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"The Eternal Word Became Flesh" John 1:1-5, 14
The cover of a recent issue of U.S. News and World Report asked the question "Who was Jesus?" Inside it reported on some academic discussions about the identity of the one we call "Lord": "In just the past two years, Jesus has been depicted variously as a magician and healer, as a religious and social revolutionary and as a radical peasant philosopher. One author has even theorized that Jesus was the leader of the Dead Sea Scrolls community in Qumran, that he survived the Crucifixion and went on to marry twice and father three children."
Newsweek magazine ran a similar cover story in 1994, this one on "The Death of Jesus." One of the articles focused on a group of seventy-seven liberal scholars known as the "Jesus Seminar." These people meet twice a year to talk about their opinions regarding who Jesus was and what He actually did.
One of their most curious practices is that of voting about the authenticity of specific passages in the Gospels. Every person is given four beads; when it is time to vote, they simply drop in the appropriate beads. Red beads mean they believe Jesus certainly said or did what the text says. Pink beads indicate that they think Jesus said or did something close to what the text describes. Gray beads signify their doubt that Jesus said or did what the text relates, and black beads represent their certainty that Jesus never thought or did anything like what the text declares. The following conclusions by the majority in the "Jesus Seminar" are shocking and, I believe, blasphemous!
"This "historical" Jesus performed no miracles, but he did have a healer's touch, a gift for alleviating emotional ills through acceptance and love. He called for an utterly egalitarian Kingdom of God--not on some day of judgment, but in the here and now. He wanted people to experience God directly, unimpeded by hierarchy of temple or state. The authorities executed him, almost casually, after he caused a disturbance in Jerusalem during Passover. Jesus lived on in the hearts of followers old and new, but he did not physically rise from the dead. Taken down from the cross, his body was probably buried in a shallow grave--and may have been eaten by dogs.'
The identity of Jesus is a topic of discussion not only in scholarly circles today, but also in homes, at coffee shops, and on street corners all around the world!
Some hold that He was "a nice man." Others believe that He was "an outstanding teacher." Still others contend that He was "the wisest man who ever lived." Most people in the world have some opinion of who Jesus of Nazareth really was.
What, then, are you and I to make of all this discussion? While I disagree strongly with the conclusions expressed in the above-mentioned news magazines and am deeply concerned with many popular notions about Jesus, I am fascinated by the fact that almost 2,000 years after He lived on the earth, people are still asking about Jesus. The good news for us is that the Gospel of John begins with a definite answer to the question. ———————————— The first chapter of the Fourth Gospel is one of the greatest adventures of the religious thought ever achieved by the mind of man.
It was not long before the Christian church was confronted with a very basic problem. It had begun in Judaism. In the beginning all its members had been Jews. By human descent Jesus was a Jew, and, to all intents and purposes, except for brief visits to the districts of Tyre and Sidon, and to the Decapolis, he was never outside Palestine. Christianity began amongst the Jews; and therefore inevitably it in spoke in the Jewish language and used Jewish categories of thought.
But although it was cradled in Judaism it very soon went out into the wider world. Within thirty years of Jesus's death it had travelled all over Asia Minor and Greece and had arrived in Rome. By A.D. 60 there must have been a hundred thousand Greeks in the church for every Jew who was a Christian. Jewish ideas were completely strange to the Greeks. To take but one outstanding example, the Greeks had never heard of the Messiah. The very centre of Jewish expectation, the coming of the Messiah, was an idea that was quite alien to the Greeks. The very category in which the Jewish Christians conceived and presented Jesus meant nothing to them. Here then was the problem-how was Christianity to be presented to the Greek world?
Lecky, the historian, once said that the progress and spread of any idea depends, not only on its strength and force but on the predisposition to receive it of the age to which it is presented. The task of the Christian church was to create in the Greek world a predisposition to receive the Christian message. As E. J. Goodspeed put it, the question was, "Must a Greek who was interested in Christianity be routed through Jewish Messianic ideas and through Jewish ways of thinking, or could some new approach be found which would speak out of his background to his mind and heart?" The problem was how to present Christianity in such a way that a Greek would understand.
Round about the year A.D. 100 there was a man in Ephesus who was fascinated by that problem. His name was John. He lived in a Greek city. He dealt with Greeks to whom Jewish ideas were strange and unintelligible and even uncouth. How could he find a way to present Christianity to these Greeks in a way that they would welcome and understand? Suddenly the solution flashed upon him. In both Greek and Jewish thought there existed the conception of the word. Here was something which could be worked out to meet the double world of Greek Jew. Here was something which belonged to the heritage of both races and that both could understand.
Where the Book Begins The way John began his Gospel is significant. First, he did not "quietly slip in the back door." We have all seen salesmen who try to conceal what they are really doing.
Often during supper time at my home we will get a telephone call from a telemarketer who is trying to sell a phone system, a credit card, or a timeshare condominium. (I can usually tell it is a salesman when he begins by mispronouncing my name!)
I am often amazed at how long these people can talk without getting around to what they really want, which is to try to sell me something. You will see that the beginning of the Book of John violates all the rules of telemarketing!
Second, John did not begin with the easiest matters and then slowly work toward the more difficult. Every week the newspaper has advertisements for a "Book-of-the-Month'' club or a "Cassette-of-the-Month" club. They try to attract new members by telling us that we will receive ten free books or cassettes simply by signing up. What they do not tell us in their advertisements is that it is almost impossible to cancel the subscription once we have started! They start with the easy (the ten free books or cassettes) in order to get us committed to the difficult (a long-term agreement). John did not use these methods in beginning his Gospel.
Third, John did not introduce his Gospel with an area of universal agreement and then move toward more divisive topics. Politicians are often masters of saying what people want to hear. They know their crowds and say whatever will please and excite them. Later, when faced with different crowds, they alter their messages to please their new listeners. They try to avoid, or at least delay, any mention of matters that may be controversial. John, as he began his Gospel, demonstrated that he had absolutely no political instincts!
Instead, the Gospel of John storms up the sidewalk, bangs on the front door of our hearts, and immediately confronts us with the most demanding and potentially divisive message ever heard! We should brace ourselves, for John begins with an earthshaking declaration! ———————————————- "But will God indeed dwell on the earth?" asked Solomon as he dedicated the temple (1 Kings 8:27). God’s glory had dwelt in the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34) and in the temple (1 Kings 8:10-11); but that glory had departed from the disobedient Israel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4, 18; 11:22-23).
Then a marvelous thing happened: the glory of God came to His people again, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ! It was John’s task to write to both Jews and Gentiles.
John's prologue gives us a glimmer of the book's major themes: the deity of Christ; Christ as light and life, the word shrouded in darkness, the witness of John the Baptist, Israel's rejection of their Savior, Gentile acceptance, and examples of the glory, grace, and truth of Christ.
In this prologue, John establishes five arguments as to why Jesus was, in fact, divine: 1. He was eternal (vs. 1-2) 2. He was the Creator (vs. 3-5, 9) 3. He gave spiritual life (vs. 10-13) 4. He manifested glory (vs. 14-17) 5. He explained God (vs. 18) Jesus is the eternal word, the creative word, and the incarnate word.
The LOGOS, or Word, is the subject here of main discussion. It means "to lay by, to collect, to put words side by side, to speak, to express an opinion." It implies the intelligence behind the idea, the idea itself, and the transmissible expression of it.
To the Jew, a word was far more than a sound. It had an active and independent existence and which actually did things. "The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive...It was a unit of energy charged with power.
"It flies like a bullet to its billet," one writer said. For that very reason the Hebrew was sparing of words. Hebrew speech has fewer than 10,000 words...Greek speech has 200,000.
Remember the Old Testament story in Genesis 27 of Jacob and Esau? The idea of the power of words is no better given than in this time when Isaac had been deceived into blessing Jacob rather than Esau but could do nothing about it because his word had go out and begun an act which could not be changed!
The words "God said..." in the creative chapters of Genesis remind us of God’s power. In fact, whenever it (logos) is used, it brought to mind the Word of God and the Reason of God. There are seven names or titles used of Christ in this chapter: 1. The Word 2. The Light 3. Son of God 4. Lamb of God 5. Messiah 6. King of Israel 7. Son of Man
* THE WORD AND DEITY (1:1) 1. The Son of God in Eternity "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
As we step into John's gospel, we immediately slide through a time tunnel that transports us to eternity past. In eternity--before man, before creation, before time itself--there existed the everlasting, triune God.
Without question, John wants us to know that the word was already there at the very beginning. The first predicate of the LOGOS is eternity. This passage is one of the summits of Scripture. In fact, it probably reaches the highest of human thought. What is the thought that reaches the height of human concepts? It is this: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is... · the Word of God · the Creator of Life · the Very Being and Essence of Life.
These three truths have to be deeply thought about to understand their meaning. A quick reading of this passage leaves a person disinterested, not even close to understanding what is being said. However, the importance of the truths lie at the very foundation of life. They cannot be overstated, for they determine a man’s destiny. If Jesus Christ is the Word of God, then men must hear and understand that Word or else be lost forever in ignorance of God Himself.
Christ is eternal. Note three profound statements made about Christ, the Word. 1. Christ was preexistent. This means He was there before creation. He had always existed. a. "In the beginning [en archei]" does not mean from the beginning. Jesus Christ was already there. He did not become; He was not created; He never had a beginning. He "was in the beginning with God" (cp. John 17:5; John 8:58). b. The word "was" (en) is the Greek imperfect tense of eimi which is the word so often used for deity. It means to be or I am. To be means continuous existence, without beginning or origin.
The phrase "In the beginning" is essentially the same as that of Genesis 1:1. The expression does not refer to the beginning of some particular process, a definite localized point of time, but rather to the indefinite eternity which preceded all time, the immeasurable past.
The Word was not a created being. He was before the beginning (the Greek perfect tense is used here). He is without beginning and without ending! Not only was Christ not a created being, but all things were created by Him! The Father was the architect, but Jesus was the primary agent of creation.
We shall go on study this passage in short sections and in detail; but, before we do so, we must try to understand what John was seeking to say when he described Jesus as the Word.
THE WORD BECAME FLESH The first chapter of the Fourth Gospel is one of the greatest adventures of the religious thought ever achieved by the mind of man.
It was not long before the Christian church was confronted with a very basic problem. It had begun in Judaism. In the beginning all its members had been Jews. By human descent Jesus was a Jew, and, to all intents and purposes, except for brief visits to the districts of Tyre and Sidon, and to the Decapolis, he was never outside Palestine. Christianity began amongst the Jews; and therefore inevitably it in spoke in the Jewish language and used Jewish categories of thought.
But although it was cradled in Judaism it very soon went out into the wider world. Within thirty years of Jesus's death it had travelled all over Asia Minor and Greece and had arrived in Rome. By A.D. 60 there must have been a hundred thousand Greeks in the church for every Jew who was a Christian. Jewish ideas were completely strange to the Greeks. To take but one outstanding example, the Greeks had never heard of the Messiah. The very centre of Jewish expectation, the coming of the Messiah, was an idea that was quite alien to the Greeks. The very category in which the Jewish Christians conceived and presented Jesus meant nothing to them. Here then was the problem-how was Christianity to be presented to the Greek world?
