...your light and life...

“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 came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. ”  John 1:1-3.

Here we see that Jesus is God’s creative and life-giving Word, the power of God who created the world, and the reason God sustains the world.  

Notice that the Word was already present at the very beginning of creation. 

The Word is not one of God’s created things.   The Word has always been in existence. The Word is not part of the world and the Word does not exist in created time. The Word is part of eternity.

This means that if the Word is part of eternity and with God before time began, God was always Jesus and Jesus was always God. God and Jesus are not two different Gods.

What Jesus did was open the door to time so that we might see the loving, eternal, unchanging, merciful God.  God does not live in time — He created time for His creation.   It was only through Jesus — in created time — that the world saw what God has always been like.  Jesus showed us what God is like — God is just like Jesus.

John also says that the Word was with God.  This means that there has always been an intimate and complete union between God and Jesus.

God and Jesus have always been one God.

This means that Jesus is exactly what God is like, and Jesus is exactly what God’s will is for us, and what God’s love and heart and mind are like. Jesus is so united and intimate with God that the mind of God is the mind of Jesus.  Only Jesus can reveal God to us.  If you see Jesus you see God.

Lastly please notice that the Word was in the beginning with God.  It’s not that Jesus is identical with God, rather Jesus, the Word, IS God.  There are not two identical Gods.  There are no differences between God and Jesus in mind, in heart, and in being.  In Jesus we see God perfectly.  So in Jesus humanity sees perfectly who God always was and always will be. In Jesus we see how God feels about humanity and what He desires for all of humanity.

Then in verse 3 John seems definitely to connect Jesus with creation for which there is some background to this insistence of John’s.  At this time in history there was a heresy known as Gnosticism which believed that in the beginning two things existed: God and matter.  Matter was the raw material out of which the world was created.  Gnostics believed that matter was flawed and imperfect as it contained seeds of corruption in it.

They believed God was pure spirit, and as such could never touch corrupt matter.  Gnostics concluded that God could never have created the world.  What the Gnostics did was create a philosophy of the world, and they believed that because God could not create the world He instead released a series of emanations, each of which got further and further away from God until such emanations were totally distant and ignorant of God — even hostile to God.

The Gnostics saw God as the god of the Old Testament (YHWH) who was ignorant of and hostile to God the Father of Jesus Christ.  The Beloved Apostle John deliberately wanted to combat this Gnostic heresy.  John wished to reinforce the Christian belief that God created the world out of nothing and that the world was created with no flaws whatsoever.  So John wrote in verse 3:  “All things came into being through Him (Jesus, the Word), and without Him not one thing came into being” John 1:3. 

Furthermore John wished to say that the created world belongs to God, 

and so it cannot be that God was anything but intimately united to and completely responsible for the creation of the world.  The Gnostics tried to pin evil on God, while Christianity has always believed that the evil of the world is due to the sin of human beings.  It is our sin that injured the world and kept it from being what God created it to be.  The Christian glorifies the world God created because the Christian believes God created it and is in it.  And it is Jesus who re-created the world as an act of loving redemption.  Jesus, the Word made flesh, is God wishing to win back what has always been His own. 

“What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people.   The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  John 1:4-5.

We are deliberately spending time in the beginning of John looking at the text a few verses at a time because these verses are so important to understand John.   Two (2) very important words appear in verse 4, two words that are foundational to understanding John’s Gospel: Life and Light.   These two (2) other words are among the best expressions of John’s view of Jesus, and represent the focus and intentions of John to write this Gospel.   The bookends of all the books in the Bible are important — the beginning and end.   This Gospel begins and ends with Life!   Here in verse 1 we see that John wants to say that Jesus Is Life!   At the very end of his Gospel consider these amazing closing words:  “30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have Life in His name”  John 20:30-31.   Now consider putting these two (2) verses together:   Jesus is life, and through believing, you may have life in His name!   Dear friends, this is the purpose of your life, the answer to the age-old question of life: Why am I here?  Answer: You and I are here because Jesus is life, and through believing, you may have life in His name!

