Welcome to Day 2134 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Gospel of John – 2 – Christ Is the Eternal Word – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 01/30/2022

The Gospel of John – Christ Is the Eternal Word

Today we continue our new Good News series according to John the Apostle. This message will present Jesus Christ as the author of all creation. John’s prologue offers four reasons to believe that Jesus Christ, the Word, is God:

• The Word is eternal; He had no beginning, and He will have no end (1:1–2).
• The Word is the Creator; all things were made through Him (1:3).
• The Word is the Source of life; nothing remains alive apart from Him (1:4–13).
• The Word, though completely human, fully reveals the Father (1:14–18).

Before we examine these reasons in detail, I will read John 1:1–18 in the NLT. Take note of John’s deliberate progression from infinity and eternity down to the single individual, Christ, in whom all that is infinite and eternal resides. I would recommend keeping this passage open as we go throughout the message today. John 1:1-18 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.  They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’” From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us. The Word is eternal; He had no beginning, and He will have no end. In eternity past, before the beginning of anything—space, time, matter—in the indefinite expanse of timeless existence, in the beginning, He that had no beginning, “the Word” was existing in an eternal, infinite “present.”  The NLT is a literal rendering of John’s first sentence. In the beginning, the Word already existed. Why is this so important? Because John carefully crafted these initial sentences to establish an essential truth. He chose his words carefully and arranged them precisely to leave no room for misunderstanding. Before any conceivable point in the eternal past, the Word already existed. The Word, therefore, has no beginning. The Word has always existed. Later in the prologue (1:14), we learn that the Word is Jesus Christ. The Greek term “Word” is logos, a profoundly significant concept among philosophers for at least three centuries before Christ. It referred to an uncreated divine mind that gives meaning and order to the universe. John essentially co-opted the concept, saying in effect, “The concept pagan philosophers have theorized about, actually exists; He is God, and Jesus Christ is He.” John describes “the Word” by saying He was with God. When used in this particular manner, the Greek preposition pros represents familiarity. “The Word” and God the Father were existing closely together, sharing place, intimacy, and purpose. The intimacy and closeness were such that “the Word was God.” The Word and God share the same essence; therefore, all that is true of God is true of the Word. Psalm 90:1-2 came from the pen of Moses, and it celebrates the eternal existence of God, who has no beginning—unlike His creation. Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God. A good paraphrase would render the idea this way: “From the vanishing point in the past to the vanishing point in the future, You have existed, Lord.”  God is, at both points, unaffected by either. Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist, it can have no application to Him. “Began” is a time word, and can have no personal meaning for the high and lofty One that dwells in eternity. This is what John expresses about the Word. Then, to underscore and summarize his point, John adds, He existed in the beginning with God. In that eternal existence before time, the Word and God were together, and they were, in their essence, the same being. John 1:3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. In 1:1–2, John states that the Word is Deity and then makes his case from the standpoint of time: Only God is eternal, and because the Word is eternal, He is God. In 1:3, the apostle establishes the deity of Christ from another perspective: creation. In the ancient mind—Hebrew and Gentile—everything that exists can be placed into two distinct categories: Created and Not Created. Anything “not created”— anything not brought into being—is deity. For the Hebrews, only God was “not created.” Therefore, anything said to be “not created” is God. Why is John’s prologue so important? Because false teachers—starting in John’s day and persisting even now—claim that Jesus Christ is not God, coeternal and coexistent with the Father in eternity past. Many claim that He was the first created being—that the Father brought the Son into existence, and the Son then brought everything else into being. A third-century false teacher, Arius was fond of saying, “There was a time when He was not.”  Today, this teaching is the official doctrine for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both organizations have translated John’s prologue to suit their theologies. If you think that sounds like nonsense, you’re right. It is nonsense!  The Son of God could not have made Himself. Therefore He is God, and He created all things. With this ancient worldview in mind, let’s reread John 1:3 carefully: “God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.”  