John 1:1–18 — Jesus, the Word, who makes God known
(Josiah Hall)
John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
The first eighteen verses of John form the book’s preface, introducing the primary character, major themes, and as Matt preached yesterday, the dominant conflict that will drive the rest of John’s account of Jesus. Every Gospel begins differently: Mark with Jesus’s baptism, Matthew with Jesus’s birth, and Luke with the birth of John the Baptist. John’s Gospel begins even further back: “in the beginning.”
The Gospel’s first words intentionally echo the first words of the entire Biblical story, but whereas Genesis begins with “In the beginning God”, John begins with “In the beginning was the Word”. As the rest of John 1 makes clear, John is equating the Word and God (“the Word was God”). Though none claim to fully understand it, those familiar with Christianity are normally comfortable with the Christian confession that our God is a Trinity: one nature in three persons. Recall, however, that John wrote long before early church councils provided language to help Christians understand how Jesus could be fully human and fully God at the same time without Jesus being created and without there being two deities.
John, therefore, does three things in these verses to help his audience understand Jesus’s relationship to God. First, John describes Jesus as the “Word” of God to both identify Jesus as truly God (“the Word was God”) and clarify that Jesus alone does not fully exhaust God’s identity (“the Word was with God”). When we listen to a person’s voice, we are truly encountering them, and yet knowing a person’s voice does not mean that we know that person entirely. Similarly, by describing Jesus as God’s Word, John links Jesus to God’s voice, through which God both created the world and revealed his name and character to Abraham and his descendants. In this way John communicates that Jesus accurately displays to humanity God’s power and character. And yet by stating that the “Word was with God”, John carefully reminds us that Jesus alone is not all there is to know.
Second, in 1:14, John describes Jesus as the presence of God that we can encounter in a way that allows us to truly know him. The verb “dwelt” in the translation above renders a word that the Old Testament uses when God dwelt among his people in the tabernacle and made his glory visible to them as a pillar of fire and as a cloud. John uses the imagery of the tabernacle to clarify that just as God’s glory dwelled in the tabernacle so that Israel could be in relationship with him, so Jesus took on human flesh and dwelled among us so that we can know God. Remember that Israel could see God’s glory in the tabernacle as fire and cloud, but the people could not approach God’s glory. Jesus, however, was a real person who could be seen, heard, and touched, upon whose chest one could lay their head.
Third, in 1:18, John clarifies that this encounter with God exceeds every previous encounter with God. No one has ever seen God before. But in Jesus we can truly know God. Note, though, that John clarifies that Jesus makes God known because he is at the Father’s side. We must not neglect how John highlights both the genuinely intimate and yet non-exhaustive nature of the knowledge of God that Jesus provides if we want to understand what John depicts as the real benefit that Jesus brings for those who believe in him: they become children of God (1:12). Through Jesus we enter the family of God where we have relationship with all three members of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Here are two questions to consider today as you reflect on this passage: (1) Are you tempted to think that Jesus is the sum total of God’s self-revelation? What might it look like to celebrate that belief in Jesus brings us into intimate relationship with all three members of the Trinity? (2) Are you uncomfortable with the idea that God can come into such close contact with humanity that he becomes a real person and provides a genuine sight of his glory in that human person, that to see Jesus is to see God (not exhaustively, but truly)? As you read John over the next weeks, pay attention to the objections that people in the story raise against Jesus’s identity, and allow them to challenge and deepen your own understanding of Jesus.
Weekly Prayer Focus: Congregational Renewal
Daily Prayer Request: “Hunger for the Word of God.” That we, as a congregation, would hunger to know God better as we meditate on Scripture.