Almighty God, become man (1:1-18)

In our previous study we looked at the meanings of some key words in this passage.  But looking at jigsaw pieces is different from looking at the finished picture!

Within the eternal Godhead

John's opening words convey powerful and mysterious mood music: we are looking back through the mists of time, back beyond Creation itself into Eternity Past.  Before the beginning to time and space, the Word, the ultimate expression of God's heart and mind, already was.  This 'Word' was, somehow, both inherently God and distinct from God.

Everything we can now see, touch, or feel - was all made by His agency, His actions.  Initially this planet was covered with ocean from pole to pole, and was in pitch darkness.  But He created a boundary between the seas and the dry land; and then He created a firmament - an atmosphere that could sustain life for mankind. He made all the different lifeforms, from microscopic bacteria to giant sequoia trees.  Then, He made Adam: modelling his body out of clay, and breathing the breath of life into him.  Lastly, He cloned a perfect life-partner for Adam, so that together they could 'fill the earth, and subdue it'.

This 'Word' was a higher being, with a higher form of life than Adam ever had.  His life was un-ageing, endless, spiritual, and pure.  His life challenged all the darkness in mankind, offering a transformative energy source; but though this life-light shone into our darkness, we could neither grasp it nor extinguish it.

God decided to send this Word, His only-begotten Son, into the world in human form.  But before He did so, He sent an announcer called John the Baptist.  He knew that mankind would have difficulty recognising His Son, and He wanted no-one to miss out by rejecting Him.  Despite John's efforts, and Jesus's arrival, and the fact that He'd made everything,
and that He came to His own people who'd been primed with wonderful truths, mostly, they rejected Him - all bar a few.

Those few who accepted His identity, were given the right to become children of God. They were 'born again', with a different sort of life - the life of Jesus.  Nothing to do with biology, or sex, or human decision: completely down to God.

So you see, the 'Word' became a human being - the only time anything like this ever happened - but God's father-and-son intimacy with Him continued just as before.  He spent time with us, so that we could see exactly what God was like.  And we realised that our previous conception of God was quite wrong.  Yes, the Law He gave us through Moses does truly reflect His holiness and purity; but it is also characteristic of Him, that He is full of loving kindness, despite knowing us inside out.  He just goes on pouring out grace on us, time after time after time.  But for Jesus, we could never have known this.  It's impossible to physically see God - but Jesus makes Him visible! His intimacy with God means He expresses who God is, exactly.

The man Christ Jesus was also God-in-the-flesh

Imagine that one of your cousins suddenly announced at the age of thirty, He was God-in-the flesh.  How easy would you find it, to conceive what that meant, even if you were willing to believe it was actually true?

Seeing a newborn baby can bring sense of worship: they look so pure, so innocent, so heavenly.  (But on the other hand, when they need their nappy changing, or cry incessantly, their humanity is immediately obvious!)  The Bethlehem shepherds had it easy compared to people like Nicodemus.  The angels had told them that this child was heaven-sent, divine.  His birth brought ‘glory to God in the Highest; and would bring peace on earth, grace to mankind (Lk 2:1-14).  And yet here He was, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  Both God, and Man. Two natures in one Person.

The three wise men saw him as a toddler, but could see that one day he would be the King of Israel. They had faith enough to give Him the most precious of gifts.

Mary was told that ‘You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and you shall call His Name JESUS.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.  And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’ (Lk1:31-33)

And Joseph was told that the child in her womb was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and would be called Jesus ‘for He will save His people from their sins’.  Isaiah’s prophecy would be fulfilled, that ‘The virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, meaning, ‘God with us’. (Matt 1:21-23)

All these people had a head start on people like John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin.  True, whilst still in his mother’s womb he had leapt for joy when Mary came to tell Elizabeth that she too was miraculously pregnant.  But Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah lived in Jerusalem, miles from Nazareth, and it seems John had never actually met his cousin Jesus until the day He came to the Jordan, asking to be baptised.  Only the fact that God had given John a pre-arranged signs, enabled him to recognise Jesus as the Messiah.

A different John - the Apostle John who wrote this gospel - possibly another of Jesus’s cousins, had had no such direct word from God to tell him who Messiah was.  But having become one of John-the-Baptist's disciples, he was there the day Jesus reappeared after His temptation.  For six weeks, John-the-Baptist had been pondering the sight of a dove landing on Jesus’ head - and then on top of that, a voice from heaven saying “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”.  And he had realised that Jesus was the One he  had been told to look out for.

So as Jesus approached, John-the-Baptist turned to his disciples and said,
‘Look! The sacrificial Lamb whom Abraham said God would provide!  The One who is greater than I, whose sandals I’m not fit to undo.  The One who, though born after me, existed before me. The One who baptises with the Holy Spirit, where I only baptise with water.  The Son of God!”

John, and his friend Andrew (Peter’s brother) decided to shadow Jesus and see where He was going.  Jesus realised, and invited them to His lodgings to spend time with Him.  What they talked about isn’t recorded, but when Andrew went to find his brother the following day, he said, “We have found the Messiah!”  Apostle John's own journey of recognising who Jesus really was, had begun.  Like Peter at Caesarea Philippi, even if we spend years following Jesus we cannot receive the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, truly God and truly man, until God reveals it to us by the Holy Spirit.  But once we do, we receive a revelation of His glory - ‘glory as of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth’.

Unlike the other gospels, John isn’t interested in Jesus’s human genealogy or family tree, which had already been thoroughly documented by Matthew and Luke. He was much more interested in Jesus’s heavenly origins.  The glory that John saw in Jesus, had to do with His being both Son of God, and fully Man: in other words, His incarnation.

Grasping the truth of the Incarnation was of key importance in the Apostle John’s eyes.

John’s eyes had been opened at the Transfiguration (Matt 17:1-9), but with hindsight he realised that Jesus’s glory had been revealed throughout His ministry: in all His acts of grace and words of truth as well as in His dying for us on the Cross.  So he sets out to help us too see Jesus’s glory - His heavenly roots, His authority, His heavenly teaching, His omniscience and omnipotence, in short His divinity - so that the wonderful fellowship with Jesus and His Father that John is experiencing, can extend to us too.

Half a century later, John’s core message was coming under major attack: heresies about Christ’s nature began to proliferate, and to tear apart Christian fellowships.   Laying down an acid test of truth, John defined whether a spirit was of God or not, as whether it would acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.  If not, it was the spirit of Antichrist.  In other words, the truth of the incarnation is what Antichrist hates most, and seeks to distort and subvert.  So it is vital that we wrestle to get a firm hold on this truth.

We need to come at this in faith: some questions will leave us pondering, or with a sense of wonder.

Seeing the gospel of John through this lens, it becomes clear that it’s an account of the titanic struggle between Christ and Antichrist, to establish the truth of Jesus's identity.  As we proceed through the gospel, we’ll observe he Judaeans’ hearts became progressively hardened, whilst the Twelve became progressively convinced that Jesus was God Incarnate.