02 In the Beginning was the Word (John 1:1-18)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the second talk in our series on the Gospel of John, and today we will study John chapter 1, verses 1 through 18. Thanks for listening. Well, last week I introduced you to the author of this gospel, the Apostle John, and we talked about how John's Gospel is different than the other three Gospels. The other three Gospels use a two-part structure, focusing first on the work Jesus did in Galilee, followed by his journey to Jerusalem. John uses a back and forth structure, noting each time Jesus traveled to Jerusalem for one of the feasts, and how every time he goes to Jerusalem, he provokes the Jewish leadership and they get more hostile toward his ministry. Each author, each of the gospel authors, is editing and picking what to tell for his own plan and purposes and the audience he's writing for. So they shape the story and organize it to highlight the significance of the events for the particular audience they have in mind and for the main themes and points they want to make. And finally, we talked about how the gospels are not just biographies. They don't intend to record every detail of Jesus' life in chronological order. Rather, they are apologetic. They seek to persuade. They don't just record the teachings of Jesus or the events of his ministry. Instead, they defend and explain the importance of his teachings and the significance of the events. Now, in this study, we're going to try to stay focused on the big picture. We're not going to do the kind of detailed micro exegesis we did in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. In a big picture study, we're interested in the overarching frame that the author put together. Like all authors, John made choices about how he wanted to present this material. He had goals which caused him to put the stories together in a certain way and caused him to include certain details and omit others. And our goal in this kind of study is to learn what John intended to communicate by those choices. Now normally we wouldn't stop with this kind of study. We'd go on and do the microexegesis and put the whole puzzle together. And talking to some of my listeners, I realized that modeling this kind of study is rare. We tend to get so focused on the details and analyzing the words and the phrases that we forget to look up now and then and say, what kind of picture is being formed? So, in the interest of furthering your own study skills, I'm going to try to show you how to look up from those details now and then and put the big picture together or to see the frame that John is hanging the gospel on. In this study, I'm going to try to stay focused on the question, did John intentionally highlight certain aspects of the ministry of Jesus to make a point? And I am arguing he did. I'm going to argue he had specific themes in mind and he told the story to highlight those themes. I'm going to try to stay focused exclusively on those themes, so this study will give you a great foundation to go back later and do your deep dive into the details of each story. Today we're going to start with the very famous prologue of John's Gospel. In this prologue, I'm going to argue, John immediately introduces the themes that he's going to emphasize throughout this book. John begins his gospel with Jesus already an adult. Matthew and Luke tell us about the unusual events surrounding the birth of Jesus, but John's approach is strikingly different. The only introductory material he includes is this prologue. And that raises the question, why start like that? Why start here? And I'm going to argue because John's main point in writing this gospel is to make the case that believing in Jesus Christ is the way to eternal life, and the prologue begins making that case. Now I have a slightly different take on this prologue. I'm going to ask for your indulgence. Please bear with me and give me a little leeway. We're going to end up in the same place everybody else ends up, but we're going to take a slightly different path than you might be used to. So please suspend your disbelief for a few moments and be open to this alternative. I think it makes a lot of sense. Let's start with the first five verses. This is John chapter one verses one through five. 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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. That's the English Standard Version of the Bible, and today we're used to coming to this passage and substituting Jesus for the Greek word logos, which is translated word. And then we use the third person pronoun to translate the next three verses. So in our minds we read, in the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God, all things came into being by Jesus. Apart from Jesus, nothing came into being that has come into being. In Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men. The traditional interpretation of this passage would say that the Logos, the word translated word, is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Jesus was with the Father, the first person of the Trinity from the beginning, and so forth. If that is all John is trying to say, that's great, I'm there. I have no problem with understanding the Logos to be Jesus who is the second person of the Trinity. And I have no interest in undermining the traditional Orthodox view of the Trinity. That is not my purpose. My problem with the tradition, our quibble with the traditional interpretation is that I think we substitute Jesus in too soon, and therefore we miss some of the impact of John's prologue. It's like knowing the punchline of a joke before it's told. If you know the punchline, then the