1 John 1:3

What exactly? That the Life, being eternal, appeared to us, and we were eyewitnesses of it both before the cross and after the resurrection. For one and the same was nailed in the flesh to the cross and rose again in the same flesh. And …

That ye also may have fellowship with us - May enjoy the same fellowship which we enjoy. And truly our fellowship - Whereby he is in us and we in him. Is with the Father and with the son - Of the Holy Ghost he speaks afterwards.

The life assumed a mouth and tongue, that he might utter words of life. The apostles not only heard of him, but they heard him himself. Above three years might they attend his ministry, be auditors of his public sermons and private expositions (for he expounded them in his house), and be charmed with the words of him who spoke as never man spoke before or since.

This may be distinguished from the foregoing perception, seeing with the eyes; and may be the same with what the apostle says in his gospel ( ch. i. 14 ), And we beheld -- etheasametha, his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. The word is not applied to the immediate object of the eye, but to that which was rationally collected from what they saw.

The apostles could not be deceived in such long and various exercise of their sense. Sense must minister to reason and judgment; and reason and judgment must minister to the reception of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel. The rejection of the Christian revelation is at last resolved into the rejection of sense itself.

That which we have seen and heard,....

It became the apostles to open to the disciples the evidence by which they were led, the reasons by which they were constrained to proclaim and propagate the Christian doctrine in the world. Wisdom and integrity obliged them to demonstrate that it was not either private fancy or a cunningly-devised fable that they presented to the world.

The repetition of "with" before the "Son," distinguishes the persons, while the fellowship or communion with both Father and Son, implies their unity. It is not added "and with the Holy Ghost"; for it is by the Holy Ghost or Spirit of the Father and Son in us, that we are enabled to have fellowship with the Father and Son (compare 1Jo 3:24).

FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD was one of the richest privileges of unfallen man. The Lord God walked in the garden and talked with Adam as a man talketh with his friend. So long as he was willing and obedient, Adam ate the fat of the land, and among the rich dainties and “wines on the lees well refined,” of which his soul was a partaker, we must number first and foremost, unbroken communion with God, his Father and his Friend.

FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD was one of the richest privileges of unfallen man. The Lord God walked in the garden and talked with Adam as a man talketh with his friend. So long as he was willing and obedient, Adam ate the fat of the land, and among the rich dainties and “wines on the lees well refined,” of which his soul was a partaker, we must number first and foremost, unbroken communion with God, his Father and his Friend. Sin, as it banished man from Eden, banished man from God, and from that time our face has been turned from the Most High, and his face has been turned from us;—we have hated God, and God has been angry with us every day. Christ came into the world to restore to us our lost patrimony. It was the great object of his wondrous sacrifice to put us into a position which should be equal and even superior to that which we occupied in Adam before the fall, and as he has already restored to us many things that we lost, so among the rest—fellowship with God. They who have by his grace believed, and have by the precious blood been washed, have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord, they are “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God,” and they have access with boldness into this grace wherein we stand. So they who are in the kingdom, and under the dispensation of the second Adam, have restored to them in all its fullness that fellowship which was lost to them by the sin and disobedience of their first federal head. John was among the number of those who had enjoyed this privilege with Christ in his flesh. He had been Christ’s chosen companion, elect out of the elect to a choice and peculiar privilege.

THE 12 Apostles were favored with the most intimate communion with our blessed Lord, but I can hardly say that they entered into fellowship with Him during His life on earth. Each of them might have been asked the question that our Savior put to one of them—"Have I been so long a time with you and yet have you not known Me, Philip?" But after Christ had ascended to Heaven and the Spirit of God had rested upon His disciples and in proportion as the Spirit did rest upon them, all that they had seen, heard and handled of their Lord became a means of communion between Himself and them. They were then able to realize what a very near, dear, deep and familiar communion had been possible to them through having spent some three years or so with Him in public and in private and having actually seen Him, heard His voice and felt the touch of His hands. Now, since their literal hearing, seeing and touching Christ did not create communion with Him apart from the work of the Spirit, we need not so much regret, as we might otherwise have done, that we never saw, or heard, or touched the Savior—because we, also, without seeing, or hearing, or touching Him, can believe in Him and rejoice that He said, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." And, further, as it is through faith, rather than by sight, or hearing, or feeling that the Spirit of God operates upon us, when we believe the witness of the Apostles concerning Christ, the Spirit of God will bless their message to us and we shall enter into the Apostles' fellowship! What the Apostles learned, they learned in order that they might tell others.

THE 12 Apostles were favored with the most intimate communion with our blessed Lord, but I can hardly say that they entered into fellowship with Him during His life on earth. Each of them might have been asked the question that our Savior put to one of them—"Have I been so long a time with you and yet have you not known Me, Philip?"

That which we have seen and heard - We deliver nothing by hearsay, nothing by tradition, nothing from conjecture; we have had the fullest certainty of all that we write and preach. That ye also may have fellowship with us - That ye may be preserved from all false doctrine, and have a real participation with us apostles of the grace, peace, love, and life of God, which communion we have with God the Father, who hath loved us, and given his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us; and with his Son Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for the life of the world and through whom, being God manifested in the flesh, we have union with God, are made partakers of the Divine nature and dwell in God, and God in us.

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you - We announce it, or make it known unto you - referring either to what he purposes to say in this Epistle, or more probably embracing all that he had written respecting him, and supposing that his Gospel was in their hands. He means to call their attention to all the testimony which he had borne on the subject, in order to counteract the errors which began to prevail.