Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Redemptive History from John 1:1–18
Sometimes when I try to understand a biblical text, I begin by trying to put myself (so far as that’s possible) in the place of a first-century person hearing this text or reading this text for the very first time. Put yourself in the place of a first-century, Greek-speaking Jew or proselyte, a God-fearer, somewhere in the empire.
Maybe you have some connections with Christians somewhere. This book begins: “In the beginning was the Word.” Because you’re a Jew or a proselyte who’s been attending synagogue service, you hear those words in the beginning, and what do you think of right away? You can’t help it. You inevitably think of Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”
Yet although these lines quickly talk about creation, very rapidly do they go on to some sort of new creation. Then there is this strange expression: “In the beginning was the Word.” What does that mean? The word Word, logos, in the ancient world had a very broad range of meanings. At the risk of reductionism, it finally tracks down into one of two patterns.
It can refer either to inner thought or to outward expression. When it has something to do with inner thought, it is sometimes rendered in English reason or science or logic. Hence all of our logy words. Like theology. It comes from logos. It’s the science of theos, of God. It’s the study of God. Or psychology, which is the science, the study, of psyche, of the soul. Or geology, which is the science, the inner thought structure of ge, of land, of earth.
It can also refer to the outward expression of inward thought. For various reasons, I’m persuaded that that is what is at stake here. In that case, it can often be rendered by something like speech or message. In John 8:31, Jesus says, “If you hold to my logos.” The NIV renders it teaching. If you hold to my word, if you hold to my message, you really are my disciples.
Or in 1 Corinthians 1:18: “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” That does not mean the word cross is foolishness; it means the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. So, in the beginning was the message. That is to say, perhaps better, “In the beginning God expressed himself. This self-expression was with God, and this self-expression was God.” (I’m very paraphrastic now, but you get the point.)
We might well ask why Jesus is introduced in this way by John’s gospel. Why does the evangelist opt for this particular title? Why doesn’t he use one of the titles that fill the pages of this gospel? Son of God or Son of Man or Christ or King of Israel? Why Word? Because beyond the prologue here, this particular title is never applied to Jesus again throughout the rest of the book. Why here?
If he’d used another one, let’s say Son of God, here in the prologue, it would’ve had the effect of orientating the reader to think that this whole book so far as it was introducing Jesus, was introducing you to Jesus as the Son of God. That would’ve been the introducing, the controlling title.
It’s almost as if John is going to introduce Jesus in many important categories, and Son of God is one of the most important in this book, but he wants another category to embrace them all, something that will wrap them all up together, summarize them. He recalls that in the Old Testament the word of God, though never personal, is often personified.
It’s made to sound as if it’s a person. In the Old Testament, the word of God is bound up with creation. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” It’s bound up with revelation. “The word of the Lord came to the prophets saying …” or “The Lord has sent his word.” The NIV has message. “The Lord has sent his word against Jacob.”
So creation, revelation. Also salvation or deliverance, as in Isaiah 55. “My word will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire.” In Psalm 107: “When some people were ill, God sent forth his word and healed them.” God sent his word forth and there was creation. God sent forth his word and there was revelation. God sent forth his word and there was deliverance.
In short, in the Old Testament, God’s word is God’s powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and deliverance. Most Jews in Jesus’ day knew that God had not sent a full-blown Old Testament prophet with a full-blown word of the Lord for close to 400 years. They used the word prophet sometimes to speak of others with some gift of preaching and the like, but they were looking for some word from the Lord.
“Well,” John says, “God may have been silent for 400 years, but the next word he spoke was Jesus Christ.” Nowhere is there a closer parallel to this in the New Testament than in the epistle to the Hebrews. “In the past,” Hebrews opens, “God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us …” and the NIV has by his Son, which almost makes it sound as if the Son is just one more prophet tacked on to all the rest.
That’s not really quite what the original says. If you say it quite the way the original does, it doesn’t sound like English. But I’ll say it that way and then I’ll paraphrase it. “In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us in Son.”