joke falls flat, even if it's told really well. Knowing the punchline of a joke just ruins the impact of the joke. In the same way, I think knowing that John is building toward Jesus, we miss the impact in what John is saying. And I want to propose that John's readers did not know the punchline in advance. When they came to this gospel, they didn't know where John was going. So what I want to do is read through this prologue again and ask you to pretend you've never read these words before and you don't know where John is heading. And if you don't bring in Jesus until John brings in Jesus, then the profound statement that he's making becomes more obvious. First, though, let's talk about this Greek word logos, which is translated word in the prologue. There are at least three ways that John could be using this word. And most commentaries have a really good discussion of this word and its uses. I'm only going to give you the basics here. So one way John could be using logos is you'll notice that John's opening sounds a lot like Genesis 1. Genesis 1 starts in the beginning, and John 1 starts in the beginning. Both Genesis and John talk about light and darkness. Both of them talk about creation being spoken into existence. John says everything came into existence through the Lagos, and the Lagos very typically means something spoken, a declaration, a word, something that someone says. In Genesis 1, God speaks everything into being. We have the famous phrases, let there be light, let there be an expanse, let there be waters and dry land and so forth. We might understand logos here in John to be a reference to God speaking creation into existence. So in the beginning was the declaration of God or something like that. And that would make sense in a certain way, but it's a little hard to understand why John would want to make that point in the prologue to his gospel, especially with what he goes on to say. There's a second option for what this word logos might mean. John uses this word logos about thirty six times in his gospel, and everywhere else in the book, logos simply means the message, the word, the thing that somebody said. Someone believes someone else's word, so the townspeople believe the word of the woman at the well, people believe the word of Jesus. The idea of word as someone's message or testimony is a very common theme in John. And it is quite possible that John means the same thing in the prologue that he means throughout the rest of his gospel, and we often give interpretive weight to a word being used the same way throughout a book or a letter. If we understand logos in this way, John would be saying in the beginning was the message, or in the beginning was the gospel, or the word in that sense. The problem with that option, at least for me, is that it doesn't seem to fit the flow of thought in the prologue. I just can't make message or gospel or word in that sense work in any coherent way. There is a third option, and I think this option ends up making the most sense. In my opinion, this third option contains a kind of poetic echo of the first two options, which is another reason I like it. I think John is perfectly aware that he's echoing the words of Genesis, and I think he intends to do that, and I think he intends to echo this prologue throughout his gospel by repeatedly using this word logos as message. Now at this point I lean toward this third option, but I'm still studying. I reserve the right to change my mind. But I've been studying this concept and this prologue for about 25 years, and I'm pretty set, I think, now. I'm pretty sure this is the way to go. So here's the third option. Logos was a very common word in classical Greek. The Greek philosophers defined this term to mean the principle of order and knowledge that governs all reality. The Stoics defined a logos as the common law of nature imminent in the universe and maintaining its unity. So it was the divine fire, the soul of the universe. A Jewish philosopher named Philo defined it as the agent of creation. Now it's hard to sum that up in English with a single word or phrase. Here's my best shot. I would say the common understanding of this word in classical Greek at the time is that logos meant the ultimate rationale, the reason or the plan behind the universe. It's that intelligent purpose that governs and shapes everything in existence. Now everyone in the ancient world agreed that someone or something designed this whole universe and creation that we live in. They looked around and said creation has order, it has rationality. The universe is not a random chaotic mess. Creation has been rationally and intelligently organized somehow by someone somewhere. How do they capture that idea? They called it the logos. The ordering principle behind all of creation is the logos. Now, while studying this, I learned that Chinese Bibles translate this word Tao. And as I understand that term, and I am not an expert on Chinese at all, but as I understand it, Tao is the basic eternal principle of the universe that transcends reality and is the source of being, non-being, and change. I think this is the understanding that John's readers would have brought to this term logos. When they came to his gospel, they wouldn't read Jesus, they would read something like Tao, the basic eternal principle of the universe that transcends reality, the ordering rational principle that is the source of being, non-being, and change. And this is where you need to bear with me. I'd like to suggest that John is starting with something his readers already know and agree with. He's starting from the accepted, philosophical, and religious understanding of the day, and then building off that understanding