One day in Oxford, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were lamenting together how few books there were of the kind that they liked. They concluded that the thing to do was to write some. They decided on stories of science fiction and time-travel. They flipped a coin and Lewis wrote his space trilogy. Tolkien began a time-travel story entitled The Lost Road. He never finished it. What he did write is worth reading – it is a good story – but it is especially interesting in that Tolkien wrote himself into the story. The qualities he gives to one of the main characters were from his own life. The story thus has something of an autobiographical aspect to it.
I cannot help but reflect upon what it might be like for an author, who has created a world in story, to suddenly find himself actually in that story as one of the characters. What would Tolkien have thought and felt if he suddenly woke up, like a couple of the men in his story, as a living person in another world and time – one which he had created. Would he be excited, or would he suddenly wish he’d made that world a little differently because now he must live in it? Whatever the author’s feelings might be, to actually step into his own story would be a very remarkable experience indeed!
We may say this speculation is rather ridiculous – such a thing could never happen. However, it is the very point which St. John makes in the first part of the first chapter of his gospel that this very kind of thing has indeed happened. Human history is a story and its Author has actually, really, entered into his story. The Creator has become one of his creatures. In John’s words, the Word became flesh.
Before we look at this amazing event in John in more detail, we immediately recognize how differently John’s gospel begins in comparison with the other three, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Instead of the genealogy of Jesus or the Advent story of Jesus’ birth, we have a theological statement and a history that really begins in eternity past. John wrote his gospel to give witness to the life of Jesus in a way which the other gospel writers had not. He does two things: he covers different events in the life of Jesus and he writes in a very theological way. John is very concerned to teach us who Jesus is. He tells us in the latter part of his book (20:31), “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” We should realize then, from the beginning, that throughout this gospel we are going to learn a lot about the identity of Jesus and why we should put our faith in him for eternal life.
John begins this excursion into the identity of Jesus by telling us that he is none other than our Creator. As a way of understanding how he does this, let’s begin with the fact that John calls Jesus “the Word.” The Greek word translated “Word” is logos. It is often the case that Bible expositors and preachers spend most of their time in the first few verses of John explaining the meaning of logos and seek in the meaning of that word the main point that John is making about Jesus’ identity. Logos is a word used by Greek philosophers with their own meaning to it, which we might equate with the idea of Reason. It is also a word used in the Greek version of the Old Testament for the word of God, which the Jews associated with the wisdom of God. That is why we read in Proverbs 8 of the wisdom of God participating in his creation of the world. We know that God spoke the world into existence and thus, according to Proverbs 8, God used his wisdom in making everything. Bible commentators mention all of this so that we will understand that, by calling Jesus the logos of God, John was weaving the Greek and Jewish ideas of God’s wisdom together, hoping that both of them would consider Jesus as someone who expressed the mind of God in some way.
This is indeed all true and very interesting, however, I think a focus on the word logos misses the mark. Everything else about the passage is straight from the book of Genesis. Whatever may be the subtleties to be found in John’s use of the word logos for Jesus, he is more importantly writing his own version of the creation story. The Word is the second person of the Trinity who, with the Father and the Spirit, made us and our world. And John tells us this so that he can then go on to tell us that this Word became flesh. The Creator entered the creation; the Author entered the story.
If you will think back to the Genesis story, you will remember that the first things God deals with in his creation are day and night; light and darkness. After the light and dark are divided and order is given to chaos, God begins to bring into being the living creatures. He brings life into his creation. As John writes his own creation account, he picks up on the ideas of light, darkness, and life and does some more weaving. He says that the Word of God is both the light and life of God. He is the source of light and life. And these two, light and life, go together: where there is the light of God, there is the life of God.
As for his being the light of God, when he came into this world of darkness, he was rejected by that darkness. The very world he made did not want him; the characters rejected the Author. But not all the characters. There were some who received him. And those who received him were given life. They were given a birth into the family of God. Those in darkness who received the light, thus were given life. [If you look at chapters 3 and 8, you will find that John continues to combine these two precious gifts from God as he tells us about Jesus.]
