אבנימ

John 1.1-18

Introduction – Advent

We have now come into the season of Advent, when believers all over the globe take time to ponder that great and glorious mystery: The Incarnation of Christ…

“Advent” is the Latin term meaning literally, “A Coming To” This is not just any coming, mind you, but The Coming of The One who had been promised for ages past through God’s prophets. The Scripture even tells us that “God who cannot lie, promised it before time began.” (Titus 1.2)

Small wonder then that the Advent season has historically been such a time of joy and celebration, especially for those who know God and His Son Jesus Christ, and who have tasted of eternal life in Him. It is the commemoration of the fulfillment of God’s long promise, purpose and plan, and the single most amazing event all of all history.

1. 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 came into being by Him,
And apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
4. In Him was life,
And the life was the light of men,
5. And the light shines in the darkness,
And the darkness did not overcome it.

6. There came a man,
Sent from God,
Whose name was John.
7. He came for a witness,
That he might bear witness of the Light,
That all might believe through him.
8. He was not the Light,
But came that he might bear witness of the Light.

9. There was the True Light,
Which coming into the world,
Enlightens every man.
10. He was in the world,
And the world was made through Him,
And the world did not know Him.
11. He came to His own,
And those who were His own did not receive Him.

(Central Theme – 20.31)

12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God,
even to those who believe in His name.
13. Who not of blood,
Nor of the will of the flesh,
Nor of the will of man,
But of God were born.

14. And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory,
Glory as of the only begotten from the Father
Full of grace and truth.

15. John bore witness of Him,
and cried out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me
has a higher rank than I,
for He existed before me.’”

16. For of His fulness
We have all received
And grace upon grace.
17. For the Law was given through Moses;
Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
18. No man has seen God at any time;
The only begotten God,
Who is in the bosom of the Father,
He has explained Him.

1.1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. 2 οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. 3 πάντα δι᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν 4 ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων· 5 καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
John 1.6 Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος, ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ, ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἰωάννης· 7 οὗτος ἦλθεν εἰς μαρτυρίαν ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός, ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν δι᾿ αὐτοῦ. 8 οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς, ἀλλ᾿ ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός.
John 1.9 Ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον, ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον. 10 ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔγνω. 11 εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν, καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον. 12 ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, 13 οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν.
John 1.14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας. 15 Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων· οὗτος ἦν ὃν εἶπον· ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν 16 ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος· 17 ὅτι ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο. 18 Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.

Introduction – John

As we turn our attention to His long-promised coming, why do we take up John’s gospel this morning as our text?

There are the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament we could consider, beginning with Genesis 3:15 where the victorious Seed of the Woman is promised to our first parents, and later the promises to Abraham and David, and the prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, Micah and the rest of the prophets. And then of course there are the beautiful and moving nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke.

We will be blessed in our study of all of these, but as we come into the Advent season, let’s first look at the eternal context in which all these other inspired texts are to be understood. Like no other book, John gives us the heavenly perspective on the fulfillment in time of God’s eternal plan, and shows us Jesus Christ as the Eternal One, “the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the World.” (Rev.13.8)

John wrote his gospel quite a few years after the other three writers, and his approach is notably different. God gave him the task of providing an interpretative guide to understanding the gospel records. To generalize we could say that John focuses less on the events of the gospel history than the others, and more on the meaning behind the events. John Calvin put it this way:

“…all of them had the same object in view, to point out Christ, the three former exhibit his body, if we may be permitted to use the expression, but John exhibits his soul. On this account, I am accustomed to say that this Gospel is a key to open the door for understanding the rest…”

And so we turn to John today because it unfolds to us the eternal plan of God, and shows us Jesus Christ as the eternal Word of God, who became Flesh and dwelt among us.

The Prologue

As we know, John was a fisherman before our Lord called him, but we also know that after the Holy Spirit came, the religious leaders marveled at his and Peter’s boldness,

“and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, …And they realized that they had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4.13)

This gospel bears the marks of a man who has “been with Jesus,” who leaned upon His breast, and who drank deeply of His Spirit.

This text, the first 18 verses, are known as the Prologue. They serve as an introduction to the entire book, and present all of the themes which John will develop throughout. With a brief review of the Prologue we could name a few of these themes:

* The Eternal Divinity of Christ
* Christ as the Word of the Father
* Christ as the source and sustainer of Life and Light to Men
* Christ as the fullness of Grace and Truth
* The Witness of John the Baptist
* Christ’s Coming to Earth from Heaven
* His rejection by His own people
* New Life through faith in Him

If you take the time to read the Prologue carefully, and then read the rest of the gospel, at any point in the book you will be able to track back to the Prologue to and identify one of John’s themes which are here set forth.

