6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. 12 But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, 13 who 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 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. 15 (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.’”) 16 For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.
You’ll remember from last Sunday that the opening 18 verses of John’s gospel is a prologue in which he introduces the main themes he elaborates on in the following chapters. Last week we covered the first 5 verses, and today we will look at the rest of John’s introduction.
In verses 6-8 John writes, “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 came to bear witness about the light.” It’s important to note that John is not talking about himself here, but the man we know as John the Baptist. The other 3 gospels all give him that title, but John the apostle never identifies himself by name in the gospel of John, so whenever we see that name mentioned, it is John the Baptist that he is writing about.
John makes the distinction between himself and John the Baptist in what seems a rather strange way. The only time he refers to himself is in chapters 13, 19, 20 and 21, where he names himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” At first glance this seems rather arrogant, but the opposite is actually true. Most Biblical scholars agree that by remaining anonymous and not referring to himself by name, John is deliberately deflecting the attention from himself to Jesus. Also, John was not to know that what he wrote in his old age was to become part of the Canon of sacred Scripture. Again, some commentators say that as far as John was concerned, he was writing nothing more than a journal or a diary account of Jesus’ earthly life which would only be read by people who knew him, so there was no need to identify himself as the author. So there there is no pride intended by John calling himself the disciple who Jesus loved. Rather, he was awestruck that Jesus did love him at all.
We will spend more time on John the Baptist next week, but for now, we need to remember that he is the man the apostle John is referring to in verses 6-8, and we’ll come back to these verses next Sunday.
In verse 9 John speaks of Jesus as the true light, the one to whom John the Baptist pointed. The wording in this verse is also important. “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” Jesus gives light to everyone, but as we will see and as we well know, not everyone is illuminated by that light. The life and the salvation that Jesus brings is not universal. It is available to all, but it is only given to those who come to Him by faith. Many rejected Jesus 2000 years ago, and many still reject Him today.
There is another side to John’s proclamation that Jesus gives light to everyone. The NASB translates verse 9, “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” If someone says to you, “let me enlighten you,” you know that means they are about to tell you something that you did not know before.
The light of Christ enlightens everyone in the sense that God has made everyone aware of who He is through what is known as His general revelation in creation and also in our consciences.
Those who say there is no God are simply denying the facts. God reveals Himself through His creation, and everyone instinctively knows the difference between right and wrong. This is something God has given to us all.
The Christian apologist Frank Turek wrote a book titled “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.” He is referring here to Romans 1:19-20 where Paul writes, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” So the external evidence is there in creation, in God’s general revelation.
The evidence is also internal. Romans 2:15, speaking of the Gentiles to whom the law was not given by Moses, says, “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”
So the light of God’s truth enlightens us all, and what John does in verse 9 is to give that light a name: Jesus Christ. He is the true light who has come into the world. Do you want to know God? Do you want to know what He is like, what He requires of you, and how you can be reconciled to Him? Then you must know Christ, the true light. There is no other access to God the Father. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world was both the fulfillment and the embodiment of the light that God placed inside the hearts of human beings when He created us.
One of the reasons so many reject the true light is because of what that true light does. By shining His light of truth in our world, Jesus has revealed the true picture of humanity, and it is not a pretty picture. The true light reveals to us who we really are. Jesus’ human perfection exposes our imperfection and our sin, and this is why we naturally hide from the light, rather than run to it.
Verses 10 and 11 speak of Jesus, the God of creation coming into the very world He created, yet He was largely unrecognised. “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.” He came in obscurity, born in poverty to common people, and hardly anyone took any notice.
