Jesus’ Light In My Life John 1:1-14

 

Jesus’ Light In My Life
 John 1:1-14

Introduction/ Background

The Old Testament ends with the prophet Malachi exhorting the people of God to finish rebuilding the Temple. Malachi 3:8-10 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house,
and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

God through the nation Israel is readying a people and a place for the Messiah to come. One day the Saviour of Israel and of all mankind will come to Jerusaelm, to the Temple and to His people.

Malachi also gives a prophecy for the returned captives to look for a new day. Malachi 4:5-6 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Then for 400 years the revelation to Israel goes silent, no prophet is called, and no prophecy is given until the voice of angels are heard speaking to Zacharias, Elizebeth, Mary and Joseph. Matthew, Mark and Luke in their Gospel record those events, but John doesn’t start with Jesus’ human birth, he starts with Jesus’ deity. He starts not with a point in time and the son of Mary and Joseph, but with eternity and the timeless Logos.

Background of John

When you consider how wonderfully John shows us Christ as Savior, Son of God, God in the flesh, and Messiah, it is amazing to think he was once just a young man working on a fishing boat with his father and brother trying to just make a living in a politically difficult time of Roman domination. How did this simple man, with equally simple friends like Peter and Andrew, become this man who wrote one of the most profound and powerful statements in all the Bible and indeed in all the world, time, and history. How did it happen? Jesus came and changed John, his brother, his friends, his family, his country and history. “In the beginning was the Word” and the Word come to John and John was no longer a simple fisherman.

The Book of John

The Gospel of John is called the non-synoptic Gospel, while Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. The world Synoptic means “with one eye” and the first three Gospel accounts basically tell the story of Jesus in the same order and share many of the same details.

John’s Gospel tells the same story but from a different eye and with many extra details. John wrote about 40 years after the first Gospel accounts and it tells us of many details Matthew, Mark and Luke didn’t. This is true partly because John was closest to Jesus and because much of the early ministry of Jesus was seen only by the earliest disciples like John. That is why only John records the story of the wedding at Cana, the conversation with Nicodemus or the woman of Sychar, who met Jesus at a water well.

The Other Reason For the Difference

The other reason John’s Gospel is different is because John needed to fight a terrible heresy that was starting deceiving steal souls and sealing them for Hell. That heresy was Gnosticism. Gnosticism, which comes from the Greek word gnosis, knowledge, was a belief that denied the Jesus was God and Man, it denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus and worst of all it taught that a hidden knowledge was the means of salvation, instead of grace by faith in the person Jesus. If you could just learn this secret knowledge from the Gnostics of course, you would have this wisdom, this mystic light and then when you died you would leave your body behind and become a sinless spirit, a pure soul never to be corrupted by material flesh again.

Gnostics placed great stress on secret teachings or traditions given by Jesus either in special revelation or through His apostles. The secret knowledge was superior to the revelation recorded in the NT and was an essential supplement to it because only this secret knowledge could awaken or bring to life the divine spark or seed within the elect. Salvation came through knowledge rather than faith. - Cornerstone Bible Publishers, The Master Study Bible: Cornerstone Encyclopedia of Bible Knowldege (KJV), 2001, 216.

John wrote his account of who Jesus was and is at almost the end of the first century. He is the last apostle alive, all those who began this journey with Jesus in their 20s are now dead, killed for the name of Jesus. He spends the last few years of his life in Ephesus teaching and writing the Gospel and his epistles. In about 5 more years he will be arrested, tortured and sent to die on the isle of Patmos, where Jesus will come and show him the revelation of His return. We don’t know exactly how John died, but we know how he lived and we know what he wrote and what he wrote is like nothing else.

 Jesus, The Word - John 1:1-5

John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

John Declares Jesus As Logos

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What a profound statement, powerful declaration, peerless proclamation of Jesus.

John’s Gospel begins with a statement that any Bible reader and certainly any Jew of his time would understand as a reflection of Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Moses was inspired by the Spirit to write God’s beginning of creation, but John was inspired by the spirit to write about the Creator of the beginning.

Quote: Genesis and John both start from ‘the beginning,’ but, while Genesis works downwards from that point and tells what followed, John works upwards and tells what preceded…. Time and creatures came into being, and, when they began, the Word ‘was.’ Surely no form of speech could more emphatically declare absolute, uncreated being, outside the limits of time. – Alexander Maclaren

John declares Jesus without directly naming Him, instead he calls Jesus, the Word. In Greek this is O Logos. This is an old word in the Greek language used by Homer the storyteller and by the Stoic philosophers. Logos means revelation as both reasoning and speaking, but when you say O Logos, the Word then it can only mean the One who spoke creation into existence and who is the expression of God to us.

John says that the Word was in the beginning with God. John 1:2-3 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. Therefore, we know that the Word is not an abstract force, or a power of nature, but a person.

He says, John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. By this he declares that Jesus, the Word was not just the creator of the material, inanimate world but that he was the life of all things that live. Without the Logos life cannot exist for He was and is life itself.

John says, the Logos though life revealed light. He communicated the knowledge of God, which is the knowledge of salvation. So John by this statement takes back the word knowledge from the Gnostics and says, “It is not knowledge that has life, but it is the Logos that is life and gives the light that saves.”

Then in John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. The light that can only be from the life Jesus shines in the darkness, not just in the past of creation or the present of John in Ephesus, but continuously shines, breaking through the darkness of sin, ignorance and prise. It shines, He shines today, tomorrow and for all eternity.