The Son is not simply the agent of the word; the Son is the Word. God spoke in the past to the Fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, his last word has been supremely Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate. We are told immediately of him that he was with God, God’s own fellow. In the beginning, however far back that is, whatever beginning you wish to conjure up in your mind, before there was anything in the entire universe, God was.
In the beginning, the Word was with God, God’s own fellow. And the Word was God, God’s own self. There is both distinction and identity. One commentator has written, “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God. If this be not true, the book is blasphemous.” Just so. That is how John is orientating us in the very first verse of his book. What then does John tell us about this Word of God? Five things.
1. The Word creates us.
Verse 2 picks up the middle clause of verse 1 in order to make a connection to verse 3. Verse 1 says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” That middle clause in verse 1 is now repeated in verse 2. “He was with God in the beginning.” Because that sets you up for verse 3.
Because he was with God in the beginning, he could serve as God’s agent in creation. “Through him all things were made …” Then lest there be any possible slithering room to misunderstand that embracing statement, it’s put negatively. “… without him nothing was made that has been made.” Here too there is a remarkable parallel with Hebrews 1.
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” God’s agent in creation. That same theme is taught in many passages. In Colossians 1:15 and following, we are told of the Lord Jesus Christ, “All things were made not only by him, God’s own agent, but for him.” The entire universe made for the Son.
One hears an echo of John 5 that it is the Father’s determination that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. What this does is rule out certain ways of looking at the world. It rules out dualism in which there’s a good principle and a bad principle on more or less equal terms and they fight it out. It rules out pantheism in which God is sort of considered to be at one with the whole universe. The universe and God are all in some sort of one big sweep together, which lies at the foundation of most New Age thought.
No, here is theism. God exists when nothing else does. It is Christian theism, for although there is but one God, already in eternity past there is a strange plurality in this one God. John will hasten to say that always the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. God spoke by his agent and his agent created the universe. This is an extraordinarily important point.
Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone who gets back to you after a while and says, “Look, I’m happy if this Jesus stuff helps you. If you feel you need him and this Jesus business makes you a little more content or a little more fulfilled or whatever, I’m happy for you. But get off my back! I don’t need him. I don’t want him. I sure don’t like you cramming your Jesus down my throat. So back off. In fact, if you can’t back off, I’m not sure how much I want your friendship.”
Have you ever had someone say that to you? How do you respond? Well, of course it may be the part of tactful wisdom and gentleness to back off somewhat and approach by other means. But sooner or later if this person is a friend at all, surely you’re going to have to say something like this.
“The one thing I can’t do is back off completely, because you don’t see that your response is just incredibly dangerous. God made you. You owe him. The whole ground of human accountability is bound up with creation. You were made by him and for him. Every breath you breathe is by his sanction. For you to think that you’re autonomous and can go your own way and do your own thing and that you don’t need him is already the most fearsome evidence of how lost you are.”
For that is what this text insists upon. That is exactly the point that is drawn out a little later in the prologue, as we shall see. What is it that grounds our responsibility toward God? Creation and the eternal Word, who in the fullness of time became the Lord. Jesus is our Maker, and we owe him.
2. The Word gives us light and life.
First we had creation, now we have creation sliding over into revelation. Verses 4–9. This passage is a bit tricky, and I intend to come in at it rather obliquely. Some books you only read once. You get on a plane for LA or for Singapore. It’s going to be one of those long, boring flights and the movies are boring.
You’re up to date on your work and you don’t want to read any official papers or tap away on your laptop, so you’ve got this novel with you. When you’re not trying to snooze in the chair, you get through this novel. It might be a whodunit. By the time you land in Bangkok or wherever you’re going, you found out whodunit.
Yet this is not the sort of book perhaps that you want to keep on your shelf, a fine piece of poetry perhaps. A fine piece of literature. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s just a whodunit. So you leave it in the seat pocket or throw it in the nearest trash can on the way out of the plane. It helped you kill a few hours. It was a nice little bit of restful escapism. That’s all.
