John 1, Prologue, One Word

The Word in John’s Prologue as the One Meaning of Life

Please open your Bibles with me to John chapter 1, starting verse 1, reading to verse 18.

Hear the word of the Lord.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

He was not the light. He came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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 bore witness about him, and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He comes after me, ranks before me, because he was before me.

And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God, who was at the Father's side, he has made him known.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Now, if you had to describe what you wanted out of life, whatever it is, you know, sort of what holds your life together, what drives you, what gets you up in the morning, keeps you going through the day, gives you something to look forward to, you know, when you go to bed, if you had to describe that in one word, what would it be?

One word, that's all you have, what would it be? Money, maybe? You've got to pay the bills, right? You've got to put food on the table, that's what you're working for. The money, right? Money, after all, makes the world go around, they say.

No, of course not, I hope you don't think that. What about family? That's why you want the money, right? That's why you're working for that money, for your family. What can be greater than family? One thing, what is it, one idea, one cause, what is it that your life is about?

Of course, many people haven't even bothered to stop and think about that, they're just too busy trying to earn a living or to get the next thing they want, whatever it is. Maybe it's a good job now, maybe it'll be a spouse next, maybe then a child, maybe a boat, maybe just, you know, what's for lunch next?

They're like a hamster on a wheel, you know, not aware of the big picture or the fact that no matter how hard they run, they still don't get anywhere. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, in other words, he meant, you know, stop and think, what is the one thing that is worth living for?

There must be one unifying principle that makes sense of everything else. Now the ancient Greeks in the time this Gospel of John was written called that one thing the logos, Greek word, logos means the word, or it could be translated in the way they used it in their culture, the principle.

What's the principle idea that is the cause and the purpose of everything, including, you know, why you get up in the morning, that lunch that you're planning next? They thought that this word or this principle was a spiritual force, it was an abstract idea, an immaterial thing, nothing with a body, nothing with matter.

The material world, they thought, was only a shadow of that word. And we're kind of like captives chained in a cave with the entrance behind us and we're looking in into the cave and we see these shadows on the cave wall and we think the shadows, which are these material things, our bodies and, you know, the money, whatever it is, the things of this world, we think the shadows are the real world.

And they said, no, it's the spiritual things, the logos, that's the real thing. Now if the ancient Greeks thought the logos was immaterial, all spirit and no body, modern people have fallen into the opposite error.

The late famous astronomer Carl Sagan began a series on PBS in the 80s with a remarkable statement of faith. The cosmos is all there ever was, all there is, and all there ever will be.

Prove that.

Prove it. He can, of course. That's just a statement of faith. The famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking wrote, the eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.

Same thing the Greeks were after in their philosophy, right? Single idea. That's a noble goal and Christians should be pro-science. Christians have nothing to fear from science, but notice what Hawking assumes by that.

By assuming that science, which is the investigation of material things, that science then can explain the whole universe, he has assumed that everything is material. Like Sagan, he hasn't proved it. He hasn't found that out by scientific investigation.

He simply believed it from the start. And then everything he does and thinks and says is based on that assumption. Everything is material, the modern world says. And that being the case, then, well the only things worth living for are material things.

You know, the food in your stomach, the clothes you wear, the sexual experiences you can get, money that you can earn or steal, the luxuries that you can have. Of course, that's only if you don't think too much, because after all, the same scientist that say the world is only material also tell us it's all going to eventually dissolve anyway.

So it's all kind of pretty much meaningless, isn't it? So according to them, there really isn't any reason to live at all, which is why the Bible just mocks them saying, you know, according to your philosophy, we should just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.

What is this single theory that describes the universe? It's not something that science can find. It's helpful as science can be in many ways. Science can't find it because it's not purely material. And it's not merely some impersonal, abstract idea, like the Greek thought.

The single theory, the one word that explains everything and is the reason for everything that doesn't leave you ignoring the material world, because he was in it, materially. And doesn't leave you with nothing to live for, because he's eternal.

That one word is Jesus. John, the writer here, shows us that one word, Jesus, in the prologue to his gospel. The first 18 verses introduce the rest of his gospel, but introduce Jesus as far more than just kind of a historical figure that he's writing this biography about.

He introduces him as the word, saying to his Gentiles who are reading him, you know, raised perhaps in that kind of Greek philosophy that I described earlier, saying to them that this Jesus is the unifying principle that your philosophers were speculating about.

