JOHN'S GOSPEL
An Invitation to Believe

Introduction to Chapter One

John opens his gospel with the dramatic pronouncement: "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 had been made." 

John makes three profound statements about Christ, the Word, the LOGOS of God! 

(1) Christ is eternal, He existed before the creation of this world. Christ has continuous existence, without beginning or origin.

F. B. Meyer, the great preacher from London of yesteryear, writes these beautiful words: 
"It is not so difficult to wend one's way slowly back into the past, or to imagine the successive ages during which the world was being prepared for man's habitation. But when we reach the place where the links of the timechain stop, and we stand at the first moment of the creation of time and matter, and look out into the void on the other side-it is then that thought staggers and gives way. There is no light to guide us--sun, moon and stars ere not created. No Spirit to lead us; cherubim have not begun to love, or seraphim to burn. No stepping stone for our feet; for space is unoccupied save by the all-pervasive presence of God. No sufficient unit of measurement; since, where arithmetic has reached its uttermost, the mighty aggregate is but a note floating in the sunshine of the Being of God. What shall we do then, as we learn the pre-existence of the Word, but worship Him?" 

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Ps. 90:2) 

(2) Christ was co-existent. He was and is face to face with God. He was "with God" by God's side, acting, living, and moving in the closest relationship with God. Christ had the ideal and perfect relationship with God the Father. Their life together--their relationship, communion, fellowship and connection--was a perfect eternal bond. 

1 John 1:1-2 says: 
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us)". 

(3) John did not say that "the Word" was the God (ho Theos). He says "the Word" was God (Theos). He omits the definite article.

 John was saying that "The Word, Jesus Christ, is of the very nature and character of God the Father, but he is not the identical person of God the Father; a distinct person from God the Father, but he is the very being and essence (perfection) of God the Father. 

When man sees Christ, he sees a distinct person, but he sees a person who is the very substance and character of God in all of His perfect being. 

Hebrews 1:3 
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." 

John 14:9 
"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father." 

"He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:15-18)

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John is very clear in letting us know why he is writing his Gospel.

John 20:30-31 
"And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." 

The word "believe" is used ninety-eight times in the Gospel and it usually means to trust or commit. Never does it mean a mere assent to a proposition. It usually means acknowledgement of some personal claim, or even a complete personal commitment to some ideal or person.

John states that there were many "signs" which Jesus did that are not included in his book, but the signs which he has chosen are proof of the deity of Christ and are presented so that we might trust in Christ and commit our hearts and lives to Him. 

John records seven signs and each of these revealed some specific characteristic of Jesus' power and person.

(1) The Changing of Water into Wine (2:1-11)
In this first miracle of His ministry, Jesus revealed Himself as the master of "quality" by effecting instantaneously the change that the wine produces over a period of months or years. 

(2) The Healing of the Nobleman's Son (4:46-54) 
By healing the boy who was more than twenty miles distant from Him, Jesus showed Himself the master of distance or space. 

(3) The Healing of the Impotent Man (5:1-9) 
The longer a disease afflicts a man, the more difficult it is to cure. Jesus, by curing instantly an affliction of thirty-eight years' standing, became the master of time. 

(4) The Feeding of the Five Thousand (6:1-14) 
By multiplying the five flat loaves and two small fishes of one boy's lunch into enough to feed five thousand men, besides women and children, Jesus showed Himself to be the master of quantity. 

(5) The Waking on the Water (6:16-21) 
This miracle demonstrated His mastery over natural law. 

(6) The Healing of the Man Born Blind (9:1-12, 41) 
The point of this miracle is not so much the fact that Jesus healed a difficult case, as that He did so in answer to the question as to why this man should have been so afflicted. Thereby, Christ showed that He was the master of misfortune. 

(7) The Raising of Lazarus (11:1-46) 
This miracle indicated that Jesus incontrovertibly was the master of death. 

These seven miracles, then, are preeminently "signs" because they point to those aspects of Jesus' ministry in which He demonstrated His transcendent control over the factors of life with which man is unable to cope. Quality, space, time, quantity, natural law, misfortune, and death circumscribe humanity's world. Daily existence is a struggle against their limitations. 

John states that in believing in Christ, then and only then, do we really know the meaning of "life." 

The word "life" as John uses it, possesses various elements. It implies 'consciousness' for there is no knowledge without conscious existence. Further, it signifies 'contact' for one cannot apprehend those things with which one has neither direct nor indirect contact. Again, it involves 'continuity' or duration, because knowledge of God presupposes coexistence with Him. And finally, it assumes 'development' since the knowledge of God must be a growing, not a static thing. Eternal life, man's full destiny, is the objective of the teaching of this wonderful Gospel. 

For many Christian people, the Gospel according to St. John is the most precious book in the New Testament. It is the book on which they feed their minds and nourish their hearts, and in which they rest their souls. 