Who knows, when you take the same flight next year, you might buy the same book, have forgotten whodunit, and have to read it again to find out. Some books, in other words, you only read once. But there are other books, including some whodunits, that are very carefully crafted, like books by P.D. James or someone like that, where there’s a plot that you want to get to the bottom of, but at the same time, the book is so carefully crafted that all the speakers speak the right sorts of words for their time and place.
The characterizations are really wonderful and the settings are exactly right. Especially if the setting is your hometown and all the images come to light and you can picture it all. You think, “Boy, that’s a book I’d like to read again.” In that case, you don’t throw the book away; you keep it. You might skim passages of it. If it’s a very good book, you might actually memorize a few or talk it over with a friend or it becomes a discussion point or the like.
That’s a good book. The best authors are able so to write that when you re-read their books, you see new things when you re-read them. With a cheap whodunit, you don’t see anything new the next time around. You might just discern whodunit a little earlier in the plot. That’s it. But in a good book, you read it once and then you go back and read it again and you see whole new layers of things you really missed the first time.
A good author is leading you on that way. Now the question is … Did John write his book with the thought-through intention of being read more than once or did he write it as a tract to be read, passed on, and that’s it? I would be prepared to argue at some length that John wrote self-consciously in a way that pulls people in.
He knows perfectly well that as he speaks as a spokesman for the living God, he is writing in such a way that he is sucking people in and they are going to see new things as they re-read and re-read and re-read. The first evidence is found in these verses. If you’ve never read this book at all before and all you read so far are verses 1, 2, and 3, how will you understand verses 4 and 5?
All you’ve had so far are verses 1, 2, and 3 and now you read: “In him …” That is the Word. “… was life, and that life was the light of man. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not …” There’s a problem with that verb. Let’s say, “… the darkness has not mastered it.” Because there is a pun here in the original.
Mastery can be in the sense of mastering a subject, like chemistry or nuclear physics or microbiology. Or mastery can be in the sense of overpowering. Let’s take a nebulous translation like master. Now then, verses 4 and 5 again. In the light of what you’ve read about the Word and creation, you read verses 4 and 5. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it.”
Will you not read that in terms of creation? That’s what the discussion has been so far. In the darkness of nothing, before any creation, the light beamed out. In fact, if you’re a biblically literate person, you might remember that in Genesis 1, the first thing that God said was, “Let there be light!” and there was light. And the darkness could not master it.
When God spoke, when God created, the light beamed forth. Moreover, this creative power of the eternal Word, God’s agent in creation, was at the heart of all life. All that came to life came by his Word. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” When this light shone forth in the darkness, the darkness could not possibly overpower, could not possibly master it.
On the other hand, as soon as you read on, you start discovering that henceforth in the book, light almost always has quite a different meaning. For example in chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world,” Not light was created before the world or light was there at the creation of the world. “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
Now light is not bound up with creation; it’s bound up with revelation. It’s bound up with morality. It’s bound up with truth. Over against it stands evil and immorality and disobedience. “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
By the time you get to John, chapter 8, Jesus stands up in verse 12 and says: “I am the light of the world.” Now when you go back to John 1, you discover that right away this light has shifted meaning under your feet. “There was a man sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light.”
Do you realize how shocking that would be on the first reader? The first reader who’s been lead to think that the light is their creation? There were no witnesses at creation but God himself! “But this witness was called to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.”
Now the crunch. “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” Here is light that was not only there at creation, but here is light that is now manifesting itself in a world that seems to be dark. You might not catch that on your first time through John’s gospel. After you’ve read John’s gospel through, now when you go back to read verses 4 and 5, they’re going to sound a little differently.
“In him …” In this Word, “… was life, eternal life, and that life was the light of men.” It gave them a whole moral orientation. It shines in the darkness of our corruption and rebellion and sin, but the darkness has not mastered it. The darkness has not even understood it. That is a point that John now is about to make explicit by the time we get down to verses 10 and 11. “The world did not recognize him. His own did not receive him.”