But he's not immaterial and abstract and out there. The Logos, the principle of the universe, is a person, the person of God, and a person who became a man. Even in Chinese philosophy, they too look for one unifying principle.

They call it the Tao, the way. Now the Tao is the principle of creation. It determines everything. It guides the way everything works. Confucius and Lao Tzu and others looked at nature and saw that there was one ordering principle behind it.

Even C .S. Lewis, in his wonderful small book, The Abolition of Man, takes that Chinese idea of the Tao and says, as a Christian, there is this ordering principle in nature. Lewis calls it the Tao. Here John calls it the Logos.

And art, Lewis says in his book, is supposed to celebrate that. Art is supposed to bring out the beauty of creation by showing its order. Good literature is supposed to show something wonderful in life.

Good paintings are supposed to show that there's light and there's balance in the world. Good music is supposed to show that there's this beautiful order. The music of the spheres, a harmony in creation, because there is a maestro directing it all.

People have tried to rebel against that, especially in the modern world, especially over the last century. They've tried to rebel against that idea that there has to be this order, this principle. But most of us just find it, most of us just rebel, recoil at their rebellion, particularly in the art world.

You know, we find it ridiculous that people would pay for paintings that are just paint kind of randomly splattered on a canvas. You know, you think if a monkey can do that, why not? I've got to pay for it.

The 20th century composer, music composer, man named by the name of John Cage, had a composition which he called Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds, in which for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, the musicians just sat.

I'm going to try this, Brittany, for a special one day. Why don't you just sit? You know, they don't play their instruments. People are supposed to listen to whatever sounds that they make, whatever Raymond happens to be doing at the time, you know, doors opening and closing, babies crying, you know, whatever.

But we kind of hate that. There's no order to it.

You listen, that's not music.

It's ridiculous.

We want our art to display the beauty of that one unifying principle. Call it Lagos here, the Tao, and Christians not only support science, but art too, because science is the exploration of what Christ has created, and art is the celebration of that Lagos, that Tao, ultimately of Jesus himself.

The Word Is God and the Father Has Been Made Known

Well, John shows us that one unifying principle here in four parts in his prologue. First, he says the Word is God. Second, he talks about the Word's witnesses. Third, the Word became flesh. And finally, the Word received makes children of God.

So the first three of those, the first three of those parts are in two parts each, before and after what's really a middle part, which I listed last. The Word received makes children of God in verses 12 and 13.

Both before and after verses 13 are those other three parts. That idea, the Word received makes children of God, is held up sort of in the middle of this as the focus and the summit to which all of this is building.

Now all of this is important. He begins and ends with the idea, first, that the Word is God. John begins his gospel about Jesus exactly as the book of Genesis begins, of course, the whole Bible, you know, in the beginning, sounds very, you know, just like exact same words except that John goes really past the beginning to the pre-creation, past the creation to the pre-creation.

In the beginning, he says, was. That is, you know, already, it was already he, I should say, was already in existence. It didn't say in the beginning the Logos was created, but in the beginning, the Word.

Was.

He's there already, already having come from before creation. The Word was already there, being uncreated. And then he says, and the Word was with God. He was in God's presence. He was another distinct person, a self with God in the beginning.

Never created because he too is eternal, but he is with God. And then it says, famous words, and the Word was God. He too is God. He is God with God. Now he's not another God, and this gets a little confusing, you've got to pay attention to the words here.

He is with God first, and he is God, but he's not another God because there is only one God. And yet he was with God, he was near him, he was relating to him. In verse 18, it says he is in the Father's side or his bosom, but he's not the same as God.

And so here we have two persons. One is God, who the Word was with, and the other is the Word, who is also God. All that we need to see is that the Trinity, or I should say, all that we need to see is that the Holy Spirit is also God, and he is a person, and then we have three persons and one God, the Trinity.

Now some have refused to accept this. Now I can't say that, that's their idea, you've either got to be one God and Jesus is lesser or he's just another name for the one God. But John's Greek is clear and simple.

His ideas are very profound and deep. His language is very clear and simple. The Word was God. He begins and ends this prologue insisting on that. Notice he begins in verse 1, he says a similar thing in verse 18.

In verse 18 he concludes, skip down there, no one has ever seen God, right? Jesus will say that in chapter 4, God is spirit, no one's ever seen him. But here, now in verse 18, the only God, that's the next phrase, here in the ESV it's translated the only God.

That term only, here in the ESV, could be translated the one of a kind God, or in the NIV it's the one and only. That's the same term used there, translated here as only, used in John 3, 16, famously in the King James Version, as the only begotten.