Lecky, the historian, once said that the progress and spread of any idea depends, not only on its strength and force but on the predisposition to receive it of the age to which it is presented. The task of the Christian church was to create in the Greek world a predisposition to receive the Christian message. As E. J. Goodspeed put it, the question was, "Must a Greek who was interested in Christianity be routed through Jewish Messianic ideas and through Jewish ways of thinking, or could some new approach be found which would speak out of his background to his mind and heart?" The problem was how to present Christianity in such a way that a Greek would understand.
Round about the year A.D. 100 there was a man in Ephesus who was fascinated by that problem. His name was John. He lived in a Greek city. He dealt with Greeks to whom Jewish ideas were strange and unintelligible and even uncouth. How could he find a way to present Christianity to these Greeks in a way that they would welcome and understand? Suddenly the solution flashed upon him. In both Greek and Jewish thought there existed the conception of the word. Here was something which could be worked out to meet the double world of Greek Jew. Here was something which belonged to the heritage of both races and that both could understand.
Let us then begin by looking at the two background of the conception of the word. THE JEWISH BACKGROUND In the Jewish background four strands contributed something to the idea of the word. (i) To the Jew a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things. As Professor John Paterson has put it: "The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive. . . . It was a unit of energy charged with power. It flies like a bullet to its billet." For that very reason the Hebrew was sparing of words. Hebrew speech has fewer than 10,000; Greek speech has 200,000.
A modern poet tells how once the doer of an heroic deed was unable to tell it to his fellow-tribesmen for lack of words. Whereupon there arose a man "afflicted with the necessary magic of words," and he the story in terms so vivid and so moving that "the words became alive and walked up and down in the hearts of his hearers." The words of the poet became a power. History has many an example of that kind of thing.
To the eastern people a word is not merely a sound; it is power which does things. Once when Sir George Adam Smith was travelling in the desert in the East, a group of Moslems gave his party the customary greeting: "Peace be upon to you." At the moment they failed to notice that he was a Christian. When they discovered that they had spoken a blessing to an infidel, they hurried back to ask for the blessing back again. The word was like a thing which could be sent out to do things and which could be brought back again.
Will Carleton, the poet, expresses something like that: "Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds; You can't do that way when you're flying words: 'Careful with fire" is good advice we know, 'Careful with words,' is ten times doubly so. Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead, But God himself can't kill them they're said."
We can well understand how to the eastern peoples words had an independent, power-filled existence. (ii) Of that general idea of the power of words, the Old Testament is full. Once Isaac had been deceived into blessing Jacob instead of Esau, nothing he could do could take that word of blessing back again (Genesis 27). The word had gone out and had begun to act and nothing could stop it. In particular we see the word of God in action in the Creation story. At every stage of it we read: "And God said . . ." (Genesis 1:3, 6, 11). The word of God is the creating power. Again and again we get this idea of the creative, acting, dynamic word of God. "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made" (Psalm 33:6). "He sent forth his word and healed them" (Psalm 107:20). "He sent forth his commands to the earth; his word runs swiftly" (Psalm 147:15). "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). "Is not my word like fire, and, says the Lord, like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29). "Thou spakest from the beginning of creation, even the first day, and saidst thus: 'Let heaven and earth be made.' And thy word was a perfect work" (2 Esdras 6:38). The writer of the Book of Wisdom addresses God as the one, "who hast made all things with thy word" (Wisdom of Solomon 9:1). Everywhere in the Old Testament there is this idea of the powerful, creative word. Even men's words have a kind of dynamic activity; how much more must it be so with God?
(iii) There came into Hebrew religious life something which greatly accentuated the development of this idea of the word of God. For a hundred years and more before the coming of Jesus Hebrew was a forgotten language. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew but the Jews no longer knew the language. The scholars knew it, but not the ordinary people. They spoke a development of Hebrew called Aramaic which is to Hebrew somewhat as modern English is to Anglo-Saxon. Since that was so the scriptures of the Old Testament had to be translated into this language that the people could understand, and these translations were called the Targums. In the synagogue the scriptures were read in the original Hebrew, but then they were translated into Aramaic and Targums were used as translations.
The Targums were produced in a time when men were fascinated by the transcendence of God and could think of nothing but the distance and the difference of God. Because of that the men who made the Targums were very much afraid of attributing human thoughts and feelings and actions to God. To put it in technical language, they made every effort to avoid anthropomorphism in speaking of him.
Now the Old Testament regularly speaks of God in a human way; and wherever they met a thing like that the Targums substituted the word of God for the name of God. Let us see how this custom worked. In Exodus 19:17 we read that "Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God." The Targums thought that was too human a way to speak of God, so they said that Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet the word of God. In Exodus 31:13 we read that God said to the people that the Sabbath" is a sign between me and you throughout your generations." That was far too human a way to speak for the Targums, and so they said that the Sabbath is a sign "between my word and you." Deuteronomy 9:3 says that God is a consuming fire, but the Targums translated it that the word of god is a consuming fire. Isaiah 48:13 has a great picture of creation: "My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens." That was much too human a picture of God for the Targums and they made god say: "By my word I have founded the earth; and by my strength I have hung up the heavens." Even so wonderful a passage as Deuteronomy 33:27 which speaks of God's "everlasting arms" was changed, and became: "The eternal God is thy refuge, and by his word the world was created." In the Jonathan Targum the phrase the word of God occurs no fewer than about three hundred and twenty times. It is quite true that it is simply a periphrasis for the name of God; but the fact remains that the word of God became one of the commonest forms of Jewish expression. It was a phrase which any devout Jew would recognize because he heard it so often in the synagogue when scripture was read. Every Jew was used to speaking of the Memra, the word of God.
(iv) At this stage we must look more fully at something we already began to look at in the introduction. The Greek term for word is Logos; but Logos does not only mean word; it also means reason. For John, and for all the great thinkers who made use of this idea, these two meanings were always closely intertwined. Whenever they used Logos the twin ideas of the Word of God and the Reason of God were in their minds.
The Jews had type of literature called The Wisdom Literature which was the concentrated wisdom of sages. It is not usually speculative and philosophical, but practical wisdom for the living and management of life. In the Old Testament the great example of Wisdom Literature is the Book of Proverbs. In this book there are certain passages which give a mysterious life-giving and eternal power to Wisdom (Sophia). In these passages Wisdom has been, as it were, personified, and is thought of as the eternal agent and co-worker of God. There are three main passages.
The first is Proverbs 3:13-26. Out of that passage we may specially note: "She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke forth, and the clouds drop down the dew" (Proverbs 3:18-20).
We remember that Logos means Word and also means Reason. We have already seen how the Jews thought of the powerful and creative word of God. Here we see the other side beginning to emerge. Wisdom is God's agent in enlightenment and in creation; and Wisdom and Reason are very much the same thing. We have seen how important Logos was in the sense of Word; now we see it beginning to be important in the sense of Wisdom or Reason.
The second important passage is Proverbs 4:5-13. In it we may notice: "Keep hold of instruction, do not let go; guard her, for she is your life."
The Word is the light of men and Wisdom is the light of men. The two ideas are amalgamating with each other rapidly now. The most important passage of all is in Proverbs 8:1-9:2. In it we may specially note: "The Lord created me (Wisdom is speaking) at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep; when he made firm the skies above; when he established the fountains of the deep; when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command; when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always" (Proverbs 8:22-30).
When we read that passage there is echo after echo of what John says of the word in the first chapter of his gospel. Wisdom had that eternal existence, that light-giving function, that creative power which John attributed to the word, the Logos, with which he identified Jesus Christ.
The development of this idea of wisdom did not stop here. Between the Old and the New Testament, men went on producing this kind writing called Wisdom Literature. It had so much concentrated wisdom in it and drew so much from the experience of wise men that it was a priceless guide for life. In particular two very great books were written, which are included in the Apocrypha and which it will do any man's soul good to read.
(a) The first is called The Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, or, as it is better known, Ecclesiasticus. It too makes much of this great conception of the creative and eternal wisdom of God. "The sand of the sea, and the drops of the rain, And the days of eternity who shall number? The height of the heaven and the breadth of the earth And the deep and wisdom, who shall search them out? Wisdom hath been created before all things, And the understanding of prudence from everlasting" (Ecclesiasticus 1:1-10). "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, And covered the earth as a mist. I dwelt in high places, And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud. Alone I compassed the circuit of the heaven, And walked in the depth of the abyss" (Ecclesiasticus 24:3-5). "He created me from the beginning of the world, And to the end I shall not fail" (Ecclesiasticus 24:9).
Here again we find wisdom as the eternal, creative power which was at God's side in the days of creation and the beginning of time.
(b) Ecclesiasticus was written in Palestine about the year 100 B.C.; and at almost the same time an equally great book was written in Alexandria in Egypt, called The Wisdom of Solomon. In it there is the greatest of all pictures of wisdom. Wisdom is the treasure which men use to become the friends of God (7:14). Wisdom is the artificer of all things (7:22). She is the breath of the power of God and a pure effluence flowing from the Almighty (7:25). She can do all things and makes all things new (7:27).
But the writer does more than talk about wisdom; he equates wisdom and the word. To him the two ideas are the same. He can talk of the wisdom of God and the word of God in the same sentence and with the same meaning. When he prays to God, his address is: "O God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things with thy word, and ordained man through thy wisdom" (9:2).
He can speak of the word almost as John was to speak: "For while all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction, and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it touched the heaven but it stood upon the earth" (18:14-16).
To the writer of the Book of Wisdom, wisdom was God's eternal, creative, illuminating power; wisdom and the word were one and the same. It was wisdom and the word who were God's instruments and agents in creation and who ever bring the will of God to the mind and heart of man.
So when John was searching for a way in which he could commend Christianity he found in his own faith and in the record of his own people the idea of the word, the ordinary word which is in itself not merely a sound, but a dynamic thing, the word of God by which God created the world, the word of the Targums which expressed the very idea of the action of God, the wisdom of the Wisdom Literature which was the eternal creative and illuminating power of God. So John said: "If you wish to see that word of God, if you wish to see the creative power of God, if you wish to see that word which brought the world into existence and which gives light and life to every man, look at Jesus Christ. In him the word of God came among you."
THE GREEK BACKGROUND We began by seeing that John's problem was not that of presenting Christianity to the Jewish world, but of presenting it to the Greek world. How then did this idea of the word fit into Greek thought? It was already there waiting to be used. In Greek thought the idea of the word began away back about 560 B.C., and, strangely enough, in Ephesus where the Fourth Gospel was written.
In 560 B.C. there was an Ephesian philosopher called Heraclitus whose basic idea was that everything is in a state of flux. Everything was changing from day to day and from moment to moment. His famous illustration was that it was impossible to step twice into the same river. You step into a river; you step out; you step in again; but you do not step into the same river, for the water has flowed on and it is a different river. To Heraclitus everything was like that, everything was in a constantly changing state of flux. But if that be so, why was life not complete chaos? How can there be any sense in a world where there was constant flux and change?
The answer of Heraclitus was: all this change and flux was not haphazard; it was controlled and ordered, following a continuous pattern all the time; and that which controlled the pattern was the Logos, the word, the reason of God. To Heraclitus, the Logos was the principle of order under which the universe continued to exist. Heraclitus went further. He held that not only was there a pattern in the physical world; there was also a pattern in the world of events. He held that nothing moved with aimless feet; in all life and in all the events of life there was a purpose, a plan and a design. And what was it that controlled events? Once again, the answer was Logos.
