The Disciple Jesus Loved Tells All!
Who
is This Jesus?
John Chapter 1
Clip from The Jerk: Steve Martin – “I was born a poor black child…”
Most biographies start out at the beginning. If you pick up a biography of George W Bush, it will tell you where and when he was born, where he went to school, who he married, what businesses he has been involved in, and the important events in his life that have shaped it so far.
Now you could get most of the information from a web site, if you want to know about the man. But if you want to know the man, you have to dig deeper. You don’t want to know where and when he was born, but what type of home did he grow up in? You don’t want to know who he married, but what kind of husband, and father is he? You don’t want to know what school he went to, or the businesses he has owned; you want to know how he treated people in those places. In short, if you want to really know the person, you have to go to the people who know him best, and find out the inside story.
As we said last week, we are beginning a study of a biography of Jesus Christ that was written by a person who probably knew Jesus better than any other person on earth, with the possible exception of His mother. John was one of the earliest disciples to follow Jesus, and he was without question one of the closest.
John was one who
heard more than the others. He was one who witnessed more. He was one of the
Lord’s closest friends. Therefore when we open John’s Gospel, we do so in
anticipation of what the disciple whom Jesus loved will tell us.
John does not retrace many of the events already described in the other
Gospels. He does not write a chronological biography of the life of Jesus. His
purpose is not to detail the ministry of Jesus. He wrote this memoir of his life with Jesus with two specific
purposes in mind, first that we would know who Jesus is, and secondly, that we
would believe in Him, and have eternal life through Him.
Like most
biographers, John starts off by giving us some background information on his
subject. In this first chapter of his
book, John’s primary focus is to give us a clear identity of who it is he is
writing about. In this first chapter,
we are given seven titles for Jesus.
Seven names, or titles, that tell us about Who Jesus Is.
John, like Matthew
and Luke, starts at the beginning. But
Matthew and Luke started at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly life, with
the story of the shepherds, angels, and wise men. John goes farther back than that. He goes all the way back to creation - and beyond! The first words of John’s book sound a lot
like the first words of the Bible. “In
the beginning…” John says that, “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The power of these
words cannot be overstated. I read this
week in my studies that this verse may be the most powerful and important in
all of Scripture. John claims in these
words that Jesus is fully God. Jesus is
eternal. In the beginning, Jesus
was. This was a claim that Jesus made
himself to the Pharisees, when they tried to make a big deal about their being
descendants of Abraham. Jesus said to
them, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” In
that statement, Jesus did not just claim to have been around before Abraham, by
using the present tense, “I AM,” He was
claiming an eternal presence – that He, as God, is always in all places in the
present tense. And the Jews around Him
knew what He meant, because they picked up stones to kill Him for claiming to
be God!
Now let’s focus on
this term, “the Word.” The original Greek noun that translates “Word” is the
term Logos. While logos is not a well-known
English word, it was very common in 1st century Greek. And it is a word John
employs to capture the attention of his diverse audience.
To the Greeks, the Logos represented the soul of the universe. It was
the rational principle from which everything came, a creative stabilizing
governing force of the universe. Ergo, vis a vis, concordantly, logos
was a term the Greeks used much like “the force” is used in Star Wars. John was using a term that his Greek
audience would recognize as “the originator of all things,” and he identifies
Jesus as that originator.
To the Hebrews, the Logos was identified with the Word of God. In the
OT, the Word of God is connected with God’s active power. His word represented
His actions in creation (Gen. 1.1; Ps. 33.6), His revelation (God’s word came
to the prophets), deliverance, covenant, guidance, and judgment. So when John uses the term Logos, it
is a term that appeals to both the Greek and the Hebrew. It is a term that
captured the attention of the Greek philosophers, the Jewish scholars, and the
average citizens. It was familiar to all.
They knew exactly what John was implying by calling Jesus “the Word.”
The Word was not
only eternal, Verse 3 tells us that the Word was also the agent of
creation. We are told in Colossians
1:16 that “By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on
the earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through Him and for
Him…”
So John presents
Jesus Christ as the supreme – the almighty – the ultimate… He is none other
than the Most High God. But then John
tells us something that is simply amazing – In verse 14 we read, “And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The eternal became
mortal. The creator became
creation. The Word became flesh. God became man. Jesus came to live among us, to walk with us, to leave us an
example of Godly living, but most importantly, to be the perfect human
sacrifice for the sins of us all. By
God becoming a human, He was able to become a human offering to meet the
requirements of justice – justice demands that a failed human race could not
stand before a perfect and holy God – unless some way was found to negate those
failures. God found that way by sending
His Son, The Word Made Flesh, to meet those demands.
Jesus, as The Word
made Flesh, is also the light of the world. In verses 7 we read that John the
Baptist was a man, sent from God, to give witness of the Light – Jesus. Psalm 119:11 says, “Your Word is a lamp to
my feet, and a light to my path.”
Jesus, as the Living Word of God, is the light of the world.
Light is an
important thought in John’s Gospel. Light is often contrasted spiritually with
darkness. Jesus identifies Himself as the Light of the world (8.12). Light
represents God’s deliverance to the sinful, darkened souls of humanity. In v. 5, John contrasts the light of God
with the darkness of sinful humanity. Those who believe that the world is a
getting better and better are just not paying attention. It sometimes feels like the forces of
darkness are sweeping over the world, but John reminds us that the spiritual
light cannot be extinguished by the darkness of this world.