We also notice in reading the Prologue, that it is not typical narrative prose. It is modeled after classical Hebrew poetry, with structured rhythmic parallelism as in:

And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory,
Glory as of the only begotten from the Father
Full of grace and truth.

John also use a common Hebrew way of structuring the Prologue, known as CHIASM. “Chiasm” is named after the Greek letter Chi (X) which shows what it does, namely that both ends of a passage work inward toward the middle. So in the Prologue verses 1-2 correspond with verse 18 in expressing the eternal Word with God; Verses 3,4 and 5 connect with 16 & 17, and so on, until we reach the center of the Chiasm in verses12 and 13 which are the central theme of the entire gospel:

12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God,
even to those who believe in His name.
13. Who not of blood,
Nor of the will of the flesh,
Nor of the will of man,
But of God were born.

The central theme which is stated in verses 12 and 13 accords exactly with John’s explicitly stated purpose in writing his gospel in 20.31:

“these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

If you were to dig deeper, you would discover that the chiastic structure of the Prologue corresponds to the 9-candled menorah candlestick of Judaism, which pictures the long-expected Messiah as the Light of World, and which is lit during Hanukkah, The Festival of Lights, in anticipation of His Coming.

So in a few moments, we have just caught a glimpse of the marvelous structure of this passage. May the Lord now open our hearts and eyes and minds to comprehend its meaning, as we follow the Prologue from the outside in until we come to the climax, our new life in Christ, our right to become the children of God.

In the Beginning

The opening line immediately brings us back to the opening line of Holy Scripture:

“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

Genesis tells of the Creation where God spoke His Word, and by that divine Word creation came into being, but here John takes us back before the beginning when that same Word of God, by which the worlds would be made, was with God and was God.

The Logos

John tells us that the Word is eternally in the presence of God, and that the Word is Himself God. But what did John intend by using this term “Word?”

The Greek is LOGOS, which has a wide range of meaning. John uses this particular word with holy purpose, so that he might communicate to both the Hebrew and the Greek mind, with both the East and the West. John understood that The Gospel is universal in its scope.

To the Hebrew mind, God’s Word is His creative power revealed, by which He made all things, and continues to act in accomplishing His purposes.
His Word has a distinct power and identity, as God’s messenger.

So shall My word be which goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire. (Is. 55.11)

As God’s agent, it is the active means by which God speaks to His people in instruction, comfort, promise, rebuke, as in “The Word of Lord came to Jeremiah, saying…” etc.

This Word comes in power on behalf of His people to save them, as in Psalm 107.20 “He sent His Word and healed them.”

But God’s Word is not just something that proceeds from God, not something that only comes into being when God speaks. No, the Word is with God eternally. We see this in Proverbs 8 which tells us of Christ as God’s Wisdom,

Prov. 8.22 The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
Prov. 8.23 I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
Prov. 8.30 Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him…

To the Greek, on the other hand, LOGOS was a familiar philosophical idea denoting the rational thought lying behind everything, the ordering principle of the universe, and the perpetual expression of the divine nature.

This is Christ, the ordering principle of Creation who is the Alpha and the Omega, that is the beginning and end of language, that which communicates intelligent thought. He is forever the perfect expression of the divine nature, who upholds all things by the Word of His Power, and the One in Whom God has fully and finally spoken to Man in these last days.

In translating this text, Calvin used the Latin word SERMO meaning speech instead of the Vulgate translation VERBUM which simply means word.
He believed that SERMO, from which we get our word sermon, conveys more clearly the idea of God’s intelligent communication. This is very much in accord with John. In the chiastic structure of the Prologue, verses 1-2 connect with verse18 in describing the Eternal Speech of God.

Vs. 18 concludes with “He has explained Him.” This is the Greek Word ἐξεγέομαι from which we get our word “exegesis.” Exegesis is the drawing out of an author’s meaning in a text, which is what a good preacher endeavors to do with the text of Scripture. So Calvin was right on the mark in his translation, showing that Christ is God’s preacher to Man, and that He Himself is the message, He is God’s sermon to Man.

LOGOS communicates to both the Hebrew and Greek mind, to both East and West, and we can only stand in awe before God when we realize that these meanings of LOGOS are not contradictory or mutually exclusive, but are complementary facets of our glorious Lord.

