John 1:1-5
The Word Became Flesh
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Genesis 1:1–5
The Beginning
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
We now begin a short series in the build-up to Lent in which we’ll be looking at this start of John’s Gospel, in which he says some amazing things about Jesus Christ. And no doubt from Christmas time these words are very familiar to us, that in the beginning was the Word. We hear that read out every Christmas. It’s one of the better-known bits of the Bible.And it tells us three things about Jesus Christ that I’d like us to think about this morning. And first, and most obviously, Jesus is the Word.
Now, words are amazing things, aren’t they? Language is an amazing thing. You know, I love language. Language is my big passion in life. But just thinking about what language is for a second is incredible. Just think about it. You’re using parts of your body that are primarily designed to begin the digestion process — you know, your teeth and your lips and your tongue. You’re using them to create sounds that then do amazing things in the people around you.
Words have power, don’t they? They have power to give great joy, but also great pain. And we love reading because in the words of books, we get great pleasure from creating worlds in our minds, from entering into amazing places, or getting new information for us to learn. Words carry meaning in a way that mere pictures cannot.
If I simply saw a picture of my wife, I would think she was beautiful, of course, but I would not know much about her as a person at all. It’s the same with God. He created the universe as a picture of what he’s like. But without his speaking to us, we can’t know much about him.
Our words connect our mind, our thoughts, and our very character to others. And so God’s word connects his mind, his thoughts, and his character to us.Importantly, in John’s Gospel we’re told that God’s communication to us is not first and foremost in language, but in the form of a person.
Think about it like this. When the internet first appeared, it enabled online chatting and therefore online dating. That was a thing. Do you remember Friends Reunited? That was an old website where you could meet old friends from school. And presumably the main thing was to ask them out on a date. But if the relationship stayed in just words, that wouldn’t be enough, would it? The whole point of an online relationship is that you end up meeting the person in question face to face.
Yes, God has spoken to us in language in the Bible, and that’s the equivalent of a love letter, if you like. But he’s actually come to meet us in person through Jesus. That’s not to downplay the importance of the Bible. It’s just to say that the Bible is a means to an end, a means to knowing Jesus — the person, the human being. In Jesus, in his words, in his actions, God communicates to us what he is like. And ultimately, that communication takes the form of Jesus’s death on the cross. The cross is such a powerful word to us. It shows us that there’s something terribly morally wrong with humanity, but that in his love, God has taken the blame for that moral wrong on himself. And he’s done all this by himself.
If we want to know what God is like, we must get to know Jesus. And if we want to know Jesus, we must look first and foremost to the cross.
So Jesus, first of all, is the Word. But John also tells us that Jesus is the instrument. It’s a funny word to use. Why do I use that word?
Well, John tells us about Jesus, the Word, that through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Now, understanding what John is saying here comes from understanding the word through in this verse. And it’s tough for Bible translators, as we don’t have one easy word in English to sum this up.
Older translations have a more literal version: in him all things were made. And what John is saying is this: by means of Jesus, all things came into being. Jesus is the means, the instrument, if you like, which God used to make the universe. What on earth does that mean?
Well, it links back to what we were saying about Jesus being the Word of God. Think about the game of charades, if you’ve ever played charades. The whole fun of the game is this: it’s very difficult to get people to understand things without using words. We can do our actions with our bodies, can’t we? But we have to use words if we’re going to make anything substantial happen.
And a word is something which comes out of our mind and makes something happen in the world around us. It’s an instrument, if you like, of transferring what’s going on inside us to what’s going on outside us. Of course, right now I’m attempting to do that myself with the words I’m saying to you.
So in the same way, Jesus is the Word who comes out of the mind of God and makes something happen in the world around him.
It’s fascinating that even in the Old Testament, before Jesus was born, when God does something physically in the world, we’re often told that it’s the Word of God which did it. The Word of God came to Moses. It says the Word of God spoke to Samuel. Because God is a spirit and has no body, he must have some means of connecting with the physical universe. And what John is saying in our reading is that Jesus has always been the means by which he does this, even before he was born as a baby that first Christmas.