Now I think one of a kind is probably a good translation, and so look at verse 18. No one has ever seen God, right? And then there's another. The only God, the one of a kind God, who is at the Father's side, he's the same one in verse 1, who is the Word, this one of a kind God, in verse 18, is the same one who is the Word in verse 1, who is with God in the beginning.

Here, he is at the Father's side, in verse 18. He has made him known. Jesus, the one of a kind God, has made the Father, whom no one has ever seen, known. And you notice in verse 18 he introduces the term, a term, for that one God, for that God that no one has ever seen.

He calls him the Father.

The Father.

No one has ever seen. The one of a kind God, the logos, has made him known. Understand? So, now some say, we can't really know God. You know, he's infinite and we're finite. He's so far beyond us. He's just above us.

We can't really understand him. In Chinese philosophy, Lao Tzu described the Tao as unknowable. You can't know this principle. The Tao that can be described is not the Tao, he said. If you can explain it, it's not what we call here the word.

It's not the Tao. He described, he defined the Tao as the sound of one hand clapping. In other words, it's an absurdity. It's just beyond our imagination. It's a mysterious thing. And while it's true that by our minds alone, by our logic, and logic is a word based on the Greek word here, logos, by that alone, we can't know the word.

We can't know God. But what John tells us here is not that we ascend to God with our knowledge, with our minds, with our studying, with our logic, somehow using logic to know the logos. No, Jesus is, he says, the one of a kind God, in verse 18.

He has made the Father known, the Father that we could not see. He has revealed to us the one of a kind God, Jesus has. He reveals to us what we couldn't know on our own. God reveals God. God reveals himself, in verses 16 and 17, and he reveals himself as a bountiful, generous God.

He is good and he is blessing to his people. He says there, verse 16, from his fullness, this is his bounty, his great generosity, all that he has. We have all received grace upon grace. It's like grace after grace.

In other words, he has this abundance and from it, he gives us grace, and then grace, and then more grace. It's like waves of grace, one after another, each bigger and better than before. Grace upon grace.

And we see this in history, as he describes here. First, he saved his people from slavery, right? Moses came and he gave that grace gift. God gave the grace gift of his law through Moses. The law came through Moses, he says.

He doesn't mean to put that law down at all. That's God's ways that lead to a better life, if you follow it, which even now make clear to us our need for salvation so that we will, once we see that we need salvation, turn to God for grace.

And then after that, after giving us the law to show us our need, then God met that need by giving us grace, grace and truth through Jesus Christ. Notice in verse 17. And notice that also, verse 17, by the way, Jesus Christ is named.

He's the word.

He's the one of a kind God who reveals the Father. The word, the one of a kind God, is Jesus Christ. Now, as God in verse 2, skipping back down there, he was in the beginning with God. At least so far, we see two persons, both God, but only one God.

They both existed eternally. They were there already at creation. In verse 3, all things were made through him, through Jesus Christ, the one of a kind God, the Logos. It doesn't say that he made all things by himself.

It implies that God, really all of God, created the universe. But the word, Jesus, was the creative mediator. He was the one through whom God created everything. And he was the means which God created the universe.

As Psalm 33, verse 6 says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. You read that first, you think it's just by his speaking. But we hear in John, the word is more than just word spoken. He's Jesus Christ.

And through him, the heavens, the universe, was made. And then here, back in John 1, without him was not anything made that was made. In other words, Jesus was involved in it all. The stars, the galaxies, the black holes, this planet, earth, the mountains, the trees, the birds, the single cells, takes a microscope to see, the molecules, the DNA, the God particles.

There's some scientists think, that's gonna be it, that's gonna contain a single theory that explains everything. These little subatomic particles. Except they'll never be able to explain where those subatomic particles came from.

God explains that. And Jesus, the one of a kind God, was involved even in that. Because the word was God, in verse 4, because he's God. In him was life, that's in Jesus Christ. Physical life, spiritual life.

Scientists still haven't been able to explain where physical life comes from. Just haven't figured, how did it just arise out of a sterile planet? And even if they somehow do explain that, that is not all the life that there is.

There is the spiritual life, which scientists can't study. And that life is the light of people. It shines, and it shows them God. And the darkness, in verse 5, that's the conspiracy of people, that darkness.

They conspire because they hate the light, and they choose the darkness. They want to destroy the light, because they prefer the darkness. But that darkness has not overcome the light. Even though the darkness tries to destroy the light, as we see in this gospel.

