Jesus is God (John 1:1-5)

Who is Jesus? Where did he come from? What was he doing there? Why did he come? Where is he now? Why is he there? What is he doing? Why is he doing what he is doing? When will he stop doing what he is currently engaged in? We could ask lots of questions, but the important feature about questions is whether or not there are any answers. The good thing for us is that all legitimate questions about Jesus will find answers in the Bible.

The greatness of Jesus

If there is one word that sums up what John says about Jesus in verses 1-4, it is greatness. Note, first, the time reference that John gives – he refers to ‘in the beginning’. I assume he is referring to the commencement of earthly history, to the same period as is mentioned in Genesis 1:1. Of course, he could be referring to how far back we can go in our thinking. Whenever it was, John says that Jesus was there when it all began.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a situation where a great person was a neighbour. I would think about where he came from and what his origins were. Here John commences his description of Jesus by saying that he was there in the beginning. Before anything else existed, Jesus did. In other words, John is saying that Jesus is eternal.

Not only does John say that Jesus was there in the beginning, but he also says who Jesus was with. Jesus was with the Father. There are several Greek prepositions that are translated by the English word ‘with’. In English, the word ‘with’ may not be very precise. For example, I could be with somebody and yet not be connected to him, or I could be with somebody but not paying attention to him, and yet I am said to be with such. The word that is translated here as ‘with’ means ‘towards’ or ‘face to face’. Another way of saying this would to say that Jesus was enjoying intimate fellowship with God. So here is John saying something that points to the greatness of Jesus – he could look at God without flinching.

How could he do this? John goes on to give the answer when he says that Jesus himself was also God. Right away we are brought to consider something very profound, which is that there is more than one person in the Godhead. We know from elsewhere that there are three persons, because the Holy Spirit is also God. The God we worship is the Trinity, and this is the most amazing reality about the living God. There are not three Gods, only one. Since Jesus was divine, it means that Jesus as the Son of God could look at God fully – he understands who he is looking towards, and he can look at God endlessly because since he is divine he is also eternal. Remember that John is pointing his readers to consider the greatness of Jesus. Imagine trying to hold God’s gaze forever. The only one who could do so would have to be God’s equal. And that is who Jesus is.

John gives to Jesus an unusual name when he calls him the Word. Such a title may seem a bit abstract to us, but I don’t think John is being difficult or obscure when he uses this title. Instead, I would suggest that he is telling us that Jesus before he came was interacting with the Father and I suspect that we can deduce some other activities from this title. So here is a suggestion.

What would they have been interacting about? I would say that two topics would be these, and in a sense they would be the topics that were available for discussion. First, they would speak to one another about their own excellencies, which in their cases describes everything about them – they are equal in power and glory. Second, they would speak about their plans, about what they were going to do. It looks, from the way that John describes things, that nothing else existed during the beginningless period described in verse 1. But John goes on to describe something of that plan in the next couple of verses, and bear in mind that he is presenting the greatness of Jesus in order that we can put our trust in him.

An incredible activity of Jesus

In verse 3, John says that Jesus was involved in the creation of all things. Jesus was the divine Agent through whom everything was made. In order to understand what is being said here, we can think of some of the great makers that we have heard about. Take Thomas Telford. He made the Caledonian Canal, which we know very well, or at least we think we do. But did he move every stone that had to be shifted or did he cut down every tree that had to be moved? No one knows everything about the Caledonian canal except God.

Or we can take Steve Jobs and Apple. It is likely that we all have something connected to Apple in our homes. When he was alive, did Steve Jobs make every piece of the Iphone, Ipad or Imac? No, he did not. Before he passed away, did Steve Jobs involve himself in every detail of how the Apple products reached the customers? No, he did not.

As far as Telford and Jobs were concerned, they were dependent on the skills of thousands of other people. They did not know everything about the items they had been involved with, and they could not even recall all the contributions they had made to their products. But when we consider Jesus as the Maker of all things, he did it all by himself, he knows everything about everything that he made at the beginning, and he knows everything that has ever happened to anything.

