"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.

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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!

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"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.

• Christ showed man the life, that is, how to save his life and avoid the things that can cause him to stumble and lose his life.

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 the