‘completely happy’ to know that Jesus has died for your sins?

4. Analysing - What does John mean when he says that people ‘live in the dark’? What does he mean when he says that we need to ‘live in the light’? 

Give some examples of the wrong things that people do when they ‘live in the dark’. Give some examples of good things that people do when they ‘live in the light’? 

If it is true that we have all done wrong things? How do we become able to ‘live in the light’? 

5. Evaluating - If God already knows about every wrong thing that we have done, why do we need to tell Him about those things? Even if we think we are not so bad, and if we try to live a life that we think is good, is that enough to please God? Why not?  

Why do you think John wanted to tell us that we are deceiving ourselves if we think we are good? Do you think he was right? Why?

Why did John write about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross? Why was the sacrifice of Jesus so important?

6. Creating -  Important! Read the ACTIVITY below, then read the NOTES below that.

ACTIVITY

You will need two clear drinking glasses, some pretty paper, a piece of string (or rubber band), and a piece of candy (or a small piece of fruit). 

1. Make one glass look good by putting pretty paper around it. Tie the paper on with string or a rubber band. (Look at the picture below these notes to see how this looks.) 

2. Leave the other glass as it is. Do NOT put paper around it.

3. Now, fill both glasses with clean water.

4. In the glass that has the paper around it, put three teaspoons of salt. Mix it in well so that the water looks clear. (The water in the two glasses should look the same.)

5. Work with a friend or a small group. Show them the two glasses of water.

6. Ask, ‘Which glass looks better?’ (They will choose the glass with the pretty paper.)

7. Now ask someone to take a small taste of the water from the glass with the paper around it. Ask, ‘How is it?’ (Of course, because it has salt in it, it will not taste very good.)

8. Ask, ‘How can we fix the water in the glass so that we can drink it?  Let’s add something sweet to it, like a piece of candy (or a piece of fruit).’

 9. Add the candy or fruit.

10. Now ask the same person to taste the water again.

 11. Ask ‘Did the candy (or fruit) make the water taste good?’ (Answer - ‘No'.)

 12. Ask, ‘Does the pretty paper make the water in the glass good enough to drink?’ (Answer - ‘No’.)

13. Ask, 'What do we need to do so that we can have a drink of water that tastes good?' (Answer- 'We need to throw out the salty water, wash the glass, and put clean water into it.’)

 14. Now ask the same person to taste the water from the glass that has no paper around it. Ask, ‘How is it? Is it better than the first glass?’ (Of course it is, because it is clean water, with no salt in it.)

Now use the NOTES below to tell someone (a friend or a group of people) about the Bible reading. Try to say everything in your own words. Do not just copy the words from the notes. (If the people you are going to speak to do not know English, you can use the language they understand.)

NOTES (Remember to read these notes first before you do the activity)

1. We (all people) often try to please God by doing good things (just like we tried to make the glass of water look good by putting pretty paper around it). But doing good things is not enough for God to accept us, because all of us also do wrong things. (We all sin.) 

2. God is pure and holy. Doing wrong things makes Him very sad. We cannot please God by ourselves or by doing good things to try to please Him (just as we could not make the salty water better by adding something sweet to it.) 

3. Jesus came from heaven. He Himself is God. When He was on Earth, He never ever did anything wrong. He was completely good! He died on the cross as a sacrifice. He died because of our wrong doing. He did that to make us clean and pure, so it is God Himself, who makes us right with Him. 

4. It is not enough just to know about this. We need to be made clean. To become right with God, we need to tell Him that we are truly sorry for the wrong things we have done. We need to believe that Jesus is God, and that He was completely good in our place. We need to accept that it was His sacrifice and death that paid the price for the wrong things we have done (our sins). God Himself took our place on the cross. 

5. We need to ask God to forgive us for the wrong things we do, and to give us new life as a follower of Jesus, just as He promised. (Then we will be like that glass of clean water that tasted good.) 

6. When we believe, we should thank God for forgiving us and giving us new life. Then, we need to live in His light. When God gives us new life, we become able to live in His light. We can do this by following the example of Jesus and doing what He taught. We will want to live, and we will be able to live, in a way that pleases God, because God Himself gives us the power to please Him. 

7. We need to live that new life for the rest of our time on Earth. We should always be thankful to Him for saving us. We should always love and trust Him because He is so good.

When you have finished the activity and your talk, give your friend (or everyone in the group) a glass of clean water to drink. 

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Answer: Number 2, Understanding - 

1. 1, Jesus. Because John saw and followed Jesus while He was on Earth, and in the later verses, (verse 3 and the verses after that) to talk about Jesus by name.

2. In verses one to five, the ‘we’ describes the people Jesus chose to follow Him, who lived with Him and watched and listened to everything Jesus said and did while He was on Earth. John, who wrote this book, was one of those people. He, and the others who followed Jesus at that time, knew Jesus very well because they were with Him every day. 

3. The ‘you’ in verse six is everyone who reads this book that John wrote. That also means you and me today.

4. The people called ‘we’ and ‘us’ in verses seven to 10 mean every person on earth. All people, everywhere, at all times and in all places.