Heraclitus took the matter even nearer home. What was it that in us individually told us the difference between right and wrong? What made us able to think and to reason? What enabled us to choose aright and to recognize the truth when we saw it? Once again Heraclitus gave the same answer. What gave a man reason and knowledge of the truth and the ability to judge between right and wrong was the Logos of God dwelling within him. Heraclitus held that in the world of nature and events "all things happen according to the Logos," and that in the individual man "the Logos is the judge of truth." The Logos was nothing less than the mind of God controlling the world and every man in it.
Once the Greeks had discovered this idea they never let it go. It fascinated them, especially the Stoics. The Stoics were always left in wondering amazement at the order of the world. Order always implies a mind. The Stoics asked: "What keeps the stars in their courses? What makes the tides ebb and flow? What makes day and night come in unalterable order? What brings the seasons round at their appointed times?" And they answered; "All things are controlled by the Logos of God. The Logos is the power which puts sense into the world, the power which makes the world an order instead of a chaos, the power which set the world going and keeps it going in its perfect order. "The Logos," said the Stoics, "pervades all things."
There is still another name in the Greek world at which we must look. In Alexandria there was a Jew called Philo who had made it the business of his life to study the wisdom of two worlds, the Jewish and the Greek. No man ever knew the Jewish scriptures as he knew them; and no Jew ever knew the greatness of Greek thought as he knew it. He too knew and used and loved this idea of the Logos, the word, the reason of God. He held that the Logos was the oldest thing in the world and the instrument through which God had made the world. He said that the Logos was the thought of God stamped upon the universe; he talked about the Logos by which God made the world and all things; he said that God, the pilot of the universe, held the Logos as a tiller and with it steered all things. He said that man's mind was stamped also with the Logos, that the Logos was what gave a man reason, the power to think and the power to know. He said that the Logos was the intermediary between the world and God and that the Logos was the priest who set the soul before God.
Greek thought knew all about the Logos; it saw in the Logos the creating and guiding and directing power of God, the power which made the universe and kept it going. So John came to the Greeks and said: "For centuries you have been thinking and writing and dreaming about the Logos, the power which made the world, the power which keeps the order of the world, the power by which men think and reason and know, the power by which men come into contact with God. Jesus is that Logos come down to earth." "The word," said John, "became flesh." We could put it another way-"The Mind of God became a person."
BOTH JEW AND GREEK Slowly the Jews and Greeks had thought their way to the conception of the Logos, the Mind of God which made the world and makes sense of it. So John went out to Jews and Greeks to tell them that in Jesus Christ this creating, illuminating, controlling, sustaining mind of God had come to earth. He came to tell them that men need no longer guess and grope; all that they had to do was to look at Jesus and see the Mind of God.
Here at the beginning John says three things about the word; which is to say that he says three things about Jesus. (i) The word was already there at the very beginning things. John's thought is going back to the first verse of the Bible. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). What John is saying is this-the word is not one of the created things; the word was there before creation. the word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and the world began. John was thinking of what is known as the pre-existence of Christ.
In many ways this idea of pre-existence is very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to grasp. But it does mean one very simple, very practical, and very tremendous thing. If the word was with God before time began, if God's word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Jesus.
Sometimes we tend to think of God as stern and avenging; and we tend to think that something Jesus did changed God's anger into love and altered his attitude to men. The New Testament knows nothing of that idea. The whole New Testament tells us, this passage of John especially, that God has always been like Jesus. What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.
We may well ask, "What then about some of the things that we read in the Old Testament? What about the passages which speak about commandments of God to wipe out whole cities and to destroy men, women and children? What of the anger and the destructiveness and the jealousy of God that we sometimes read of in the older parts of Scripture?" The answer is this-it is not God who has changed; it is men's knowledge of him that has changed. Men wrote these things because they did not know any better; that was the stage which their knowledge of God had reached.
When a child is learning any subject, he has to learn it stage by stage. He does not begin with full knowledge; he begins with what he can grasp and goes on to more and more. When he begins music appreciation, he does not start with a Bach Prelude and Fugue; he starts with something much more simple; and goes through stage after stage until his knowledge grows. It was that way with men and God. They could only grasp and understand God's nature and his ways in part. It was only when Jesus came that they saw fully and completely what God has always been like.
It is told that a little girl was once confronted with some of the more bloodthirsty and savage parts of the Old Testament. Her comment was: "But that happened before God became a Christian!" If we may so put it with all reverence, when John says that the word was always there, he is saying that God was always a Christian. He is telling us that God was and is and ever shall be like Jesus; but men could never know and realize that until Jesus came.
(ii) John goes on to say that the word was with God. What does he mean by that? He means that always there has been the closest connection between the word and God. Let us put that in another and a simpler way-there has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God. That means no one can tell us what God is like, what God's will is for us, what God's love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.
Let us take a simple human analogy. If we want to know what someone really thinks and feels about something, and if we are unable to approach the person ourselves, we do not go to someone who is merely an acquaintance of that person, to someone who has known him only a short time; we go to someone whom we know to be an intimate friend of many years' standing. We know that he will really be able to interpret the mind and the heart of the other person to us.
It is something like that that John is saying about Jesus. He is saying that Jesus has always been with God. Let us use every human language because it is the only language we can use. John is saying that Jesus is so intimate with God that God has no secrets from him; and that, therefore, Jesus is the one person in all the universe who can reveal to us what God is like and how God feels towards us.
(iii) Finally John says that the word was God. This is a difficult saying for us to understand, and it is difficult because Greek, in which John wrote, had a different way of saying things from the way in which English speaks. When Greek uses a noun it almost always uses the definite article with it. The Greek for God is theos and the definite article is ho. When Greek speaks about God it does not simply say theos; it says ho theos. Now when Greek does not use the definite article with a noun that noun becomes much more like an adjective. John did not say that the word was ho theos; that would have been to say that the word was identical with God. He said that the word was theos-without the definite article-which means that the word was, we might say, of the very same character and quality and essence and being as God. When John said the word was God he was not saying that Jesus was identical with God; he was saying that Jesus was so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in him we perfectly see what God is like.
So right at the beginning of his gospel John lays it down that in Jesus, and in him alone, there is perfectly revealed to men all that God always was and always will be, and all that he feels towards and desires for men. Among the Greek philosophers, especially the Stoics, logos came to mean the rational principle that gave order to the cosmos. It could therefore be equated with God. Human reason, in turn, derived from this universal logos. Philo of Alexandria used this concept in his efforts to interpret Jewish religion for those versed in Greek philosophy. In Philo's writings, logos was the mediating agency by which God created the world and by which revelation comes to God's people. The logos became a distinct entity, specifically the "word of God" active in creation and revelation.
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, logos translates the word dabar, which could mean "word," "thing," or "event." In Hebrew thought, the dabar was dynamic and filled with a power that was transmitted to those who received it. The term was often used to designate God's communication to his people, as at the beginning of many of the writings of the prophets: "The word of the Lord came." The whole of the Law, or all of Scripture, could then be referred to as God's Word.
Toward the end of the Old Testament period wisdom was increasingly personified as the Word of God that mediated between God and the world (see Prov. 8:22-31; Wisdom of Solomon 9:1-2). Wisdom (sophia) was preexistent, God's first creation, His instrument and agent in all the rest of creation. God became increasingly aloof in Jewish theology and dealt with His creation only through this subordinate being and through His angels.
In the New Testament logos is used both with common and with technical meanings. It is used for empty words (Eph. 5:6) and evil words (3 John 10), but it could also refer to the teachings of Jesus (Matt. 24:35).
Jesus preached the word (Mark 2:2) or the word of God (Luke 5:1), and judgment would be determined by one's response to Jesus' words (Mark 8:38). The gospel, the message about Jesus, could then be called "the word" (1 Thess. 1:6; Luke 1:2; Titus 1:2-3) or "the word of God" (Acts 8:14; 1 Thess. 2:13).
The word carries God's power to save (1 Cor. 1:18). Those who receive the word are called to be faithful to it (Titus 1:9) and to be "doers of the word" (Jas. 1:22).
In the Johannine writings Jesus himself is called the logos (John 1:1,14). Paul called Jesus the "wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24) and spoke of His preexistence (Phil. 2:6; Col. 1:15-16); but only in the Johannine literature do we find the full development of an understanding of Jesus as the logos or wisdom of God that became incarnate. As the preexistent logos, the Son of God was the agent of creation. In contrast to earlier wisdom speculation, John affirmed that the logos was with God and was God. The logos was not created.
Elsewhere in the Gospel of John, we find logos used with qualifiers such as "of God" (10:35), "of Jesus" (18:32), "my word" (8:43), or "his word" (8:55). Revelation 19:13 calls Jesus the "word of God," and 1 John 1:1 speaks of Him as "the word of life" (compare Heb. 1:2), but only in the prologue of the Gospel is logos used of Jesus in the absolute sense.
Throughout John's Gospel Jesus spoke and acted as the incarnate logos, continuing God's creative and redemptive work. Hence, He could change water to wine, create eyes for a man born blind, and breathe the Spirit into His disciples (20:22).
John was probably dependent upon the developments in the use of logos that are evident in Jewish wisdom speculation and in Philo's writings, but John's distinctive contribution was the adoption of this concept to illuminate the identity and role of Jesus more fully.
The Gospel of John declares that the logos of whom the philosophers and sages spoke had come in human form in Jesus of Nazareth.
2. Personality The second affirmation is that of eternal personality. It is here implied that the Word was on a level and in communication with God. The LOGOS is not an impersonal principle, but is to be regarded as living, intelligent, an active personality.
In order to place all the emphasis on Christ's full deity, in the Greek the predicate precedes the subject. And John certainly states this again in this gospel, as in John 10:30: "I and the Father are one."
3. Nature The third step is the assertion of deity. The Greek word "theos" (God) is here used without the article, which places the emphasis on quality...God as a kind of being. The LOGOS possessed and eternally manifested the very nature of God. He was co-existent with God (Phil. 2:6) and in essence and substance, was God (Heb. 1:3; Col. 2:9-10).
* THE WORD AND CREATION (1:2-3). "He was with God in the beginning. {3} Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
Christ was coexistent. He was and is face to face with God forever. The word "with" (pros) has the idea of both being with and acting toward. Jesus Christ (the Word) was both with God and acting with God. He was "with God": by God’s side, acting, living, and moving in the closest of relationships. Christ had the ideal and perfect relationship with God the Father. Their life together—their relationship, communion, fellowship, and connection—was a perfect eternal bond. This is exactly what is said: "The same was in the beginning with God" (John 1:2).
The testimony of John was that Jesus Christ was the Word, the One who had always co-existed with God. Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God.
John did not say that "the Word" was the God (ho Theos). He says "the Word" was God (Theos). He omits the definite article. John was saying that "the Word," Jesus Christ... · is of the very nature and character of God the Father, but He is not the identical person of God the Father. · is a distinct person from God the Father, but He is of the very being and essence (perfection) of God the Father.
When a man sees Christ, he sees a distinct person, but he sees a person who is of the very substance and character of God in all of His perfect being.
The testimony of John was that Jesus Christ was the Word, self-existent and eternal, the Supreme Majesty of the universe who owes His existence to no one. Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God.
