First I wanted to share an introduction to John from John MacArthur (emphasis mine). Sorry it's long, but I thought it was excellent and had to share it!
Now each [of the gospels] has its own distinctness. In Matthew, for example, Jesus Christ is presented as the promised king and Messiah of Israel. Consequently Matthew's message to Israel and the world is this: Behold your king. Mark, on the other hand, does not present Christ as king, but presents Him as a servant/prophet. And that's the reason there's no genealogy in Mark because no servant had a genealogy that mattered. And so Mark's message to the world is behold your servant. And when you come to Luke's gospel you see that Luke presented Christ as the perfect man walking among the people of the world and so Luke's message is behold the man.
So Matthew wants us to behold the king, Mark wants us to behold the servant, Luke wants us to behold the man, that is the humanity of Christ. And now as we come to the gospel of John we see a completely dimension. We see when we begin the gospel of John that heaven opens up and the first thing that happens is the eternal Son of God descends. God and man, in one blessed and glorious person, the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ. And so John's message is behold your God. And his revelation was written to establish the truth of the divinity and the deity of Jesus Christ, that He is absolute total God of very God living in a human body. He is not half-God, half-man, He is total God and total man. And so the genealogy that John presents doesn't name any human beings. It goes right back to the time before time, the time of eternity, and says that He was there when it all began. That's His genealogy. He didn't start; he always was. So John presents to us God.
We can look at it another way. There is another unveiling in the order of the four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the unveiling is very, very similar to the old Hebrew encampment. They had the tabernacle in the middle and all the tribes around. And in Matthew we find the writer surveying the theocracy, that is the rule of God in its entirety. In other words we see the whole camp surrounding the king and we see in Matthew God in the midst ruling all of them. And then as we move to Mark we move inside the outer court of the tabernacle, the place of service and sacrifice.
And that's Christ in Mark's gospel, the perfect servant, the perfect sacrifice. And then as we enter into Luke we move into the holy place where we find the candlestick of witness and the showbread of communion and Luke presents Christ in that picture carrying out His priestly work among men, witnessing and communing with them.
But when we come to the gospel of John we enter into the most sacred holy place of all, the holy of holies and we see God in person, God in flesh. And John ushers us into the holy of holies, the very presence of God. And so the fourth gospel is the gospel of all gospels. It is the holy of holies of the New Testament. It is almost as if we ought to take off our shoes for we stand on holy ground as we approach this gospel because it presents in the most magnificent glory the deity of Jesus Christ. It talks about His humanity, it talks about His servant hood, it talks about His kingship, but it presents primarily His deity. It is behold your God that John is trying to get across and we'll see it as we go.
Christ, then, becomes the theme of John's gospel just as He is the theme of John's three epistles and just as He is the theme of Revelation. Needless to say John loved Christ, also needless to say Christ loved John. There were no closer two than they two. And consequently when John writes he always writes about Christ. And the primary emphasis upon Christ in the gospel of John is His humiliation. And yet at the same time His embodiment of deity, whereas in Revelation it's His glorification. And as we read the gospel of John I promise you you'll really hear the beating heart of Jesus Christ. As we read the gospel of John and study it you're going to be able to lay your hands right on the nail prints of Jesus Christ and cry out with Thomas who said, "My Lord and my God," cause you're going to see Him for who He is. This is sacred territory.
And you know, the words of John are so simple that when you go to seminary or you go to graduate school to study Greek the first book that you ever translate is John. Why, because his vocabulary is so simple. You see he always takes the simple words and creates pictures of the most profound transcendent truths. That's John's way. And so John is plain but deep, so John is natural but mysterious. And John's gospel is as simple as a child and as sublime as an angel. John's gospel is as gentle as a lamb and as bold as an eagle. John's gospel is as deep as the sea and high as the heavens. It's sweeping and we present it with Jesus Christ, the blessed Son of God. And we're going to look into the face of Jesus Christ. We're going to stare into His face.
You say why, because as we boldly stare into the face of Jesus Christ Paul says, "We are changed into His image." I trust that when this time is over, even as it begins, we shall find ourselves being changed by the Holy Spirit because we are gazing face to face into the blessed Son of God. And so John presents the eternal word of God, Jesus Christ, and he presents what men did with Him. Some received, some believed, and some rejected and ignored. That's his message.
Now onto our passage or verse for today....
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Simple words, yet incredible truth packed into them!