John emphasizes the phrase “created through him,” which he uses repeatedly. Anything that was “created through him,” had a beginning. At one point, it did not exist, and then it began to exist. John takes us back to eternity past, far beyond Genesis 1:1, to say that the Son of God was already existing. With our understanding of the triune God, we see all three elements of God were active in creation (Father, Son, and Spirit). He brought everything else that exists into being. John 1:4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. John’s Gospel does something not done by the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Matthew traces Christ’s genealogy back to Abraham. Luke traces His roots to the first human, Adam. But John reaches beyond them to the creation of the universe. John states that in Jesus Christ was life and light, two images Moses used about God in Genesis 1. The Creator spoke the universe into existence and then filled it with the light of His truth (Genesis 1:3). The Creator began filling the earth with life: vegetation, sea creatures, birds, land animals, and His crowning achievement, humanity. Finally, he breathed His own life into the man and woman, who were created as His imagers. John says, in effect, “In the beginning, God the Son created humanity and filled them with life. He then came to earth as a human to bring life again to humanity, which is spiritually dead because of sin.” While it is true that John did not specifically mention the fall of humanity (see Gen. 3), it is safe to assume that by the end of the first century, the doctrine of human depravity was well understood by most. Nevertheless, John did highlight our desperate need for salvation by describing the world’s reaction to the appearance of Life and Light. John declares in verse 5 that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” The primary meaning is “to seize,” “to attack,” “to overpower,” or “to hold without losing grip.” However, as often happens in language, the literal definition eventually led to its symbolic use, “can never extinguish it.” “The darkness did not overpower the Light; nothing can stop the light from shining.” In the end, darkness could not diminish the Light, even by placing the Light in a tomb. The following verses appear to stress the mental deficiency of the darkness: its unwillingness to believe and, therefore, its inability to be illuminated by the light. So then, as the story of Jesus unfolds, John will show that truth is nonsense to a mind darkened by sin. In verses 6-8, John the Baptizer, the man Jesus called the greatest of all the prophets (Matthew 11:9–13), was no match for the darkness. Like Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the luminaries of the Word throughout the centuries before him, John the Baptizer failed to enlighten humanity. After all, they were only human. Therefore, the only hope for humankind was the Source of Light, who can illuminate every mind because He is more than human. John 1:9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. When Moses wrote the creation story, he drew upon the literary symbol of light to communicate an important truth. Immediately after forming space and matter, the Lord filled the void and formless earth with literal light, but not merely illumination. Before He fashioned physical sources of light on the fourth day—the sun, moon, and stars—He filled the universe with the light of His presence, with truth, the foundation upon which everything else would be built. Before giving the world order (the beginning of fixed time by dividing day from night, sky from earth, dry land from the ocean), the Lord suffused every atom with His truth so that everything would reflect His character. These creative acts began the space-time continuum as we know it. One day, it could be soon, or centuries later, God will recreate what He began with the original Eden. However, His plan will not be delayed this time as God establishes a global Eden where heaven and earth are combined, where we will work, rule, and reign in the presence of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. In this new Eden, we will not require the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them” (Revelation 22:5). Evil will be gone, and all of creation will again reflect what we are told in 1 John 1:5, “God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” John 1:9-13 can be troublesome at first glance. It would seem to contradict what John had just declared in 1:5: verse 9 reads, “The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” In a future message, when we explore John 15, John’s point becomes more apparent. Now that the Source of light has come to earth and illumined humanity's minds, no one can legitimately claim ignorance. All who do not believe are without excuse. That is why, before His arrest, Jesus told His disciples in John 15:22-25, “They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Anyone who hates me also hates my Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father. This fulfills what is written in their Scriptures: ‘They hated me without cause.’” Let me illustrate John’s point another way. Every modern house is connected to an electric grid, providing the energy to illuminate every dark corner. However, people