The story goes that a little boy wanted a bicycle very badly, but he didn’t know how to pray for one. He tried to imitate how his parents prayed by saying, “Lord, if it be thy will, please grant your servant a bike, in Jesus’ name.”
Two days later, there was no bike. Overhearing a prosperity preacher on TV, he prayed, “Father, in the name of Jesus, I COMMAND you to get me this bike. I claim a blue one with studded tires and racing stripes. In JESUS’ NAME I name it and claim it.”
Two days later, still no bike. Well, his dad was watching The Godfather at the time, so the boy grabbed the little statue of Mary from the family’s nativity set, got down on his knees, and said, “Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again …”
It’s obvious the boy had some very misinformed views of Jesus, but the truth is, it’s not just children in our society who are confused about who Jesus really is. The most important question of your life that you could ask is, “Who is Jesus, really?”
In the opening to his Gospel, John aims to answer that question. You could almost think of John 1 as Jesus’ résumé—who he really is and why he alone is qualified to be Savior. According to John, Jesus is the Word, the light, the life, and glory enfleshed.
1. The Word
John 1:1 starts with, “In the beginning was the Word …” echoing the first sentence of the Bible itself: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth …” (Genesis 1:1 ESV). And how did God create? Through his Word, the Word that John claims was a person, a person named Jesus.
Verse 2 says, “… and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—with and was at the same time. Your finite mind, amazing as it is, isn’t built to fully comprehend the divine realities of God, so sometimes he uses an analogy, like calling Jesus “the Word.”
Jesus is to the Father what a word is to you. In one sense, your words are separate from you, but in another, they are part of you. No one would ever say, “Yeah, I heard J.D.’s words, but I didn’t hear J.D.” Words are, in a sense, the audible expression of a person.
I think of it like this: The Father is like the thought, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit is like the vibration carrying the Word to our ears. There’s only one God, but three persons: The God who sits on heaven’s throne is the Father; the God we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands is Jesus; and the God we feel moving in our souls is God the Spirit.
The Word was with God and the Word was God.
2. The Light
In verse 4, John continues his parallel of Genesis and Jesus when he says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” He goes on to use “light” a total of seven times here to describe Jesus. Light was the first thing God created, and it was fundamental to everything else.
This isn’t an accidental metaphor. Light brings life. When it shines on things, they come alive. Light dispels darkness, allowing you to see things that might otherwise cause you harm or inhibit your understanding of things. Light creates color, revealing the beauty and distinctiveness of creation. And light (as we’re beginning to understand) can even halt time. Light is the constant, the foundation, and at the speed of light, time stands still.
All of this is true of Jesus—the light that holds together the first creation, the life-giver, the illuminator, the revealer of beauty.
3. The Life
Just as God speaking brought order from the chaos of the universe during creation, John says that Jesus’ word brings order to your chaotic, confused life. His word calms storms and brings peace. His command heals diseases. He speaks and the blind see, the lame walk, and the mute speak. He calls out and the dead rise to new life. His utterances deliver the oppressed from their demons, break the chains of addiction, and fill the broken with joy.
All of this from the one who was crucified on the sixth day—the same day that God created humanity in the beginning—and resurrected on the first day of the week. He absorbed the curse that humanity had brought to the first creation by sin, and in his resurrection he started a week of new creation.
In the opening verses of his Gospel, John establishes that just as Jesus was the power of the old creation, so he is the power of the new creation.
4. Glory Enfleshed
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Here John uses the word “tabernacled” for “dwelt among us” because that’s what Jesus’ body was, the presence of God on earth. In other words, “enfleshed” (a word that my computer doesn’t like but that reflects the reality really well). The glory of God took on flesh and blood so humanity could see it and touch it and understand it.
Many religions, you see, conceive of God with some of these ideas, but not all of them together. They easily turn into truth without any grace. Like a searching spotlight, they can tell you what they think is right—but in a way that condemns and excludes you. They aren’t enfleshed religions.
Other religious approaches are grace without truth. Like a giant hug, they act all accepting, but refuse to be honest about what God’s Word says. There’s no light at all in a religion like that. And, as it turns out, no enfleshment either.
Neither of these are the way of Jesus.
Jesus was full of grace and truth, and only that brings life. His truth didn’t cancel out grace, nor did grace compromise the truth. When he died in your place so you wouldn’t perish under God’s righteous standards, he didn’t lower those standards. He lived them out fully. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could know truth and grace—and, blissfully, reconciliation with God.