Consider in verse 18 the eternal state of Jesus Christ, the Word
“Who is in the bosom of the Father”

Think of what this means with respect to your assurance. If you are trusting in Christ and clinging to Him for life, if you are united to Him in His death and in His resurrection by faith, then you are in Christ. And Christ is in the bosom of the Father. That is where believers are! Closest to the Father’s heart, in His Son, the dearest and most cherished, in Whom He is well-pleased. This is why Paul says in Romans 8 that “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Next we come to…

Life and Light – Grace and Truth

bq.3. All things came into being by Him,
And apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
4. In Him was life,
And the life was the light of men,
5. And the light shines in the darkness,
And the darkness did not overcome it.

The Word is eternally with God, in the bosom of the Father, but He is also ever active, ever speaking. Verses 3,4,5 and their corresponding verses 16,17, tell of the Word as the source of Life and Light, of Grace and Truth.

He created everything that is, without exception. Remember that we are not talking about some abstract idea here, but about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He not only created everything that is, but also preserves everything, moment by moment, as the other apostles tell:

“In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17.28)

“He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Col.1.17)

“He upholds all things by the Word of His power” (Heb. 1.3)

He is the One who alone has life in Himself, and His Life illumines all mankind.

This illumination, this light, is the innate knowledge of God in every person. Being made in His image we have His mark within us. The creation we behold with our senses tells of His glory, but more so within us do our rational and reasonable souls, the knowledge of ourselves and of God, the ability to understand.
We have been created with this inescapable knowledge of God as a fundamental part of our being. The source of this light within us is Jesus Christ -

“in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col.2.3).

As fallen men and women, we use our rational faculties to make excuses for our sin and rebellion against our Creator, and to contrive idols to replace Him, but we do so by the very divine light of reason that is in us from the Living Word. So it is that Paul tells us in Romans 1 that man in his wretched state attempts to quench this light by “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness” but nevertheless it is still remains in every person, bearing testimony to God’s eternal power and Godhead.

Man gropes in the darkness of his sinfulness, and fallen state, but
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

In the corresponding verses, 16-17, John extends the scope of the illumination of Christ from common grace to all Mankind to the special grace which comes to His redeemed:

16. For of His fulness
We have all received
And grace upon grace.
17. For the Law was given through Moses;
Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

We who have received Him, receive “grace upon grace” – wave upon wave of grace, out of His glorious fullness and abundance, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (Col. 2.9)

“Grace and Truth are the oft-repeated couplet of God’s mercy and justice in the Hebrew Scriptures: ‏חֶ֣סֶד וֶ֭אֱמֶת (Chesed va Emeth).

Psa. 85.10 Mercy and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed.

In Jesus Christ, and in His cross, God’s righteous justice is satisfied, and His inestimable grace toward sinners is displayed in the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

The Witness

Though all men ought to have known Him, so that He should have needed no Introduction, so great was God’s grace and tender care toward men, and so firm was His purpose to glorify His only-begotten Son, that He promised, prepared and sent a herald to announce His coming at the fullness of times.
Verses 6,7,8 connect to verse 15 in the chiasm, and they tell of John the Baptist and His testimony to the Coming One.

Notice how the structure of the Prologue is moving toward the central theme. We started in eternity before time, moved next into time with Creation and the Illumination of Men by the Word, and now the focus becomes yet narrower as we touch down, as it were, in the time and place of His Coming, when the promised herald came to point to Christ.

We read in these verses of John, whose ministry was brief, whose appearance was rough, who did no miracle, and yet whom our Lord identified as the greatest of prophets born of women. He was the greatest because He did nothing other than to point to Christ.

6. There came a man,
Sent from God,
Whose name was John.
7. He came for a witness,
That he might bear witness of the Light,
That all might believe through him.
8. He was not the Light,
But came that he might bear witness of the Light.

15. John bore witness of Him,
and cried out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me
has a higher rank than I,
for He existed before me.’”

In this John is a great example for us. What higher office could we have than to bear witness to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? And as it was for John, so it is true for us who have received him, who are in Christ and have received His Spirit: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3.30)

As Paul says: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal.2.20)
The Word comes into the World

And now the fulfillment of the long expectation has come, the hope of the Ages,

since Man’s First Disobedience, and Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat…

“the Desire of All Nations shall come, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts.” (Hag. 2.7)

John now sharpens our focus right down onto that Great Event, the Mystery of all mysteries, when The Eternal God became one of us, a mortal man.