in these homes can choose to live in the dark. The light is available, but it isn’t compulsory. The Source of light has come to the world and has illuminated all minds; however, many choose to draw the shades and shun the light. Now that Christ has come, belief or unbelief is no longer a crisis of the intellect (if it ever was); it is a crisis of the will and choice. When a darkened mind chooses to remain in darkness, no one is to blame but the individual making that choice. Many have rejected the light, but many have chosen to receive it through faith—the choice to believe in Jesus Christ. John foreshadows the teaching of Christ in John 3:1–21 by declaring that those who have chosen to believe are “children of God” as the result of supernatural birth from above. Natural birth is the result of two humans choosing to procreate. By contrast, spiritual birth is the result of God’s sovereign choice. Let’s move on to John 1:14-18. The truth of Christ’s dual nature, His unblemished deity, and His complete humanity are essential theologically, but it’s also crucial in a practical sense. John’s gospel reminds me of an important truth when I am tempted to shake a fist at the heavens or wonder if God is cruelly indifferent while innocent people, especially children, suffer down here on earth, I have to remember this fact. When Adam brought sin into the world, and death with sin, as we are told in Romans 5:12, the Lord could have incinerated the world as a just punishment. He would have been no less holy or righteous. But He didn’t. Furthermore, when we sin—as individuals and collectively as humans—God has every right to turn His back and say, “Fine. Run the world your way. The mess you make of it is yours to bear.” But He doesn’t. On the contrary, the Creator voluntarily became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, who suffered as we suffer, tempted as we are tempted, and endured injustice as we will never know—yet without sin. I am comforted to know that God understands and empathizes. Through His incarnation, we can appreciate His compassion more fully. Because He lived and died as a human, we can more easily understand and accept that, in His resurrection, the Son is for us even when we feel abandoned, mistreated, or punished by God. The Word, though completely human, fully reveals the Father. John’s terminology was boldly offensive to these false teachers. He says, in effect, "The Word became meat." He lived among us in the material world. We literally saw Him, heard Him, and touched Him. So in 1 John 1:1, the apostle puts it in absolute terms: “We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.” In the Old Testament, God didn’t remain abstract. Having revealed Himself in several ways, dreams, and visions, as supernatural fire amid a bush, as an otherworldly glow above the Ark of the Covenant, at times took on a human physical manifestation. Those times differed from when God became fully human from conception to death.  A flesh, blood, and bone human being who could be seen, heard, touched, and even smelled. The Son of God became a tangible representation of the Father in all His glory. If we have trouble understanding God the Father, we need only look to God the Son for all we need to know. Or, to summarize John 1:14: So the Word became human (flesh) and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. People have always wondered, “What’s God like?” You could have observed His visible presence throughout Jesus’ thirty-plus years on earth. As Jesus conducted ministry in Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. Today, people struggle to know who God is and what He’s like. We can point to Jesus Christ and say, “Get to know Him, and you will know God.” Let’s apply the Five Qualities of Authentic Faith contained in John 1:1-18. First, genuine believers are not too independent to admit their own needs. Throughout John’s narrative, those who needed healing, forgiveness, or enlightenment understood their helplessness and came to Christ for help. While pride kept many in their sin, others’ vulnerability allowed Jesus to perform miracles. Trust in the Lord should translate into vulnerability with others. Only when we trust the Lord enough to admit our weaknesses and inadequacies will we enjoy intimacy with the people He has given us as a blessing. Second, genuine believers are not too busy to know the people around them. People, not tasks, are the priority of believers living out their faith in truth. Authentic trust in Christ recognizes the value of others, despite their failures or shortcomings, and devotes adequate time to know them well. Third, a genuine believer isn’t too proud to rely upon God’s Word. Most churchgoers do their best to obey the Scriptures they know. However, true faith pangs of hunger to know as much about God’s Word as possible because it doesn’t trust itself. Genuine trust in Christ remains humbly devoted to knowing what He thinks about life and how He would have us live. Fourth, a genuine believer doesn’t rely solely upon their perspective. Genuine believers have no trouble admitting the continuing impact of their sinful natures, and they do whatever is necessary to nullify its influence when making decisions. They...