to make a point about Jesus. But he hasn't brought Jesus into the text yet. So let's put that understanding back into the text and see where it takes us. For brevity's sake, I'm going to translate this word logos as Tao as a shorthand because it's just too hard to say something like the ultimate intelligent purpose that governs and shapes everything in existence. So I'm going to refer to that concept we've just been talking about as Tao. So let's look at John 1 1 and 1 2. In the beginning was Tao, and Tao was with God, and the Tao was God. Tao was in the beginning with God. So when he says in the beginning, this is the Genesis beginning. Before creation was created, there was this rational purpose, there was this plan, there was this eternal principle and being that transcends reality, and that eternal being is the source of being, non-being, and change. This Tao was with God. It didn't come after God. It's not derived from God. It is as original as God Himself. In fact, this Tao was God. This eternal principle, this intelligent designer that all of you Stoics and philosophers out there recognize, is in reality the God of Israel. What you call Tao or Lagos is the God who revealed Himself to Abraham, the God who made promises and covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the very same God who made those covenants and spoke through the prophets, is the one who gave order, structure, purpose, and existence to the entire universe. Now you have recognized this ordered intelligent design behind the universe for years, and I, John, am here to tell you the intelligent designer is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now I think all of that, verses one and two, sets the stage to make this next point. Verse three, all things were made through this Tao, and without this Tao was not anything made that was made. Everything that exists in all of creation is part of God's ordered, structured, rational plan. Nothing that exists came into existence apart from the plans and purposes of God. There's no noise in the universe, there's no static, there's no chaos, there's no randomness that can hinder, thwart, or obstruct God's plan. Nothing is beyond God's understanding, nothing's beyond or outside his control. It's all part of his organized rational plan. Now why is that important? Because that means our lives have meaning. Everything in all of creation, all the details of our lives are part of the plans and purposes of God. We humans are not random atoms that arrived by chance and happenstance in a cold and uncaring universe. We are the result of the creative, rational, active, ordering, structured, beautiful, glorious design of our Creator. Our lives, our very existence has meaning and purpose because we are part of this grand and glorious plan. Going on, verse 4. In Tao was life, and life was the light of men. So within the scope of this grand and glorious design for the cosmos and all of creation is life, and life is the light of mankind. So let's talk about light and life here for a minute. John doesn't explain what he means by life or light here, but these ideas are going to come up frequently in his gospel, and as we go along, he's going to give us more clues about what he's talking about. Plus, we have the rest of Scripture to fill in our understanding. Now light is frequently used as a metaphor for goodness, truth, wisdom, understanding. Something good, light is something of tremendous value, and that was common not just in scripture but throughout the classical Greek world. Context usually tells us what the metaphor refers to, and John doesn't give us many clues here, but the underlying principle behind the metaphor is light is something good. Light is something we want, something we need, something we long for, unlike the darkness, which is evil, harmful, and dangerous. To call life the light of mankind is to say that life is our ultimate good. Good in the sense of it's the ultimate blessing from God. If we gain life, we have gained that which is most valuable and most worthwhile, and nothing could be better. Life is the most significant thing a human being can ever gain. And again, this is by God's design. The ultimate ordering principle behind all of the creation is God, and God's ultimate ordering plan and purpose is to give life to us humans. In terms of the order and the structure as God created it, we were created to enter into life. If we fall short of life, we fall short of what we were created for. The life God offers is the only thing that will fulfill us because that's what God created us for. Now by life, I think John means eternal life, or the kind of life we will have in heaven. And this again will become more clear as we go through the gospel. And again, John doesn't explain what he means here. He doesn't go into detail. This is the prologue. He's setting the stage for the story he's about to tell. Now I am reading my understanding of the rest of his gospel and many other New Testament passages back into this explanation. By life, I think he means the kind of life we will have in the kingdom of heaven, eternal life. God's plan and purpose from the beginning was to give us eternal life. But eternal life is not what we have now. The life we have now is corrupted. It's ruined by sin and death. We rebelled against God and we lost life. And now our lives are flawed, futile, corrupted, and we die. We face tragedy, sin, death, evil, and destruction daily. Everything falls apart, the universe falls apart, and everything eventually dies. But God's plan from the beginning was to give us eternal life, which is vastly different, not just because it won't end in death, but primarily because it is not corrupted by