Think of it like this. I don’t know if you’ve seen the classic science fiction movie Tron. It was cutting edge back in the day. It had amazing special effects back in 1982. You watch it now and you think… but anyway, back then it was very cutting edge, all these glowing people. And in the film, a computer programmer called Kevin Flynn is transported into the digital world, where he teams up with security programs Tron and Yuri to overthrow the evil and tyrannical master control program, which threatens to destroy all Kevin’s programming. The point is this. Tron and Yuri were originally ideas in the mind of Kevin, which he then programmed into the computer using his body, his hands and his eyes. And it’s only when Kevin enters the digital world that they see his agency firsthand.
In the same way, God has always brought about things in the world through Jesus, like creating us. But it’s only when Jesus enters our world as one of us that we see this firsthand. Jesus has always been the means, the instrument, by which God brings things into being.
So Jesus is the Word, he’s also God’s instrument, but he’s lastly life and light. John says this: In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
So we’ve seen how Jesus is the communication from God. Jesus causes things to happen from God in the world. So it makes sense to call Jesus life. And life’s an amazing thing, because scientists are at a loss to fully understand how life began. The main problem is to do with DNA.
DNA is, of course, the code language within our cells which enables the creation of new cells. And the thing is that language is made of words which have meaning, and DNA is no exception. The coding within DNA carries meaning which has an effect on the physical world. But think about it — meaning doesn’t come out of non-meaning. Meaning, like all words, has to come out of a mind.
Think about it like this. If you were walking through the forest one day and you found a letter written on the floor, would you think, “Oh, that letter randomly assembled itself on the floor through random physical processes”? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d think that letter was written by someone.
It’s the same when we look at DNA. It’s crazy to think that randomly assembled itself because it has meaning. Life has to start with a mind, and that mind is God’s mind. And he enables it through the Word, Jesus Christ. But words also give light, don’t they?
In our modern times, we take light for granted. We flick a switch and on it comes. But in the ancient world, light was harder to come by much of the time, especially at night. Light turns something which is unclear and potentially dangerous into something clear and easier to make safe.
In the same way, Jesus, in his person, in his teaching, through the cross, turns all human existence from something unclear into something clear.
People talk these days about a crisis of meaning, and research shows that people are deeply craving meaning in their lives — a meaning that was taken away when our culture turned away from its Christian roots. And for us as Christians, it’s a bit like this. Imagine someone in Broadwell who keeps falling over at night on the way to and from friends’ houses and from the pub. They say to you, “Do you know what? I really crave some way of seeing in the darkness so I don’t keep falling over.” What would you say to them? You’d say, use a torch — or having to say, get a torch. And they’d say, “No, sorry, I don’t believe in torches.”
You think that’s mad.
In the same way, we Christians see people going through life, stumbling, falling over in relationships, trying to find meaning. We say, “Have you thought of light for your path?” And often the response is, “No, thank you, I don’t believe in light.”
So what does that mean for us? Well, if you want to know what God is like, you have to know Jesus — not know about him, but know him personally, as a person. The challenge for each of us this morning is this: do we know Jesus personally? Do we have a personal relationship with him? Can we say we know him like we know our friends and family?
This comes from reading the Bible, from praying, from talking about it with other Christians. That’s why we put such a priority in the benefice on small groups, on our away day. That’s a time when we can talk to each other about what it means to know Jesus personally.
Jesus is the life and the light of the world. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
If we want to get through life as we were designed to, if we want to avoid the stumbling, the falling over, we have to rely on Jesus and allow him to guide us. If we try not to do this, we’ll be like the person coming back from the pub in the dark with no torch. We may be okay for a bit, but sooner or later we’ll fall over and hurt ourselves. Again, it comes from reading the Bible, praying, making faith not just a Sunday morning thing but a whole-life thing.
And if you speak to anybody who has known Jesus, who has walked as a Christian throughout their life, they’ll tell you it’s not always easy — but you don’t stumble and fall in the same way you would if you were not a Christian.