Very often, on stained glass windows and the like, the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four beasts whom the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (Revelation 4:7). The emblems are

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variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the MAN stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the LION stands for Matthew, for he especially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; the OX stands for Luke, because the ox is the animal of service and sacrifice and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and the universal sacrifice for all mankind; the EAGLE stands for John, because the eagle, of all living creatures alone, can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled and John, of all the New Testament writers, has the most penetrating gaze into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and into the very mind of God. It is true that there are many people who find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world! 

Let's take a minute to understand the circumstances in which John wrote this gospel. 

The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus 'round about the year 100 A.D. By that time, two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. The vast majority of its members now came, not from a Jewish, but from an Hellenistic background. The Greek had little to no concern for genealogies. He knew very little about Jewish history and the ancient kings of Israel. The coming of the Messiah had no importance in the mind and thinking of a non-Jew. 

So, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John seeks to explain the great truths of the Christian faith, not from the mindset of a Jew, but from that of one taught in Greek philosophy and thought. 

The Greeks had the conception of the LOGOS. It meant two things to them...WORD and REASON. The Jews were entirely familiar with the all-powerful word of God. "God said, Let there be light and there was light" (Gen. 1:3). The Greek was entirely familiar with the thought of reason. He looked at the world and he saw a magnificent order...night followed day, and the years kept their season in unvarying course. But, what produces this order? That was the search of the philosophers! And their answer...the LOGOS. What gives man power to think, to reason, to know? What makes him a rational, thinking creature? Again their answer...the LOGOS! It is the mind of God dwelling within a man that makes him a thinking, reasoning being. So John seized on this! 

He said to the Greeks, "All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God you have called the LOGOS. That LOGOS has come to earth in the man Christ Jesus. Look at Him and you will see what the mind and thought of God are like." Secondly, the Greeks had a concept of two worlds, the world is a world of shadows and copies and unrealities, but the unseen was the real world. It was Plato who systematized this way of thinking in his doctrine of form and ideas. He held that in the unseen world there was the perfect pattern of everything, and somewhere there was the perfect pattern of the good and the beautiful of which all earthly goodness and earthly beauty are imperfect and inadequate copies. And the great reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths. 

It is John's answer that this is what Jesus enables us to do! Jesus is reality come to earth. Jesus is the real light (1:9), Jesus is the real bread (6:32), Jesus is the real vine (15:1), to Jesus belongs the real judgment (8:16). Thus, every action that Jesus did was, therefore, not only an act in time, but a window which allows us to see into reality! 

To John, the miracles were not simply single events in time; they were illustrations, examples, insights into that which God is always doing and what Jesus always is; they are windows into the reality of God! 

John was not so much interested in the mare facts, as in the meaning of the facts. It was not facts that he was after, but truth.

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Christ reveals the most important Person in all the universe: God. He reveals all that God is and wants to say to man. Therefore, Christ must be diligently studied end sought after, and all that He is and says must be heeded to the utmost obedience. 

Christ reveals that God is the most wonderful Person. God is far, far beyond anyone we could have ever dreamed. He is loving and caring, full of goodness and truth. He will tolerate injustices, and someday, all men shall bow their knee in His presence! 

"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11) 

And think of the thrilling thought.... 
The very nature of Christ is to exist eternally, to exist in a perfect state of being, knowing nothing but eternal perfection and to exist in perfect communion fellowship eternally. 

And...it is the very nature of Christ that shall be imparted to believers. 

John 14:20 
"At that day ye shall know that I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you." 

Romans 8:29 
"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren." 

1 John 3:2 
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see him as he is." 

In verse 3. John declares Jesus Christ to be the CREATOR. Every detail of creation, each element and thing, each being and person--whether material or spiritual, angelic or human--has come into being by Christ! 

1 Corinthians 8:6 
"But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him." 

God is not off in some distant place far removed from the world, unconcerned and disinterested in what happens to the world. God cares about the world...He cares deeply. But the problems of the world are not due to God and His attitude...the problems of the world are due to sin, to the attitude and evil of man's heart. The answer to the world's problems is not man and his technical skill. The answer is Christ: for men to turn to Christ, surrendering and giving their lives to know Christ in the most personal and intimate way possible. Then, and only then, can men set their lives and world in order as God intends. 

In verse 4, John says: "In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." 

William Barclay, in his commentary writes: 
In a great piece of music the composer often begins by stating the themes which he is going to work out and elaborate in the course of the composition. That is what John does here. In the Fourth Gospel, LIFE and LIGHT are two of the great basic words on which the gospel is built up. 

The Fourth Gospel begins and ends with LIFE. Here, at the beginning, we read that in Jesus was LIFE; and at the very end, we read that John's aim in writing the Gospel was that men might "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have LIFE through His name." 

Quite simply, he means that LIFE is the opposite of destruction, condemnation and death. Christ is the source of Light. From the very beginning man was to know that life, to know God personally and intimately. The knowledge of the life of Christ was to be the light of men, the beam that was to give real life, both abundant and eternal!