sin and selfishness and evil. Life in the kingdom of God will be a glorious, wonderful, and fulfilling thing. It will be beyond belief, because there will be no sin, no death, no evil, no futility, no corruption, no tears and no selfishness. Those who obtain eternal life in the kingdom of heaven will be given glorious new bodies that also do not decay or fall apart. Those who obtain eternal life in the kingdom of heaven will be holy as God is holy. They will love God as they should, they will love their neighbors as they should. No corner of their being will be flawed or corrupted by selfishness. Those of us who obtain eternal life will have a life that fulfills us because we will finally be conformed to the image of God. We will be glorious, gracious, compassionate, truthful, generous, kind, and caring creatures, and that kind of loving generosity will be as natural to us as breathing. We won't have to work at keeping our relationships from falling apart. We won't have to worry about hurting or offending anyone. We won't have to fear the anger or wrath of others, because we will be the kind of people who naturally bring joy and fulfillment to others. Think about that no death, no sin, no tragedy, no evil, no corruption. No decay, no futility, and no tears. Now God created us to give us that kind of life, life without sin, evil, and death, giving us that kind of life with a capital L is part of His plan and His ultimate design for humanity. So within the grand plan of God's design for the universe was life, and life was the light of mankind. Now if that isn't profound enough, he makes this other incredible statement, verse 5, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. This word overcome is used of snuffing out a candle. We might better translate it extinguish. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not extinguished it the way you might extinguish a candle. We were created to have this kind of life with a capital L, but we rebelled against God and we fell, and now we live in darkness, but that darkness did not snuff out the light. We live in a world flawed by sin, corrupted by evil, by selfishness and death. We are foolish creatures, deceived by lies and utterly selfish. We don't love God as we should. We don't love our friends and family and neighbors as we should. We have the potential to destroy ourselves and to destroy all that is good in the world, and yet the darkness has not overcome the light. God could rightly condemn us. God could withhold and take away our chance of ever obtaining life with a capital L. But here's the good news He doesn't. The light still shines in the darkness. There is still a way to obtain the life that God offers. We have not forfeited our chance to enter the kingdom of God. We have not forfeited the grand and glorious plan of God. The light still shines. There is still a way to enter into that life. We have not forfeited that chance because of our evil and sin. So how do we obtain this life? John now begins to tell us. Let's look at six through eight. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light. Now author John is speaking of John the Baptist here. You want to know how to find eternal life? Here's the way to find it. First, God sent a man named John the Baptist. He came as a witness. His job was to announce that the light is coming and to prepare us to hear the good news about how to find it. He was not the one through whom we would find life with a capital L. He was not the light, but he came to teach us how to find the light, to testify that someone else was the giver of light. These words testify and bear witness are going to come up a lot in John. All in all, some form of this word testify or testimony occurs over 60 times in John's gospel, not to mention the other words that are synonyms like report, message, heard, confirm, and so on, which are basically the same thing, somebody's word or message of a report about what happened. This idea of bearing witness and testifying is going to be one of the big themes of this gospel. Why should we believe what we haven't seen for ourselves? We believe because of the testimony of those who did see it. That's the basis upon which we're being asked to believe. And this theme of testimony is going to run to the very end of the book. So John came to testify. John came to bear witness, to teach us how to recognize the giver of life. Now going on in 9 through 11, the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. Now Author John starts building to his big reveal. The true light, the person who can grant eternal life to everyone, came to the world. John the Baptist announced this person was coming and he came. John the Baptist said, Prepare the way, the king is coming, and the king came. Now Author John has not named the true light yet, and he's not going to name him until seventeen. His point right now is John the Baptist announced the true light. He announced the person who can grant eternal life to everyone, that that person was coming, and in fact that person came, but no one recognized him. Even though John the Baptist came first announcing the imminent arrival of the one who could grant life, no one recognized him. In fact, they rejected him. Even his own people rejected him, the people to whom God had revealed some of his plans and purposes through the prophets, the people who were most prepared to recognize this giver of life when he came, even they didn't accept him, they rejected him too. Now let's talk about this phrase in 110, the world was made through him. I would argue that the context suggests that author John is not intending to explain the metaphysical details of the Trinity here. Now we might learn something