Welcome to Day: 2134

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Gospel of John – 2 – Christ is the Eternal Word – Daily Wisdom

/: 2022

The Gospel of John – Christ the Eternal Word

Today we continue our new Good News series according to John the Apostle. This message will present Jesus Christ as the author of all creation.

John’s prologue offers four reasons to believe that Jesus Christ, the Word, is God:

The Word is eternal; He had no beginning, and He will have no end (1:1–2).

The Word is the Creator; all things were made through Him (1:3).

The Word is the Source of life; nothing remains alive apart from Him (1:4–13).

The Word, though completely human, fully reveals the Father (1:14–18).

follow along, it is on Pages: 1645

John 1:1-18

In the beginning the Word already existed.

The Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He existed in the beginning with God.

God created everything through him,

and nothing was created except through him.

The Word gave life to everything that was created,

and his life brought light to everyone.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness can never extinguish it.

God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.  They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’”

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

 

The Word is eternal; He had no beginning, and He will have no end. In eternity past, before the beginning of anything—space, time, matter—in the indefinite expanse of timeless existence, in the beginning, He that had no beginning, “the Word” was existing in an eternal, infinite “present.”  The NLT  is a literal rendering of John’s first sentence. In the beginning, the Word already existed.

Why is this so important? Because John carefully crafted these initial sentences to establish an essential truth. He chose his words carefully and arranged them precisely to leave no room for misunderstanding. Before any conceivable point in the eternal past, the Word already existed. The Word, therefore, has no beginning. The Word has always existed.

Later in the prologue (1:14), we learn that the Word is Jesus Christ. The Greek term “Word” is logos, a profoundly significant concept among philosophers for at least three centuries before Christ. It referred to an uncreated divine mind that gives meaning and order to the universe. John essentially co-opted the concept, saying in effect, “The concept pagan philosophers have theorized about, actually exists; He is God, and Jesus Christ is He.”

John describes “the Word” by saying He was with God. When used in this particular manner, the Greek preposition pros represents familiarity. “The Word” and God the Father were existing closely together, sharing place, intimacy, and purpose. The intimacy and closeness were such that “the Word was God.” The Word and God share the same essence; therefore, all that is true of God is true of the Word.

Psalm 90:1-2 came from the pen of Moses, and it celebrates the eternal existence of God, who has no beginning—unlike His creation.

Lord, through all the generations

you have been our home!

Before the mountains were born,

before you gave birth to the earth and the world,

from beginning to end, you are God.

A good paraphrase would render the idea this way: “From the vanishing point in the past to the vanishing point in the future, You have existed, Lord.”  God is, at both points, unaffected by either.

Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist, it can have no application to Him. “Began” is a time word, and can have no personal meaning for the high and lofty One that dwells in eternity.

This is what John expresses about the Word. Then, to underscore and summarize his point, John adds, He existed in the beginning with God. In that eternal existence before time, the Word and God were together, and they were, in their essence, the same being.

1:3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.

In 1:1–2, John states that the Word is Deity and then makes his case from the standpoint of time: Only God is eternal, and because the Word is eternal, He is God. In 1:3, the apostle establishes the deity of Christ from another perspective: creation. In the ancient mind—Hebrew and Gentile—everything that exists can be placed into two distinct categories: Created and Not Created.

Anything “not created”— anything not brought into being—is deity. For the Hebrews, only God was “not created.” Therefore, anything said to be “not created” is God.

Why is John’s prologue so important? Because false teachers—starting in John’s day and persisting even now—claim that Jesus Christ is not God, coeternal and coexistent with the Father in eternity past. Many claim that He was the first created being—that the Father brought the Son into existence, and the Son then brought everything else into being. A third-century false teacher, Arius was fond of saying, “There was a time when He was not.”  Today, this teaching is the official doctrine for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both organizations have translated John’s prologue to suit their theologies.  If you think that sounds like nonsense, you’re right. It is nonsense!  The Son of God could not have made Himself. Therefore He is God, and He created all things.

With this ancient worldview in mind, let’s reread 1:3 carefully:

God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.  John emphasizes the phrase “created through him,” which he uses repeatedly. Anything that was “created through him,” had a beginning. At one point, it did not exist, and then it began to exist. John takes us back to eternity past, far beyond Genesis 1:1, to say that the Son of God was already existing. With our understanding of the triune God, we see all three elements of God were active in creation (Father, Son, and Spirit). He brought everything else that exists into being.