The question is … Which did John mean? The answer, of course, is both. He draws you in so that you will read verses 4 and 5 one way. Then when you’ve read the book through a couple of times, you go and read 4 and 5 the other way. The same Word that was the origin of light in the creation is also the Word that enters into this world and becomes our light and life.
This Word as he enters the world, appears in the domain of history. You can bear witness to him. That has been one of the great strengths of Dick Lucas’s expositions these last mornings. He appears not as a philosophical abstract. He appears in such a way that there are witnesses who touch him and see him and handle him, who hear his words and see him after he has risen from the dead.
John is the first of these compelling witnesses. “Not to be confused with the light himself,” the author says, “but he came to bear witness to the light so that through him all might believe.” In the second place then, the Lord gives us light and life. The Lord creates us, the Lord gives us light and life.
3. The Word confronts us and divides us.
The end of 9, we’re told that this light was coming into the world. Then the word world is picked up upon in verse 10. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” When I was a lad in Canada in the conservative circles in which I was growing up, there was a lot of concern about worldliness.
“Never drink, dance, smoke, or chew, and never go out with girls who do.” That wasn’t the sum of all worldliness, but it was jolly close. We were all warned not to be worldly. What is the world in John’s view? Kosmos is the Greek word. I have heard some people say kosmos belongs to the same word group as kosmeÛ, to adorn, from which we get cosmetics. So if you don’t want to be worldly, avoid adornment and don’t put on cosmetics.
It’s not a very good approach to Greek and it’s not quite what John has in mind. The world for John is the entire created human order in rebellion against God. It is this damned race in your face against God. Once in a while, the world for John is just a big place. The word is used something like 70-odd times. In three or four of its occurrences, it’s used just as a big place.
For example in the last two verses, it is a big place that holds a lot of books. I rather like that. “The whole world could not contain the books that would be written.” I’d like to think of the world as one big library, myself, but usually when John refers to world, he means the created order, the moral order. You and me in defiance against God. He’s not referring to just this planet spinning on its axis going around the sun so often. No, no, no.
“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” Then more intimately, “He came to that which was his own.” The idiom could be rendered, “He came to his own home, but his own people did not receive him.” He came to his own covenant people, the Jews, and they did not receive him. Not because they were worse than others, but because they were typical of all. That’s the point of verse 10.
At one level, this is entirely in line with the kinds of things that Old Testament prophets are saying all the time. Isaiah 65, verses 2 and 3, God says, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations—a people who continually provoke me to my very face …” That’s the world in John’s terminology. We sometimes sing these things better than we handle them any other way. There is an old hymn that has been set to a new tune by Samuel Crossman.
My song is love unknown
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh, and die?
He came from his blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But oh, my Friend,
My friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend.
Sometimes they strew His way,
And his sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day.
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!”
Is all their breath,
And for his death
They thirst and cry.
They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay.
Yet cheerful He
To suffering goes,
That he his foes
From hence might free.
In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth did have;
In death, no friendly tomb,
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav’n was his home;
But mine the tomb
Wherein he lay
Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King,
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
In whose sweet praise
I all my days
Could gladly spend.
Are there then no exceptions? Yes, verses 12 and 13, but not because they are intrinsically better. The word does not divide men and women on the basis of what we people are, as if some were good and some were bad. We are all the world. Later on, John’s disciples are said to be chosen out of the world.
We all belong to the world that intrinsically does not recognize Jesus and does not receive him and finds him uncomfortable and angular. We want to reject. But in the mercy of God, some do receive him and believe in him. Not finally because of human decision, but because they are born of God. Here John is doing one of the things that the does all through the prologue.
He’s introducing a theme that he will extrapolate upon and build upon a little later. In this case, he is anticipating what he says about the new birth in John 3. Here too Dick Lucas has been very helpful to us. Word then creates us. The Word sheds its light and life. The Word confronts us and divides us.
