He Came Down

John 1:1 – 18

 

We’ve all been there. You’ve just sat down in your recliner and put your feet up. Maybe it’s after a meal and your family or some friends are sitting down with you too. You’ve finally gotten comfortable, and there’s a knock at the door, or your doorbell rings. Ugh, everyone groans. Quickly everyone looks at each other and says, “Not me.”

 

So you get up and walk to your door and open it to see who’s disturbing you while you’re sitting on your throne in front of the tv. It’s not a salesmen trying to sell you solar, it’s not girl scouts selling girl scout cookies, and it’s not a yard guy trying to drum up business. It’s either a pair of JW’s or a pair of Mormon’s asking you if you know the key to eternal life, asking you if you know Jesus.

 

Some of you know Mark Tanksley from the Hilmar church, and if you’ve gotten to know him even just a little bit, you know he’s a character. But one small part of his character is his ability to be troll. He tells this story of when two LDS missionaries came to his door one day and asked him if he knew Jesus. He played along with them, not for a few minutes, or a few hours, but for weeks.

 

They came to his house weekly to study their Bible as they tried to convert him to Mormonism. They failed, as Mark is pretty entrenched in his belief in our one true, triune God and he’s intimately familiar with God’s Holy Word. I’m sure after that experience he must be on some blacklist so future missionaries know to avoid his house.

 

But that experience, and I’m sure most of us have experienced having JW and LDS missionaries at our doors, ought to teach us something very important. That is the utmost importance of getting the answer to this question right, who precisely is Jesus Christ. You see, among several errors in the theology of JW’s and Mormons, the most egregious, most drastic error is their understanding of who Jesus Christ is.

 

 Getting the answer to that question right is the anchor for our faith, the key to understanding the gospel, and it is the foundation for understanding the meaning of Easter and the reality of the resurrection. To get our answer to the question turn to our passage today John 1:1 – 18.

If you came to our Christmas song service our passage today might sound familiar to you. That’s because that night I gave a short devotional on John 1:1 – 14, talking about how truly understanding who Jesus is was key to truly understanding the meaning of Christmas, and that how understanding the meaning of Christmas was key to understanding the meaning of the Resurrection.

 

Well today I’m going to dive deeper into that passage, because like I already said, we have to get the answer to the question of who Jesus is right. The answer to that question was so important to the apostles and the early church that we have four God breathed Gospel’s (and numerous other writings that are not the inspired word of God) that all set out to answer that question.

 

Of our four Gospel’s, Mark’s is the shortest and it is believed to have been written first around 50 – 60AD. It is believed that Mark wrote down the testimony of the apostle Peter, and it is short because it is action packed. Then there’s Matthew, with the longest Gospel, likely written about ten years after that, and he was concerned and took great pains to show how Jesus fulfilled Jewish Messianic prophecy.

 

Then there’s Luke, who we’re taking a short break from, who said in the opening of his Gospel that he was among many who set out to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled, and that he too decided to write an order account to prove the certainty of early Christian teaching. Because Luke was an associate of Paul on his missionary journey’s, it’s believed that Luke’s Gospel was written around the same time as Matthew’s or a little later.

 

And then there’s John’s Gospel, believed to have been written near the end of the apostle’s life, the only apostle to not die a martyr’s death, somewhere around 90AD. While they all set out to record the facts, the reality, and the theological implications of Christ’s ministry on earth, John’s Gospel is mostly different than the other synoptic gospels.

 

Those three give us a synopsis, a summary, of Christ’s life. Mark begins right away with Jesus’ ministry; there’s no birth story there. Matthew and Luke both begin with Jesus’ birth, but in different ways. Matthew had Jesus’ genealogy to show Him as the Jewish Messiah and Luke, if you remember my preaching, highlighted that Christ, though Jewish, was sent for all peoples and according to God’s sovereign plan.