You know, when Judas finally chooses to betray Jesus, he chooses money, 30 pieces of silver, over the light. And it says he went out, away from Jesus, he went out. And it says, and it was night, in John chapter 13, verse 30, it was darkness.

That's what Judas was going into. But even the crucifixion didn't overcome the light. And it tells us why here, because in him was life, the word is God. Well, the word has witnesses. In verses 6 to 8, and then in verse 15, we hear about one of the most important witnesses to the word, is John the Baptist.

He was a man sent from God, it says, that's like the prophets. The prophets are sent from God. All of the gospels begin by mentioning something about John, and so does this one. And this one focuses in on the fact that he's a witness.

That's his primary mission, is to bear witness to the light, to that one word, who makes sense of it all. To Jesus. John came that more people would believe in Jesus. Not that they would believe in him.

Now, in his time, John was a very notable figure. He was a celebrity, he was widely known, thought to be a prophet by the people. We know even in Acts chapter 16, that several years after his death, that there were still groups of people who believed in John.

Who tried to follow John the Baptist. But here we're told in verse 8, that he was not the light, but came for the purpose of bearing witness to the light, for testifying, pointing away from himself to Jesus.

In verse 15, he's even quoted there. Jesus is the one, he says, who comes after me. John says he ranks before me, he's higher than me, because he was before me. And of course, it's foolish, isn't it? To follow someone, or follow something that is supposed to be a witness to someone greater.

Why would you follow John, when he's trying to tell you to follow Jesus? Doesn't just make much sense. Why follow someone who's ranked less, when he's trying to tell you about the one who's ranked more than him, when he's trying to draw your attention away from himself to Jesus?

Well, the church too is a witness, like John. We're not the light, we're supposed to bear witness to the light. Now sure, the Lord Jesus said, speaking to the church, to us, that you are the light of the world.

But we are only the light, if we're like the moon, reflecting the sun. I got that from Brittany's Facebook page, by the way. But some people are more concerned with following their church, believing in it and glorifying it.

I guess it's easier, they can just ask them questions and do what the church says. But they're more concerned with believing the church, glorifying their church, than they are in following Jesus and believing him and glorifying him.

Some churches or cults even put themselves in the place of Jesus. And telling their people that if you believe us, because we speak for Jesus, basically. The same, believing in us is the same as believing in Jesus.

But instead, we should be like John here. We're not the light, we're bearing witness to the light, to him who ranks higher than us, who was before us. Because he was with God in the beginning, to Jesus, who is the one of a kind God.

And so we don't use church, this assembly, to draw attention to ourselves, to celebrate ourselves, our traditions, or our citizenship, our nationality, our culture. But to point to someone as high above all of that, to Jesus.

The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us

We should be a witness to the word. The word became flesh. In verses 9 to 11, and verse 14, we see that the word, as the logos, the tau, the one uniting principle, he came into this world. The very planet he had made hosted him.

And this is why believing in Jesus is not merely about, you know, just kind of abstract doctrines and theories and ideas. Sound good, maybe get excited about them, nice to sing about. But, you know, they really can't be practiced.

And we go out, we live no differently. But this is why our world, because the word became flesh, is why our world, even our physical world of bodies, and jobs, and school, and relationships, and money, it isn't merely a shadow on the wall that God doesn't really care about.

As long as our hearts are somehow good, we can sin all we want. No, God came into this world, into a body like ours. The grand miracle, C .S. Lewis called it. The word becoming flesh, with flesh here meaning all of our human existence in its frailty, in its vulnerability.

He was tired and thirsty at a well. He was able to be killed at a cross. Well, just like our human lives, which Isaiah describes in chapter 40, all flesh is grass. The one of a kind God came into that kind of flesh, and he dwelt, he lived among us.

Literally, they're tabernacled, not a word we commonly use, tabernacled. Just as God lived among Israel in the Old Testament, you know, in that tabernacle, remember, in Joshua, they brought the tabernacle into the promised land, and God lived in that tabernacle in the middle of his people.

And so he's saying here, in Jesus, God was living in a body in the middle of his people. But who are his people? You know, verse 10 says that the world of people, at least those who he came to, didn't recognize him.

They didn't receive him. In verse 11, he came to his own. That is, he came to the nation, the ethnic group to which he naturally belonged, to which physically he was descended, him and his family, to Israel.

He lived among the Jews, just as the tabernacle had been literally among the Jews, among Israel. But they didn't receive him, his natural people, according to the flesh, at least not most of them. Those natural people, according to the flesh, according to birth, according to ethnicity, didn't accept him.