4. The Word incarnates God for us.
Verses 14 and 15. “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. 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.” ’ ”
Incarnate simply means enfleshes. To say that the Word incarnates God for us is to say that the Word enfleshes God for us. That’s all it means. Now no one can doubt that what the coming of the light means for John is the coming of the light in the incarnation. The Word becomes flesh. It does not even say that the Word simply dons flesh or puts it on or hides under flesh or assumes flesh or dresses in flesh. The Word becomes flesh.
That is, the Word actually becomes a human being. That is what is meant. Yet there is a background in the Old Testament here that we really must take time to understand. If I were to say to this august crowd, “God so loved the world that …” Could you fill out the rest of it? Well, most of you could, couldn’t you? Yes.
Likewise, someone who is strong in Isaiah, for example, if I started to quote some words from Isaiah 53, “He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised …” So also here. If someone is steeped in Old Testament texts from the exodus, I suspect they could not help when they read verses 14–18 here, they could not help but call to mind three chapters from the Old Testament: Exodus 32, 33, and 34. We need to look at a few verses in those chapters if we are going to understand adequately what John is doing in these verses in the prologue.
Exodus 32 is the horrible account of the golden calf. Moses has been up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. He comes down and he hears the wild orgy down below and he smashes these two stone tablets. Then God is ready to wipe out the entire race. Moses intercedes with God. Some judgment falls, and the whole thing is very uncomfortable.
God says that although the plans on the Mount call for the tabernacle to be built right in the midst of the people, with three tribes on the north, three on the south, three on the east, three on the west, with the tabernacle and the glory of God right in the middle of the people, he could not possibly remain in the midst of these people lest his glory should break out in anger and he should simply wipe them off the face of the earth.
Now we pick up the account in chapter 33, verse 7. This is before the tabernacle was built, but already there is some kind of Tent of Meeting. It’s now pitched outside the camp, we’re told. “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’
Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses.”
This produces the great radiance on Moses’ face that is picked up by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3, which things we cannot now go into. Here then is what Moses is saying to God on this particular occasion. Verse 12: “Moses said to the Lord, ‘You have been telling me, “Lead these people,” but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.’ ”
He says this because all along he’s had Aaron with him. The condition of Moses going in the first place is that God would send his brother, but now his brother Aaron has been complicit in this horrible idolatry. Moses now feels terribly alone. “You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’
If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. The Lord replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ Then Moses said to him, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?’ ” He puts the two together.
God had said that he would not put his glory in the midst of the camp. “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” In response to this intercession God says to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” From that point on, there is no further mention of the presence of the glory of God outside the camp.
When the tabernacle is built, it is constructed and placed amidst the tribes, with the tribes arranged on all sides. That is the arrangement throughout the years of wilderness wanderings. “Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ ” It’s as if Moses in his hour of supreme crisis, knows that above all, he must see more of God. That will anchor him, the only thing that will.
“ ‘Now show me your glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and I will proclaim my name, [Yahweh,] the Lord, [the I am,] in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ ” It is according to God’s sovereignty that mercy is finally meted out. “ ‘But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’ ”
So the Lord then arranges second-best, the best that Moses could possibly hope for. He arranges for Moses to hide in a cleft of the rock. God, as it were, covers him over and intones as he goes by. Then Moses is permitted to peep out and see something of the afterglow of the trailing edge of the glory of God. That’s what happens in chapter 34 before Moses goes back up on the mountain to take the new copies of these stone tablets.
He chisels them out in verse 4. “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.’ ” It’s almost as if the most that Moses can see is the trailing edge of the glory of God. He must hear God disclosed in words. God discloses himself as full of …
Well, the NIV that I’m reading says, “Love and faithfulness.” Checed ‘emeth in Hebrew, a pair of words that comes up again and again and again. Sometimes rendered grace and faithfulness or grace and truth. It’s God’s covenantal love and grace for his people, his utter reliability that expresses itself not only in propositional truth but in covenantal perfection that he never, ever lets slide.
