Eyewitness to Jesus

The Apostle John, the younger brother of the Apostle James, was likely a teenager when he was called by Jesus¹. John and James were cousins of Jesus, and their mother was a sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus². John was among Christ’s inner circle, along with Peter and James³.

John was called the “Beloved disciple⁴” and was the one who leaned on Jesus during the Last Supper⁵. John wrote five books of the New Testament – The Gospel According to John, First, Second, and Third John, and the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

So, we can see that John probably knew Jesus better than anyone. Here is what John wrote about Jesus:

“We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.”
– 1 John 1:1

John’s eyewitness testimony was that his cousin, by his Aunt Mary, was a real person. John tells us that he personally heard the voice of Jesus, saw Jesus with his own eyes, and touched Jesus with his own hands. John tells us that Jesus was a man, yet Jesus was there when Creation began.

John is telling us something that is difficult to understand. Countless people will create heretical teachings about Jesus to make the existence of Jesus “easier” to believe. But there is only one truth. Jesus is 100% man and 100% God⁶. Because this is so unintuitive, the Apostle John goes into great detail to help us know who Jesus is. He then goes on to tell us why it is important for us to know the real Jesus:

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
– 1 John 1:3

There are things about God that, as the Creator, we, the created, cannot fully grasp; they can only be received by faith in God. Faith is the gift God has given us to connect to Him. By faith, we accept Jesus as who He truly is. John, the man who knew Him the best, tells us that our access to fellowship with the Father and His Son, Jesus, is by joining John and all who have put their faith in Jesus.

Footnotes

1. How old were Jesus’ disciples? (2017, August 22). GotQuestions.Org. https://www.gotquestions.org/how-old-were-Jesus-disciples.html ↩︎
2. Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40, John 19:25 ↩︎
3. Matthew 17:1–9 ↩︎
4. John 21:20 – New Living Translation. (n.d.). Bible Gateway. Retrieved July 12, 2025, from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2021%3A20&version=NLT ↩︎
5. John 13:23 – Jesus Predicts His Betrayal. (n.d.). Bible Hub. Retrieved July 12, 2025, from https://biblehub.com/john/13-23.htm ↩︎
6. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. – 1 John 1:2 ↩︎