John 1:1-18 | Light of the World

If you have a Bible, go and grab it and open it to the book of John. While you turn there, if I could just make one comment in the least judgmental, pure observation Jerry Seinfeld kind of way: the room is awfully weighted on this side. I'm just saying that, right? I know a lot of people get comfortable sitting in whatever seat they normally sit in. I'm just throwing it out there. Depending on where you sit in the church, you actually get to know different groups of people, right? So, I know the pews can kind of be indented with the shape of our own bodies, and I want to encourage you: hey, it might be worth switching things around and getting to know someone else if you'd like. And it'd be nice for me to not have to look at this side weighted, just purely making an observation, just throwing it out there. No pressure, not trying to be a legalist.

We're in the book of John. We've been looking at the book of Genesis for the last few months; now we're going to turn for the next couple months to the first three chapters of John. If you don't have a Bible, you could use a pew Bible in front of you. The big numbers are chapter numbers, the little numbers are verse numbers. We're looking at the Gospel of John, and we'll be looking at the very beginning of the book. If you don't own a Bible, we would love for you to just take that Bible home with you; that'd be our gift for you. We would love for you to have a copy of God's Word with you. Again, we'll be looking at the book of John, verses 1 through 18. It says this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’”) Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him. — John 1:1-18 (CSB)

Let's pray. Lord, in our sin, when we examine our hearts, we see darkness. We are blind by the god of this age; we're kept from being able to see your glory. So I ask, Lord, that your Spirit would act now by the grace of Jesus Christ to unveil our faces, to see the light of Christ in your Word this morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? If you talk to 50 different people in our community, I imagine you would get 50 different opinions. A brief Google search reveals a bunch of different options as to who Jesus would be. These are some of the things that I read: Jesus was a brown-skinned, long-haired, hippie, socialist immigrant. Others would say that Jesus was a good rabbi or a prophet of the Lord Most High. I imagine if you talk to all sorts of people of all sorts of different faith traditions, all of them are aware of Jesus in some sense and have some opinion about who he may or may not be.

Sometimes the confusion over who Jesus is isn't just from those who are outside the bounds of those that we would consider to be Christian, but those who claim to be gospel-believing Christians themselves. In 2022, Ligonier, a ministry, published their state of theology where they surveyed Americans about their view on Christianity. And this was more than just like a poll where you click a link and you fill things out; this was like a professionally done survey trying to get at different demographics. And amongst those who claim to be evangelical, gospel-believing, Bible-delving Christians, 55%, more than the majority, agreed with this statement: Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. If you don't know, that's heresy. Gospel-believing evangelicals got that question wrong. Who would you say that Jesus is?

John, the author of this gospel, much like Mark we looked at a year ago, writes this book, this Gospel, to try to tell you and I exactly who Jesus is. And not just to tell us who Jesus is, but so that we would do something in light of who Jesus is: that we would respond to Jesus in faith, because the true Christ, this true light that John describes here, is worth believing in. He is worth believing in. So, here's a main idea for us this morning: receive the Word made flesh. You'll see different words kind of describing this idea of receiving, seeing, believing. But that's what John wants us to do. That's why he writes this whole letter, is so that we would believe in Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus? Well, he's two things as revealed in this passage this morning. First, Jesus is God. Second, Jesus is man. Jesus is God and Jesus is man.

Jesus is God

Let's start with number one: Jesus is God. Read again with me from verse 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." If you want to write a biography on a person, you start at their beginning. You start when they were born. But John goes further back than the birth of a human being. He goes all the way back to the beginning of the universe. He starts his Gospel with this phrase, "in the beginning," the beginning of all beginnings. There's another book that begins with that phrase, "in the beginning." Any guesses as to what that book may be? Yeah, Genesis, we were just looking at. Very good. It means that you were listening to the sermons, right? Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The very beginning of your Bible outlining the very beginning of creation begins with that exact same phrase. And John knows exactly what he's doing.

