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John 1:1–18 Christ the Eternal Word 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. This verse immediately takes us back to “the beginning”, which is to say, before time began. At the very commencement of his Gospel, John refers the time before time began, the days of eternity, when nothing existed—except God (Gen 1:1). There has never been a time when God did not exist (Ps 90:2). If the reader were not familiar with this fact, John spells it out for us here: God existed before anything else. And yet that is only part of what John is saying here, for “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God.” There was someone else with God in the beginning—the Word—and so this person is eternal as God is. Not only was the Word with God in the beginning, the word was God. At the beginning of his Gospel John wants us to accept that the Word—Jesus Christ—is fully divine. We will only understand what John is saying about Jesus in the rest of the Gospel if we understand his introduction. Although he does not fully develop it here, John is introducing the concept of the trinity; which is expanded in the first epistle attributed to him (1 John 5:7). 1:2 The Word was with God in the beginning. John repeats his emphasis that although the Lord Jesus Christ (the Word) is God, yet he was with God (as part of the Godhead), in the beginning. There can be no explanation of these verses without understanding that John has the idea of the Trinity in mind as he writes. Though the Word is God, he does not exist on his own, but together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 1:3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. John gives further testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ being fully divine and equal with God. Not only was he with God in the beginning (he is eternal), but also “all things were made by
Him” (he is the Creator). The Jews accepted that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Here John sees the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, was the agent in that creation (Gen 1:1–3). As God, the Father spoke, or willed the creation into being, it was the living Word who performed the action through the Holy Spirit who moved in power on the face of the waters. All three members of the Godhead are credited together with the act of creation. Significantly John says, “without Him nothing was made that was made.” The other members of the Godhead did not act independently of him or of each other. They did nothing without him —which is to say they acted in perfect union as one Creator.
Christ the Light of Life 1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. John’s thoughts here “move from the creation of the world in general to the creation of man specifically” (Vincent). Having created the heavens and the earth, the land, plants and animals, fish and birds, etc. God had one more thing left to create. He made man in a unique way—forming his body from the dust of the ground and imparting the essence of his own life into man by breathing into his nostrils. In this way man became a living being, as God is a living being. God in this sense made man in his own image and likeness, for man shared the life which God imparted to Him. No man has life of himself. It was given to us by God. All that we are and have comes from God, the life or spirit of man is God’s life imparted to man. That is the force of John’s words here, “in him was life”; it was never ours, it was always his—but he gave it to us. Adam was specially created, sharing God’s life, to have a relationship with God. Later God made woman in the same image as man, so that she shared the life which was in man, which was God’s life. God did not need to breath into her, for the life he had already given to Adam was to be imparted via him to the whole human race. Similarly, God has no need to breathe into every newborn baby, for each baby receives its life from its parents, the one act of creation being sufficient for the procreation of the race in God’s image. The life that Christ the Word imparted to man was “the light of men”. This is not natural light; it is the faculty of being alive; the faculty of being able to understand and know God, to discern right from wrong. It is this light, given by the special impartation of God’s life into man that raises humanity above the lower order of creation and gives him dignity as a son of God (Adam is called the son of God in Luke 3:38)—that is, one who is in the image of God. when Christ, the word, breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, he filled him with rational light and knowledge. Adam had a knowledge of God; his being & perfections; of the persons in the Trinity; of his relation to God, dependence on him, and obligation to him; of his mind and will and knew what it was to have communion with him. (Gill)
1:5 And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it. So what has happened between versed 4 and 5? Verse 5 describes a tremendous calamity! From talking about the light given to man, John now speaks of the darkness that is in man. If light is the knowledge of God, then darkness is the wilful ignorance of God. It began in Eden where Adam and Eve thought to be wiser than God, and disobeyed him. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that ever since man opened the door to sin, he has wilfully tried to expunge the knowledge of God from his being (Rom 1:18–21, 28). God told Adam and Eve that their disobedience would lead to death, and to this day humanity remains in a state of spiritual death (Eph 2:1); sin has separated us from the life of God. We are wilfully ignorant of God, and our wicked actions prove we are his enemies (Eph 4:8; Col 2:21). Evil powers influence humanity, for men and women “walks according to the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). All of this is what John has in mind when he writes of “the darkness” that is in the world, and again this theme is expanded more fully in the First Epistle of John. Yet verse 5 also brings good news. Although man has fallen into this state of alienation from God, there is now a light shining in the darkness, showing us a way to escape the darkness of sin and once again share the light of the knowledge of God. Tragically, such is the condition of man’s heart that when this light was manifested, man was so used to the dark that he did not recognize or understand the light when it came. This is the reason John wrote his gospel, that we might know that Christ has come as the light to bring us back to God (Luke 1:78–79; 2:29–32).