about the Trinity from these verses, but I think John is making a different point. I think the point he's making is this God made the world with this plan in mind. All that is created was created for this grand design, and that grand design finds its fulfillment in the giver of true life, whose identity John has not yet revealed, but we know him as the Messiah, and we know the Messiah is Jesus. This phrase, the world was made through him, is making the point this plan is not an afterthought. This plan where the giver of life would come to grant eternal life to humankind, it's not plan B. It's not like God saw Adam and Eve eat the fruit in the garden and said, Oh rats, they screwed everything up. Jesus, I'm so glad you're here. We're gonna need you after all. That is not what happened. All of creation is part of the plan and the purposes of God. The Messiah and his role is the plan. Everything in the world is building toward the Messiah. All of history is on a crash course with the giver of light. His first arrival is the watershed event of history that changes everything. All God's grand and glorious design and plans and purposes are fulfilled in him, and yet we ignored him. The world didn't know him. John doesn't talk about it here, but we know his second arrival to be the culmination or the crescendo of all of human history. So you see the flow of thought. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not extinguish it. Our sin, the fall, the problem of evil, that didn't take God by surprise. It didn't disqualify us from ever finding life again. Rather, this is all part of the rational, creative, glorious, purposeful plan of God. The true light is still shining. The plan is still in motion. The true light came into the world, the person who could explain the plans and purposes of God, the person who could bring us eternal life and explain how to find it, that person came, and we missed it. We didn't accept him. By and large we rejected him, even his own people rejected him, the people that God prepared to hear him and taught to wait for him, even they rejected him. But now we get to the really good news. This is twelve and thirteen. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Here's the good news everyone who listened to him, everyone who embraced his teaching as true, everyone who believed he was telling us the truth from God, to these people he gave the right to become children of God. These people who believe him will receive the incredible, glorious gift of life with a capital L. Now there's so much we could talk about here, but again I want to keep focusing on the big picture. Because here's the second theme John is introducing. We saw the first one was testimony. The second big theme is the connection between believing in Jesus and finding life. What's the point of all this testimony? The point is that we would believe what we have been told and so find eternal life. The question, are you going to believe based on what you have seen and heard, and therefore find life? That is another huge theme of John's. And that theme of belief starts right here. Why did John the Baptist testify? He testified so that we might believe the giver of life has come, and we all might believe and receive life. Who are the children of God? They are those who believe in his name. They believe in the giver of life. John focuses his gospel on this connection between arriving at eternal life and believing this message about the Messiah. Some form of the word believe occurs, I think, about 85 times in the Gospel of John. We'll see the disciples believed, the crowds believed, the Samaritans believed, the blind man believed, and in contrast, we will see this tragic picture of the Jewish leadership that did not believe, that rejected him. But those who believe in his name have the right to become children of God. We're going to run into this over and over. John is going to explore questions like, what reason do we have to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ? What are the consequences of believing that? What are the consequences of not believing that? Why should it matter what I believe about Jesus? Why should I believe something I haven't seen myself? Why do some people hear the message about Jesus and believe it and others reject it? John's going to explore all of those, and we'll see the point of believing in Jesus is to find eternal life. How can evil, sinful, guilty people like us ever find eternal life? Well, the Messiah is the one and only person who can give you the right to become a child of God. And that's going to be a big theme that's strongly explored in this gospel. Believing in Jesus leads to life because he has made this provision for the problem of our sin. So in 13, John introduces a third theme, and that's the nature of belief, or how do you become a person who believes in Jesus? Let me read those again. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John is going to emphasize this third theme that we need the Spirit of God. We will see this idea that the Messiah came to baptize with the Holy Spirit in the very next passage. We're going to see that finding life is not something we create for ourselves. It's not something we manufacture. It's not something we earn through lawkeeping. We are so broken and evil that we need the Spirit of God to work inside us and change us. And this theme that belief is a work of God is a very strong theme in the Gospel of John. How do you become a person who believes in Jesus? Well, you have to be born of God. And John is going to contrast those who believe with those who do not believe, and the key difference between them is the activity of the Spirit of God. Now finally we reach the punchline. We reach the big reveal that John has been building toward. This is fourteen through sixteen. And the Tao became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me, for from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Okay, so follow me through the flow of thought. And that basic eternal principle you guys talk about, that in reality is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How do we know the plans and purposes of God? God sent someone in the flesh to dwell among us. All that God wants us to know, He gave to this one person in human flesh to tell us, to teach us, and to explain to us. This grand and glorious plan of God culminates and finds its fulfillment in this Son who dwelt among us. And we saw him. We can testify to his glory, his authority, his integrity, and his message. He was full of grace and truth, the kind of truth that only the Son of our Heavenly Father has. The Son is the one who can teach us the way to find eternal life. The Son is the one who can reveal to us the plans and purposes of God, and we have seen him. We have seen his glory. We have seen the great, wonderful, glorious truth in this man. He has the glory that only a son of God would have. He is full of grace and truth. This phrase only the Son from the Father clues us in that this is the Messiah. This term Son of God or Son of the Father was a title given to the Davidic king. It comes from God's promises to King David, where he tells David, I will be a father to you and you will be a son to me. And he extends that to the kings that succeed from David, that he will be their father and they will be his sons. So that relationship is extended to all the kings of Israel that sit on the Davidic throne. Now in an ancient Jewish household, the oldest son had the authority of his father. He could speak for his father, he could do business in his father's place, and he could represent his father in the marketplace. But his authority was derived. Whatever authority he had was the authority that his father gave him. So like the oldest son in a household, the king of Israel was supposed to rule or govern the people of Israel as the firstborn son of God. His job was to rule over the people as God would rule over them. He was to act on his heavenly father's behalf and carry out his heavenly father's wishes. So this term son of God referred to the king of Israel and spoke to his authority to rule on behalf of God. Now after the Babylonians destroyed the throne of David, the prophets of Israel began teaching about another king who would come. This king would come and sit on David's throne again, but this king, this son of God, would be different than the kings in the line of David before him. The prophets said this coming king, this son of God, would rule in justice and righteousness, and his rule would never end. So after the exile, this term son of God came to be a term for that one coming king that the prophets talked about. And this word Messiah means God's anointed one. The king, the son of God, was God's anointed ruler, the Messiah who would rule over God's creation forever in justice and righteousness. And then the Greek word for Messiah is Christ. John is finally naming names. He says, We have seen that Son of God. We have seen the Son of the Father who is the Messiah. But you have more than our testimony. You have the witness of the prophet John the Baptist, who pointed to this man Jesus and said, He's the one. He's the coming king I've been telling you about. He's the one who can give us life, this grace upon grace. We saw this man. John confirmed he was the one. Who is this man? John finally gives us his name. We finally reached the punchline. John one, seventeen and eighteen. For law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. So Moses gave us the law. Moses gave us the old covenant, but the message of how to find life with a capital L, the grace to find life despite our sins and the truth about how to find it, that message came from Jesus, who is the Messiah. No one else can reveal God's plans and purposes to you because no one else has ever seen God. No one else has been granted the privilege of knowing God's plan. God told his plans to Jesus, and Jesus makes them known to us. No regular human being knows what God is thinking or planning or purposing. We can't read God's mind, we can't hear his thoughts. The only way we can know what he's thinking is if God decides to tell us what he's thinking. And the way God chose to make himself known was through Jesus, the Messiah. God revealed his plan to this one unique and glorious person, Jesus Christ. God made himself known to Jesus and Jesus makes God known to us. If you want to find life, you will find it through Jesus Christ. All the purposes and plans of God find their fulfillment in Him because He is the Messiah. All that we need to know about God we learn from Jesus because He's the Christ. Jesus has been given the authority to make us children of God because He is the Son of God. All the plans and purposes of the universe culminate in Jesus Christ, and that is truly good news. So let me try to summarize the flow of thought as I see it in this prologue. And this is why I wanted you to suspend your knowledge that he's building toward Jesus as you start reading and don't bring in Jesus until John does. Here's the flow of thought as I see it. You, my readers, have recognized this ordered, intelligent design in the universe for years. And I'm telling you, the intelligent designer behind creation is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Everything that exists is part of God's ordered, structured, rational plan. Nothing that exists came into existence apart from