In the beginning, the beginning of all creation, even then Jesus was not created. It doesn't say that Jesus was born; it doesn't even say Jesus was made. It says, "In the beginning was the Word." The Word *was*. Did you notice that about God in Genesis 1? God doesn't have a beginning in Genesis 1 either. "In the beginning, God," He simply *is*. There's no beginning to God. He's eternal. He always has been. He always will be. In the same way, John begins his Gospel by describing the Word, by describing Jesus in the exact same way. Jesus was not created. He simply is. There's no point in reality when the Word was not, when He did not exist. There's no point in time when God the Father existed apart from the Son or from the Holy Spirit. "In the beginning, God," and "in the beginning was the Word." To be at the beginning, to be present in the beginning, means you had to be there before the beginning. To already have existed, which means Jesus is eternal. He's eternal.

And that word "eternal" needs to get defined, because by eternal I don't mean immortal. I don't mean that God started at a point and now He'll exist forever. I mean Jesus has existed infinitely into the past and He will exist infinitely into the future. Jesus always has been and always will be. Now, if you're paying attention to Genesis 1 and John 1:1, you may say that only God is eternal like that. Only God is able to always have been and always will be. And the Apostle John will respond by saying, "Exactly! That's my point." That's why he says that the Word was with God and the Word was God.

You notice those two phrases back to back there in verse 1: "The Word was with God and the Word was God." The Word was *with* God because the Word, Jesus, the Son of God, is distinct from His Father and they are not the same person. At the same time, the Word *was* God because they're of the same substance, the same essence. Jesus is God and is not the Father. Now, are any of you lost? It's a lot of big concepts to kind of throw at the same time. Sometimes when we try to wrap our minds around this idea of the Trinity—God is one God in three Persons—it kind of feels like there's a tennis ball machine just firing balls at you and you're like, "I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm trying to hang on as best as I can." It's hard for us to wrap our minds around this idea that Jesus is God while not being the same as His Father.

And often people will try to come up with different illustrations in order to explain how this union works. You might have heard of people liken the Trinity to a three-leafed clover or to three candles that join their fire together to make one giant flame. And I love you, and I want you to know all of those illustrations are wrong. They're all wrong. Don't use them. They're incorrect. For example, the three-leaf clover makes God look like a three-headed man, like they're united at one point but they're different at other points. That's not true. God is not a Siamese triplet. The three flames don't work because each fire comes from a unique source. They're fundamentally three and they join together to make one flame like a Megazord Power Ranger. And they come from three different places. That's not true. We know that Deuteronomy 6:4 says that God is one.

So what do we do in order to try to wrap our heads around this idea that Jesus is God and that Jesus is not His Father? Here we see in John 1 the solution, which is you say both and you don't try to fix it. Jesus, the Word, was with God and He was God. John says both truths side by side at the same time. He is God. He's distinct from God the Father. And I would say don't try to go in there and figure it out, not because you shouldn't think about it more—you absolutely should—but don't try to fix problems in the Trinity that the Bible doesn't see as problems. The Bible is totally fine with laying out the truth that Jesus is God and that He's not the Father. There's no tension there for the biblical authors. So, we want to make sure that we teach both, just like the Bible does, without trying to fix something that doesn't need fixing. One of my friends put it this way; I think it's a good phrase for us to remember: "Don't solve the mystery, preserve the paradox." Let's say that one more time: "Don't solve the mystery, preserve the paradox." The Bible teaches both. Know both without trying to fully figure out how it works. Pay attention to what the Bible teaches, especially about God in particular, and don't try to solve how it works.

Now, when I say that, I am not saying you should not think about God. I'm also not saying that you should turn your mind off as I talk about Jesus being God and being distinct from the Father. You need to know that. But there is a difference between understanding and comprehensibility. There's a difference between understanding and comprehensibility. In other words, you can know something to be true without knowing the entirety of that thing. For example, did you know that right now on the planet Earth only about 26% of the ocean has been explored? Only 26%. Right? There are three-quarters of the ocean where we know literally nothing about what's going on down there. We have our best guess. We have different observations that we can make based on the 26% that we do know. But there is 74% of the ocean that you and I currently know nothing about. There's no verified information. And yet, I don't think any of us would say that marine biology doesn't exist. It absolutely does. Despite not knowing the entirety of the ocean, there are things within the ocean that you can know to be absolutely true. For example, it has water.

