Tag: jesus

Just as a warning, some of today’s post may be a bit complicated. Please let me know if anything is unclear!

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ John testified about Him and called out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has proved to be my superior, because He existed before me.’” ¹⁶ For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.

V14 – We read previously how the Word of God is God himself and was yet with God from the very beginning. In another post I mentioned that the beginning of John allows for introductory remarks on the Trinity. We have historically understood God to exist as three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we get to verse 14, though, we see something extraordinary – the Word became flesh and lived among us. The reason for him becoming flesh is given in verses 17 and 18. He came to give grace and truth and to reveal the Father. I will come back to this in a little bit, but may we never underestimate the goodness of God in these verses! God could have left us without revealing grace and truth, but yet he chose to. Jesus could have stayed with the Father, and yet he voluntarily decided to be like one of us. It would be like a king or president revoking their privileges in order to serve common people… but multiply a king or president’s honor and privilege a billion times over! We should be amazed at the God who condescended to us to then die for us. And that’s something else to contemplate… God, in eternity past, decided to die for his creation. Why would God create or allow these circumstances to occur, such that God himself would die in the flesh on a cross? Why not create a world where sin would never occur and therefore avoid death and resurrection? Why even create a universe where the first two humans sin? These are questions we don’t have exact answers for, but a basic response would be that God did it simply because he wanted to and to receive glory. God doesn’t need the praises of anyone, but his receiving glory results in benefits for us. Colossians 1:16 says that all things exist FOR him. He also says in Ephesians 1 that he has redeemed a group of people to be “to the praise of his glory”.

Something else to think about is how is it possible for God to become flesh? How is it possible for a body to contain all the deity of God?? This, again, is a mystery in God. It seems an impossibility to put together these two natures into one person! However, detracting from either nature detracts from Jesus’ mission on earth. If Jesus is just a man or just God, then he couldn’t accomplish anything for us. If Jesus were just a man, then it would be impossible for him to not sin. If Jesus were only God, then it would be impossible for him to serve as a sacrifice for us. As such, early Christians who thought and debated over this said that Jesus is both fully man and fully God. This is expressed in the Athanasian Creed, which was a declaration and clarification of the Trinity. This creed was traditionally attributed to a man named Athanasius in the 300’s AD, but some think that it was written somewhat later in the 400-600’s AD. And then later on in 451 AD the Chalcedonian Creed was written to further define the unity of God and man in the person of Jesus. The Athanasian Creed addressed the question of the union of God and flesh more on a side note, whereas in the Chalcedonian Creed the dual, but united, nature of Jesus is front and center. Here is one translation of the Chalcedonian Creed with my underlinings,

“We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.¹”

The union of God and man in the person of Jesus is called the hypostatic union. There were others who denied this perfect union. Groups such as the Nestorians, monophysites and Arians denied this teaching. I won’t go into more detail here, but the union of God and man in Jesus is something to marvel at, deeply appreciate, and realize that without it there would be no redemption!

Going back to our passage, in verse 14, John says that in Jesus we see God’s glory. In other words, we see God’s excellence and magnificence in Jesus. As a side note, if you had never the read the Bible John 1 could be a little confusing. He seems to give a very majestic description of someone who, to the majority of the world, is just a nice man or prophet. To add more mystery to Jesus and the nature of God, we then read a word that has never been fully understood by anyone. The NASB says, “glory as of the only Son of the Father”. The Greek says, “glory as of the ‘only-begotten’ of the Father”. Jesus is said to have been “begotten” by the Father. The NASB reflects the preference of some to abandon the idea of Jesus being “generated” from the Father. Rather, “only-begotten” is taken to refer to Sonship only. However, classical understandings of the Trinity support the notion of the Father “begetting” the Son. Personally, it is hard for me to understand the Trinity in general, but this aspect of it is the most difficult part to understand. To beget someone is typically understood as conceiving a child. However, this can’t have the same meaning here. If God is the Father of Jesus like humans are fathers, then that means that Jesus was created and there might potentially be a mother. The Jehovah’s Witnesses affirm that Jesus was created, and the Mormons affirm both parts of the above statement! Mormons believe that God the Father has a “wife” called Heavenly Mother! However, we should strongly deny any creating of Jesus where Jesus had a beginning point. I’ve written in other posts why we should deny this. To combat this, church fathers and scholars typically have said that Jesus is “eternally generated” by the Father. He is not created!