Now go back to John, chapter 1. We’ll pick up some of the parallels in the last point in a moment, but already, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” the NIV here has. He tabernacled among us. This is not a normal way of speaking. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
Where had God disclosed himself under the old covenant? In the tabernacle. Where did the glory come down? Over the tabernacle. Where was the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire? Over the tabernacle. “Now,” John writes, “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we have seen his glory.” This is a set up as well for John 2, where Jesus insists that he is the true temple. Temple and tabernacle are related. The temple is merely the more firm structure based in Jerusalem. That’s all.
Jesus is the true temple. He’s the true tabernacle. He’s the very place where God’s glory is manifested. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Does that mean that when the first disciples looked on Jesus he had sort of a glow on his face? A halo perhaps? Is that what is meant when John here writes, “We have seen his glory?” Oh no, that’s not it at all.
As you read through the pages of the book, the disciples see his glory in various contexts. At the end of the first sign, for example, in John chapter 2, verses 1–11, we read at the end of it that the disciples saw his glory. They saw his glory in this sign-ificant event, in this event that pointed beyond itself to who Jesus really was. But the ultimate point of glory in John’s gospel, as you move on … John is drawing you on by his themes.
He’s drawing you on until finally you get to chapter 12 and the Gentiles start coming to Jesus. He knows this is a divine sign that it is time for him to go to the cross. He says, “Father, now is the hour. Glorify your Son.” Jesus returns to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began by being glorified. In John’s gospel that means that by being lifted up on the cross he returns to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began … by dying!
By dying an ignominious and shameful death, a sacrificial death. He’s presented as the Lamb of God in this chapter. He dies and is buried and rises to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began. We hear the words from Exodus 33, “Show me your glory!” “I will make all my goodness pass in front of you … full of grace and truth.”
Where has God’s goodness supremely manifested itself full of grace and truth? When the Son was glorified. The Word incarnates God for us. Precisely because this is in the arena of public history, again John is called forth in verse 15. He testifies too. “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ”
In those days, you were honored according to when you were born. The older person always received more honor. If John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus, then John the Baptist should get more honor. Except that John the Baptist has come to the place where he sees that Jesus’ antecedents go back to merely Mary and Joseph copulating. No, no, no.
This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me.” In the process of birth, he came after John. Nevertheless he takes precedence before me. He has surpassed me. Because when it comes right down to it, he was before me. His physical birth is not his ultimate origins. That brings us to the last point.
5. Above all, the Word supremely reveals God to us.
Verse 16: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” I tell my students at the seminary that if at any point in the first five years of their ministry I hear them say, “The Greek says …” to an audience, to a congregation, I will personally throttle them.
Because you don’t want to start engendering the impression that our translations are closed books and so forth. But this is one of those places where you really do have to resort to what the original says. This is an attempt to get around some really rather difficult Greek. If I had to render it rather pedantically then it reads something like this, “From his fullness, we have all received even grace anti grace.” (Anti is the preposition in Greek.) What does that mean?
People have been wrestling with that one for a long time. This way of reading it, which is just about possible, “From the fullness of his grace, we have all received one grace after another, one blessing after another.” It sounds as if he’s the one who sort of piles on the blessings. One after another, one after another, one after another. In a sense, that’s true. We have so many blessings from his hand. We have life itself. We’ve all had food today and at least some shelter from the rain.
Friends and security on the way up here and moderate health. We have an open Bible, some education. We live in a country where we are free to worship. We have many blessings, piled one on top of the other. That’s not what this text says. The particular preposition that is used here is the preposition which in this case really must be taken to mean something like exchange or substitution. From his grace, from his fullness, we have all received a grace instead of a grace.
That’s what it says. A grace replacing a grace. The explanation is given in the next verse, introduced by for. “From his fullness, we have all received a grace replacing a grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth …” That pair of words again. “… grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
This is not saying that there is no sense whatsoever in which the law of Moses continues. It is saying that the whole law covenant is now being replaced. The law covenant as a covenant was a great grace from God. It was a graciously given gift, a wonderful thing. But that law covenant is now being replaced by a new covenant, by a superior grace, the fulfillment of that grace, Jesus Christ himself, the fullness of grace and truth.