It does not matter whether or not the particular detail was big or small as far as Jesus was concerned. He spoke and whatever it was appeared. It was not harder for him to make the planet Mars and hold it loose in space that it was for him to make some stones as a riverbed and have them lying beside one another. He can make an elephant and a mouse with the same ease.

Here we see what he is capable of as the Word. He speaks divinely, he speaks directly, and he speaks dynamically. What do we think of the greatness of Jesus when we consider the galaxies? He made them all without difficulty, and that of course is a great encouragement when we realise that he cares for us.

The ongoing activity of Jesus

John then points out that Jesus is the source of all life, but his focus is on how Jesus as life was the light of men. Probably he is still thinking of Jesus as the Word when he speaks about him as the light of men. In order to get his point, we should remind ourselves that the ability to say a word indicates rationality, that we are able to think, to use our minds. We know what life is like when people cannot talk. John here is saying that the reason humans can think is because of Jesus.

Think of the number who lived between Adam and the time of John. They could think, even although they were sinful. And the mental abilities that they possessed all came from Jesus. Where did Socrates get his brains from? Or Archimedes? Or Plato? They did not use their abilities for the glory of God, but their possession of abilities came from Jesus. And it is still the same as far as all humans are concerned. In a sense, every conversation takes place because of the eternal Word.  Does this insight into what he does for all people not show us the greatness of Jesus Christ?

The conflict in which Jesus was engaged

John then mentions a further activity in which Jesus was engaged before he came into the world as a man, and this activity was with an enemy, here called the darkness. I suspect by darkness John means everything that has been affected by sin, which is virtually everything. John’s words indicate that the darkness was trying to obliterate the light that Jesus kept shining.

We can think of the world before the flood. How strong the darkness seemed! Yet the light shone in the hearts of the descendants of Seth because Jesus arranged for it. Although things seemed so weak when the number following the light had been reduced to the family of Noah, we must remember that it was Jesus who was keeping the light shining.

We can move on to the period between the flood and the formation of the people of Israel. How dark those long centuries were and the darkness seemed to be triumphing. Here and there, the light was shining. We can think of Melchisedek and Job, and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jethro, as well. How did they know the true God? Jesus enlightened them and delivered them from the darkness.

Then there was the period between the formation of Israel and the coming of Jesus. One small nation out of all the nations had the light and the rest were overcome by the darkness. And even in that little nation, there were numerous times when the number who had the light was very small. How many had the light when Jesus was born? Yet at whatever period we see the light shining we see the activity of Jesus preventing the darkness from overcoming.  

Those various details – his eternity, his equality with God, his ease of involvement in the work of creation, his enlightening the minds of his creatures, and his engagement in the battle of the ages – reveal clearly for us the greatness of Jesus. To them, we must add the detail mentioned by John in verse 14 when he says that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

There are some details we should note about ‘became’. First, it was his own choice to do so. Second, he became flesh without ceasing to be fully divine. Third, the word ‘flesh’ points to weak, fragile flesh, and that reminds us of the condescension of Jesus, of how far down he came.

What can we say in response to John’s description of Jesus before he came? First, there is a real sense in which it is all incomprehensible. Who can possibly understand or even begin to grasp the exalted position of Jesus and the amazing activities in which he was engaged before he was born? All we can say is, ‘I cannot fully understand it, but what I can see tells me that Jesus is great.’

Second, when we think about who Jesus was and what he did, we are reminded of the impeccability of his background. In later studies, we will see him walking among sinners, but when we do, we should remind ourselves from where he came. His background is perfection; he lived in a perfect community; he engaged in perfect activities; and he eventually became human without ceasing to be perfect.

John wrote his Gospel with the intention of helping people to believe in Jesus, whether for the first time or whether to strengthen an already existing faith in Jesus. Thinking about his majestic past is a sure way of becoming stronger in our faith, but we have to think about it. This leads to the question, ‘Are our thoughts focussed on the One with such an incredible background?’

Preached on 10/7/2016