Having established this plot, if you will, to the story God unfolds, John then tells us how the light came into the world. He says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Our word amazing and all of its synonyms all piled on top of one another come no where near describing this act of God as it appears to our feeble minds. The Author entered the story! People saw God! As John says, “We beheld his glory,” or “we gazed upon his glory,” as Bishop Wright translates it. Here we are, in all the cares, emptiness, pain, etc., of this miserable life in a fallen world, and the Creator of it all shows up among his fallen creatures. What did they see? John says they saw this Word bore the image of the Son of God the Father, and as that image, he was full of grace and truth. In other words, when they saw him, they saw that God gives us freely all he has for us. They also saw him who was the beginning of all that is real and true about human life; after all, he was the Author himself! As Jesus later said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And as John ends this section of his chapter, he says the same thing: this only begotten Son is the one who declares God the Father to us.
Let me now show you one more way that John weaves two themes together to help us to understand who Jesus is. The very first time John actually refers to the name of Jesus is in verse 17, where he also refers to another person for the first time in his book: Moses. What is John doing? He is in the portion of his chapter where he is talking about the incarnation of the Son of God and how he shows us God’s glory. The only other time in history when God showed so much of himself and revealed so much truth about himself to his people was when he gave his law at Mt. Sinai to Israel, by the hand of Moses. The religion of John’s Jewish relations was based upon this revelation. But God had done something new and greater and the Jews must recognize this greater revelation if they are to remain in the flow of God’s story for his people. We have anticipated here for us how John will be presenting the revelation of God in Jesus as superceding the revelation to Moses. For, though the outward way in which God revealed himself through Jesus was much less impressive to the human mind than the way he revealed himself on Sinai, if rightly understood, it was even more impressive than Sinai and therein we do see God’s redemption for us and a greater revelation to us of the truth of his love.
All of this dashes deism into pieces. You will recall that deism is the idea that God set all the creation in motion and then distanced himself from it, to allow it to run on its own without his involvement. It was supposed to be the religious belief of the fathers of our country. It was not, of course, but in the case of a few. I recommend Richard Weaver’s history on the subject. Well, there is no deism in John 1. Instead of finding a Creator distanced from his creation, we find him in the creation. Not only, as Bishop Wright says, is God acting to bring the story of his creation to completion, he does so by becoming a character in the story itself. He steps out of eternity into history; out of heaven into humanity. He becomes Jesus of Nazareth. He is no distant Creator; he is in his creation with us.
The Scripture says that when he came to us, he came at the perfect time. To continue our metaphor, he came at just the right point in the story. He wrote himself into the plot and stepped into the world he had made at the perfect place. As a good author, he had everything planned out this way.
J. K. Rowling says that, before she started writing her Harry Potter series, she had already created 40 different characters as classmates for Harry so that, when the time was right, she was ready to put new people into the story. If Rowling and other authors have carefully planned the appearance of their characters in their stories, how much more God, the Author of Authors? You and I are in his story. He has placed each one of us in the story of history at just the right time and place. And then he sent his Son into this story where we live that he might be our light and life. He came that we might know the glory of our Author, and that he is full of grace and truth. He came to give himself, in all his light and life-giving Reality to be to you whatever you need as you play your part in the story. He shines His light in your darkness. Have you received him? Do you receive him? If so, you will experience his reality as a child of God – a new creation, in Jesus.
Amen.
I cannot help but reflect upon what it might be like for an author, who has created a world in story, to suddenly find himself actually in that story as one of the characters. What would Tolkien have thought and felt if he suddenly woke up, like a couple of the men in his story, as a living person in another world and time – one which he had created. Would he be excited, or would he suddenly wish he’d made that world a little differently because now he must live in it? Whatever the author’s feelings might be, to actually step into his own story would be a very remarkable experience indeed!
We may say this speculation is rather ridiculous – such a thing could never happen. However, it is the very point which St. John makes in the first part of the first chapter of his gospel that this very kind of thing has indeed happened. Human history is a story and its Author has actually, really, entered into his story. The Creator has become one of his creatures. In John’s words, the Word became flesh.