But John gives his purpose for writing his Gospel at the end. In John 20:30 – 31 he writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

 

To that end, John opens his Gospel with one of, if not the most theologically charged passages of the entire Bible. As you can see from our Scripture today, and as you’ll hear as I preach today, John is making a truth claim that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. That is a powerful assertion to make, and one that if it’s true, everything flows from it.

 

When I say everything, I mean everything. If this is true then Jesus Christ is Lord, and He is the Logos of creation, and He is the Lord over all things, He is the second person of the Trinity, He is the reigning Savior and Lord, and His kingdom will know no end. But if it’s not, then Christianity is but another meaningless religion trying to explain the meaning of life and the world.

 

If Jesus is not God incarnate, then His death on the cross that we’re going to celebrate on Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, was meaningless and you and I are all still dead in our sin. If Jesus’ is not God, then He was just a teacher with no real power, and worse than that, He was just a crazy person who went around 2,000 years ago claiming to be God when He actually wasn’t.

 

By now you should all know that the Gospel of John is not just my favorite Gospel, but my favorite book of the whole Bible. By now, if you were to play a trivia game that asked which book of the Bible is your pastor’s favorite, you all should be able to answer the Gospel of John.

 

And this is why, as much as I love history, I have found that God has cultivated a new love in me, a love of theology, the study of the things of God. And John’s Gospel is less about the historic facts about Jesus’ life and ministry, and more about the theology and truth of who Jesus is. That’s why this is my favorite book of my favorite book.

 

So, with that in mind, notice that John doesn’t begin with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry like Mark, or with Jesus’ birth stories like Matthew and Luke. No, to back up what is about to be said in this passage, John goes back to the very beginning.

This Gospel begins with the words that echo the very first line of Holy Scripture. “In the beginning…” But our passage goes back to before creation to tell us about the One who existed before it. You see, Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Here, verse 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word.”

 

Notice what Scripture says carefully, John doesn’t say that the word came into existence in the beginning, he says the Word was. In the very beginning, before God created the heavens and the earth, before anything existed, the Word already was, already existed. That the Word already was means that the Word’s existence is eternal, the Word was, and is, and forever will be.

 

And then in quick succession Scripture gives us another statement, “The Word was with God.” Before the beginning of time, before God created the heavens and the earth, the Word existed in a unique relationship with God the Father. That the Word was with God doesn’t mean that He was just there and present.

 

No, the Greek phrasing implies that the Word was in active relational fellowship with God. He wasn’t just there, and He isn’t just distinct from the Father, but He is unified with Him. And to emphasize that point, John adds a third profound statement.

 

“And the Word was God.” That’s a big claim to make. It’s one thing to say that the Word has always existed since before creation. It’s one thing to say that the Word was actively in fellowship with God in the beginning, demonstrating His distinct but unified essence. But it’s a whole other thing to say that the Word was God.

 

The Word is eternal. The Word is distinct from the Father. And yet the Word is fully divine and in perfect union with the Father, the Word and the Father are one.

 

Just look at what Jesus said in John 17:5 when praying to the Father before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.

 

“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” The Word always existed, in glory, intimately connected to the Father, unified in essence and substance, fully God.

For Jewish Christians, “the Word” (Dabar in Hebrew and often associated with God’s power in creation and His revelation through the prophets, think “the word of the Lord), “the Word” was practically a personification of God’s actions and wisdom. For John to say that the Word was “with God” and “was God” would immediately evoke the divine attributes of creation and revelation.

 

For Gentile Christians, Logos would bring to mind the concept of universal reason that governs the entire created universe. The Greek concept of Logos is where we get our root for logic, and any word that ends with “ology.”

 

The logic of God for theology, the logic of the psyche for psychology, and you get my point. This passage takes these concepts that would have been familiar to the immediate audience and transforms them by anchoring them in the truth, the Logos of God, God’s Word indeed.

 

Having evoked the memory of God’s creative power through His Word, John adds, “All things were made through him, and without was not anything made that was made.” Not only is the Word eternal, but He is the Creator of everything. Every star in the sky, every grain of sand on earth, every ocean, forest, desert, valley, and mountain top, you, me, and every living thing.

