By
Lawrence O. RichardsTHE DEITY OF JESUS - John 1:1-18
The Gospel of John speaks more clearly than any other of the deity of Christ. There can be no doubt: the Bible does teach that Jesus of Nazareth was fully God as well as truly man.
This teaching does not, of course, rest only on what we find in John’s Gospel. There are many other passages that affirm Jesus’ deity. Among the most powerful are:
Colossians 1:15-20. Jesus who expresses the invisible God was Himself the Creator of all things, and has priority over all.
Hebrews 1:1-13. Jesus is the “exact representation” of God’s being, and sustains all things by His own powerful word. He is, as God, above all created beings, including the angels who are so superior to mortal man.
Philippians 2:5-11. Jesus, though “in very nature God” voluntarily surrendered the prerogatives of Deity to become a true human being. Now that He has been resurrected He has been exalted again, and in the future every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
It is this Jesus, God from before the beginning, whom John wants to show us in his Gospel. And from this Gospel John wants to teach us how to respond, from the heart, to Him as Saviour and Lord.
GRACE.
“Grace” reveals both God and man. It shows human beings as helpless, trapped in sin. And it shows God willing and able to meet our deepest needs.
Eternity Unveiled: John 1:1-5With the first words of the Gospel of John we see that John’s task is to unveil. The other Gospels begin with the birth of Jesus or with an account of His human ancestry. Matthew and Luke emphasized that a man, a human being, was actually born in the normal way to a young woman named Mary in the ancient land of Judea at the time Herod the Great was living out his last days. John, on the other hand, tells us immediately the Child born then was the eternal God! His origin was not at His physical conception, but, as Micah said, his “origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2 ). And Isaiah called Him “Mighty God, Everlasting Father” (Isa. 9:6 ).
John’s way of taking us back to eternity was to identify Jesus as “the Word” who was “in the beginning.” Moreover, this Word “was with God, and the Word was God.” Finally John said plainly that “the Word became flesh and lived for a while among us” (John 1:14 ).
The Word. The Bible gives many titles or names to Jesus. When He is called “the Word,” we are reminded of His role in the Godhead from the very beginning. Human speech has the capacity to unveil thoughts, feelings, and emotions; to reveal the person behind the words. Jesus is God expressing Himself through Jesus.
When Philip asked Jesus to show the disciples the Father, Christ answered in gentle rebuke. “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (14:9). Another time Jesus explained to His disciples, “No one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Luke 10:22 ).
This title, “the Word,” teaches that Jesus is now, and always has been, the One through whom God expresses Himself. But how did God express Himself in history past, even before the Incarnation? Obviously God was known before Jesus’ birth.
In Creation (John 1:3). Paul wrote that “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the Creation of the world God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen” (Rom. 1:19-20 ). The material universe itself speaks of a Maker, loudly shouting His handiwork:
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:2-4
This Word of Creation is the word of Jesus before the Incarnation. “Through Him all things were made,” John said. “Without Him nothing was made that has been made.” From the very beginning Jesus has expressed God to humankind.
In life (John 1:4). But it was not just in the creation of inanimate matter that Jesus communicated God. On the spinning sphere hung in the emptiness of space, the Creator placed living creatures. These living creatures are different from dead matter; they moved, ate, responded to stimuli, and reproduced themselves. The creation of life was a voice testifying to God.
Only One who was a living Being Himself could be the source of other life. Dead matter does not generate life now, nor has it ever.
And then, among all the living things, the Creator planted another kind of life that was made “in Our image, in Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26 ). Not just life, but self-conscious life, came into being. This life that came from Jesus the Creator remains deeply rooted in Him. Our very awareness that we are different from all other living creatures is another wordless testimony to the existence of the God whose likeness we bear. Jesus gave us life itself, and by that life He expressed God to us.
In light (John 1:5). This final term introduces one other way in which God has expressed Himself through the preincarnate work of Jesus. In John’s writings the terms light and darkness are often moral terms. Light represents moral purity, holiness, righteousness, good. In contrast, darkness as a moral term represents evil, all those warped and twisted ways in which sin had perverted the good in man, and brought pain to individuals and society. “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood [or, extinguished] it.”
The moral light is one of the most powerful and pervasive evidences of God’s existence. Paul described pagans who have never known God’s Old Testament revelation of morality, yet they “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Rom. 2:15 ). There is a moral awareness planted deep in the personality of every person. Different societies may develop different rules to govern, for instance, sexual behavior. These rules may be glaringly different from the pattern set in Scripture. Still, in every culture, there is the awareness that sexual behavior is a moral issue, and that no individual can simply have any other person he or she wants, at any time or in any way.