Jesus Christ is eternal. This says several critical things about Christ. 1) Christ reveals the most important Person in all the universe: God. He reveals all that God is and wants to say to man. Therefore, Christ must be diligently studied, and all that He is and says must be heeded to the utmost (cp. John 5:24).
2) Christ reveals God perfectly. He is just like God, identical to God; therefore, when we look at Christ we see God.
3) Christ reveals that God is the most wonderful Person. God is far, far beyond anyone we could have ever dreamed. He is loving and caring, full of goodness and truth; and He will not tolerate injustices: murder and stealing, lying and cheating of husband, wife, child, neighbor, brother, sister or stranger. God loves and is working and moving toward a perfect universe that will be filled with people who choose to love and worship and live and work for Him (cp. John 5:24-29).
The very nature of Christ is... · to exist eternally. · to exist in a perfect state of being, knowing nothing but eternal perfection. · to exist in perfect communion and fellowship eternally (cp. 1 John 1:3). Note: it is the very nature of Christ that shall be imparted to believers; therefore, all three things will become our experience.
Two salient facts regarding Christ's deity are expressed here: 1. Christ Himself was not created; 2. All things were created by Him.
It may seem strange to us that John so stresses the way in which the world was created; and it may seem strange that he so definitely connects Jesus with the work of creation. But he had to do this because of a certain tendency in the thought of his day.
In the time of John there was a kind of heresy called Gnosticism. Its characteristic was that it was an intellectual and philosophical approach to Christianity. To the Gnostics the simple beliefs of the ordinary Christian were not enough. They tried to construct a philosophic system out of Christianity. They were troubled about the existence of sin and evil and sorrow and suffering in this world, so they worked out a theory to explain it. The theory was this.
In the beginning two things existed-the one was God and the other was matter. Matter was always there and was the raw material out of which the world was made. The Gnostics held that this original matter was flawed and imperfect. We might put it that the world got off to a bad start. It was made of material which had the seeds of corruption in it.
The Gnostics went further. God, they said, is pure spirit, and pure spirit can never touch matter at all, still less matter which is imperfect. Therefore it was not possible for God to carry out the work of creation himself. So he put out from himself a series of emanations.
Each emanation was further and further away from God and as the emanations got further and further away from him, they knew less and less about him. About halfway down the series there was an emanation which knew nothing at all about God. Beyond that stage the emanations began to be not only ignorant of but actually hostile to God. Finally in the series there was an emanation which was so distant from God that it was totally ignorant of him and totally hostile to him-and that emanation was the power which created the world, because it was so distant from God that it was possible for it to touch this flawed and evil matter. The creator god was utterly divorced from and utterly at enmity with the real God.
The Gnostics took one step further. They identified the creator god with the God of the Old Testament; and they held that the God of the Old Testament was quite different from, quite ignorant of and quite hostile to the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
In the time of John this kind of belief was widespread. Men believed that the world was evil and that an evil God had created it. It is to combat this teaching that John here lays down two basic Christian truths. In point of fact the connection of Jesus with creation is repeatedly laid down in the New Testament, just because of this background of thought which divorced God from the world in which we live. In Colossians 1:16 Paul writes: "For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth . . . all things were created through him and for him."
In 1 Corinthians 8:6 he writes of the Lord Jesus Christ "through whom are all things." The writer to the Hebrews speaks of the one who was the Son, "through whom also God created the world" (Hebrews 1:2). John and the other New Testament writers who spoke like this were stressing two great truths. (i) Christianity has always believed in what is called creation out of nothing. We do not believe that in his creation of the world God had to work with alien and evil matter. We do not believe that the world began with an essential flaw in it. We do not believe that the world began with God and something else. It is our belief that behind everything there is God and God alone.
(ii) Christianity has always believed that this is God's world. So far from being so detached from the world that he could have nothing to do with it, God is intimately involved in it. The Gnostics tried to put the blame for the evil of the world on the shoulders of its creator. Christianity believes that what is wrong with the world is due to man's sin. But even though sin has injured the world and kept it from being what it might have been, we can never despise the world, because it is essentially God's. If we believe this it gives us a new sense of the value of the world and a new sense of responsibility to it.
There is a story of a child from the back streets of a great city who was taken for a day in the country. When she saw the bluebells in the woods, she asked: "Do you think God would mind if I picked some of his flowers?" This is God's world; because of that nothing is out of his control; and because of that we must use all things in the awareness that they belong to God. The Christian does not belittle the world by thinking that it was created by an ignorant and a hostile god; he glorifies it by remembering that everywhere God is behind it and in it. He believes that the Christ who re-creates the world was the co-worker of God when the world was first created, and that, in the act of redemption, God is seeking to win back that which was always his own.
The Father was the architect, but Jesus was the primary agent of creation. John now reveals His position in the world of action. The LOGOS shared with God His place at the beginning of all things, which relates to the universe, its elements, and its systems of law.
Furthermore, the material creation is the product of the LOGOS. Christ is the medium through whom deity expresses itself.
This is said in other verses as well: Colossians 1:16: "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him." Hebrews 1:2: "...but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe."
Notice what is said here: God made the world by a word; Christ was that Word. Nothing was made without Him! The verb "was made" is perfect tense in the Greek, which means a "completed act." Creation is finished. It is not a process still going on, even though God is certainly at work in His creation (John 5:17). Creation is not a process; it is a finished product.
Christ is the Creator. Note several things. 1. "All things" (panta) mean every detail of creation—not creation as a whole, but every single detail. Each element and thing, each being and person—whether material or spiritual, angelic or human—has come into being by Christ.
2. The words "were made" (egeneto) mean came into being or became. Note what this is saying. Nothing was existing—no substance, no matter whatsoever. Matter is not eternal. God did not take something outside of Himself, something less than perfect (evil) and create the world. Christ, the Word, took nothing but His will and power; and He spoke the Word, and created every single thing out of nothing (ex nihilo).
3. Christ was the One who created all things—one by one. Among the Godhead, He was the active Agent, the Person who made all things. Creation was His function and work (cp. Col. 1:16 above).
(1 Corinthians 8:6 NIV) "yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."
(Hebrews 1:2 NIV) "but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe."
4. Note that two statements of fact are made. Þ The positive statement of fact: "All things were made by Him." Þ The absolute statement of fact: "Without Him was not anything made that was made." a. Christ was actively involved in the creation of every single thing: "Without Him was not anything made." b. The words "not anything" (oude hen) mean not even one thing, not a single thing, not even a detail was made apart from Him.
Note a critical point for man. The world is God’s; He made it, every element of it, one by one. This means several things. 1) God is not off in some distant place far removed from the world, unconcerned and disinterested in what happens to the world. God cares about the world. He cares deeply, even about the most minute detail and smallest person. He cares about everything and every person in the world.
2) The problems of the world are not due to God and His attitude. The problems of the world are due to sin, to the attitude and evil of man’s heart.
3) The answer to the world’s problems is not man and his technical skill. The answer is Christ: for men to turn to Christ, surrendering and giving their lives to know Christ in the most personal and intimate way possible. Then, and only then, can men set their lives and world in order as God intends.
This verse puts to rest two heresies: 1. That matter is eternal, and 2. That angels or aeons had a share in creation, as advocated by the Gnostics.
* The Word and Life (1:4-5) "In him was life, and that life was the light of men. {5} The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."
In a great piece of music the composer often begins by stating the themes which he is going to elaborate in the course of the work. That is what John does here. Life and light are two of the great basic words on which the Fourth Gospel is built up. They are two of the main themes which it is the aim of the gospel to develop and to expound. Let us look at them in detail.
The Fourth Gospel begins and ends with life. At the very beginning we read that in Jesus was life; and at the very end we read that John's aim in writing the gospel was that men might "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31). The word is continually on the lips of Jesus. It is his wistful regret that men will not come to him that they might have life (5:40). It is his claim that he came that men might have life and that they might have it abundantly (10:10). He claims that he gives men life and that they will never perish because no one will snatch them out of his hand (10:28). He claims that he is the way, the truth and the life (14:6). In the gospel the word life (zoe) occurs more than thirty-five times and the verb to live or to have life (zen) more than fifteen times. What then does John mean by life?
(i) Quite simply he means that life is the opposite of destruction, condemnation and death. God sent his Son that the man who believes should not perish but have eternal life (3:16). The man who hears and believes has eternal life and will not come into judgment (5:24). There is a contrast between the resurrection to life and the resurrection to judgment (5:29). Those to whom Jesus gives life will never perish (10:28). There is in Jesus that which gives a man security in this life and in the life to come. Until we accept Jesus and take him as our saviour and enthrone him as our king we cannot be said to live at all. The man who lives a Christless life exists, but he does not know what life is. Jesus is the one person who can make life worth living, and in whose company death is only the prelude to fuller life.
(ii) But John is quite sure that, although Jesus is the bringer of this life, the giver of life is God. Again and again John uses the phrase the living God, as indeed the whole Bible does. It is the will of the Father who sent Jesus that everyone who sees him and believes on him should have life (6:40). Jesus is the giver of life because the Father has set his own seal of approval upon him (6:27). He gives life to as many as God has given him (17:2). At the back of it all there is God. It is as if God was saying: "I created men that they should have real life; through their sin they have ceased to live and only exist; I have sent them my Son to enable them to know what real life is."
(iii) We must ask what this life is. Again and again the Fourth Gospel uses the phrase eternal life. We shall discuss the full meaning of that phrase later. At present we note this. The word John uses for eternal is aionios. Clearly whatever else eternal life is, it is not simply life which lasts for ever. A life which lasted for ever could be a terrible curse; often the thing for which men long is release from life. In eternal life there must be more than duration of life; there must be a certain quality of life.
Life is not desirable unless it is a certain kind of life. Here we have the clue. Aionios is the adjective which is repeatedly used to describe God. In the true sense of the word only God is aionios, eternal; therefore eternal life is that life which God lives. What Jesus offers us from God is God's own life. Eternal life is life which knows something of the serenity and power of the life of God himself. When Jesus came offering men eternal life, he was inviting them to enter into the very life of God.
(iv) How, then, do we enter into that life? We enter into it by believing in Jesus Christ. The word to believe (pisteuein) occurs in the Fourth Gospel no fewer than seventy times. "He who believes in the Son has eternal life" (3:36). "He who believes," says Jesus, "has eternal life" (6:47). It is God's will that men should see the Son, and believe in him, and have eternal life (5:24). What does John mean by to believe? He means two things.
(a) He means that we must be convinced that Jesus is really and truly the Son of God. He means that we must make up our minds about him. After all, if Jesus is only a man, there is no reason why we should give him the utter and implicit obedience that he demands. We have to think out for ourselves who he was. We have to look at him, learn about him, study him, think about him until we are driven to the conclusion that this is none other than the Son of God. (b) But there is more than intellectual belief in this. To believe in Jesus means to take Jesus at his word, to accept his commandments as absolutely binding, to believe without question that what he says is true.
For John, belief means the conviction of the mind that Jesus is the Son of God, the trust of the heart that everything he says is true and the basing of every action on the unshakable assurance that we must take him at his word. When we do that we stop existing and begin living. We know what Life with a capital L really means. The second of the great Johannine key-words which we meet here is the word light. This word occurs in the Fourth Gospel no fewer than twenty-one times. Jesus is the light of men. The function of John the Baptist was to point men to that light which was in Christ. Twice Jesus calls himself the light of the world (8:12; 9:5). This light can be in men (11:10), so that they can become children of the light (12:36), "I have come," said Jesus, "as light into the world" (12:46). Let us see if we can understand something of this idea of the light which Jesus brings into the world. Three things stand out.
