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John 1:1-18
The Word Became Flesh
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.
6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
Today’s reading is the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John. Since a number of our Reflections in the next few weeks will be based on readings from John, we should start by reviewing some of the things the New Testament scholars tell us about the Gospel of John in general. John is different from the other three gospels. Matthew and Luke are based on Mark, so all three of them follow the same basic framework. They’re called the “synoptic” gospels, from a Greek term that means ‘same view.’ But as we said, John is different.
One of the things that makes it different is that this gospel explains the meaning of the things that Jesus said and did, rather than just reporting them. John was the last of the gospels to be published – probably forty years or so after Mark and twenty or twenty-five years after Matthew and Luke. My guess is that the apostle John and his disciples might have figured that most people already knew the basics about Jesus and his teachings, so they wanted to give some deeper explanation of what it all meant.
Our reading for today is the introduction to the Gospel of John, and it’s a good example of what I mean. Instead of launching right into the story of Jesus’ life and teachings, John starts by explaining why Jesus was and is so significant to the world and its history. John might have intended that his readers keep this introduction in mind while they read the rest of the story, because he kind of sets out a number of the themes of his gospel in this introduction.
It’s also important to keep in mind that since this was the last of the four gospels to be published, it came out at a time when the church was growing rapidly in the gentile world. It was making a lot of gentile converts. And those gentile converts had been raised in a world dominated by Greek culture. (That’s why the New Testament was originally written in Greek.) So when the apostles went out into that gentile world, they would sometimes tell the story of Jesus using ideas from Greek poetry and philosophy.
There are some traces of that Greek philosophy in our reading for today. The Gospel of John begins with those famous words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In that sentence, ‘Word’ translates the Greek word logos. And in Greek philosophy, logos had a specific meaning. It meant ‘the organizing principle of the universe.’ The Stoic school of Greek philosophy taught that the world didn’t just happen; there was a plan behind it. There was an organizing principle, a logos. So in this introduction to his gospel, which would be read by a lot of people who knew something about Greek culture, John was saying that yes, there really is an organizing principle behind the universe, and that organizing principle is Jesus.
In other words, the whole history of the universe points toward Jesus.
Then John goes on to say that Jesus has always been present with God, and in fact Jesus is God. Jesus was a participant in the act of creation, and gives all of creation its light and life. John writes that Jesus came bringing light into a world that was dark, but that the darkness has not “understood it,” or “overcome it.” The Greek word can have either of those meanings – something like our English verb ‘master.’
John writes that even though Jesus came first to the covenant people of Israel, they didn’t really embrace him. But John says that those who do embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior are given the right to “become children of God.” (And we remember that Jesus said we can call on God as Abba, which is something like an Aramaic version of ‘Papa.’)
John also writes that, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The Greek word that’s translated “made his dwelling” literally means something like “pitched a tent.” In other words, John is explaining that in Jesus, God sort of ‘camped’ in the world for a while, but he never intended to settle here permanently.
The last two verses make a couple of other important points.
In verse 17, John writes that God’s law came into the world through Moses, but through Jesus a new era began. This era was not dominated by trying to become righteous by obeying the Old Testament law, but rather by receiving God’s grace and truth. Remember that the biblical meaning of ‘grace’ is God’s un-earned favor – a loving favor from God we’re not capable of earning by being righteous under the law. John says Jesus came to explain God’s truth in a way that goes beyond just keeping the law.
In the last verse, John points out that none of us has ever seen God. But in Jesus, the world has a chance to see God’s nature revealed in human form.
All these ideas are pretty important to how we understand Jesus and his teachings, and a number of them will come up later in the Gospel of John, so this introduction to that gospel gets us ready to absorb Jesus’ teachings there. It also sketches out some of the main principles of what it means to live as his disciples.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the great love you showed in making a home for us in a universe organized around Jesus. We thank you also for coming into the world for a while to show us what it means to live an abundant life. Help us always to remember that we have no better way to see your nature than by focusing on him. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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