Grace and truth came through Moses. Grace and truth came through the law. Grace and truth were given by God and shown to him at that wonderful display at Sinai, but grace and truth par excellence? It came through Jesus Christ. If there are any remaining doubts that John is referring back to that passage, he now says explicitly, verse 18, “No one has ever seen God.”
That’s exactly what Moses was told. “Show me your glory.” “No one can see me and live,” God says. “But I will show you something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of my glory and I will pronounce before you who I am, full of grace and truth, the eternal one.” John reminds us. “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
Now hold your finger on verse 1 and verse 18. You will discover that verse 1 and verse 18 are mirror images of each other. Verse 1. You have the Word, God’s self-expression, which was with God and which was God. Notice those three things in that order: the Word, God’s self-expression; which was with God, God’s own fellow; and which was God, God’s own self. Now we read in verse 18, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only …”
This was referring to the Word, himself God. “… who is at the Father’s side …” He is with the Father. He is God’s own fellow. He has made him known. He is his self-disclosure. He is his Word. He is his self-expression. No one has ever seen God, but if you want to see God as close as you are going to get before the new heaven and the new earth, look at Jesus. He has made him known. He is the Word made flesh.
When I was an undergraduate at McGill University 30 years ago, in my second or third year I met a Pakistani Muslim. He was twice my age and was at McGill to do a PhD in Islamic Studies. McGill had a very fine Islamic institute. He had left his wife and two children behind in Pakistan. He was lonely.
In my ignorant enthusiasm, I befriended him and was interested in trying to lead him to Christ. He had never had a Christian Bible. He had never been to a Christian church. He was interested in finding out about these things, so he came with me once or twice to the church I was going to. Thought it all a bit strange.
I remember once walking down the mountain from our dorms to catch the bus on Pine Avenue. He turned to me and he said with this wonderful, broad smile and this thick Pakistani accent, “Don, do you believe Jesus is God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe the Father is God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe the Spirit is God?”
“Yes.”
“Don, if you have one cup and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?” I was doing chemistry and mathematics, so I could answer that. I said, “Two cups.”
“If you have two cups and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?”
“Three cups.”
“If you have three cups and you take away one cup, how many cups do you have?”
“Two cups.” I could see where he was going.
“Is Jesus God?”
“Yes.”
“Is the Father God?”
“Yes.”
“Is the Spirit God?”
“Yes.”
“So if you have one God plus one God plus one God, how many Gods do you have?”
I was doing chemistry; I wasn’t doing theology! My answer was pretty thick, to be honest, but it was the best I could do at the time. I said something like, “Well, if you’re going to use a mathematical model, let me at least choose the branch. I will choose infinities. If you have infinity plus infinity plus infinity, how many infinities have you got? If you have three infinities and take away one infinity, how many infinities have you got? I serve an infinite God!” It was bad theology, but it was the best I could do.
That Christmas, I brought him home to my folks, who at that point had moved up to the Ottawa area, about 120 miles away. He came home to have Christmas with us. He had no place else to go. This was his first winter in Canada. In the providence of God, my father had heart problems and spent three weeks in the hospital.
Because we only had one car and we were going back and forth to the hospital, Poor Mohammed Yusuf Guraya was more or less left on his own. Some weeks earlier I had given him his first copy of a Bible. He had never had one. I was a bit slow getting around to it. I gave him one and he said, “Where should I start reading?”
I said, “I don’t know. Maybe start with John’s gospel.” Of course, when you or I start reading a book, you flip through the pages. The trick is to see how many pages you can get through before it’s time to quit. In many Asian societies, the idea is to read slowly. Especially with holy books, you read slowly and meditatively and thoughtfully and turn it over in your mind.