 

All of it came into existence through Him. In Genesis it is the Word of God that speaks the world into existence. Which means, the One that John is talking about, the Word, is no mere prophet or teacher. He is the Creator Himself. And the opening to John’s Gospel is about to tell us that the Creator entered the very world He made. The creator stepped into His creation, as one of them.

 

Why? Why would the eternal Word and Creator voluntarily leave the glory He had in heaven to come down and enter what He had made and man had broken? He came down so that His creation could know Him. Our passage now turns from eternity to humanity.

 

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Can you just see how our passage is still reaching back to creation in Genesis 1? Genesis 1:2 – 3, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

In the beginning the Word of God spoke and instantly light shone in the darkness. And here in the Gospel of John the very same Word came and was the light shining in the darkness. Light and darkness are set against each other throughout John’s gospel and you see it right here from the beginning.

 

Light brings order, revelation, and above all life. Darkness brings chaos, deception, and death. Understand that the Gospel’s were all written after the fact. John experienced the end of the story. To see the extent of light and darkness you don’t have to look very far.

 

Nicodemus in John 3 came at night, in secret, and dealing with the chaos and uncertainty in his heart about salvation by works rather than by faith. Judas went out into the night to betray Jesus. There is motif of conflict surrounding darkness. And notice the opposite. Here the Word Himself is the light, and at the resurrection it is morning, dawn, first light.

 

And that light was life, the eternal life in the eternal Word brings life to all mankind. Later in the Gospel, Jesus says: I lay down my life.. that I may take it up again.” (John 10:17 – 18). His death and resurrection is not merely something that happened to Jesus, it was voluntary, it was the will of God.

 

The Word is the source of life, and the resurrection is literally life rising from within Him because life itself is in Him. And that life that is light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John knows the outcome, that sin and death and darkness do not prevail against the light.

 

Scripture tells us that in the Word was life, and that life was the light of men. In this Gospel you can see what that means. Jesus will give sight to the blind, He will raise the dead, He will declare, “I am the resurrection and the life.” (Jn. 11:25) In the end, the One who is life itself steps into the darkness of the grave—and the grave will not overcome Him.

 

JtB is introduced, as a witness to the light. All four Gospel’s testify to the witness and ministry of John the Baptist. He came to bear witness, so that all might believe through his witness. And our passage is clear, JtB was not himself the light, but a witness to the light.

 

But the tragic reality of our fallen world, of our fallen sin nature is on full display here in our Scripture. The true, genuine, authentic light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. The Logos of creation, the Word was stepping down from heaven and entering His creation. And vv.10 – 11 ought to break your heart, they sure break mine.

 

“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.” Let that hang there for a moment. This rejection is the first shadow of the cross in John’s Gospel. How sad, how tragic that the world does not respond to its creator the way it should.

 

Think about the irony here. Understand the ancient Jewish concept of knowledge was not head knowledge, it was experiential knowledge, it was intimately knowing someone. The Creator enters His creation, and His creation fails to recognize Him. They didn’t know Him.

 

And John goes further when he writes that He came to his own people. The Messiah came to the very people who had been waiting for Him, praying for Him to come. The very people who had the Scriptures, who knew their promises, and they rejected Him.

 

You know, the apostle Paul was so broken up about this that in Romans 9 he laments that Israel rejected Jesus, and he even goes so far as to say that he would rather be cursed himself, if it meant that his people would know Jesus. Look at what he writes in Rom. 9:2 – 4. Anguish.

 

The light entered the world, but the darkness resisted it. Darkness is the absence of light, so eventually light permeates into every dark corner of humanity. And as such, the story doesn’t end there on that sad and tragic note.

 

This Gospel tells us that there were indeed some folks who responded differently, and that brings in such great hope. In v.12, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Here is the grace of God breaking into the darkness.