John the Witness 1:6-7 A man came, sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that everyone might believe through him. God sent John to bear witness that light (in the person of Jesus) had already come into the world. God’s good news requires men and women to propagate it to other men and women. All who come to know Christ do so through the witness of other people, just as it was God’s intention that through John the Baptist's testimony, all who heard him might believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved. 1:8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. John does not want his readers to think that John the Baptist is the light; John is introduced at this point to highlight how much greater than other men Christ (the light) must be, which has such a dignitary (Matthew calls John the greatest of men – Matt 11:11) testifying to him. 1:9 The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
John refers to Christ as the true light; one who can be fully trusted. He came to bring light to everyone who has ever been born into the world. Such a statement indicates that Christ is the only way to life. There is not one correct way for one religious group and one way for another—Christ is the unique light of all people (John 14:6). 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him. At the time of John the Baptist's ministry Jesus was already in the world. It was the world that he had made, but the entire population of earth, left to themselves, would have gone on without recognizing him. John strikes the tragic note, that men have gone so far from God that even when God stood among them, they did not know him. That is why Christ had to be introduced to people: by John, by God’s testimony, by the miracles, and so on. For the same reason, Christ came first to the Jews (verse 11), so that through his ministry to them the whole world might be re-introduced to its Creator. 1:11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. Jesus not only came to his own world but to the nation of Israel, which God had set apart as his own people. Yet even his own people, who had the extra light of divine revelation given through the prophets, rejected him. It is not John’s intention to show that Israel was worse than other nations; but rather to show, since even privileged Israel rejected Christ, how far humanity as a whole has fallen from God. 1:12–13 But to all who have received him — those who believe in his name — he has given the right to become God's children — children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband's decision, but by God. Good news again: there were those who did receive him! John defines “receiving Christ” as believing or trusting in Him. Everyone may choose to believe, but only those who do are born of God - born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, as John goes on to explain in chapter 3. What John is saying in this first chapter is clear. God made man to share his image and glory, but man fell from that privileged position because of his sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, the light of life, has come into the world to bring us back to God that we might again share his nature and glory. He does this for all who believe in him, as they by faith become children of God. As Paul describes it this as “regeneration of the Holy Spirit” (Tit 3:5). This new birth does not depend on a person’s ancestry, it does not happen because of any human effort; nor is such conversion merely outward. It is an act of God wrought within the heart of a person on their initial faith in Jesus Christ.
The Word made Flesh 1:14 Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory — the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. This is the key verse of the passage. Unlike Matthew and Luke, John does not go into the practical details of the virgin birth of Christ. He simply states that he who was God in the beginning, became flesh. The word “became” denotes the unity of two natures, God and man. Jesus Christ was fully human yet fully God, the two natures being perfectly united together. John could honestly say that Jesus lived among us and we saw his glory. Christ’s glory shone through in the events which John witnessed: his calming of the storm, walking on water, changing water into wine, healing the sick, raising the dead, in his transfiguration and chiefly his resurrection. The reason John records all these events in his gospel is so that others might believe (John 20:30–31). His glory was the glory of the Son of God, who had come from the Father, and who was filled full of grace and truth. Christ came to forgive the sins of men (grace) without condoning sin in man (truth). He came to bring salvation without ignoring the justice of God. As Paul says, he provided a way in which God “might be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:23–26; Ps 85:10).
The Word made Fullness 1:15 John testified about him and shouted out, "This one was the one about whom I said, 'He who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me.' " John the Baptist had testified that Jesus was the pre-existent and exalted Son of God. John the apostle had been one of his followers and it was from him that he had first learned of Jesus. 1:16 For we have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. Since then John and everyone else who received Jesus as Saviour had received his fullness. As believes, Christ resides in us; for we are “filled with him” (Col 2:9–10, my paraphrase). When we receive his grace, we receive all that he is. He is ours, we are his; we live by his life and rejoice in him evermore. How is this fullness received? On what basis? Not based on works but by grace. It is “grace for grace” or “grace upon grace”. All the blessings we have received in Christ were given us freely by his grace, without any merit on our part. 1:17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ. Christ is greater than Moses. Moses brought the law, God’s holy standard, which showed man his sin but gave him no power to change. Jesus Christ brought grace and truth by which man is forgiven and brought back into a right relationship with God, justified from
the law’s demands and by the indwelling spirit is enabled to live a life that is pleasing to God. 1:18 No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known. There has never been a person in the history of the world who has seen God. God is Spirit, and invisible (by implication of 1 Tim 3:16, not even the angels have ever seen him). But there was One who knew the invisible God so well that when he became man he could speak from his own experience about God. He came from the bosom of the Father, being essentially one in nature with him. This is the One whom John has introduced us to in the prologue - the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. ©
Mathew
Bartlett
&
Derek
www.biblestudiesonline.org.uk
Williams
2017.
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