Twice in verse 10 we see the words, “His own.” The first speaks about all of creation, while the second reference is more specific, as it speaks about the rejection Jesus experienced from the nation He was born into - the Jews. In Matthew 13 Jesus teaches a series of parables, and there is an interesting narrative at the end of the chapter. “When Jesus had finished these parables, He went away from there, and coming to His hometown He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And are not His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all His sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offence at Him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his hometown and in his own household.’ And He did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.” (Matthew 13:53-58)
J Vernon McGee writes in his commentary, “They did not recognise who He really was. To them He was just a carpenter’s son. And that is all He is to some folk in our day. They think He was a great teacher, a great man, a wonderful person, but to them He was only a carpenter’s son.” He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. Instead of being received and welcomed as the one who could reconcile lost sinners to a holy God, Jesus was roundly rejected then as He is now, but we see a transition as we move into the following verses.
“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 1:12-13)
Contrary to what we often hear, none of us are naturally children of God. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2 that prior to salvation we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and by nature, children of wrath. He then goes on to say that it is by grace we have been saved, and not through anything we have done. The point is that it is God who draws us to Himself, and as He awakens us to our need of salvation, there are some who receive Jesus, but even this is an act of God’s grace. We are not children of God by nature. Being a true child of God is a privilege given only to those who have faith to believe in Jesus Christ, and even that faith to believe is a gift from God.
In verse 12 John writes “He gave the right to become children of God.” This is stating the obvious, but you can’t become something that you already are. It takes a whole new nature, a spiritual rebirth, also known as regeneration in order to become children of God. As John writes in verse 13, we don’t become children of God by natural means or by our own will. It takes a supernatural, spiritual birth from above. To receive Christ means that God removes our spiritual blindness, as we recognise our need for salvation. Part of the process of repentance is understanding just who Jesus is, and then by faith, we turn to Him as He gives us the gift of salvation.
So to become a child of God, we need a second birth. This is known as the new birth, conversion, or being saved. Verse 13 teaches us three ways by which the new birth does not happen, and the one way by which it does.
Not of blood. This means that we don’t become Christians because our parents were. Salvation is not passed down from parent to child like some kind of birthright.
Secondly, it is not of the will of the flesh. In other words, as sinners, we do not have the power nor the will produce this new birth we need. Yes, we must be willing in order to be saved - this is a desire that God places within us, but our own will is not enough for us to be saved. Remember that God doesn’t take 99 steps towards us waiting to for us to take that single, final step. Dead men can’t walk. He takes all 100 steps.
And thirdly, we do not become children of God through the will of man. No other human being can save another. By all means, we can and we must pray for our unsaved loved ones, but we cannot save them. Only God can produce the second birth that is necessary for us to be saved.
The power to produce the new birth does not rest with anything or anyone but God. It is He and He alone, who through Christ and Christ alone brings us into His family. God then adopts us as His own. You might remember that we looked at the doctrine of adoption a few months ago, and a point I made was that you cannot adopt your own biological children. You can only adopt the child of other parents. And so, in accordance with His sovereign grace, God adopts those who were formerly children of wrath, as they become children of God.
Now we move onto the final section in the prologue of the gospel of John, where he writes about the mystery of the incarnation. As we saw last week, Jesus is the eternal, pre-existent God of creation, but at a certain time and place in history some 2000 years ago, He entered our world in human flesh.
We know the Christmas story so well, and we have all heard it countless times, but we will never truly understand (certainly not on this side of the grave) the mystery that God Himself became one of us.
John MacArthur writes of the incarnation, “This reality is surely the most profound ever because it indicates that the Infinite became finite. The Eternal was conformed to time. The Invisible became visible. The supernatural One reduced Himself to the natural.”
There is a remarkable contrast between verses 1 and 14. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” As we saw last Sunday, the Word was with God and the Word was God points to the eternal nature of Jesus, His pre-existence, yet in verse 14 we read that He became flesh. God Himself became one of us as He took on humanity in all its fulness with the one glaring exception of a sinful nature, while He remained at the same time fully God.
This mystery of Jesus being the God-man, fully divine and fully human at the same time, is what is known as the hypostatic union, and it is an important Christian doctrine. It’s important because only God could pay the price of our sin. If Jesus had died on the cross as only a human being, albeit a sinless human being, His death would not have been sufficient for our salvation. It is the perfect, divine Lamb of God who takes away our sin.