And in a word of victory John declares the darkness comprehended it not. This word is an interesting word, καταλαμβάνω katalambanō; and has several shades of meaning. To take eagerly, to seize, possess, apprehend, attain, come upon, comprehend, find, obtain, perceive, or overtake.

If you look at different translations, you see these different definitions. The ESV says, “the darkness has not overcome it. The Tree of Life version says, “the darkness has not overpowered it.” The Amplified Bible tries to put all the definitions together and says, “the darkness has never overpowered it [put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it and is unreceptive to it].

The KJV says, the darkness could not comprehend the light. Darkness had no way of understanding it, no way of overpowering it and no way of absorbing it. The light shatters the darkness, but the darkness cannot affect the light.

Next in vss 6-9 John speaks of another John, John the baptizer. He says in vs. 6.

Jesus, The Light - John 1:6-9

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him (the light) might believe. 8 He was not that Light but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

John Declares Jesus Is The Light

Now John adds to the person of Jesus and absolutely destroys the idea that light or knowledge can be found anywhere else but in Jesus. He not only brought light to the darkness, but He is the light that shatters the darkness.

John the apostle tells of John the Baptist who came preaching, preparing the way for the Light. Luke 3:3-6 And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; 6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

John the apostle writes of John the Baptist and says, John 1:8 “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.” The true light was Jesus which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Jesus was the only true light and by Him everyman and any man could find the truth and the salvation of that divine illumination.

John has one more vital truth to impart in his introduction to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was the truth that Jesus who was the eternal God of creation, the giver of life and the imparter of light came to earth, took on human flesh and became a man. The Creator humbled himself and became a part of that which He had created. This is what John says in vs. 10

Jesus, The Man - John 1:10-14

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

John Shows Jesus As Man

The world was His creation, and He came to walk as a man in that which belonged to Him by right of creation and yet John says in amazement “the world knew him not.” Not only did the world not recognize him but even His own people that He had called through Abraham, delivered through Moses and returned from captivity by Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, those people, His people rejected Him as their own. They, refused to trust Him to be their savior their Messiah.

The world as a whole then and even now doesn’t know Jesus. The nation of Israel then and now still won’t receive their rightful Messiah and King, but just as the darkness of the world couldn’t stop the light of Jesus, neither could the ignorance of the world nor the coldness of the Jews leaders stop Jesus from being know and welcomed by many.

John 1:12 But as many as received him.” Here is another of those miraculous Biblical exceptions. If not for those exceptions no one could be saved by because of them anyone may be saved. “But as many as did received Him.” They saw the light; they heard the Word and they received Jesus as their savior and then look what Jesus did.

John 1:12 to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name! Put an exclamation point on the end of that sentence because it is, as the old timers used to say, shouting ground. Those who believe on His name. Those who believe the truth of who Jesus is, that He is the creator, that He is God, that He became man. That believe Jesus is the only light, that He is the O Logos of God. To those who believe, truly believe fully believe, then by His power He makes us the children of God!

Paul joyfully exalts in this sonship in Romans 8:14-17 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;

John then explains further so that there is no misunderstanding about what he means. The children, the sons and daughter of God John 1:13 “were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This was not something could be achieved by any natural means, not by our blood. Nor could it be achieved by our will, our intellect, our knowledge. But it could only be accomplished by the will of God.

And in vs. 14 John tells us the will of God. John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

God’s will, God’s plan of salvation, God adoption of sinful man to become the children of God was simple but emphatically this, The Word, Jesus was made flesh and dwelt among us. John gives his testimony to this truth “we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father” a glory full of grace and truth.

Later in the Gospel John writes John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

Do You Believe on the name Jesus?

John wrote at a time in which Christianity was gaining a small foothold in the world. A time when the people began to see the light through the darkness. The darkness couldn’t stop the light and so it began to counterfeit the light, to corrupt it from the glory of Jesus the word and the light and turn it into Jesus as just a symbol, a part of the something greater than Himself. Jesus knew the truth, the darkness said but he was not the truth personified. He showed us the light, yes but He was not light itself. He led us to life but He was not the source of all life.

Years later John writes a letter to those most are precious to him in 1 John 5:13 “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” Believe John says, believe on the name of the Son of God.

Gnosticism is as deadly and as powerful today as it was in John’s day. It has spread in so called churches and unfortunately even those who have never hear of it, believe it.

To so many Jesus in not God, He is not the Creator, the life giver, or the light. Instead, He is just a teacher, an example, at best a prophet who can tell us the way, but He is not the way itself.

The question I must face then is this, Do I believe in Jesus as John declares Him or do I twist the truth and filter the light until Jesus fits into my human conceptions and my human abilities?

If Jesus is The Word of God, if He is the life of man,  If He is the Light of the World? If He and He only can overcome the darkness of sin and ignorance and make us children of God and inheritors of heaven, then you and I can’t change any aspect of that truth or we will lose all aspects of that grace.

If Jesus is not all that John declares him to be then Jesus is nothing. Only if you believe on his name, who is truly and fully is can you find forgiveness, salvation and eternal life.

And I’ll add one more thing, if all those things about Jesus are true and I have believed on His name then how can I not live everyday in humble submission to Hom and an live an utterly joyful life for Him? Too many of us are shuffling like shadows in our relationship with Jesus when we should be jumping in joy like living, breathing, heaven bound, exultant children of God and believers in the Jesus that John declares in the first chapter of the Gospel.

Conclusion

Which Jesus do you know today and what life are you living because of the Jesus you know.

Hebrews 1:2-4 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 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; 4 Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

I need that Jesus. John’s Jesus, Paul’s Jesus, the apostle’s Jesus, the real Jesus. I need to know truly, fully, and absolutely know Him.