The deep-seated conviction that there is a moral order to things is present in every human society. But society is in darkness; even though some sense of moral order and rightness exists, people in every society choose to do what they themselves believe is wrong. So conscience struggles, and individuals accuse themselves (or perhaps try to excuse as “adult” behavior they know is wrong).
Moral awareness in a world running madly after darkness is another testimony to us that light comes from the preexistent Word. Light, like creation and life itself, shouts out the presence of God behind the world we see.
Then, finally, the Word took unique expression in space and time. “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ).
Grace and Truth: John 1:6-18A totally new level of communication begins with the Incarnation. We catch a glimpse of this fact in the ministry of John the Baptist. John, the Bible says, was sent “to testify concerning that light.”
What a strange expression. John was sent to identify the light! Why? What was there about Jesus as the Light that demanded identification? When we examine the Baptist’s message in the other Gospels, we see that John focused his preaching on twin ideas: (1) the promised King of Old Testament prophecy was about to appear, and (2) His coming demanded a moral renewal.
John rebuked sin in ruler and common man alike. His tongue lashed the religious. “You brood of vipers!” he cried scornfully. “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:7-8 ).
The Baptist’s prescriptions were clear, simple reflections of Old Testament Law. “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same,” John told the people. “Don’t collect … more [taxes] than you are required to,” John told the tax collectors. “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay,” John told the soldiers (vv. 11-14 ).
The moral light shed in the Old Testament shone through the Baptist’s message. His words pointing to the Person about to appear promised a kingdom in which moral light would not be lost in the darkness, but instead, darkness would be exiled by light. “The true Light,” the Gospel writer said, “was coming into the world.” And John the Baptist’s mission was to make it clear to all that that Man is the Light.
But still, why? Why must John announce Jesus? Why did a people who already had the light of the written Law need to have light—an expression of true morality and reality—identified for them? The Gospel writer explained it to us with another term: grace. When the Word became flesh, we were given new light—a revelation that the divine morality is “grace and truth.”
Law. It is important to understand that all revelations of God before Jesus came were true, but incomplete. Creation spoke of God’s existence and power, but not of His essential character. Life testified to God’s personhood, but told nothing of His deepest emotions or plans. Light, as awareness of morality, reflected God’s holiness, but somehow His heart remained hidden. Even the Law of the Old Testament, which defined holiness and morality more fully and gave a glimpse of God as One who cares about people, still did not communicate God’s heart.
There were still some questions left unanswered. What does God truly want with us? How does He react when we fail to meet His standards? “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.” It is the Son who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Heb. 1:1-3 ). In Jesus, the Word is spoken! And what do we hear when the final revelation comes? “Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17 ). In Jesus we see a morality that goes beyond law and can only be identified as grace.
How is grace portrayed in verses 9-13 of this chapter? The Creator entered the world He had made. He came to His own people, to whom He had given life. But His own people would not receive Him. He was rejected, scorned, and ultimately crucified. In spite of this, He reached out to individuals who would receive Him, and He gave them the right to become the children of God.
The human race did not seek out a family relationship with God. The reaching out was God’s, and His alone. In spite of mankind’s failure, God drew men and women to Himself and lifted them up, adopting them as His children and heirs. In this act of pure grace, a glorious light bursts into history. In Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, we discover that God’s ultimate morality is one of love and of grace.
At first it is hard to realize that the God who spoke in the past is the same God unveiled in Jesus. We had never grasped the full extent of His glory. But John the Baptist was a witness to that light, and testified that He is the same. The splendor of God seen in the Son goes so far beyond the glimpses of glory that shine through the Law. Now, we must learn to live in grace’s new relationship with the Lord, so that we can share His glory.
And so the theme of Jesus, the Living Word, unveiling God, dominates the Gospel of John. Jesus, full of grace and truth, unveiled now the relationship which God the Father had always yearned to have with humankind. And we, as His sons and daughters, must learn a way of life guided by the splendor of grace rather than by the flickering candle of Law.
For this, we must know Jesus. We must see Jesus as He is, God’s ultimate Word of revelation. We must hear His Word, come to understand, and believe in Him. When we trust ourselves to Jesus, forever, and daily, we will learn what it means to “have eternal life in Him.”