(i) The light Jesus brings is the light which puts chaos to flight. In the creation story God moved upon the dark, formless chaos which was before the world began and said: "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3). The new-created light of God routed the empty chaos into which it came. So Jesus is the light which shines in the darkness (1:5). He is the one person who can save life from becoming a chaos. Left to ourselves we are at the mercy of our passions and our fears.
When Jesus dawns upon life, light comes. One of the oldest fears in the world is the fear of the dark. There is a story of a child who was to sleep in a strange house. His hostess, thinking to be kind, offered to leave the light on when he went to bed. Politely he declined the offer. "I thought," said his hostess, "that you might be afraid of the dark." "Oh, no," said the lad, "you see, it's God's dark." With Jesus the night is light about us as the day.
(ii) The light which Jesus brings is a revealing light. It is the condemnation of men that they loved the darkness rather than the light; and they did so because their deeds were evil; and they hated the light lest their deeds should be exposed (3:19, 20). The light which Jesus brings is something which shows things as they are. It strips away the disguises and the concealments; it shows things in all their nakedness; it shows them in their true character and their true values.
Long ago the Cynics said that men hate the truth for the truth is like the light to sore eyes. In Caedmon's poem there is a strange picture. It is a picture of the last day and in the centre of the scene there is the Cross; and from the Cross there flows a strange blood-red light, and the mysterious quality of that light is such that it shows things as they are. The externals, the disguises, the outer wrappings and trappings are stripped away; and everything stands revealed in the naked and awful loneliness of what it essentially is.
We never see ourselves until we see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus. We never see what our lives are like until we see them in the light of Jesus. Jesus often drives us to God by revealing us to ourselves.
(iii) The light which Jesus brings is a guiding light. If a man does not possess that light he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going (12:36). When a man receives that light and believes in it, he walks no more in darkness (12:46). One of the features of the gospel stories which no one can miss is the number of people who came running to Jesus asking: "What am I to do?" When Jesus comes into life the time of guessing and of groping is ended, the time of doubt and uncertainty and vacillation is gone. The path that was dark becomes light; the decision that was wrapped in a night of uncertainty is illumined. Without Jesus we are like men groping on an unknown road in a black-out. With him the way is clear.
"Life" is a key theme in this gospel; it is used 36 times. We understand that there are some essentials for human life: light, air, water, and food. And Jesus is called all of these in this gospel!
John tells us in these verses something of the nature of this divine Word. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Behind Christ's creative involvement was one crucial and dynamic element: life!
1. Christ is the source of light. Note the statement: "The life [Christ] was the light of men." From the very beginning man was to know that life, to know God personally and intimately. The knowledge of the life of Christ was to be the light of men, the beam that was to... · give real life to man, both abundant and eternal life. · infuse energy and motivation into men so that he might walk and live as they should.
There is another way to say this. From the very beginning, the life (Christ) was to be the light of man’s...
The life (Christ) was to be the light of man’s purpose, meaning and significance upon earth.
Turning from Christ's creative work to His saving work, John shows us that just as Christ is the source of all physical life, so is He also the source of all spiritual life.
When life is manifested, it is called, for it is characteristic of light to shine forth. Truth and love are synonyms of light in the gospels.
2. Christ is the answer to darkness. a. Christ’s life did shine in the darkness. Very simply, since man had brought darkness into the world (by sin), the life of Christ was the light of man, the beam that showed man the way, the truth and the life. Þ Christ showed man the way God intended him to live. Þ Christ showed man the truth of life, that is, the truth about God and man and the truth about the world of man.
b. Christ’s life (the Light) cannot be overcome.
DEEPER STUDY -- the simple statement "in Christ was life" means at least three things. 1. Life is the quality and essence, the energy and power, the force and principle of being. Christ is life; He is...
Without Christ, there would be no life whatsoever. Life is in Him, within His very being. All things exist and have their being (life) in Him.
2. Life is purpose, meaning, and significance of being. Christ is life; He is... · the very purpose of life. · the very meaning of life. · the very significance of life.
3. Life is perfection. Life is all that a man must be and possess in order to live perfectly. This is what is meant by life. Life is completeness of being, absolute satisfaction, the fulness of all good, and the possession of all good things. Life is perfect love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control (cp. Galatians 5:22-23).
Whatever life is and all that life is, it is all in Jesus Christ. Even the legitimate cravings of man that are sometimes entangled with evil—such as power, fame and wealth—are all included in the life given by Jesus Christ. Those who partake of His life shall reign forever as kings and priests. This is the very thing that is distinctive about life—it is eternal. It lasts forever and it is rewarding. It will eventually exalt the believer to the highest life and place and position. (Cp. Rev. 21:1f.)
Jesus Christ is the source of life: He is the way to life and He is the truth of life. He is the very substance of life, its very being and energy (John 5:26; 1 John 1:2).
All living creatures have their life in Him. Genesis 1:20: "And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." Genesis 2:7: "...the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
Power and energy (life) comes from the Word. The power that creates and sustains life in the universe is the LOGOS! He was manifested to the world and they rejected Him.
The Eternal Word was made known to the world before the Incarnation. 1. By revelation to the mind of man. Romans 1:19-20: "...since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. {20} For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
2. In creation. Psalms 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." It was also revealed through type and shadow, revelations in visions, dreams, etc. in the Old Testament, which times doesn’t allow us now to discuss. But they (the world) did not comprehend Him! Why did the world not comprehend Him?
- They, in their own wisdom, became vain in their thinking concerning the eternal God and the eternal Word. Paul discussed this in Romans 1:21, 28: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened...Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done."
- Their love for darkness kept them from the light. John 3:19-20: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. {20} Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."
Except for a few visits, Jesus had never been outside of Palestine. By A.D. 60, there were some 100,000 Gentiles in the church for every Jew who was a Christian!
It's been stated correctly that "men are conscious of their helplessness in necessary things. We are longing for a hand let down to let us up...we hate our sins but cannot leave them."
Light and darkness are recurring themes in John's gospel. God is light (1 John 1:5) while Satan is "the power of darkness" (Luke 22:53). People love either the light or the darkness, and this love controls their actions. Those who believe on Christ are the "sons of light" (John 12:35-36). The coming of Jesus Christ into the world was the dawning of a new day for sinful man (Luke 1:78-79).
It's difficult to believe, but we'd think that blind sinners would welcome the light, but such is just not always true!
We need to realize that God never leaves Himself without a witness to the world. Jesus is the light to every man. John 1:9: "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world." Jesus' coming dissipated shadows of doubt about what God was like. We see what God is like in Christ! His coming also showed man that death was only the way to a larger life.
It’s been suggested that Jesus provided three lights: First, Jesus’ light puts chaos to flight. Left to our own we are at the mercy of our passions, desires, fears, and dreads.
Jesus is also a revealing light, as He strips away disguises, concealment’s and shows things in nakedness, true character, and values. He is also a guiding light. One who walks in darkness doesn't know where he is going.
The Son of God on earth (1:10-13) In spite of the fact that Jesus offers Himself to everyone without exception, His light is shunned by many: "He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. {11} He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. {12} Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--{13} children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."
Like children coming out of a Saturday matinee--whose eyes squint at the light of day and who shrink back into the theater--many refused to step into the light of Christ. The world, in its hardness, stood as a defiant piece of sculpture, shunning its sculptor and refusing to acknowledge Christ as its maker.
Not only did the creation "not know Him," but even Jesus' own people, the Jews, "did not receive Him." In verse 10, the evangelist summarizes the entire presence of Christ in the world, where here applies to the material and spiritual environment in which men live.
The world as a system had no comprehension of the manifested Word, and no place for Him! Not only did the world fail to know the Pre-Incarnate LOGOS, but it failed to recognize him when he became Incarnate (John 1:26).
When John wrote this passage two thoughts were in his mind. (i) He was thinking of the time before Jesus Christ came into the world in the body. From the beginning of time God's Logos has been active in the world. In the beginning God's creating, dynamic word brought the world into being; and ever since it is the word, the Logos, the reason of God which has made the world an ordered whole and man a thinking being. If men had only had the sense to see him, the Logos was always recognizable in the universe.
The Westminster Confession of Faith begins by saying that "the lights of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable." Long ago Paul had said that the visible things of the world were so designed by God as to lead men's thoughts to the invisible things, and that if men had looked with open eyes and an understanding heart at the world their thoughts would have been inevitably led to the creator of the world (Romans 1:19, 20). The world has always been such that, looked at in the right way, it would lead men's minds to God.
Theology has always made a distinction between natural theology and revealed theology. Revealed theology deals with the truths that came to us directly from God in the words of the prophets, the pages of his book, and supremely in Jesus Christ. Natural theology deals with the truths that man could discover by the exercise of his own mind and intellect on the world in which he lives. How, then, can we see God's word, God's Logos, God's reason, God's mind in the world in which we live?
(b) We must look upwards. Nothing demonstrates the amazing order of the universe so much as the movement of the world. Astronomers tell us that there are as many stars as there are grains of sand upon the seashore. If we may put it in human terms, think of the traffic problem of the heavens; and yet the heavenly bodies keep their appointed courses and travel their appointed way. An astronomer is able to forecast to the minute and to the inch when and where a certain planet will appear. An astronomer can tell us when and where an eclipse of the sun will happen hundreds of years from now, and he can tell us to the second how long it will last. It has been said that "no astronomer can be an atheist." When we look upwards we see God.
(c) We must look inwards. Where did we get the power to think, to reason and to know? Where did we get our knowledge of right and of wrong? Why does even the most evil-ridden man know in his heart of hearts when he is doing a wrong thing? Kant said long ago that two things convinced him of the existence of God-the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. We neither gave ourselves life, nor did we give ourselves the reason which guides and directs life. It must have come from some power outside ourselves. Where do remorse and regret and the sense of guilt come from? Why can we never do what we like and be at peace? When we look inwards we find what Marcus Aurelius called "the god within," and what Seneca called "the holy spirit which sits within our souls." No man can explain himself apart from God.
(d) We must look backwards. Froude, the great historian, said that the whole of history is a demonstration of the moral law in action. Empires rise and empires collapse. As Kipling wrote: "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!"
And it is a demonstrable fact of history that moral degeneration and national collapse go hand in hand. "No nation," said George Bernard Shaw, "has ever outlived the loss of its gods." All history is the practical demonstration that there is a God.
So, then, even if Jesus Christ had never come into this world in bodily form, it would still have been possible for men to see God's word, God's Logos, God's reason in action. But, although the action of the word was there for all to see, men never recognized him.
He was in the world, and, although the world came into being through him, the world did not recognize him. It was into his own home that he came, and his own people did not welcome him.
(ii) In the end God's creating and directing word did come into this world in the form of the man Jesus. John says that the word came to his own home and his own people gave him no welcome. What does he mean by that? He means that when God's word entered this world, he did not come to Rome or to Greece or to Egypt or to the Eastern Empires. He came to Palestine; Palestine was specially God's land and the Jews were specially God's people.