When Carol and I
lived in North Dakota, we would sometimes go to visit civilization on the
weekends. On Sunday evenings, as we
drove back to our remote outpost on the edge of the known universe, we would
drive over miles of empty, flat prairie.
I can recall being able to see the lights of our city from 25 miles
away, on a small rise that in North Dakota qualified as a mountain. The light would pierce the darkness. NO matter how many hundreds of miles of
darkness there was, one light would shine through it!
And we are reminded that the darkness could not overcome/extinguish the light.
Remember, John is writing this gospel after the resurrection. He knows that
Jesus Christ could not be overcome by the spiritual darkness of this world. He
is the victor. The light shines (continual) in the darkness, and the darkness
cannot overcome it. Jesus is the
originator of life and light. He brings life to the spiritually dead hearts of
sinful humanity. He brings light to the darkened souls of lost people. He is the Originator of life and light.
John also presents
Jesus as the only begotten Son of God in verse 18. John refers to Jesus as “The Son of God” at least 9 times in his
biography. Seven different people in
John’s account testify to Jesus being the Son of God, including Jesus
Himself. In this first chapter, John the
Baptist does it in verse 34, and Nathanael says it in verse 49. “You are the Son of God.”
Jesus is also
identified by John as, “The Lamb of God” in this first chapter. In verse 29, John the Baptist says to two of
his followers, “Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the
world!” In this name, Jesus is shown to
be the sacrifice for our sins. From the
earliest days of God’s dealing with man, He had required the shedding of blood
for sin. When Adam and Eve first sinned,
and realized they were naked, God shed the blood of a lamb to clothe them. Later, he required the sacrifice of a lamb
for the sins of the people of Israel.
At Passover, each family had to sacrifice a lamb in remembrance of God’s
deliverance of the people. In a few
minutes, we will join together in communion, to remember the deliverance that
we have from sin by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins
of the world.
In verses 35-42, we
read the account of two of John the Baptists’ followers becoming Jesus
followers. When John points out Jesus
to them, they began to follow Him, and finally Jesus turned and said, “What do
you want?” They indicated that they
wanted to spend some time with Him, so Jesus invited them to join him. Apparently they spent the rest of the day
talking. By the time they were
finished, Andrew knew who Jesus was. He
went to get his brother, Simon Peter, and when he did, he said, “We have found
the Messiah.” That Hebrew title meant
that Andrew recognized Jesus as “the Anointed One,” the Christ, the Son of
God. He realized that Jesus is the
fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.
In verses 43-49, we
read the account of Philip and Nathanael.
Philip had been invited to follow Jesus, and he did. After he realized who Jesus was, he ran to
get his friend, Nathanael. When
Nathanael heard, he didn’t believe it.
He really couldn’t believe that God was at work, in Nazareth or anywhere
else. But when he met Jesus, it all
changed. Jesus was able to show him
that He knew things about him that he didn’t think anyone could know. It seems obvious that when Philip found
Nathanael under the fig tree, he was thinking about Jacob’s ladder, when Jacob
had seen a dream of a ladder to heaven with angels going up and down it. Jesus not only mentions where Nathanael had
been, but alludes to what he had been thinking about. No one could have known that but God! So Nathanael says, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the
king of Israel!”
Lastly, John records
a seventh title for Jesus in this chapter.
It is one that Jesus uses for Himself in the last verse of the
chapter. He says, “Hereafter you will
see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
Man.”
“Son of Man” is one
of Jesus’ favorite titles for Himself.
It comes from Daniel 7:13, where the prophet records that he had a
vision in the night, and saw, “One like the Son of Man, coming in the clouds of
heaven!” This was a reference to the
Messiah, and by the time Jesus came, “the Son of Man” was one of the favorite
name among the people for the Messiah that they were waiting for.
CONCLUSION
So, in one chapter,
we have 7 different titles for Jesus.
Each one points to a single truth – Jesus is God. He is the eternal creator, the light of the
world, the Son of God, the Son of Man, The Messiah, the King of Israel, The
Lamb of God.
John tells us that
Jesus is all those things – and He is!
But John also tells us that there were those who refused to recognize
Him or believe Him. Verse 10 tells us
that,
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world
did not know him. He came to His own,
but His own did not receive Him.
You know, what it
really comes down to is this. Jesus is
who Jesus is. He is all those things
that John has identified Him as – but unless we recognize Him as those things,
unless we receive Him as the creator, the light of the world, the Son of God,
the Lamb of God and all the rest, then we remain separated from Him. It is just that simple. Jesus will not, with all His power, force
Himself on you. He will let you choose
to receive Him or reject Him.
In the early 1800’s,
President Andrew Jackson issued a full pardon to a man named George Wilson, who
had been sentenced to be hanged for a crime he had committed. But George Wilson
refused it. The question was raised, “Could he legally refuse the Presidential
pardon?” Supreme Court Justice John
Marshall declared, "The value of the pardon depends upon its acceptance.
If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must hang." And he was.
There’s no logical reason for it, but some reject God even after he’s made
every attempt to relate, to meet them on their level, to pardon them for their’
sins.
But for others the outcome is quite different.
John continues in verse 12,
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become
children of God, to those who believe in His name.
Jesus is God. He became man. He came to this earth to die for you. Will you recognize Him for Who He is? Will you believe in Him, and have life in His name? That is why John wrote this book in the
first place. But don’t just read the
book – get to know the Man – personally and intimately.
Prayer.