The God Who Becomes a Human Being (John 1:1-18)

"The Word became flesh" (John 1:14).

J.C. Ryle says about John's Gospel: “The things which are peculiar to John’s Gospel are among the most precious possessions of the church of Christ. No one of the four Gospel writers has given us such full statements about the divinity of Christ as we read in these pages.”

Indeed, John's Gospel is one of the world's treasures. John is so simple that children memorize their first verses from its pages and so profound that dying adults ask to hear it as they pass from this world. It is said that John is a pool safe enough for a child to wade in and deep enough for an elephant to drown. Martin Luther wrote, “This is the unique, tender, genuine, chief Gospel… Should a tyrant succeed in destroying the Holy Scriptures and only a single copy of the Epistle to the Romans and the Gospel according to John escape him, Christianity would be saved.”

Why did John write his gospel? According to Irenaeus, the 2nd century bishop, John wanted to combat heresies that were rising, especially those that denied either the full deity or the full humanity of Christ. Moreover, as Christianity spread beyond its original Jewish bounds, it seems that John wrote to make the gospel more accessible to the Greek mind. But John himself tells us his main purpose in Jn 20:31: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

In John 1:1-18, the prologue, John says at least 11 things about Jesus:

Jesus is eternal (Jn 1:1-2; Gen 1:1a). Jesus possessed the quality of eternality.
Jesus is distinct from the Father (Jn 1:1). With is a preposition that expresses proximity and relationship.
Jesus is God (Jn 1:1,18). John unambiguously declares this.
Jesus is the Word (Jn 1:1-2), the clearest and ultimate way God chooses to reveal and express himself (Jn 14:9).
Jesus is the Creator (Jn 1:3; Gen 1:1). The Word that brought the world into being (Ps 33:6) has become incarnate in the person of Jesus.
Jesus is the source of all spiritual life (Jn 1:4; 11:25; 14:6). Life was in Jesus inherently, innately, un-derivedly.
Jesus confronts and divides us (Jn 1:9-11,12-13).
Jesus is God in our flesh (Jn 1:14). Jesus became what He was not (a man), without ceasing to be what He was (God) (John 1:14). Incarnation is not metamorphosis. Jesus was enfleshed. God was enfleshed.
Jesus shares the Father's glory (Jn 1:14). A Hebrew knows this 1 truth even if he knows no other truth: No one shares God's glory.
Jesus, in word and deed, accomplishes the Father's will (Jn 1:17). Jesus alone fulfilled/did God's will/work, did God's instructions, did God's truth, fulfilled the Law of Moses.
Jesus is the only revealer of God the Father (Jn 1:18).

(Jesus is God (2006), sermon by Ligon Duncan)

Unlike the other 3 gospels which begin with historical developments, John's Gospel begins by addressing what the coming of the eternal Son, the coming of God, means. From the prologue (John 1:1-18), we begin to sense the wonder and power of who this Jesus is and why he has come in 3 parts:

The Word is God's Self-Expression (John 1:1). 1:1 might say, "In the beginning was God's self-expression (for that is what "Word" suggests).
What the Word does (John 1:2-13)

The Word creates us (Jn 1:3)
The Word gives us light and life (Jn 1:4-5, 6-8)
The Word confronts and divides (Jn 1:9-11, 12-13)

Who the Word is (John 1:14-18): The Word becomes Flesh (the incarnation, literally "the infleshing") 5 major themes from Exodus 32-34:

Tabernacle and Temple (Jn 2:19-21).
Glory (Ex 33:18-19; Jn 2:11, 12:23-33, 17:5).
Grace and Truth (Love and Faithfulness) (Ex 34:6).
Grace and Law (Jn 1:16-17)
Seeing God (Jn 1:18, 14:9; Ex 33:18)

(The God Who is There (2010), by D.A. Carson; Chap 7: The God Who Becomes a Human Being, 101-120.)

Jesus is the Word of God.
Jesus is the Word made flesh/soft/vulnerable/killable.
Jesus tabernacled among us, so we can see his glory.

(The Word Became Flesh, sermon by Tim Keller)

Jn 1:1 was an important statement in the church’s fight with the earliest heretics. Arius, for instance, whose heresy prompted the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., maintained that Jesus, though certainly God-like in many ways, was nonetheless less than God. Arius argued that Jesus was a created being, however glorious and close to God. But John tells us, instead, that when time and creation began, Jesus already “was.” Leon Morris explains, “The Word existed before creation, which makes it clear that the Word was not created… The Word is not to be included among created beings.”

The best-selling novel The DaVinci Code asserts that Christians never considered Jesus to be God until the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century. But here, in clear language, the apostle John writes, “and the Word was God.” He repeats this claim in John 1:18, saying that the one “who is in the bosom of the Father,” or as the English Standard Version puts it, “who is at the Father’s side,” is himself “the only God” (ESV). Likewise, at the Gospel’s end, when the resurrected Jesus appears to doubting Thomas, the disciple falls before him and cries, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28). That is the Christian confession. John
wants us to know from the beginning of his Gospel that Jesus Christ, the Word, is God.

“It may be that some day there will come forth from God a Word, a Logos, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain.” Plato

(The Word (Jn 1:1-3) sermon by Richard D. Phillips, 2007)

John began his gospel with poetic imagery, referring to Christ as “the Word.” In the ancient world, “the word” was an image that was used differently by various religions. The Stoic philosophers used the term to signify a non-personal principle that ordered the universe, much like “the force” in the Star Wars movies. The Israelites, on the other hand, used the term to signify the creative power of God. Here John took this term that was used by other belief systems and redefined it to make the gospel more understandable. If John were writing in our day of Oprah-esque spirituality, he might have used the term “spirit.”

John was saying that God put on flesh (Jn 1:14) – this is what we call the “incarnation,” it’s one of the central elements of our faith. The force that unleashed a million suns, the power that set the planets in motion, the immensity that hand-carved every atom in existence and set them spinning, the very design for everything that is, was and will be – all of that was contained within a real, flesh-and-blood human body: a real body that got sunburned, that grew fatigued, that needed sleep and food and water; all that power within a body that could be cut and bleed and die; all that power within a man who loved and laughed and cried. Does anybody dare raise his hand and say, “I understand”?

(Rediscovering Jesus, Jn 1:1-18, Russel Smith)

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