The very titles by which the Old Testament calls the land and the people show that. Palestine is repeatedly called the holy land (Zechariah 2:12; 2 Maccabees 1:7; Wisdom 12:3). It is called the Lord's land; God speaks of it as his land (Hosea 9:3; Jeremiah 2:7; 16:18; Leviticus 25:23). The Jewish nation is called God's peculiar treasure (Exodus 19:5; Psalm 135:4). The Jews are called God's special people (Deuteronomy 7:6). They are called God's peculiar people (Deuteronomy 14:2; 26:18). They are called the Lord's portion (Deuteronomy 32:9).
Jesus came to a land which was peculiarly God's land and a people who were peculiarly God's people. He ought, therefore, to have been coming to a nation that would welcome him with open arms; the door should have been wide open for him; he should have been welcomed like a wayfarer coming home; or, even more, like a king coming to his own-but he was rejected. He was received with hate and not with adoration.
Here is the tragedy of a people being prepared for a task and then refusing that task. It may be that parents plan and save and sacrifice to give a son or a daughter a chance in life, to prepare that son or daughter for some special task and opportunity-and then when the chance comes, the one for whom so much sacrifice was made refuses to grasp the opportunity, or fails miserably when confronted with the challenge. Therein is tragedy. And that is what happened to God.
It would be wrong to think that God prepared only the Jewish people. God is preparing every man and woman and child in this world for some task that he has in store for them. A novelist tells of a girl who refused to touch the soiling things of life. When she was asked why, she said: "Some day something fine is going to come into my life, and I want to be ready for it." The tragedy is that so many people refuse the task God has for them.
We may put it in another way-a way that strikes home-there are so few people who become what they have it in them to be. It may be through lethargy and laziness, it may be through timidity and cowardice, it may be through lack of discipline and self-indulgence, it may be through involvement in second-bests and byways; but the world is full of people who have never realized the possibilities which are in them. We need not think of the task God has in store for us in terms of some great act or achievement of which all men will know. It may be to fit a child for life; it may be at some crucial moment to speak that word and exert that influence which will stop someone ruining his life; it may be to do some quite small job superlatively well; it may be to touch the lives of many by our hands, our voices or our minds. The fact remains that God is preparing us by all the experiences of life for something; and many refuse the task when it comes and never even realize that they are refusing it.
There is all the pathos in the world in the simple saying: "He came to his own home-and his own people gave him no welcome." It happened to Jesus long ago-and it is happening yet.
Verses 11-13 develop the statement of verse 10: they individualize and personalize the matter, showing how contact was established. And two possible responses are here: Rejection: Most rejected Him. Reception: Some received Him, and they entered into a new relationship.
They saw His works and heard His words. They observed His perfect life. He gave them every opportunity to grasp the truth, believe, and be saved. Jesus is the Jesus is the way, but they would not walk with Him (6:66-71). He is the truth, but they would not believe Him (12:37ff). He is the life, and they crucified Him!
Jesus Christ—Rejection: Christ was tragically rejected by the world. 1. Christ (the Word and the Light) was in the world. He had made the world, and He loved and cared deeply for the world; therefore, He was actively working to help the world and its people from the very beginning of creation.
a. Christ gave the light of order and purpose and beauty to the universe as a whole. The universe is lovingly supplied to take care of man’s needs, and the world shows the glorious power and deity of God (Romans 1:19-20).
b. Christ gave the glorious light [privilege] of living in such a beautiful world to man. He gave man a soul, the very light of life by which he could learn and reason, love and care, work and serve—all for the purpose of building a better world, both for God and for himself.
c. Christ gave a spirit to man, the light of knowing and worshipping God and living forever in the life of God.
d. Christ gave messengers to men, prophetic lights to proclaim the truth and to encourage men to follow God and to be diligent in their work and service to the world.
But note what happened and still happens. "The world knew Him not" (auton ouk egno). Men rejected Christ; they closed their eyes, and failed to see Him. (Cp. Romans 1:19-32 for the tragic indictment against man’s rejection of God’s activity in the world.)
2. Christ (the Word and the Light) came to His own people, but they too rejected Him. The words "unto His own" (eis ta idia) mean literally to His own home, to His own people. There are two meanings here.
a. The world is His home, and all the people are His by creation. He came to all the people of the world, but they did not receive Him. They rejected Him.
b. The nation of Israel was His peculiar home, the people whom He had chosen to be the messengers of God to the world. They, of all people, should have known better because of the special privileges, but they too rejected Him.
Jesus Christ, Accepted—Salvation: Christ was wonderfully received by some persons. Not everyone rejected Christ—most did, but a few received Him. Note three points. 1. How men receive Christ. They "believe on His name" and are baptized into Christ (Acts 2:38).
2. The results of receiving Christ. A person is given the power to become a son of God. Þ The word "power" (exousian) means both power and right or authority. Þ The word "sons" (tekna Theou) means children of God. Þ The words "to become" (genesthai) mean to become something a person is not.
When a person receives Christ into his life through baptism, Christ gives that person the power and right to become something he is not—a child of God.
3. The source of sonship is a new birth. a. The new birth is not of man. Þ It is not by blood. The idea is that heritage—being born of a particular family, race, nation or people—is of no value in becoming a child of God. Blood is not what causes the new birth. Þ It is not by the will of the flesh (ek thelematos sarkos): sexual desire. The idea is that a person is not spiritually born again by wanting and willing to become a child of God just like a person wills to have an earthly child. Þ It is not by the will of man (ek thelematos andros, husband). The idea is that even man (the husband, the stronger member, the one who is usually the leader) cannot bring about the spiritual birth of others. No man, no matter who he is—husband or world leader—can cause or make a person a child of God.
b. The new birth is of God. He gave them (and us) the power to become Sons of God. I John 3:1-3: "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us; that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure."
To become a Son of God one must be born of God. 1 Peter 1:17-25: "Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you."
THE WORD INCARNATE (1:14) This verse explains the Incarnation—God becoming man in the person of Christ. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
The Word, Christ, became flesh, which was visible, audible, and tangible. With this flesh and blood he became limited by space and time, and with its physical handicaps of fatigue, hunger and susceptibility to suffering. The words "dwelt" or "lived" are the Greek word "skenoo," (pronounced: skay-nooo) which means "to pitch a tent" or "tabernacle." This is special when we see the times Peter talked of our "earthly tent" in his epistles. "The Word was made flesh"—God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was made flesh and blood; He became a man. No greater message could ever be proclaimed to man.
Here we come to the sentence for the sake of which John wrote his gospel. He has thought and talked about the word of God, that powerful, creative, dynamic word which was the agent of creation, that guiding, directing, controlling word which puts order into the universe and mind into man. These were ideas which were known and familiar to both Jew and Greek. Now he says the most startling and incredible thing that he could have said. He says quite simply: "This word which created the world, this reason which controls the order of the world, has become a person and with our own eyes we saw him." The word that John uses for seeing this word is theasthai; it is used in the New Testament more than twenty times and is always used of actual physical sight. This is no spiritual vision seen with the eye of the soul or of the mind. John declares that the word actually came to earth in the form of a man and was seen by human eyes. He says: "If you want to see what this creating word, this controlling reason, is like, look at Jesus of Nazareth."
This is where John parted with all thought which had gone before him. This was the entirely new thing which John brought to the Greek world for which he was writing. Augustine afterwards said that in his pre-Christian days he had read and studied the great pagan philosophers and had read many things, but he had never read that the word became flesh.
To a Greek this was the impossible thing. The one thing that no Greek would ever have dreamed of was that God could take a body. To the Greek the body was an evil, a prison-house in which the soul was shackled, a tomb in which the spirit was confined. Plutarch, the wise old Greek, did not even believe that God could control the happenings of this world directly; he had to do it by deputies and intermediaries, for, as Plutarch saw it, it was nothing less than blasphemy to involve God in the affairs of the world. Philo could never have said it. He said: "The life of God has not descended to us; nor has it come as far as the necessities of the body." The great Roman Stoic Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, despised the body in comparison with the spirit. "Therefore despise the flesh-blood and bones and a net-work, a twisted skein of nerves and veins and arteries." "The composition of the whole body is under corruption."
Here was the shatteringly new thing-that God could and would become a human person, that God could enter into this life that we live, that eternity could appear in time, that somehow the Creator could appear in creation in such a way that men's eyes could actually see him.
So staggeringly new was this conception of God in a human form that it is not surprising that there were some even in the church who could not believe it. What John says is that the word became sarx. Now sarx is the very word Paul uses over and over again to describe what he called the flesh, human nature in all its weakness and in all its liability to sin. The very thought of taking this word and applying it to God, was something that their minds staggered at. So there arose in the church a body of people called Docetists.
Dokein is the Greek word for to seem to be. These people held that Jesus in fact was only a phantom; that his human body was not a real body; that he could not really feel hunger and weariness, sorrow and pain; that he was in fact a disembodied spirit in the apparent form of a man. John dealt with these people much more directly in his First Letter. "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist" (1 John 4:2, 3). It is true that this heresy was born of a kind of mistaken reverence which recoiled from saying that Jesus was really, fully and truly human. To John it contradicted the whole Christian gospel.
It may well be that we are often so eager to conserve the fact that Jesus was fully God that we tend to forget the fact that he was fully man. The word became flesh-here, perhaps as nowhere else in the New Testament, we have the full manhood of Jesus gloriously proclaimed. In Jesus we see the creating word of God, the controlling reason of God, taking manhood upon himself. In Jesus we see God living life as he would have lived it if he had been a man. Supposing we said nothing else about Jesus we could still say that he shows us how God would live this life that we have to live.
So the word of God became a person, and took up his abode in our being, full of grace and truth; and we looked with our own eyes upon his glory, glory like the glory which an only son receives from a father.
It might well be held that this is the greatest single verse in the New Testament; we must therefore spend much time upon it so that we may enter the more fully into its riches.
We have already seen how John has certain great words which haunt his mind and dominate his thought and we are the themes out of which his whole message is elaborated.
Here we have three more of these words. (i) The first is grace. This word has always two basic ideas in it. (a) It always has the idea of something completely undeserved. It always has the idea of something that we could never have earned or achieved for ourselves. The fact that God came to earth to live and to die for men is not something which humanity deserved; it is an act of pure love on the part of God. The word grace emphasizes at one and the same time the helpless poverty of man and the limitless kindness of God.
(b) It always has the idea of beauty in it. In modern Greek the word means charm. In Jesus we see the sheer winsomeness of God. Men had thought of God in terms of might and majesty and power and judgment. They had thought of the power of God which could crush all opposition and defeat all rebellion; but in Jesus men are confronted with the sheer loveliness of God.
(ii) The second is truth. This word is one of the dominant notes of the Fourth Gospel. We meet it again and again. Here we can only briefly gather together what John has to say about Jesus and the truth. (a) Jesus is the embodiment of the truth. He said: "I am the truth" (14:6). To see truth we must look at Jesus. Here is something infinitely precious for every simple mind and soul. Very few people can grasp abstract ideas; most people think in pictures. We could think and argue for ever and we would very likely be no nearer arriving at a definition of beauty. But if we can point at a beautiful person and say that is beauty, the thing becomes clear. Ever since men began to think about God they have been trying to define just who and what he is-and their puny minds get no nearer a definition. But we can cease our thinking and look at Jesus Christ and say: "That is what God is like." Jesus did not come to talk to men about God; he came to show men what God is like, so that the simplest mind might know him as intimately as the mind of the greatest philosopher.