There are many who teach that Jesus did give up His divine nature during His earthly life. This is a heresy called kenosis, and it creates all kinds of conflicts with Biblical Christianity. The kenosis heresy teaches that in His humanity, Jesus gave up or lessened His divinity.
What they teach is that while Jesus was on earth, He was less than fully God, and that we should be following the example of Jesus as a man by healing the sick and even raising the dead. Sounds ridiculous I know, but this is exactly what cults like Bethel Church teach.
By denying the hypostatic union, those who teach the heresy of kenosis are missing the entire point of Jesus’ miracles on earth. Jesus did not perform miracles in order to make us happy, healthy and wealthy. And He did not perform them as an example for us to follow. He performed them in order to point to His divine nature, and to reveal His glory, as John writes in verse 14.
The KJV uses a wonderful old-fashioned word in verse 14. “We beheld His glory.” In the Old Testament we often read about the glory of the Lord as a shining light. Jewish scholars speak about the shekinah glory, which means the manifested or visible glory of God.
Now as we’ve already seen, Jesus, during His earthly life veiled the fulness of His glory, but He did reveal enough of His glory for us to understand just who He is. Firstly, there is His moral glory, or His perfectly sinless nature. His perfect life and character showed us His glory. There was no flaw or blemish in Him, because He was perfect in every way, and as I mentioned, His miracles also revealed His divinity and His glory.
And secondly, there was a moment when the disciples James, Peter and John were given a glimpse of His physical glory on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17 and Mark 9. “He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2) This brief glimpse of the glory of Jesus the disciples saw pointed them to the truth that Jesus truly is the Son of God.
Verse 16 says, “From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” The NIV translation says, “From the fulness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another.” This connects us perfectly with the end of verse 14 where John tells us that Jesus is full of grace and truth. The result of living in a saving relationship with Christ is that we receive one blessing after another. Now of course, this does not mean that we will get everything that we want. Rather, it means that God, through Christ gives us what we need. And what we need is grace, forgiveness of our sins, assurance of our forgiveness, and the secure promise of eternity with God.
When John writes about us receiving grace upon grace he refers to the problem we have with the law in verse 17. The law teaches us about God’s standard of righteousness, a standard we cannot live up to, and in the same sentence John speaks about the grace which we need and which God shows us in Jesus.
The law, which was given to Moses, was not a display of God’s grace but rather God’s demand for holiness. As we saw in our series on Romans, the law does not save us. Rather it reveals God’s holiness and our sin at the same time, and it points us to our need for a Saviour.
The law commanded men to obey and it condemned them to death if they failed to do so. It taught what was right but the law does not give us the means or the power to do what is right. It reveals our sin, but it does not save us from our sins. And what is John’s answer to that predicament? Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. There is the glory of the Gospel message.
Jesus did not come to judge the world but to save the unworthy, those who could not save themselves, and who were His enemies. That’s what grace is really all about. Someone once called grace heaven’s best for earth’s worst.
The wages of sin is death. And so God entered our world as one of us. The Word became flesh. He revealed His glory and even though many rejected Him, to those who did receive Him, He made it possible for former children of wrath to become children of God. He is our only hope, and although John writes in verse 18 that no one has ever seen God, we have seen Christ. We have seen His glory. We have beheld His glory, the one who is full of grace and truth.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 1:6-13
How does Jesus bring “light to every man?”
Verses 6-8 are referring to John the Baptist, who we will look at in more detail next week, but in which ways are we also to be witnesses of the light of Christ?
Discuss the many truths we see in verses 11-13.
Many people believe that we are all God’s children. How does verse 12 contradict this idea? (See also Ephesians 2:1-5)
Read verses 14-18
What does “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” mean?
How has our familiarity with the Christmas story affected the wonder of the incarnation?
A cornerstone of the Christian faith is that while Jesus lived on earth, He was both fully God and fully human. This is known as the hypostatic union.
Why is this so important?
(Go to www.gotquestions.org/hypostatic-union.html for an excellent article on this doctrine)