John 20:31 gives us the purpose of the book of John - But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
This is not a telling of Jesus' human life story. It is a powerful argument for the incarnation and, as John Piper says (emphasis mine), John was writing to awaken faith in unbelievers and sustain faith in believers—and in that way lead both to eternal life. And there may be no better book in the Bible to help you keep on trusting and treasuring Christ above all.
the Word was God. The Word was and is Jesus.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word existed in the beginning - before creation! The Word was the Creator of the universe. Macarthur: In the beginning of beginnings before beginnings even began God was. He never came into existence because He always was. Impossible for us to wrap our human minds around that.
Jesus was not merely human. He was human but He was also God who existed before the beginning of time. John wants to get across this incredible truth: the deity, the majesty and the power of Jesus.
This verse also gives us the truth about the trinity (though the Holy Spirit is not mentioned yet).
the Word was God means that Jesus is God.
the Word was with God means that Jesus had a relationship with God.
Jesus and God are distinct Persons that can have a relationship with each other, yet they is only one God. One divine Essence in the form of three Persons.
Interesting note in my Life Application Bible about "the Word"
What does John mean by "the Word"? The Word was a term used by theologians and philosophers, both Jews and Greeks, in many different ways. In Hebrew Scripture, the Word was an agent of creation (Psalm 33:6), the source of God's message to his people through the prophets (Hosea 1:2), and God's law, his standard of holiness (Psalm 119:11). In Greek philosophy, the Word was the principle of reason that governed the world, or the thought still in the mind, while in Hebrew thought, the Word was another expression for God. John's description shows clearly that he is speaking of Jesus (see especially 1:14) - a human being he knew and loved, but at the same time the Creator of the universe, the ultimate revelation of God, the living picture of God's holiness, the One in whom "all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). To Jewish readers, "the Word was God" was blasphemous. To Greek readers, "the Word became flesh" (1:14) was unthinkable. To John, this new understanding of the Word was gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.
MacArthur explains it even better I think (sorry, this is getting so long!)....
Why did you call Him the Word? Why doesn't he say in the beginning was Christ? Why the word? Well it's interesting. Two reasons: number one, the Jews would understand that and number two, so would the Greeks because both of them used that concept of the Word....
In the Old Testament it was the word of God by which God created the universe. The universe was created by the word of God's mouth, see, and everything that God did, His power, His will, His mind was directed toward men and it was always called "his word". And the word of God came into so and so, and the word of God spake, and all that which emanated from God in terms of His power and His will and His mind and that means anything that came from God and contacted man was called the word. And so the Jew was very familiar with that concept because all through the Old Testament there was that reality of the word...
Jesus Christ was the embodiment of the Old Testament concept of the Word. If you want to see the Word that brought the universe into existence, if you want to see the Word that gives the mind of God to men, if you want to see the Word that transmits life and light to the soul look at Christ, He is the embodiment of all that God is. And in the Old Testament all the power and the mind and the will of God that came from God was called His Word, but that which comes from God in the New Testament is His Son embodying that same thing...
the Greeks had an interesting concept. Let me just put it to you very simply. They believed in a super power. We'll call it God. They had to; it was obvious. And they believed that, that God had power and had a mind and had reason, and you know why they believed that, because men had a mind, had reason, and had power. So they believed it had to come from somewhere.
So Greek philosophers like Heraclides, Philo, Stoics, etc. they believed that God's mind and will was existing somewhere in space floating around and it gave man the ability to reason, and it gave man the ability to act and respond intelligently and have some kind of power. God's mind, then was alive and moving around somewhere. It was impersonal; in no way was it a person, it was just the instrument through which God made the world. It was sort of a philosophical power....
The Greeks called it something. You know what the called it? The Word. Interesting. They called it the Logos. And Logos is a Greek philosophical term expressing the identity of this power of God that makes things do what they do and creates and thinks and reasons...
You see, so he's saying to the Greeks Christ is the answer to what you're looking for. He's saying to the Jews Christ is the embodiment of all that God was for you in the Old Testament ... And so the Greek knew all about the Logos and so did the Jew. And John by using the Logos is saying for centuries you've been looking for the Word of God, Israel, you've been looking for the Word of God, Greeks, there He is right there in the form of Jesus Christ.
All that from one verse!Tomorrow's scripture focus: John 1:2-5
1 comment:
Very interesting! Thanks!
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