1:4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. (Shine light on Globe)

John’s Gospel does something not done by the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Matthew traces Christ’s genealogy back to Abraham. Luke traces His roots to the first human, Adam. But John reaches beyond them to the creation of the universe. John states that in Jesus Christ was life and light, two images Moses used about God in Genesis 1. The Creator spoke the universe into existence and then filled it with the light of His truth (Genesis 1:3). The Creator began filling the earth with life: vegetation, sea creatures, birds, land animals, and His crowning achievement, humanity. Finally, he breathed His own life into the man and woman, who were created as His imagers.

John says, in effect, “In the beginning, God the Son created humanity and filled them with life. He then came to earth as a human to bring life again to humanity, which is spiritually dead because of sin.” While it is true that John did not specifically mention the fall of humanity (see Gen. 3), it is safe to assume that by the end of the first century, the doctrine of human depravity was well understood by most. Nevertheless, John did highlight our desperate need for salvation by describing the world’s reaction to the appearance of Life and Light.

John declares in verse 5 that The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.  (or overcome or understand it)The primary meaning is “to seize,” “to attack,” “to overpower,” or “to hold without losing grip.” However, as often happens in language, the literal definition eventually led to its symbolic use, “can never extinguish it.” “The darkness did not overpower the Light; nothing can stop the light from shining.”

In the end, darkness could not diminish the Light, even by placing the Light in a tomb. The following verses appear to stress the mental deficiency of the darkness: its unwillingness to believe and, therefore, its inability to be illuminated by the light. So then, as the story of Jesus unfolds, John will show that truth is nonsense to a mind darkened by sin.

In verses 6-8, John the Baptizer, the man Jesus called the greatest of all the prophets (Matthew 11:9–13), was no match for the darkness. Like Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the luminaries of the Word throughout the centuries before him, John the Baptizer failed to enlighten humanity. After all, they were only human. Therefore, the only hope for humankind was the Source of Light, who can illuminate every mind because He is more than human.

John 1:9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

When Moses wrote the creation story, he drew upon the literary symbol of light to communicate an important truth. Immediately after forming space and matter, the Lord filled the void and formless earth with literal light, but not merely illumination. Before He fashioned physical sources of light on the fourth day—the sun, moon, and stars—He filled the universe with the light of His presence, with truth, the foundation upon which everything else would be built. Before giving the world order (the beginning of fixed time by dividing day from night, sky from earth, dry land from the ocean), the Lord suffused every atom with His truth so that everything would reflect His character. These creative acts began the space-time continuum as we know it.

One day, it could be soon, or centuries later, God will recreate what He began with the original Eden. However, His plan will not be delayed this time as God establishes a global Eden where heaven and earth are combined, where we will work, rule, and reign in the presence of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.  In this new Eden, we will not require the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them” (Revelation 22:5). Evil will be gone, and all of creation will again reflect what we are told in 1 John 1:5,  God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.”

us told His disciples in John: 15:22

They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Anyone who hates me also hates my Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father. This fulfills what is written in their Scriptures: ‘They hated me without cause.’

Let me illustrate John’s point another way. Every modern house is connected to an electric grid, providing the energy to illuminate every dark corner. However, people in these homes can choose to live in the dark. The light is available, but it isn’t compulsory. The Source of light has come to the world and has illuminated all minds; however, many choose to draw the shades and shun the light. Now that Christ has come, belief or unbelief is no longer a crisis of the intellect (if it ever was); it is a crisis of the will and choice. When a darkened mind chooses to remain in darkness, no one is to blame but the individual making that choice.

Many have rejected the light, but many have chosen to receive it through faith—the choice to believe in Jesus Christ. John foreshadows the teaching of Christ in John 3:1–21 by declaring that those who have chosen to believe are “children of God” as the result of supernatural birth from above. Natural birth is the result of two humans choosing to procreate. By contrast, spiritual birth is the result of God’s sovereign choice.

Let’s move on to John 1:14-18

The truth of Christ’s dual nature, His unblemished deity, and His complete humanity are essential theologically, but it’s also crucial in a practical sense. JOHN’S GOSPEL REMINDS ME OF AN IMPORTANT TRUTH when I am tempted to shake a fist at the heavens or wonder if God is cruelly indifferent while innocent people, especially children, suffer down here on earth, I have to remember this fact. When Adam brought sin into the world, and death with sin, as we are told in Romans 5:12, the Lord could have incinerated the world as a just punishment. He would have been no less holy or righteous. But He didn’t.