That's what it means there. His own did not receive him. But those weren't really his people. People who don't receive him aren't really his. They aren't children of God. Well, who are his people? You know, it doesn't depend on ancestry, or on race, or on nationality, or on family.

God's people have never been about a nation, or a race, or, you know, an ethnic group, but about faith. His people are those who have seen his glory. They've seen that Jesus is full of grace and truth.

In verse 14, he has grace for their sins so that they can be right with God. Not a kind of sloppy excusing of sin, so they keep on sinning, but truth to set us straight, truth that sets us free. The light shines.

It exposes the truth, the truth that we're sinners and that we need grace, the truth that Jesus Christ gives us, grace upon grace. In verse 14, the word who became flesh and set up his tent in this world is again described as the only son.

That's the same term we were looking at earlier. The only, the one and only, the only begotten, the one of a kind. Here he is named as the son, right? We've seen the father named. Here we see the son named.

He is the son, the one of a kind God from the father, God whom no one has ever seen, and he is, Jesus Christ is, you know, not just have a little bit of grace and truth, but mixed in with some severity, and legalism, and darkness.

But he is, it says, full, full of grace and truth. The word became flesh to be the word who makes children of God, who are God's people, not everyone. Now, some, as it says here, receive him not. They don't accept him.

But starting in verse 12, to all who receive him. What's it mean to receive him? It means to believe in his name, to believe in the revelation of himself, who he has made himself known to be, to believe that he has been given the name that is above every name, greater than every other so-called God, everything that we tend to put our trust in and hope for, greater than money, greater even than family, greater than even science.

You know, when science has concluded, people listen, people bow and obey. Science says so. It's okay. But to receive him, Jesus, is to believe in Jesus, to believe that at that name, every knee will bow, and everyone will finally admit that he is the one to obey.

To those who receive him, Jesus gives the right, it says, the authority, the right to become children of God. He came to his own, to the people who should have been his family, and found that they were not his family.

You know, for a time, literally, even his own immediate family didn't accept him. Eventually, they did, but for a time, his brothers scoffed at him. In this very gospel in John, they mock him, they make fun of him.

His mother and brothers come at one point to try to take him away from teaching, but he pointed to those who were around him, listening to him, who had received him, who believed him, pointed to them, and said, this is my family.

And he gives them, he gives them believers the right, the authority to be children of God. Now, sure, it's not exactly like Jesus, because Jesus is the one of a kind son to the father, but by the power given to us, by the word of God, the word made flesh, we become children of God.

We become God's family. Now, if it stopped right there, at the end of verse 12, some would conclude, well then, we become God's people, his family, by our choice, the decision we make, by our choosing to believe, it's up to us then.

It's in the power of our free will. And we get to congratulate ourselves if we think we made the right choice. But it doesn't stop right there. Verse 13 says, we, the children of God, became children of God.

We were born again, that is, use the term you'll use in chapter three, we were born again, not of blood. It's not by physical birth, because we were born into the right family, the right bloodline, as though faith is just, you know, just faith just kind of runs in the blood.

No, he says, not of blood, nor, look at that carefully, said verse 13, nor of the will of the flesh, our will, or the will of man. What Paul says in Romans 9, verse 16, that salvation does not depend on human will, both here, in John chapter 1, verse 13, and in Romans 9, the Bible says directly that being born again does not come about by an act of our will.

We cannot choose to make it happen. Someone once joked that a book entitled How to Be Born Again must have been written for God, because he's the only one who can make people born again. It's not dependent on anything we do or anything we choose.

Here, but of God, we are born again, but of God, God's choice. Well, that's the peak. That's the focus to which all of this prologue has been building up and then flows down from. Jesus gives to those who receive him power to become children of God.

The word, the one that everything is about, came to the world to gather a family. That family believed him. That family received him because they were, past tense, born of God, because God willed it. They were born of God because Jesus gave them life.

He shined his light into our dark hearts. That quickening ray, the light that makes alive, shone into our dark hearts. That light was life, and we were born again by God's life, by God's will. And finally, finally, then we saw, ah, he's full of grace and truth.

We're not the light. No, it's not us.

He is.

And so we believed, and then we knew we were now children of God. He had given us that right. As that great hymn puts it, he left his father's throne above, so free, so infinite, his grace. He emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race.

Tis mercy all, immense and free, for oh my God, it found out me. Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.

My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

Let's do that now.