(b) Jesus is the communicator of the truth. He told his disciples that if they continued with him they would know the truth (8:31). He told Pilate that his object in coming into this world was to witness to the truth (18:37). Men will flock to a teacher or preacher who can really give them guidance for the tangled business of thinking and living. Jesus is the one who, amidst the shadows, makes things clear; who, at the many crossroads of life, shows us the right way; who, in the baffling moments of decision, enables us to choose aright; who, amidst the many voices which clamour for our allegiance, tells us what to believe.
(c) Even when Jesus left this earth in the body, he left us his Spirit to guide us into the truth. His Spirit is the Spirit of truth (14:17; 15:26; 16:13). He did not leave us only a book of instruction and a body of teaching. We do not need to search through some unintelligible textbook to find out what to do. Still, to this day, we can ask Jesus what to do, for his Spirit is with us every step of the way.
(d) The truth is what makes us free (8:32). There is always a certain liberating quality in the truth. A child often gets queer, mistaken notions about things when he thinks about them himself; and often he becomes afraid. When he is told the truth he is emancipated from his fears. A man may fear that he is ill; he goes to the doctor; even if the verdict is bad he is at least liberated from the vague fears which haunted his mind. The truth which Jesus brings liberates us from estrangement from God; it liberates us from frustration; it liberates us from our fears and weaknesses and defeats. Jesus Christ is the greatest liberator on earth.
(e) The truth can be resented. They sought to kill Jesus because he told them the truth (8:40). The truth may well condemn a man; it may well show him how far wrong he was. "Truth," said the Cynics, "can be like the light to sore eyes." The Cynics declared that the teacher who never annoyed anyone never did anyone any good. Men may shut their ears and their minds to the truth; they may kill the man who tells them the truth-but the truth remains. No man ever destroyed the truth by refusing to listen to the voice that told it to him; and the truth will always catch up with him in the end.
(f) The truth can be disbelieved (8:45). There are two main reasons why men disbelieve the truth. They may disbelieve it because it seems too good to be true; or they may disbelieve it because they are so fastened to their half-truths that they will not let them go. In many instances a half-truth is the worst enemy of a whole truth.
(g) The truth is not something abstract; it is something which must be done (3:21). It is something which must be known with the mind, accepted with the heart, and acted out in the life.
A life-time of study and thought could not exhaust the truth of this verse. We have already looked at two of the great theme words in it; now we look at the third-glory. Again and again John uses this word in connection with Jesus Christ. We shall first look at what John says about the glory of Christ, and then we shall go on to see if we can understand a little of what he means.
(i) The life of Jesus Christ was a manifestation of glory. When he performed the miracle of the water and the wine at Cana of Galilee, John says that he manifested forth his glory (2:11). To look at Jesus and to experience his power and love was to enter into a new glory.
(ii) The glory which he manifests is the glory of God. It is not from men that he receives it (5:41). He seeks not his own glory but the glory of him who sent him (7:18). It is his Father who glorifies him (8:50, 54). It is the glory of God that Martha will see in the raising of Lazarus (11:4). The raising of Lazarus is for the glory of God, that the Son may be glorified thereby (11:4). The glory that was on Jesus, that clung about him, that shone through him, that acted in him is the glory of God.
(iii) Yet that glory was uniquely his own. At the end he prays that God will glorify him with the glory that he had before the world began (17:5). He shines with no borrowed radiance; his glory is his and his by right.
(iv) The glory which is his he has transmitted to his disciples. The glory which God gave him he has given to them (17:22). It is as if Jesus shared in the glory of God and the disciple shares in the glory of Christ. The coming of Jesus is the coming of God's glory among men.
What does John mean by all this? To answer that we must turn to the Old Testament. To the Jew the idea of the Shechinah was very dear. The Shechinah means that which dwells; and it is the word used for the visible presence of God among men. Repeatedly in the Old Testament we come across the idea that there were certain times when God's glory was visible among men. In the desert, before the giving of the manna, the children of Israel "looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud" (Exodus 16:10). Before the giving of the Ten Commandments, "the glory of the Lord settled upon Mount Sinai" (Exodus 24:16). When the Tabernacle had been erected and equipped, "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" (Exodus 40:34). When Solomon's Temple was dedicated the priests could not enter in to minister "for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:11). When Isaiah had his vision in the Temple, he heard the angelic choir singing that "the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:3). Ezekiel in his ecstasy saw "the likeness of the glory of the Lord" (Ezekiel 1:28). In the Old Testament the glory of the Lord came at times when God was very close.
The glory of the Lord means quite simply the presence of God. John uses a homely illustration. A father gives to his eldest son his own authority, his own honour. The heir apparent to the throne, the king's heir, is invested with all the royal glory of his father. It was so with Jesus. When he came to this earth men saw in him the splendour of God, and at the heart of that splendour was love. When Jesus came to this earth men saw the wonder of God, and the wonder was love. They saw that God's glory and God's love were one and the same thing. The glory of God is not that of a despotic eastern tyrant, but the splendour of love before which we fall not in abject terror but lost in wonder, love and praise.
(1:14) Jesus Christ, Incarnation: Christ became flesh. The Incarnation did take place. The Son of God was actually made flesh. He came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt about John’s meaning here. The word "flesh" (sarx) is the same word that Paul used to describe man’s nature with all of its weakness and tendency to sin. This is a staggering thought. Jesus Christ is God—fully God, yet Jesus Christ is man—fully man. (Cp. 1 John 4:2-3.) The word "beheld" (theasthai) means actually seeing with the human eye. It is used about twenty times in the New Testament. There is no room whatever for saying that God becoming a man was merely a vision of some man’s mind or imagination. John was saying that he and others actually saw the Word made flesh. Jesus Christ was beyond question God Himself who became man, who partook of the very same flesh as all other men. (Cp. 1 John 1:1-4.)
(1:14) Jesus Christ, Incarnation: the first proof of the Incarnation is that Jesus Christ dwelt visibly among us. 1. God’s glory was seen (see previous note, Incarnation—John 1:14 for meaning of word "beheld"). Two things are meant by the word "glory." a. Christ was the Shekinah glory of God. The word Shekinah means that which dwells or dwelling. It refers to the bright cloud that God used to guide Israel out of Egypt and that rested upon the tabernacle and above the mercy seat in the Most Holy Place (Exodus 40:34-38). The cloud symbolized God’s presence, and that is just what John was saying. "We beheld," actually saw the Shekinah glory, God’s very presence "dwelling among us."
b. Christ was the very embodiment of God, all that God is and does. John said "we beheld," looked at Him, and could tell He was God. All that Jesus was in His person and being, character and behavior, was so enormously different. In person and behavior, work and ministry He was... · the very embodiment of "grace and truth." · the perfect embodiment of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. · the absolute embodiment of all that God could be.
The glory of all that God was stood right before them, right in their very presence. They beheld Him with their very own eyes. Jesus Christ, the Man who dwelt among them, could be no other than the glory of God among men. It was clearly seen that "in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9). The glory of His being... · was the very glory God Himself would possess. · was the very glory God would give to His only begotten Son (just as any father would give the best of his glory and all he is to a son).
A striking fact is that James, who was the Lord’s brother, even called Jesus "the Lord of glory." Just think: James was reared with Jesus beginning from the earliest years of childhood stretching right on through the years of adulthood. If anyone ever had an opportunity to see and observe Jesus, it was James. He had every chance to see some act of disobedience, some sin, something contrary to the nature of God. However, James’ testimony is: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory," the One in whom the very presence of God dwelt among us (James 2:1). The references in John dealing with glory are as follows: John 2:11; John 5:41; John 7:18; John 8:50, 54; John 11:4; John 12:41; John 17:5, 22, 24.
2. Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth. a. He was the very embodiment of grace. b. He was the very embodiment of truth.
DEEPER STUDY (1:14) Flesh: What does the Bible mean by "flesh"? And why did Jesus Christ have to become flesh? The best description of the flesh is probably found in 1 Cor. 15:42-44.. 1. The flesh is corruptible. a. The flesh is tainted, debased, ruined and depraved by sin (lust, 2 Peter 1:4). There is a seed of corruption within human flesh; therefore, the flesh sins (lusts) and thereby ages, dies, deteriorates and decays. It does not live beyond a few years on this earth. b. Christ (the Word) became flesh to correct and to counteract the corruption of flesh.
2. The flesh is dishonorable. a. The flesh is not what God created it to be. It does not exist in the image of God that God intended. It does not hold the glory, the honor, nor the prestige it once did when God created it. It is disgraced and shamed, and it is reproached by sin and lust. It is held in the grip of sin and fear, and subject to being held in bondage—even the bondage of death. b. Jesus Christ became flesh to correct and counteract the dishonor of the flesh.
3. The flesh is weak. a. The flesh is impotent. It is feeble, frail, fragile, infirmed, and decrepit because of sin (lust). It has no strength to please God nor to save itself. b. Jesus Christ became flesh to correct and counteract the weakness of the flesh.
4. The flesh is a natural body. a. The flesh is of the earth and is part of the earth; it is made up of the chemicals and substances of the earth. It is physical, material, animal. It is "the earthly house," the "tabernacle," the "tent," which houses the human soul and spirit (2 Cor. 5:1). It is neither spirit nor spiritual; therefore, it cannot live beyond the strength of the chemicals and substances that form its flesh. It cannot live beyond its natural life. b. Jesus Christ became flesh to counteract the natural body of the flesh. He became flesh in order to become "a quickening spirit," the Savior who could quicken and make alive all those who would trust Him (1 Cor. 15:45).
DEEPER STUDY (1:14) Grace: grace is probably the most meaningful word in the language of men. In the Bible the word grace means far more than it does when men use it. To men the word grace means three things. 1. Grace is that quality within a thing that is beautiful or joyful. It may be the fragrance of a flower, the rich green of the grass, the beauty of a lovely person.
2. Grace is anything that has loveliness. It may be a thought, an act, a word, a person.
3. Grace is a gift, a favor that someone might extend to a friend. The favor is always freely done, expecting nothing in return. The favor is always done for a friend.
However, when the early Christians looked at what God had done for men, they had to add a deeper, much richer meaning to the word grace. God had saved sinners, those who had acted against Him. Therefore, grace became the favor of God showered upon men—men who did not deserve His favor. Grace became the kindness and love that dwells within the very nature of God, the kindness and love that God freely gives to His enemies.
No other word so expresses the depth and richness of the heart and mind of God. This is the distinctive difference between God’s grace and man’s grace. Whereas man sometimes does favors for his friends and thereby can be said to be gracious, God has done a thing unheard of among men: He has given His very own Son to die for His enemies (Romans 5:8-10). In this act He has done something that shows He is the perfect embodiment of grace, full... · of beauty and joy. · of loveliness and goodness. · of favors freely given. · of kindness and love freely demonstrated.
The Word Revealing (1:15-18) "John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was me of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'" {16} From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. {17} For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. {18} No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known."
We have already seen that the Fourth Gospel was written in a situation where it was necessary to make sure that John the Baptist did not occupy an exaggerated position in men's thoughts. So John begins this passage with a saying of John the Baptist which gives to Jesus the first place.