Robert Letham in his Systematic Theology has a helpful section on this. He says, “Eternal generation reflects the incomprehensibility of God and is a transcendent mystery, beyond the grasps of our minds…This was uniformly recognized by the fathers; for them it was a great mystery.”²

Wayne Grudem in his very popular Systematic Theology says the following, “Eternal generation means that the Father eternally communicates to the Son the divine essence so that the Son fully shares in every attribute of the Father…And because this generation is eternal, the Son was not created but eternally existed as ‘the only begotten Son’…Eternal generation means that the Father is the source of the personal distinctions between Father and Son, but he is not the source of their divine essence.”³

This might seem confusing, but to summarize Grudem…somehow in terms of personhood (not essence), Jesus should be thought of as proceeding forth from the Father. Jesus and the Father are the same in essence, but the personhood of Jesus is derived from the Father and somehow not lesser in status than the Father’s person. All this may seem irrelevant, but Herman Bavinck explained why eternal generation is to be appreciated, “Without generation, creation would not be possible. If, in an absolute sense, God could not communicate himself to the Son, he would be even less able, in a relative sense, to communicate himself to his creature.”⁴ So, while God expresses his nature through us in a partial sense, God’s nature is expressed in an eternal and infinite way through the Son (I hope my wording is correct)! Again from Bavinck, he says that eternal generation shows God to be “no abstract, fixed, monadic, solitary substance, but a plenitude of life. It is his nature to be generative and fruitful.”⁵ If anything, this doctrine shows me how I know so little about God! Also, please let me know in the comments if you’d like a separate post on this doctrine.

Going on to verse 15, John the Baptist teaches others the eternality of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was born in a body in Bethlehem a long time ago, but he existed before he was born. This has already been noted. As such, he is superior to us.

Verses 16 and 17 go together. Moses gave us the Law, which was good and necessary, but the Law was useless in fixing our broken relationship with God. The problem was not the Law; rather, the problem is us! If you read Romans chapter 2, you will quickly see that the Law could never put us in good standing with God because no matter how hard we try we can never always obey the whole Law. All it does is condemn us and declare that we’re guilty. So Jesus came to fix that. He gave us grace and truth. We had the truth as revealed in the Law, but there was no grace to be found in it. Without grace, we can never be in good standing with God. And thanks be to God that Jesus came in the flesh to give us grace! And truly, as John puts it, it is “grace upon grace”!

Now we come to the last verse for today, verse 18. No one has ever seen God. Yet, in the Son, we do see God because he is God. And once again in verse 18 we see the Greek word for “only-begotten”. “God the only Son” should be translated as “only-begotten God”. So again we see a clear indication that Jesus is God and yet is begotten by the Father.

John 1 so far is a huge problem for those who deny the deity of Jesus or confuse him in other ways. Over and over again we see this teaching that Jesus is God and yet is distinct from the Father.  But, it is understandable why it can be easy to misunderstand who Jesus is because his nature and essence are beyond our comprehension. He is fully man and fully God. He is God yet took on flesh. He is somehow eternally generated by the Father yet is still God. I certainly don’t know how to fully explain these things. While some may look at these mysteries and reject God because he is not 100% understood by us finite creatures or because they want a god that is tamer, these things make me lean into him more. They amaze me. They make me want to know more about God. And finally, they make me trust in his wisdom and power. If God can somehow work out how Jesus can be God and man at the same time, if he can work out how a baby can be born to a virgin, if he can work out things like eternal generation, then I can trust him with the details of life.

1 Schaff Phillip. The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes. Harper & Brothers; 1877:62.

2 Letham Robert. Systematic Theology. Crossway; 2019:116.

3 Grudem Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. 2nd ed.  Zondervan; 2020: 298.

4 Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol 2 (Bolt J, ed.). Baker; 2003-2008:420.

5 Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol 2 (Bolt J, ed.). Baker; 2003-2008: 308.

V6-9 – A man came, one sent from God, and his name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.

Starting in verse 6, we see the first mention of John the Baptist. Verse 7 says he came to testify about Jesus. We cannot underestimate the importance of John the Baptist. Remember that his birth was foretold by the angel Gabriel in Luke 1. Matthew 3:3 says that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40. Indeed, John had the unique mission of preparing the people of Israel for the arrival of Jesus. Jesus told a group of listeners in Matthew 11 that John was one of the most important prophets to have ever lived! And what is amazing about John is that he never once looked for credit in what he did. His life was completely focused upon the arrival of Jesus. John could’ve received a lot more attention than he did, but in John 3:30 we see his attitude, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Probably not many people would willingly copy John’s statement. However, his attitude should be ours!

In verse 7 we see the purpose of John’s work…”so that all might believe through him”. However, the purpose was not to make people believe in himself, but rather to believe in Jesus! How many people make huge efforts to get attention for themselves? How many people spend much of their life trying to make themselves great? But how many people work hard to make someone else look great? We see here that John worked hard to get people’s eyes on Jesus, not on himself. John wanted for everyone to see how great Jesus is.

