Our Gospel reading this week begins at the start of John’s Gospel. The Apostle John doesn’t begin his Gospel with stories of the birth of Jesus, like Matthew and Luke do. Rather, he goes way back to the beginning of time, as he knows, and wants his readers to know, as well, that Jesus was there from the beginning, back beyond creation (vs. 1-3). The phrase here, “the Word”, refers to Jesus. This phrase was one common and familiar to both Jews and Greeks. To the Jews it was an expression of God’s wisdom. For the Greeks it meant “reason” and “intellect”.
John states that all things were created by Jesus, so He existed before creation. The Word, Jesus, is eternal and preexistent. Before the universe began, Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, always existed. He always was. Jesus gave up His heavenly status to become a man (Philippians 2:6-8). He was also the Father’s agent, involved in creating everything (Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2). As I touched on in my previous blog study, even while Jesus took on human flesh and became a man, He never ceased to be fully God, as well. That is one mystery we cannot fully comprehend.
As John continues on, he speaks of Jesus as the Light, which is a theme throughout his Gospel. The darkness of evil has not, and will never overcome or extinguish the Light of God, Jesus (vs. 4-5). When we follow Jesus, the Light of the World, we are not walking blindly, and we can avoid walking into sin. Picture, if you will, two rooms connected by a closed door. One room is brightly lit, the other is completely dark. If you open the door, the light from the one room will stream into the dark room. You will never see the darkness of the dark room stream into the brightly lit room. Darkness cannot overcome or conquer light. Jesus is the Lord of Light, and Satan is lord of darkness and sin. Darkness and sin was overcome and conquered by Jesus on the cross.
When Jesus came into the world, He was not well received by most people (vs. 11-12). Those He created did not recognize Him as their Creator and Lord due to spiritual blindness. Even most of the Jewish people, those God had chosen to represent Him to the world, rejected Jesus, even though they had hundreds of prophecies that pointed to Him.
God did not give up on mankind, though. As we read in verse 12, those who received Jesus, the Son of God, have the right to become children of God. To receive Jesus is to acknowledge His claims, and to place one’s faith in Jesus, thereby yielding allegiance to Him. Those who receive Jesus become children of God, with all its authority and claims. Unfortunately not everyone does this, so not everyone is a child of God. Everyone is created by God, and He is their Creator, but not everyone is a child of God. As this verse says, only those who receive Jesus have the right to be children of God. Jesus even called some of the religious leaders who opposed Him children of the devil (John 8:44). One cannot be a child of God and also a child of the devil at the same time. One is either the one or the other, and this verse states how one becomes a child of God. There’s no other way.
Jesus is the Lord of Glory, yet He took human form and became human, just like us, only without sin (vs. 14). He is God’s only and unique Son. Jesus is one of a kind, and enjoys a relationship with God unlike any other. Because Jesus became a man, He knows what it is both to know joy and happiness, and also grief and sadness. Though He never sinned, because He paid the price for our sins, Jesus knows the suffering of sin’s consequences. We have a Savior who knows, first hand, what we go through.
The nature, essence, and will of God is revealed in Jesus Christ (vs. 17-18). If people want to know what God looks like, they can look at Jesus. If they want to know what Jesus is like, they should be able to look at Christians. Can people see Christ in you?
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