The same thing is true when we talk about God. God is what we would call incomprehensible. In other words, God in His eternality, His all-powerful-ness, His all-knowing-ness—God-ness—we can't know the entirety of God. You can't, because God is completely different than us. He's almighty. But we can still describe Him and know true things about Him. For example, that Jesus is God and that He's distinct from His Father. Which is part of the reason why no earthly analogy—no clover, no flame, no illustration—is going to do justice to that explanation because nothing on Earth is like God. Nothing on Earth is like Him. The Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus is God. He's distinct from His Father. Don't solve the mystery. Preserve the paradox.

Here's how Christians historically have articulated this exact truth. The Nicene Creed was actually written exactly 1,700 years ago, this last June. Super cool little geeky fact for you. And in it, a bunch of Christian leaders and theologians got together and tried to articulate this truth that they got from John 1 and the rest of the Bible as clearly as they can. And this is what they wrote. They said, "We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten or born Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same essence as the Father, through whom all things were made." I think that's a pretty good description. Before all time, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same essence, and through whom all things were made. That's a great example of Christians not trying to explain how something works, but stating clearly that something's true. Right? We believe that Jesus is God and that He's distinct from His Father. The Bible teaches that God is one in three persons: one *what* in three *who's*—Father, Son, and Spirit. But the focus of this passage in John 1 is about Jesus.

And if these first two verses weren't enough, John labors to distinguish Jesus from all of creation. You can see that there in verse 3. He writes, "All things were created through him and apart from him. Not one thing was created that has been created." All things were created through Him and nothing was made apart from Him. That means everything. All things that exist in society, exist in creation, and they were created through Jesus. There is not a single atom of the cosmos, from here to the very edge of our universe, that was not created through Jesus. All things were created by Him and apart from Him nothing was created. In other words, the Word was the necessary means by which the world was created. The world is created by the Word and the world cannot be created without the Word. In other words, Jesus, if He's the necessary means by which everything exists, if nothing can exist apart from Jesus, that means Jesus is the creator, not the creation. He's not the first and best being created because nothing can be created without Him, even Himself. You realize what that means? That means everything in creation is a testimony to God's majesty and power. That means the little drawings that Lana or Gia can scribble on their paper would not exist apart from Him. That means the grand nature that screams of the glory of God would not exist apart from Christ because He is God and His fingerprints are on everything. Jesus is almighty God.

Jesus is Man: The Incarnation

And Jesus came into the world as man. This brings us to point number two: Jesus is man. I'm going to ask you to skip down in the passage to verse 14: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." The Word became flesh. Almighty Son of God, second Person of the Trinity, becomes a man. This historically has been called the Incarnation. You think about carne asada, right? Flesh. Incarnation: God taking on flesh and becoming a man. This is another area where we need to be careful about our language to not solve mysteries but preserve paradoxes. Because on one hand, Jesus became a man. On the other hand, Jesus is still God. Still God. Don't solve the mystery. Preserve the paradox.

I once heard a popular Christian media personality who created something about Jesus that I generally would not recommend, but I will not name, who described the Incarnation of Jesus as Jesus setting aside His divinity so that He could become a man. That, my friends, is called heresy. That's not true. He would fail the Ligonier test, right? That's not true. The Bible teaches both. Jesus is God and He's man. The Chalcedonian Definition would describe it this way: There's no mixture, no division, no confusion. Jesus is fully God and fully man. And the Bible teaches both. Again, don't solve the mystery of how. Pay attention to the *what*. Jesus is one *who*—Jesus—with two *whats*—human and God. Human and divine. He's one *who* with two *whats*. He is a subject of both the human and the divine nature. In other words, when Jesus becomes a man, He is not subtracting something within Himself. He isn't becoming less God. He is adding a human nature. Does that make sense? The Incarnation happens by addition, not by subtraction. He's not losing any of His God-ness. He is adding a human nature. That historically has been called the hypostatic union. Try to say that three times fast: Hypostatic union. Jesus is fully God and fully man without confusion, change, division, or separation. Okay? Without confusion, change, division, or separation. Now, you may say, "Jesus might not be confused, but I am right now." How does that work? Again, don't try to solve the mystery. Preserve the paradox.