Verses 9,10,11

9. There was the True Light,
Which coming into the world,
Enlightens every man.
10. He was in the world,
And the world was made through Him,
And the world did not know Him.
11. He came to His own,
And those who were His own did not receive Him.

connect to verse 14:

14. And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory,
Glory as of the only begotten from the Father
Full of grace and truth.

As we saw before with Life and Light on one branch of the chiasm, and Grace and Truth on the corresponding branch, here again the first branch shows His Coming into the world, to His own people who did not receive Him, while the second branch tells of the experience of those who did receive Him. Again the Light of common grace to the world in the former part is balanced against the fullness of Grace and Truth revealed to His own chosen ones in the latter.

First John reminds us in 9,10,11 Who this is from what He has already set forth:
The True Light, Who Enlightens Every Man
The One Who Made the World

The world which He made, and which continues each by moment by His power, did not know Him, And even though He was explicitly promised and foretold by the prophets of His own nation, Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Seed of the Woman, was not received by His own people the Jews.

Yet to those who receive Him, we see in verse 14 that new sight has been given to them to “behold His glory” and understand that this is the Word of the Father, the express image of His nature, who bears all His fullness without measure, full of Grace and Truth.

New Life

So He has come among us, the Great God and Creator, the Illuminator of Men, has Himself become a man. The Eternal I AM is born a baby boy in Bethlehem. The Light of the World is clothed in the frailty of human flesh. This is what we remember and rehearse and rejoice in during this Advent season.

But what is the result of His coming? What does it mean to us now?

At the end of his gospel John tells us why he writes:

20:31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

This is the point, this is why He came, to become the first-born among many brethren, head of the new race of humanity, captain of salvation for the very children of God, redeemed from death and hell. He came create new life from the wreck of humanity, a second creation.

12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God,
even to those who believe in His name.
13. Who not of blood,
Nor of the will of the flesh,
Nor of the will of man,
But of God were born.

But what does John mean by “the right” or “the power” or “the authority” to become children of God? Is he saying that now we can become God’s children if we want to? that it’s up to us? This is the centerpiece of the table, so let’s make sure we get it right. Chronologically, what is the first event described here?

It is being born of God. That is first. Did we decide to do that?
We have nothing to do with being born. John takes pains to make this clear:

It is "not of blood, " that is our natural descent. Our Lord told the Jews who relied upon their descent from Father Abraham that they were of their father the devil.
We must not rely upon the faith of our parents for our own salvation. Those who have a Christian heritage are blessed, but we cannot cling to that for salvation, but only to Christ Himself.

It is also not of the will of the flesh, nor or the will of man, but of God. It is not of our will, but of God’s will.

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. James 1.18

having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, 1Pet. 1.23

Just as John showed us that it was the Word that gave life to all things at the beginning of Creation, so it is that same Word which gives life anew to His second creation, the new humanity in Christ. It is all of Him. Dead men cannot make themselves alive. John illustrates this later in the case of Lazarus, whom Jesus calls from the grave. It is life-giving Word of Christ which brings the dead to life.

the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. John 5.25

“As many as receive Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God”
These are those who receive Him: those whom He has supernaturally called from death to life. And these are the ones to whom He gives the right to become the children of God.

“Right” is the Greek word ἐξουσία “authority” the same word used in Matthew 28 in the Great Commission:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Matt. 28.18

Not only is it the same word, it is also the same authority, namely the authority of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. As we have received Him, and abide in Him we have the same rights of sonship before God the Father, the same access to His throne of grace, the same Holy Spirit by which we cry out “Abba Father.”

We are already the children of God, and in Christ we are becoming the sons of God. It is “already but not yet.” We are, and we are becoming. John clarifies this in his first letter:
now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 1 John 3.2-3

This is the Living Hope we have in Him, this Advent season, because He came down to earth to be one of us, we shall ascend to Heaven to be one with Him.

Let us pray.

Great and Gracious Heavenly Father, we rejoice in your Presence. You are Faithful and True, the same yesterday, today and forever. What you promised for ages past concerning our salvation, you fulfilled in the fullness of times, in every detail, working all things according the counsel of your own will.

Thank you for the Advent of your Word, your Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who became flesh and dwelt among us. Thank you that in Him and by His sacrifice you have made us new creatures, and received us as your daughters and sons, with free access to your throne of Grace.

Help us Lord, to cling to Jesus Christ, our elder brother, the Captain of our salvation, the Author and Finisher of our Faith. In Him all your promises to us are “YES” and “AMEN.” So we ask you to strengthen our faith in Him through the Word we have heard today, and make us strong with that Living Hope that comes boldly into your presence, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.