 

And those who receive Christ, by believing in his name are given something extraordinary. They are given the right, the power to become children of God.

And here is the core of the gospel message, our passage makes very clear that this new life, new creation as a child of God does not, indeed it cannot, come from human effort.

 

Notice v.13, “who were born, not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” This new life does not come from human ancestry. If anyone had that claim it was the Jews, and look how they handled it. No one can be born again because of who their related to. You can have an uncle, or a dad, for a pastor, that doesn’t matter.

 

It definitely doesn’t come from human decision alone. You can’t just wake up one day and decide that you’re gonna be born again. You can decide to quit rejecting the truth of the gospel, but you cannot do anything, including decide that you’re going to be born again. The only thing any of us contributes to our salvation, is our sin. Christ has done the rest.

 

If it was within your power to decide then you could boast about how you saved yourself, but we know that’s not how salvation works. Look at what the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8 – 9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

 

As John writes right here, it comes from God. Those who receive Christ by believing in Him, not just what He’s done, but in who He is. John hasn’t written anything here about any of the mighty works Christ has done yet. This is all about who Christ is, the eternal Word of God. And those who believe are born again by the will of God.

 

The light has come, and those who receive Him are given new life. But how? It’s all fine and dandy that John and Paul say that we are born again by the will of God, but how could this possibly happen? By what means does this happen? How could the eternal Creator bring sinners into the family of God? If He knew who I was He wouldn’t welcome me.

 

But Scripture doesn’t leave us hanging here. John answers that question in the next verse. This is the center of the entire passage. V.14 reads, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The eternal Creator did something quite unimaginable. Truly it is impossible for our finite human minds to grasp the full reality of this, but we’ve tried and we’ve come close, but still fall short.

 

God became human. Not partly human, not merely appearing human, not possessing a human from the moment of Christ’s baptism until His crucifixion, no none of these. God became truly human. Truly God and truly human, fully God and fully man.

 

John uses the word flesh here to emphasize the full reality of Christ’s humanity. The God who created the universe took on human nature. He entered our world that He had made. He walked our roads, He experienced hunger, exhaustion, sorrow, grief, frustration, anger, and suffering. He didn’t just create the world and everything in it and set it spinning on its axis, no He entered and experienced it.

 

When the Word became flesh, God didn’t simply step into human history to watch and observe it. He came to redeem it. The Creator entered His creation knowing that it would lead Him to the cross. Look at what Paul writes of Jesus in Philippians 2:6 – 8.

 

The One who gave life to the world humbled Himself to take on flesh, and to lay down His life for sinners—and then take it up again. The incarnation is the beginning of the mission that will lead to an empty tomb.

 

But John adds another remarkable detail, one that I’d never caught until studying to preach this. John says that the Word “dwelt among us.” That word “dwelt” literally means to pitch a tent, or to tabernacle. In the OT, the tabernacle was the place where God’s presence dwelt among His people. It was where the glory of God was revealed.

 

And now Scripture tells us something truly astonishing. God’s glory is no longer revealed in a tent, or a temple. It is revealed in a person. “We have seen his glory,” John writes. And what kind of glory did they see? “Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

 

These words echo God’s own self-revelation in Exodus. God described Himself as abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, remember the Hebrew word hesed? Grace is closely related to hesed, which often is rendered as loving-kindness or gracious mercy. And truth carries with it the same thought as faithfulness and steadfastness, all aspects of hesed.

 

 

The characteristics ascribed to only God by the OT were present in the incarnate Logos, the Word, God’s unique messenger to the world. Who not only epitomized in person the awesome sense of God’s presence in their midst, but also demonstrated those divine qualities of God.

 

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. In Jesus we see the grace of God. In Jesus we see the truth of God, Jesus even calls Himself the truth when He says in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

In Jesus, we see the glory of God. The invisible God has become visible, the seemingly distant God, the one who was silent for 400 years, has come near. And to drive home his point, John reminds us that JtB testified about Jesus, that even though Jesus was born after him, JtB says that Christ ranks before him, because Christ existed before him.