Something that comes up as a question in my mind is how to reconcile “so that all might believe through him” with other passages where it is clear that not all will be saved. The Bible also seems to teach that God chooses people to be saved. This is a concept that I’ve fought long and hard with, but I see no way around it and am done fighting it. I’ll just give a few examples to support this. In 1 Thessalonians 1:4, Paul says that we know God chose you Thessalonians because when we preached to you our message came with conviction and the Holy Spirit. In other words, we know God chose you in advance because when we came to you God was at work. In Romans 8:29 God foreknows believers. To “know” someone in the Bible oftentimes has a sense of intimacy. So God “knows” his people before the world began! You and I had nothing to do with him choosing to foreknow us. Ephesians 1:11 says that God works everything in accordance with his will. This applies to everything… even to individual salvation. Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us (believers) in him (Jesus) before the foundation of the world. He chose us. He chose you if you’re a believer. He chose me. God ensured that there would be a group of believers. Some would like to believe that God chose merely a group of people, and that that does not extend to him choosing individuals. However, I don’t see how that can work. If I choose for the NY Knicks to win the NBA championship this year, doesn’t that imply that I chose current players like Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, etc to win? If God chooses a group to be saved, then this presupposes that that group is composed of individuals who are also chosen! I don’t see how a Christian could say that God chose believers as a group but not me as an individual. The only way this could work is if I by my own will placed myself in this chosen group. However, 1 Corinthians 1:30 says that it is because of God that I am in this group in Christ! 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that a natural (unsaved) person does not and cannot understand the things of God. So how can I put myself in this group of believers if I can’t even accept the things of God? To understand the things of God, I must be changed, regenerated, by God. So again, it is God who places me in this chosen group!

So how do we reconcile this with John preaching “so that all might believe”? I’m not sure how to best answer it, but one thought that comes to mind is that in one sense God truly does desire that all would be saved, but at the same time he doesn’t. That seems contradictory, but we humans do it all the time. Parents typically don’t enjoy disciplining their kids, but they do so anyway because they have a higher desire to improve their child’s future behavior. So one hand, we parents don’t like disciplining our kids, but one the other hand we do! We have two wills at work at the same time. I see no problem in applying this to God, and this is how the Church has historically understood God’s ways. He does desire in a sense that all to whom John preached would believe, but yet he did not choose all of John’s listeners to be saved. This answer may not be satisfactory for some, but I’m ok with not understanding everything about God.

V9-13 – ⁹This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, ¹³ who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.

Again we return to Jesus as the Light. Jesus as the light enlightens every person. Now we need to ask what is meant by “enlighten”. I don’t think we have to make this too complicated. In English, when we say that we “shed light” on something it means we made something better understood. I think it has, more or less, the same meaning here. Jesus gave us greater understanding as to who God is. Hebrews 1:1-3 says this, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, ^2 [a]in these last days has spoken to us ^[b]in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the ^[c]world. ^3 [d]And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and ^[e]upholds all things by ^[f]the word of His power…” Do you see that? God spoke to us through his Son. The Son is also his radiance and the “exact representation” of his nature. When we look upon the Son, we see God. Through Jesus we come to have a clearer understanding of God. In this way, Jesus “enlightened” us.

Verse 10 is a very sad verse. Jesus came to his own creation. John 1:3 says that Jesus is the creator. Nevertheless, his own creation did not know/understand/recognize him. How dull must we humans be to not even recognize the creator! If any verse points to our natural depravity, this has to be one of the top ones! And yet we see the same concept at work in our day. How many blessings do we receive, and yet many fail to recognize the one who blessed us? How many people look at nature and don’t conclude that someone great and powerful must have designed all of it? We have evidence of God all around us, and yet many people are too dull to acknowledge it or willfully reject such an acknowledgement!

And verse 11 says that because we didn’t know him, we didn’t accept him. It’s very true that we tend to reject those things that we don’t understand. And by not accepting, John is saying that we killed him in a nice way. It’s not that we ostracized him or mocked him…the Romans and Jews worked together to kill the Son of God.

Let’s go to verse 12. Verse 12 is better news. Not all rejected Jesus! The same is true in our time…not all reject him. To those who love and follow God, God adopts those persons into his family. Connecting this to verse 13, we learn that those who are adopted by God were born of him. He gave them life. It was God’s decision to give life to those who would believe. This verse highlights that the decision to believe didn’t come from ancestry or our will; rather, those who believe were born of God. In other words, you believe because you were born of God. This verse shows the supremacy of God’s will in the matter.

And this doctrine of adoption is truly a wonderful teaching. My wife and I adopted 4 kids. When I think back on the process, our kids did absolutely nothing to be adopted. We first had the desire and plan to adopt kids. Out of that desire, we began looking for kids that needed adoption. And we were matched with the kids we would later adopt. We did all the paperwork, we flew out to Texas to meet them… we initiated everything. They did nothing. All they did was receive the benefits of our choosing them. I think this is the same for Christians. You and I did nothing to be saved. God had the desire and plan to have adopted children long before we were born. He knew we would fall into sin, but he planned to save us. Yes, I did have to exercise faith, but many of us believe that even the act of having faith was due to God’s Spirit working in us and regenerating us (see 1 Corinthians 1:30, 2:14). He brought forth in time what he had planned in eternity past! The beauty of this teaching is that God gets all the credit. It also makes me all the more thankful for what he did.