The life appeared

1 John 1:1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our joy complete.

The Life
Often when I examine the Greek, I am left with the same meaning or apparent meaning of the passage as I had beforehand. This particular verse however, is a wonderful example of why the original language is so important. I love how the apostle here uses the definite artice translated as "the" in this case. I think that it is important to emphasize this word when reading this passage. We are not talking about just any old life, but the life. I am reminded of John 14:6 where Jesus declared "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." however, I want to focus on the verbs that the apostle uses after he defines Jesus as the life.

Appeared
The first one mentioned above is translated here as appeared and in the KJV as manifested. I do not like the softness of the word appeared, because it can give the impression that Jesus "seemed" to be the life when this was not the intention of the apostle at all. The Greek here (phaneroo) means to render apparent or to manifest and this is much clearer. The word manifest means to make clear or evident, to prove, to put beyond doubt or question. This makes these first few words a powerful declarative statement that the apostle had no doubts on this issue. This is key because we learn more from the following verbs.

We have seen it
The second one, translated here as seen (from the Greek horao) is also not fitting for what the apostle is trying to convey with the Greek. This word in its proper definition means to stare at or to discern clearly with a further note that by Hebraism it means experience. This means that John has seen clearly, discerned and experienced the life that is found only in Jesus Christ. This is more than a simple "ah, there He is". This is total bodily commitment to the truth expressed in these words.

and testify to it
The third word translated here as testify (Greek martureo from which we get the word martyr) can also mean to be a witness. I like the implications of the Greek having both of these definitions for it gives one a legal sense of what the apostle is saying. When combined together one could easily say that John was a witness that was testifying under an oath to God that he took very seriously. This was true of all of the apostles as the testimony of their marytyrdom bears out. Under penalty of death, they did not recant their testimony (or witness) thus we arrived at the word martyr.

and we proclaim unto you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
The final verb we are looking at is translated here as proclaim (Greek apaggello) and brings us to the object of the discussion which in this sentence is you. The apostle wants you (the reader) to know what it is he is proclaiming so he is announcing or bringing word to you. He has gone to every length possible to stress to you how clearly he knows what it is that he is proclaiming by using the Greek words that he chose. He is proclaiming eternal life that has been manifested or made beyond doubt for him by what he has clearly seen and experienced and is testifying in the legal sense and bearing witness that what he says is truth.

I wonder why he would want to do that, but that is a discussion for another day.

Peace, Bruce