GOOD NEWS FROM ST. JOHN
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HESE opening verses of John’s Gospel are unique in the Bible in that they reveal something of the pre-incarnate existence of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a beginning, and we did not exist before we were born. The Word was from the beginning, and has no beginning and no end. There is no way that we can ever understand fully what is revealed to us here, but let us absorb the diving glory of Jesus.The name Jesus would not have been appropriate here as the name Jesus was given when Jesus was born and describes his mission and office as the incarnate Christ. The name, the Word, emphasises the pre-existence of Christ before he was made flesh. "In the beginning" means that when the world started Jesus was - he is eternal, the eternal Word. If we attach meaning to this name ‘The Word’, it tells us that it is through Jesus that God communicates with his creation, and with us who are made in the image of God.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. By this we understand that God is one, but there is the person of the Father and the person of the Son, one God yet distinct persons. We cannot explain this, but we accept and believe it because God has revealed himself as such. Let us never forget or doubt the deity of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus, we see God, for Jesus is God. When we come to know Jesus as we read of him revealed in the bible, then we see the character and nature of God. Here is the only reliable and true understanding that we can have of God.
Next we learn that the Word is the author of all creation - "through him all things were made". When we read in Genesis that God created, we understand that it was the Word who spoke and it was done. When God said in Genesis ‘let there be light and there was light’, it was the Word who spoke and it was done. Jesus is our God and Creator.
Having said all this we have not begun to express what verses 1 to 3 here tell us. Words totally fail when we seek to describe God, and seek to express the meaning of this revelation. When we get to the end of our understanding and thinking, which is very small, all that we can do in bow down and worship before the Word.
Then we are told that the Word was and is the source of all life. Life comes from God, and life is not found outside of God. Life can’t happen by chance. Life only comes from God. This is the place where science, in its imagining as to the origin of the universe and created things, fails, and has no answer. Life does not spontaneously happen, presumably by chance. Life is in God, and life comes from God. We live and move and have our being in and from God.
The essence of life is the very nature of God. This is why we read here ‘that life was the light of men’. We begin to see when we are given life. It is from the gift of light that we see the world, we have moral consciousness, and above all, it is only when we receive spiritual life, that we can see God and heavenly things, and have fellowship with God. Darkness is to be without life. The world is in darkness because it lacks the light of life. The world imagines that it sees, but it is still in darkness.
There is some life in the world which is the conscious human life we enjoy. From this we have some light. We have some moral understanding, and we have growing understanding in things pertaining to our physical world, but darkness, even gross darkness, covers the earth, because we live in the darkness of sin, violence and hatred, and do not know God, and don’t even perceive the darkness in which we exist.
Jesus came into this darkness and shone the light of life, and made it possible for us to enter the light through the gift of real life through faith in him, but in general the world can’t receive this light of life. The darkness just did not understand and does not understand this light of life. On the other hand the darkness cannot overcome this light nor subdue it, so that the light of life is always available to those who will come into the light.
This theme of life and light, and darkness in opposition is a thread which runs through this Gospel of John. Our understanding of the meaning of Jesus as the light of life will grow as we proceed through the Gospel. For now let us be sure we seek the light of life, and trust wholly in Jesus that he might gives us light as he raises us to life.
There is one last thing that deserves consideration. Surely these opening five verses of John’s Gospel prove to us the divine inspiration of the Bible. Who can imagine that thoughts like these could have been thought up by human imagining or thought. Where did John come by these words and thoughts. It can only be explained by the truth of real and direct inspiration of God, through the Holy Spirit.