And the simplest way to do that is to look at what Gospels like John here say about Jesus. And what you'll find is that the Gospels show very clearly and often side by side that Jesus is both God and that He's man. The Word became flesh; Jesus is man. The Word was God; Jesus is God. Jesus dies; Jesus is man. Jesus rose from the dead; Jesus is God. Jesus, worn out, sits down at the well hoping that He can get water; Jesus is man. Jesus claims then, as He's talking to the Samaritan woman, "I am the water of life. Whoever drinks from me will never thirst again." Jesus is God. Jesus eats because He gets hungry; He's man. Jesus feeds 5,000 with five loaves and two fish; Jesus is God. The Bible works. It labors to preserve both truths side by side. Not to solve the mystery, but to preserve the paradox. As Gregory of Nazianzus says, as I call him, Greg Naz, "If the first set leads you astray, the second takes your error away." Look at both. Look at the big picture. See both happening at the same time.

The Purpose of the Incarnation: Dwelling Among Us

Now, we've done a ton of heavy lifting here, right? We've been doing some theological squats right now, some thinking work to make sure we understand exactly what Jesus is. He is fully God and fully man. But why did Jesus do this? Why did the Word become flesh? Why bother learning and bending your mind to understand these complicated truths about who God is and what He came to do? Well, the clue is found in the second part of that verse in verse 14: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Jesus didn't just become man. He *dwelt* among us. That word for "dwell" is referring to a tent, that Jesus pitched His tent among us. And if you know your Old Testament, a tent is a pretty big deal because God dwelling in a tent is called a tabernacle. That's exactly the word that John chooses to use here. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Who tabernacles among humanity in the Old Testament? God does. God does. We'll look more about that in our evening service today. But amongst God's people, God dwelt in this tent, in this tabernacle.

But while God dwelt among His people, there was also a separation, a dividing line, a literal curtain that separated between God's dwelling and ours. Because it's the same separation that's existed since the fall. Because of our sin, we can't dwell with God. A sinful humanity cannot dwell with a holy God. There's nothing that you or I could do to try to ascend, to come up to where God is. And so, the good news of John's Gospel starts not with our ascent up to the heavens, but God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. And this way is so much greater than a tabernacle. Did you see the way that He describes Jesus in verse 18? It says, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at His Father's side. He has revealed Him."

This is more than just an Ark of the Covenant. This is more than just a lampstand. Jesus being fully God and fully man means that for the first time in humanity since the fall, human beings can see God face to face and not die. Why is that? Because of the good news that comes from Jesus Christ. Let's read the entirety of that section, verses 14 to 18:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’”) Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him. — John 1:14-18 (CSB)

This incomprehensible entrance, this Incarnation, means that this Jesus is going to fix the primary problem that existed since the beginning of creation because of who He is. Jesus being fully God and fully man means that Jesus can look at you and be full of grace and truth. You see that word come up over and over again in that section: grace upon grace, full of grace. I think John's trying to tell you that Jesus is gracious. That Jesus can give a kind of grace that no one else in all of humanity can ever give. Because Jesus is God, He has an infinite, never-ending fountain of grace and truth that's available to you. Goodness and truth. There is no valley in your soul that is so deep in the crevices of your heart that grace cannot fill. There is no void in your soul that God cannot fill with His grace and love.

And because Jesus is man, that means that He can meet you where you are. You don't have to go to Him. He comes to you. He can apply that grace to us as our substitute through His death, bearing the penalty of sin that you and I deserve on His shoulders on the cross. Jesus dying for sinners gives us something that none of us could ever earn on our own, something greater than the law that Moses could possibly give. This is more than a pep talk or encouragement or a series of instructions to try to teach you to get better. That's what Moses did. Jesus comes not to give you suggestions, but to give you a solution. Moses could teach, but Moses can't save. Jesus is more than a prophet. He becomes a savior. He died in our place and rose from the dead. Which means in Christ you and I can find grace, real hope, real truth in Him, everlasting life.