Furthermore, when we sin—as individuals and collectively as humans—God has every right to turn His back and say, “Fine. Run the world your way. The mess you make of it is yours to bear.” But He doesn’t.

On the contrary, the Creator voluntarily became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, who suffered as we suffer, tempted as we are tempted, and endured injustice as we will never know—yet without sin. I am comforted to know that God understands and empathizes. Through His incarnation, we can appreciate His compassion more fully. Because He lived and died as a human, we can more easily understand and accept that, in His resurrection, the Son is for us even when we feel abandoned, mistreated, or punished by God. The Word, though completely human, fully reveals the Father.

John’s terminology was boldly offensive to these false teachers. He says, in effect, “The Word became meat.” He lived among us in the material world. We literally saw Him, heard Him, and touched Him. So in 1 John 1:1, the apostle puts it in absolute terms: We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.

In the Old Testament, God didn’t remain abstract. Having revealed Himself in several ways, dreams, and visions, as supernatural fire amid a bush, as an otherworldly glow above the ark of the covenant, at times took on a human physical manifestation. Those times differed from when God became fully human from conception to death.  A flesh, blood, and bone human being who could be seen, heard, touched, and even smelled. The Son of God became a tangible representation of the Father in all His glory. If we have trouble understanding God the Father, we need only look to God the Son for all we need to know. Or, to summarize John 1:14: So the Word became human (flesh) and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

People have always wondered, What’s God like? You could have observed His visible presence throughout Jesus’ thirty-plus years on earth. As Jesus conducted ministry in Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. Today, people struggle to know who God is and what He’s like. We can point to Jesus Christ and say, “Get to know Him, and you will know God.”

Let’s apply the Five Qualities of Authentic Faith contained in John 1:1-18

First, genuine believers are not too independent to admit their own needs. Throughout John’s narrative, those who needed healing, forgiveness, or enlightenment understood their helplessness and came to Christ for help. While pride kept many in their sin, others’ vulnerability allowed Jesus to perform miracles.

Trust in the Lord should translate into vulnerability with others. Only when we trust the Lord enough to admit our weaknesses and inadequacies will we enjoy intimacy with the people He has given us as a blessing.

Second, genuine believers are not too busy to know the people around them. People, not tasks, are the priority of believers living out their faith in truth. Authentic trust in Christ recognizes the value of others, despite their failures or shortcomings, and devotes adequate time to know them well.

 

Third, a genuine believer isn’t too proud to rely upon God’s Word. Most churchgoers do their best to obey the Scriptures they know. However, true faith pangs of hunger to know as much about God’s Word as possible because it doesn’t trust itself. Genuine trust in Christ remains humbly devoted to knowing what He thinks about life and how He would have us live.

Fourth, a genuine believer doesn’t rely solely upon their perspective. Genuine believers have no trouble admitting the continuing impact of their sinful natures, and they do whatever is necessary to nullify its influence when making decisions. They seek truth in God’s Word, pray for the Holy Spirit’s leading, submit to the wisdom of mature counselors, and remain sensitive to the constructive criticism of others—even their enemies.

Fifth, a genuine believer doesn’t take self or life too seriously. That’s not to suggest that life isn’t serious or even dismal sometimes. Life in a fallen world can be challenging! Nevertheless, genuine believers maintain a loose grip on the people they love and an even looser one on their possessions. They accept injustices, abuses, and setbacks as confirmation that they are on the right road to glory. They maintain a composed perspective, refuse to allow bitterness to spoil their outlook, choose joy, and never pass up an opportunity to laugh. Believers can do this when they genuinely trust God as unfailingly good and utterly sovereign.

Of course, genuine belief in Jesus Christ has eternal implications. He came to seek and save the lost, receive them to Himself, and enjoy their worship forever. But genuine faith has profound implications for life here on earth. Our abundant life begins now.

Next week our lesson will be about “A Man Sent From God.” I would encourage you to read John 1:19-34 in preparation for next week.