John the Baptist says of Jesus: "He who comes after me was before me." He may mean more than one thing by that. (a) Jesus was actually six months younger in age than John, and John may be saying quite simply: "He who is my junior has been advanced beyond me." (b) John may be saying: "I was in the field before Jesus; I occupied the centre of the stage before he did; my hand was laid to work before his was; but all that I was doing was to prepare the way for his coming; I was only the advance guard of the main force and the herald of the king." (c) It may be that John is thinking in terms much more deep than that. He may be thinking not in terms of time but of eternity. He may be thinking of Jesus as the one who existed before the world began, and beside whom any human figure has no standing at all. It may be that all three ideas are in John's mind. It was not he who had exaggerated his own position; that was the mistake that some of his followers had made. To John the topmost place belonged to Jesus.
This passage then goes on to say three great things about Jesus. (i) On his fullness we all have drawn. The word that John uses for fullness is a great word; it is pleroma, and it means the sum total of all that is in God. It is a word which Paul uses often. In Colossians 1:19 he says that all pleroma dwelt in Christ. In Colossians 2:9 he says in Christ there dwelt the pleroma of deity in a bodily form. He meant that in Jesus there dwelt the totality of the wisdom, the power, the love of God. Just because of that Jesus is inexhaustible. A man can go to Jesus with any need and find that need supplied. A man can go to Jesus with any ideal and find that ideal realized. In Jesus the man in love with beauty will find the supreme beauty. In Jesus the man to whom life is the search for knowledge will find the supreme revelation. In Jesus the man who needs courage will find the pattern and the secret of being brave. In Jesus the man who feels that he cannot cope with life will find the Master of life and the power to live. In Jesus the man who is conscious of his sin will find the forgiveness for his sin and the strength to be good. In Jesus the pleroma, the fullness of God, all that is in God, what Westcott called "the spring of divine life," becomes available to men.
(ii) From him we have received grace upon grace. Literally the Greek means grace instead of grace. What does that strange phrase mean?
(a) It may mean that in Christ we have found one wonder leading to another. One of the old missionaries came to one of the ancient Pictish kings. The king asked him what he might expect if he became a Christian. The missionary answered: "You will find wonder upon wonder and every one of them true." Sometimes when we travel a very lovely road, vista after vista opens to us. At every view we think that nothing could be lovelier, and then we turn another corner and an even greater loveliness opens before us. When a man enters on the study of some great subject, like music or poetry or art, he never gets to the end of it. Always there are fresh experiences of beauty waiting for him. It is so with Christ. The more we know of him, the more wonderful he becomes. The longer we live with him, the more loveliness we discover. The more we think about him and with him, the wider the horizon of truth becomes. This phrase may be John's way of expressing the limitlessness of Christ. It may be his way of saying that the man who companies with Christ will find new wonders dawning upon his soul and enlightening his mind and enchaining his heart every day.
(b) It may be that we ought to take this expression quite literally. In Christ we find grace instead of grace. The different ages and the different situations in life demand a different kind of grace. We need one grace in the days of prosperity and another in the days of adversity. We need one grace in the sunlit days of youth and another when the shadows of age begin to lengthen. The church needs one grace in the days of persecution and another when the days of acceptance have come. We need one grace when we feel that we are on the top of things and another when we are depressed and discouraged and near to despair. We need one grace to bear our own burdens and another to bear one another's burdens. We need one grace when we are sure of things and another when there seems nothing certain left in the world. The grace of God is never a static but always a dynamic thing. It never fails to meet the situation. One need invades life and one grace comes with it. That need passes and another need assaults us and with it another grace comes. All through life we are constantly receiving grace instead of grace, for the grace of Christ is triumphantly adequate to deal with any situation.
(iii) The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. In the old way, life was governed by law. A man had to do a thing whether he liked it or not, and whether he knew the reason for it or not; but with the coming of Jesus we no longer seek to obey the law of God like slaves; we seek to answer the love of God like sons. It is through Jesus Christ that God the law-giver has become God the Father, that God the judge has become God the lover of the souls of men.
This is the final and climactic statement of the prologue. The intent of John is to make clear that while the unveiled essence of deity has never been given to mortal sight, the real character of God can be seen in the Son who is the fullest expression of the Father's life and love.
Here in plain terms John identifies the Pre-Incarnate LOGOS with Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. The full historical "Jesus Christ" is here for the first time in John. And without Christ there would be no Christianity!
This is also a second proof of the Incarnation: John the Baptist. He, too, bore witness of the Incarnation. John said very simply... · Jesus was born "after me" (6 months after). · But He is "preferred before me" (mightier; more important in being, rank, and dignity). · Why? Because "He was before me."
The words "for He was before me" (hoti protos mou en) literally mean first to me or first of me. It refers both to time and importance. Jesus Christ was first in time, existing before John. He existed "in the beginning"—throughout all eternity. John proclaimed, "He was before me": He always existed; He was the First; He was the very cause for John’s existence. John also declared that Jesus was first in importance. He was first in superiority, Being, Person. His very name is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Another proof of the Incarnation is the fulness and grace of Christ which was given to us. Genuine believers can testify to this.
The word "fulness" (pleroma) means that which fills, the sum total, the totality. It is the sum total of all that is in God (Col. 1:19). In Jesus dwelt all the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption—all the abundance of God (1 Cor. 1:30). All that Christ is, the very fulness of His being, is given to us who believe—all His "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Galatians 5:22-23). We are complete in Him.
The term "grace for grace" means that He gives grace upon grace, grace enough to meet all our needs, no matter the circumstances. It is one blessing leading to another blessing; new wonders dawning upon one’s consciousness every day; fresh experiences constantly springing into one’s life.
Note that the fulness of God, His grace and truth, does not come by the law, but by Jesus Christ. It does not come... · by being as good as we can. · by working to please God as much as we can. · by keeping the rules and commandments of the law.
It does not come by law, for no man can keep the law to any degree of perfection. The law only points out a man’s failure and condemns him for breaking the law. If a man is to be acceptable to God, it is because he comes and keeps on coming to God, begging God to forgive him; and because God loves him so much that he forgives the man.
Such is the grace, the undeserved favor of God. God’s grace comes by Jesus Christ, and we would not know the grace of God unless Jesus Christ had come to reveal it to us. The glorious fact that we do experience the fulness of God and His grace is proof of the Incarnation (that God did become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ). In verses 16-17 it is not the prophet John speaking, but the evangelist John speaking...and the thought of verse 14 is here continued. Grace is God's favor and kindness bestowed on those who do not deserve it and cannot earn it. If God dealt with us only according to truth, none of us would survive; but He deals with us on the basis of grace and truth.
He's not suggesting in verse 17 that there was no grace under the Law of Moses, because there was! Each sacrifice was an expression of the grace of God. The Law also revealed God's truth. But in Jesus Christ, grace and truth reach their fullness; and this fullness is available to us.
John now substantiates this by adding that he and all other believers with him had experienced the blessed fruits of this fullness: they had received grace upon grace from that infinite plentitude. There was nothing wrong with the law, moral and ceremonial. It had been given by God through Moses. It was preparatory in character, it revealed man's lost condition and also foreshadowed His deliverance.
But there were two things which the law as such did not supply: 1. grace so that transgressors could be pardoned; 2. help in time of need, and truth (i.e., the reality to which all the types pointed (think of sacrifices). Christ, by His atoning work, supplied both! He merited grace and He fulfilled the types! Note also that the law "was given," but "grace and truth" came through the Person and work of Him, who is here for the first time in John called by His full name, "Jesus Christ."
The fourth proof of the Incarnation is Christ—God’s Son. He alone has seen God. No man has seen God at any time; however, Jesus Christ claimed... · that He was "the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:16). · that He had come from the very "bosom of the Father" (from the deepest part, the most intimate place, the most honorable fellowship) (John 1:18). · that He had come to reveal and to proclaim the Father.
The fact that Jesus Christ is "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father" is proof of the Incarnation (that God became flesh). Jesus Christ declared unequivocally that He had come from God. A man either believes or does not believe the grace and truth of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Verse 18 is significant: not only had the law been given through Moses, but Moses had enjoyed the great privilege of speaking with God "face to face." Nevertheless, even Moses did not see God!
Note the word-order: God Himself no one has ever seen. We do not see God Himself but His revelation in Jesus Christ! As to His essence, God is invisible (1 Tim. 1:17; Heb. 11:27).
Man can see God revealed in nature (Rom. 1:20; Psalm 19:1-6) and in His mighty works in history; but he cannot see God Himself.
When John said that no man has ever seen God, everyone in the ancient world would fully agree with him. Men were fascinated and depressed and frustrated by what they regarded as the infinite distance and the utter unknowability of God.
In the Old Testament God is represented as saying to Moses: "You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). When God reminds the people of the giving of the law, he says: "You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice" (Deuteronomy 4:12). No one in the Old Testament thought it possible to see God.
The great Greek thinkers felt exactly the same. Xenophanes said: "Guesswork is over all." Plato said: "Never man and God can meet." Celsus laughed at the way that the Christians called God Father, because "God is away beyond everything." At the best, Apuleius said, men could catch a glimpse of God as a lightning flash lights up a dark night-one split second of illumination, and then the dark. As Glover said: "Whatever God was, he was far from being within the reach of ordinary men." There might be very rare moments of ecstasy when men caught a glimpse of what they called "Absolute Being," but ordinary men were the prisoners of ignorance and fancy. There would be none to disagree with John when he said that no man has ever seen God.
But John does not stop there; he goes on to make the startling and tremendous statement that Jesus has fully revealed to men what God is like. What has come to men is what J. H. Bernard calls "the exhibition to the world of God in Christ." Here again the keynote of John's gospel sounds: "If you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus."
Why should it be that Jesus can do what no one else has ever done? Wherein lies his power to reveal God to men? John says three things about him. (i) Jesus is unique. The Greek word is monogenes, which the Authorized Version translates only-begotten. It is true that that is what monogenes literally means; but long before this it had lost its purely physical sense, and had come to have two special meanings. It had come to mean unique and specially beloved. Obviously an only son has a unique place and a unique love in his father's heart. So this word came to express uniqueness more than anything else. It is the conviction of the New Testament that there is no one like Jesus. He alone can bring God to men and bring men to God.
(ii) Jesus is God. Here we have the very same form of expression as we had in the first verse of the chapter. This does not mean that Jesus is identical with God; it does mean that in mind and character and being he is one with God. In this case it might be better if we thought of it as meaning that Jesus is divine. To see him is to see what God is.
(iii) Jesus is in the bosom of the Father. To be in the bosom of someone is the Hebrew phrase which expresses the deepest intimacy possible in human life. It is used of mother and child; it is used of husband and wife; a man speaks of the wife of his bosom (Numbers 11:12; Deuteronomy 13:6); it is used of two friends who are in complete communion with one another. When John uses this phrase about Jesus, he means that between Jesus and God there is complete and uninterrupted intimacy. It is because Jesus is so intimate with God, that he is one with God and can reveal him to men.
In Jesus Christ the distant, unknowable, invisible, unreachable God has come to men; and God can never be a stranger to us again.
John the Baptist is one of six persons named in John who gave witness that Jesus is God: a. Nathaniel (1:49); b. Peter (6:69); c. the blind man who was healed (9:35-38); d. Martha (11:27); e. Thomas (20:28); f. If you add our Lord Himself (5:25; 10:36), then you have 7 clear witnesses! Last modified: July 10, 2008 |
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