Receiving the Light

Have you seen Him? Have you looked at this Jesus? That really is the central question of the book of John: Do you see Him? Do you see the Word made flesh? Because when we gaze at Jesus, when we spend uninterrupted, focused time looking at who Jesus is, it doesn't just reveal who God is; it also tells us who we are. And that's why John couches this idea of seeing right smack dab in the middle of our passage. Read with me from verse 4; I'm going to read verses 4 to 13:

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. — John 1:4-13 (CSB)

Answering who Jesus is doesn't just tell us who Jesus is. Knowing who Jesus is tells us who we are. We are the world. And we are a world cloaked in darkness. All of us are enslaved in our sin. But the true light, this true light, was coming into the world. And if the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, that means that light is still shining in the darkness. And so the question of the book could not be more clear: If this light comes into the world and it shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it, can you see it? Can you see this light, this light that shines? Because there are only two groups in humanity: those who see Him and those who don't, those who receive Him and those who reject Him. Those who see and those who are blind.

And what determines whether you're in either group has nothing to do with your background. Even those in Israel, even those who have been claiming to be a child of God by their own heritage or their lineage from Abraham, would have considered themselves to have been God's own people. And yet it says here that they did not accept Him. They don't see. You see that people can't see Christ even by their own flesh or by their own will. There's nothing that you can do by your own effort to see this thing, to be good enough to see the light. The difference between those who see and those who don't see are those who receive Jesus Christ. That's the dividing line.

And if you receive Jesus Christ, it says here that Jesus gives you the right to be children of God. Not because of your lineage, not because of what you've done, not because of your effort or the will of man, but because of who God is. If He gives you the right to be the child of God, whose right are you receiving? Not your own right. You're receiving Jesus's right, His right to be a child of God. That the adoption that you and I have as God's sons and daughters comes not because of our own merit but from the Son of God Himself. That's who you get in Christ. You become a son of God. You participate in that fellowship between the Father and the Son in Jesus. When you see that light, He takes you in as a son and daughter.

Friend, there is nothing more important than this question: Do you see Him? Have you received Jesus? Have you seen this light? God does not care about your reputation. He doesn't care if you grew up in the church. He doesn't care if you show up to church every single Sunday in terms of accepting Him. God doesn't care about your reputation. He cares about your response to this true light. If you turn from your sin and trust in Christ, you can find everlasting life in Him. That's exactly what we get to celebrate every single time that we take the Lord's Supper. Sorry, the plates aren't out here; we're going to take the Lord's Supper just after the sermon. What we do when we take the Lord's Supper is not looking at Jesus by looking at a cracker. Okay? That cracker is not Jesus. It doesn't turn into Jesus. We were talking about that during the church history class this morning for Church Matters. We don't believe anything fancy or mystical or magical happens with the elements. We don't think that the grape juice itself contains sanctification for you. What we do is we see Christ in faith.

As we remember what Jesus did for us, as we think about His body broken for us, as we think about His blood spilled for us, we are recognizing that we are a people that would not be in this building together unless Jesus died for our sins, unless Jesus did the work of redemption for us. We aren't born of Christ because we came to church, but because the Word came into the world, because this Light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. And friends, the same is true for you. 2 Corinthians 4 says that this light that shines, shone into the darkness of our hearts so that we could see the light of the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the light that you and I get to see remembering the Gospel. That's the light that you saw when you came to faith in Christ. If you're not a Christian here, that light is available for you if you would look at Christ and believe in Him in faith. I love the way that Charles Wesley describes this salvation in our last hymn, "And Can It Be": "Long my imprisoned spirit lay / Fast bound in sin and nature's night; / Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, / I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; / My chains fell off, my heart was free, / I rose, went forth, and followed Thee." The Word made flesh, the Light in darkness. Look at Him. Follow Him. Let's pray.