the plans and purposes of God. Part of God's grand plan and design is to give us life with a capital L, to give us life without sin, evil and death. He destined his people to experience that kind of life. Even though we now live in a dark and evil world and we ourselves are flawed and corrupted by sin, God still has a plan to give us life. We have not forfeited that plan, even though we sinned. The prophet John the Baptist announced the one who can give us life. He announced that person is coming and how to recognize him. In fact, he came, but we didn't recognize him, even his own people failed to recognize him. But he gives life to those who believe in him, and those who believe in him are born of God. All God's plans and purposes are focused on the Messiah, this giver of life who is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who can teach us how to find eternal life. And I would argue that this whole gospel is about that, that John is making the case that Jesus is the Christ, and the way to receive eternal life in heaven is through believing in him. That's the purpose of his gospel. And in fact, John tells us that's the purpose of his book at the end. This is John chapter twenty verses thirty and thirty one. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. I would argue that is his main thesis statement, and he has profoundly and beautifully set that thesis up with this prologue. He's going to explore the reasons we have to believe and the nature of belief for the rest of the gospel. John will tell us a story from the life of Jesus, and then he focuses almost exclusively on how people respond to that story. In fact, sometimes he races through the details of the story itself to dwell on the reaction of those who were there, whether they believed it or not. He is very interested in why some people believe and some don't. Now, in a sense, his audience is people just like us. He wrote to people who by and large had no firsthand knowledge of Jesus. By the time he wrote this gospel, a new generation had grown up who had to rely on the testimony. testimony of their parents and grandparents. They didn't see Jesus in person. They didn't even see an apostle in person. By this time all the apostles have been executed except John, and he's in exile. He can't travel around to teach them. If they're going to believe, they're going to have to believe based on the witness and testimony of others. And we today are in the same boat, but we're just farther removed from those who walked with Jesus. We still depend on the testimony of others, and this is a theme that John's going to explore. So to close and to summarize, John's gospel focuses on three main themes. First, the importance of testimony. Why should we believe what we haven't seen firsthand for ourselves? We believe because of the testimony of those who did see it. Second, the way to receive eternal life is to believe in Jesus. What's the point of all this testimony? The point is to believe in Jesus and why is believing in Jesus so important? Because he is the only one who can grant us eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. And then third, John explores the nature of belief, emphasizing our need for the Spirit of God. This theme that belief is a work of the Spirit is going to be very strong in his gospel. How do you become a person who believes in Jesus at all? You must be born of God. And John will contrast those who believe with those who reject Jesus and the difference between them is the activity of the Spirit. In the end, I think John's purpose in this book is very evangelistic. He proclaims the gospel and says you should believe this and thereby find life. He's writing many years after these events have taken place, as I mentioned before he's writing to people who are in a situation in some ways like our own Jesus is no longer there on earth for them and neither is he on earth for us. The apostles are gone for John's readers just as they are gone for us. And even though Jesus is the Jewish Messiah most of the Jewish people have not accepted him. And people have to sort that out what does that mean? What's the significance? And so John is writing this account. John is saying this is my written testimony of what happened. Why should we listen to John? Why should we care about anything he has to say? Why should we believe him? What's at stake? How John answers those questions applies just as much to us today as it did to his first readers. And basically what he's going to say is Jesus came, Jesus promised that he is the giver of life, I saw him and I heard him he performed many miracles to prove that God was with him, to prove that he could keep his promise of giving his life I saw these miracles. I heard what he had to say you didn't see it but I did and my testimony is true. In essence that's what the Gospel of John is all about. The only way to find eternal life is to believe in Jesus Christ. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast my mission is to explain not only what a passage means but how we figure it out. The blog version of this episode is on the link below this podcast or you can also find it on Wednesdayintheword.com slash John 2. If you've been blessed by this podcast please leave a positive rating and a positive review wherever you listen. It really does help others find the podcast. And you can thank me by joining the mailing list and subscribing to the podcast but most importantly tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org All the episodes in this series plus many more are available on Wednesdayintheword.com. Thanks for listening today I'm Kersan Morata and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the WordPress