He hadn’t said to me a word about this Bible, not a word. On the last day that we were there before we had to drive back to McGill, I said to my mother, “Look, Dad’s all right. He’s going to be home in a couple days. Would you mind if I take the car and show dear ol’ Guraya around. He hasn’t seen anything. He’s been parked at home while we’ve been going to the hospital.”
So she said, “Sure.” I took him up into Laurentian Hills and showed him the sights here and there. Finally we got to the Canadian Parliament buildings. The Canadian Parliament buildings are a kind of pseudo-gothic structure from the nineteenth century, really quite beautiful, on a promontory over the Ottawa River.
We managed to latch on to the end of a guided tour, 30 people or so being brought through the Senate chamber; pictures of John Macdonald, our first Canadian prime minister; the House of Commons; the library; the rotunda, and all of that. Eventually, we got back to the foyer, the entrance, where there are some pillars.
At the top of each pillar there is a fluted arch. In each arch there is a little figure: Moses, Aristotle, and so forth. The guide said, “These figures represent that on which government is based. There is Aristotle, for government must be based on knowledge. There is Socrates, for government must be based on wisdom. There is Moses, for government must be based on law.”
And he went around. Any questions? Guraya pipes up, “Where is Jesus Christ?” I didn’t know where this was coming from. I was looking for a crack to fall into. The guide didn’t have a clue either. So he said, “I beg your pardon?” Guraya, naturally enough, thinking that the reason why the guide said, “I beg your pardon,” was because his accent was so thick that the guide hadn’t understood him, said it more slowly and more loudly, “Where is Jesus Christ?”
Now you have a Pakistani Muslim asking where Jesus is in the entrance of the Canadian Parliament with three groups hearing him. The guide said, “Well, why should he be here?” Guraya looked shocked. He said, “I read in the Christian Bible that the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Where is Jesus Christ?!” I thought, “Preach it, brother!”
Here was a man who came from a religion that knew about law, knew about a god full of judgment, and knew about a holy god who keeps men to account, but where is the very incarnation of grace and truth? This Jesus had captured him, and by the end of year he had abandoned his program. That is what we are talking about when we come to the incarnation.
Before there was a universe,
Before a star or planet,
When time had still not yet begun—
I scarcely understand it—
Th’ eternal word was with his God,
God’s very Self-Expression;
Th’ eternal Word was God himself—
And God had planned redemption.
The Word became our flesh and blood—
The stuff of his creation—
The Word was God; the Word was flesh,
Astounding incarnation!
But when he came to visit us,
We did not recognize him.
Although we owed him everything
We haughtily despised him.
In days gone by God showed himself
In grace and truth to Moses;
But in the Word of God made flesh,
Their climax he discloses.
For grace and truth in fullness came
And showed the Father’s glory
When Jesus donned our flesh and died:
This is the gospel story.
All who delighted in his name,
All those who did receive him,
All who by grace were born of God,
All who in truth believed him—
To them he gave a stunning right:
Becoming God’s dear children!
Here will I stay in grateful trust;
Here will I fix my vision.
Before there was a universe,
Before a star or planet,
When time had still not yet begun—
I scarcely understand it—
Th’ eternal Word was with his God,
God’s very Self-Expression;
Th’ eternal Word was God himself,
And God had planned redemption.
Let us pray.
Forbid, Lord God, that we should become so familiar with these glorious truths in some superficial way that we are unmoved by them. Lead us by your powerful Spirit to deeper and deeper grasp of your most Holy Word. Help us so to hide these things in our heart that we may learn not to sin against you.
We bless you that in the fullness of time you sent forth your Son, born of a virgin. The Word was made flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. On this Easter Sunday, we give thanks that we have tasted already of the resurrection life to come because he died and rose again for our justification.
O Lord God, grant that in the solemnity of this moment each of us may cry out afresh to him, “Merciful God, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be this side of the glorious resurrection.” If there be some here, Lord God, who still do no know what forgiveness looks like, grant that even now they may cry out to you, “Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.” For Jesus’ sake, amen.