It follows then, does it not, that we can say that Jesus’ greatest disappointment is that you and I will not come to Him and have Life!

God so regretted our repeated choices not to come to Him that He sent His only begotten Son to save us from our decisions and choices not to come to Him and have Life!   And so it follows, and I hope so obviously, that Jesus is Life!

There is no other meaning, no other understanding, no other definition of Life except Jesus.   To live, to have life, is to come to Jesus and to believe in Him!  To live, then, is to have a faith-filled relationship with Jesus for eternity!   Jesus’ very own self-understanding, and Jesus’ very own understanding of our life came from the lips of Jesus when He said:  “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly”  John 10:10.

And obviously the Life Jesus speaks of is not human physical life — but eternal life!   Surely the Son of God would not come and die on the Cross 

to help us live a few short and quick years here on earth, and then vaporize us into nothing again at our death!    And let’s be honest and clear here, Jesus is the One — and the only One — who bestows life on all men and women:  Jesus said, “28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand”  John 10:28.   What Jesus is saying here is that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”  John 14:6.

So in John’s Gospel we will see in page after page that Life is the opposite of death and destruction.   Remember that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” John 3:16.  Whomever God gives Life to will never perish — “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish”  

John 10:28.  Until we accept Jesus as the Savior of the world, until we believe in Jesus, until we acknowledge Jesus as the only God who sits on the throne, we can surely all agree that we have not yet lived!

John also says time and time again that God is the giver of life.  John and the whole bible refer to Jesus as the living God.   In perhaps the most powerful revelation of who God is comes from Peter in a dramatic confession to Jesus: “We have come to believe and know that you are the Living God”  John 6:69.   In fact it is the will of the Father who sent Jesus that everyone who sees Jesus and believes in Jesus will have life:  “40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in Him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day”  John 6:40.   John wants to say that Jesus is the giver of life because God the Father has approved of Jesus in this way:  “27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on Him that God the Father has set His seal”  John 6:27. 

For John, Jesus presents life as eternal life, a life not of duration this side of the grave but the quality of life forever with God.   This life comes to us as pure grace, pure gift, and is entered into by believing in Jesus Christ.   “Whoever believes in the Son of God has eternal life”  John 3:16.   Jesus said it clearly Himself: “Whoever believes has eternal life”  John 6:47.  To believe means that we must be fully convinced that Jesus is who He says He is — the Son of God and the Savior of the world.   This is not at all just an intellectual belief, but a belief that shows up in obedient living of the 

commands of God!   Belief is a matter, not of book learning, but a matter of shoe leather.   Our believing must put holes in the bottom of our shoes.  In other words believing is all about the way we live and the choices we make each day of living.

John also frequently uses other word to teach us who Jesus us: Light!  Jesus Himself says that He is “the Light of the World”  John 8:12; 9:5.  This Light can be in all human beings (John 11:10), so that they can become children of the Light (John 12:36).  Jesus said: “I have come as Light into the world” John 12:46.   Jesus was like a flashlight in a black room — He opened up the darkness in life by coming and being the Light that shines in the darkness.   Out of the utter failure of the darkness of sin comes the One person who can save us all.

But Jesus who is the Light is like a mirror that reflects back to each of us who we have become.  The Light then is a condemnation on us all.

“19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed”  John 3:19-20.  As the Light For All Jesus forces us to look at ourselves, and turn to Jesus as the Guiding Light.   Jesus guides us out of the darkness into the Light — into the very heart of Jesus: “I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness” John 12:46.   And when Jesus guides you — you must believe in the Light who is Jesus!   “36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light”  John 12:36. 

So today, take time in prayer to consider Jesus as your life and light!

Prayerfully consider times in your life today when you can be the life of Christ and the light of Christ — for others!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.