 

And from Christ, we have all received grace upon grace. John writes, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” This is not to say that the law is bad, Jesus Himself shoots that idea down when He says that He came to fulfil the law, not abolish it.

 

The law was a gift from God, meant to keep God’s chosen people from sin, a fence around their lives if you will. But the coming of Christ brings the fullness of God’s saving revelation. Everything the law pointed toward is fulfilled in Christ. The grace of God flows endlessly through Christ.

 

And here, at the end of our passage today, John ends with one of the most profound statements in all of Scripture in v.18, “No one has ever seen God.” God is invisible, God is beyond human sight, but John continues: “The only Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

 

Jesus Christ, who was just named for the first time in the Gospel of John confirming that He is the Logos, the Word who is God, who brings grace and truth, is the one is not just standing at the Father’s side, but the meaning here is that He is in the Father’s bosom, He can’t get any closer than He is, because they are one.

 

 

And Jesus, has made God known, He has explained Him, He has revealed Him. He has shown us exactly what God is like. Which means, if you want to know God… you must look to Christ. If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus, because God has fully revealed Himself through the incarnation of His Son.

 

Because Jesus reveals God perfectly, you must trust and believe in Him rather than your own understanding of God in order to receive Him.

 

John begins his Gospel with this breathtaking truth: the eternal Word that created the world, entered the world. Many rejected Him, but those who receive Him are given the right to become the children of God.

 

And all of this is even possible because the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us and perfectly revealed the Father. When I say that this book, the Bible, is God’s self-revelation to us, is because the entire Bible is about Jesus. From Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, this book is all about Jesus who perfectly revealed the Father to His creation.

 

God has not remained distant, He came down, and He came near, and He has made Himself known. He has done this through Jesus Christ His Son. But the story doesn’t end with Word becoming flesh, as our passage opens, “In the beginning…” this is just the beginning. The story moves forward.

 

The One who created the world will walk its dusty roads. The Light who entered the darkness will confront the darkness of sin and death. The Son who perfectly reveals the Father will be rejected, crucified, and buried.

 

And at first it will look like the darkness has won. But the Gospel tells us the darkness never had the final word. The same Word who was in the beginning… the same Word through whom all things were made… the same Word who became flesh and dwelt among us… is the One who rose from the grave.

 

To truly understand what the resurrection means we have to get who Jesus is right. The resurrection is not an isolated miracle; it is the confirmation of everything Scripture tells us here. If Jesus truly is the eternal Word… if He truly is the Creator… if He truly is the life and light of humanity then death itself cannot hold Him.

The resurrection proves that the One who came into the world really is who John says He is. The Son of God, the revealer of the Father, the giver of life.

 

So, I have just one application for you today and it’s this: Don’t keep Jesus at the edges of your life. Many people today do not openly oppose Jesus, I mean some do, but many don’t.

 

They simply never truly receive Him. They respect Him, the appreciate His teaching, they may even attend church, this church even, but Christ remains peripheral, on the outer edges and fringes of their lives.

 

He is not the center of their trust, their identity, or their hope. John’s warning is that it is possible to be very close to Jesus and still miss Him. The people who rejected Jesus in the Gospel’s were not Pagans who had never heard of God. No, many of them were deeply religious people who knew the Scriptures.

 

Yet when the Word stood in front of them, they did not receive Him. So the question for you becomes deeply personal: Is Jesus central in your life, or is He simply nearby? Is He someone you occasionally think about, or is He the One you are truly trusting?

 

Because John tells there are really only two responses to the Light: Rejection or reception. And the promise of reception is astonishing. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

 

The Word became flesh, He came down, He died for sinners, and then He rose in victory so that people like you and I could truly know God and become His children.

 

So, if you want to know what God is like… look at Jesus. And if you want to know the power of God to save… look at the empty tomb.

 

Let’s pray.