Before we look at this amazing event in John in more detail, we immediately recognize how differently John’s gospel begins in comparison with the other three, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Instead of the genealogy of Jesus or the Advent story of Jesus’ birth, we have a theological statement and a history that really begins in eternity past. John wrote his gospel to give witness to the life of Jesus in a way which the other gospel writers had not. He does two things: he covers different events in the life of Jesus and he writes in a very theological way. John is very concerned to teach us who Jesus is. He tells us in the latter part of his book (20:31), “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” We should realize then, from the beginning, that throughout this gospel we are going to learn a lot about the identity of Jesus and why we should put our faith in him for eternal life.
John begins this excursion into the identity of Jesus by telling us that he is none other than our Creator. As a way of understanding how he does this, let’s begin with the fact that John calls Jesus “the Word.” The Greek word translated “Word” is logos. It is often the case that Bible expositors and preachers spend most of their time in the first few verses of John explaining the meaning of logos and seek in the meaning of that word the main point that John is making about Jesus’ identity. Logos is a word used by Greek philosophers with their own meaning to it, which we might equate with the idea of Reason. It is also a word used in the Greek version of the Old Testament for the word of God, which the Jews associated with the wisdom of God. That is why we read in Proverbs 8 of the wisdom of God participating in his creation of the world. We know that God spoke the world into existence and thus, according to Proverbs 8, God used his wisdom in making everything. Bible commentators mention all of this so that we will understand that, by calling Jesus the logos of God, John was weaving the Greek and Jewish ideas of God’s wisdom together, hoping that both of them would consider Jesus as someone who expressed the mind of God in some way.
This is indeed all true and very interesting, however, I think a focus on the word logos misses the mark. Everything else about the passage is straight from the book of Genesis. Whatever may be the subtleties to be found in John’s use of the word logos for Jesus, he is more importantly writing his own version of the creation story. The Word is the second person of the Trinity who, with the Father and the Spirit, made us and our world. And John tells us this so that he can then go on to tell us that this Word became flesh. The Creator entered the creation; the Author entered the story.
If you will think back to the Genesis story, you will remember that the first things God deals with in his creation are day and night; light and darkness. After the light and dark are divided and order is given to chaos, God begins to bring into being the living creatures. He brings life into his creation. As John writes his own creation account, he picks up on the ideas of light, darkness, and life and does some more weaving. He says that the Word of God is both the light and life of God. He is the source of light and life. And these two, light and life, go together: where there is the light of God, there is the life of God.
As for his being the light of God, when he came into this world of darkness, he was rejected by that darkness. The very world he made did not want him; the characters rejected the Author. But not all the characters. There were some who received him. And those who received him were given life. They were given a birth into the family of God. Those in darkness who received the light, thus were given life. [If you look at chapters 3 and 8, you will find that John continues to combine these two precious gifts from God as he tells us about Jesus.]
Having established this plot, if you will, to the story God unfolds, John then tells us how the light came into the world. He says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Our word amazing and all of its synonyms all piled on top of one another come no where near describing this act of God as it appears to our feeble minds. The Author entered the story! People saw God! As John says, “We beheld his glory,” or “we gazed upon his glory,” as Bishop Wright translates it. Here we are, in all the cares, emptiness, pain, etc., of this miserable life in a fallen world, and the Creator of it all shows up among his fallen creatures. What did they see? John says they saw this Word bore the image of the Son of God the Father, and as that image, he was full of grace and truth. In other words, when they saw him, they saw that God gives us freely all he has for us. They also saw him who was the beginning of all that is real and true about human life; after all, he was the Author himself! As Jesus later said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And as John ends this section of his chapter, he says the same thing: this only begotten Son is the one who declares God the Father to us.
Let me now show you one more way that John weaves two themes together to help us to understand who Jesus is. The very first time John actually refers to the name of Jesus is in verse 17, where he also refers to another person for the first time in his book: Moses. What is John doing? He is in the portion of his chapter where he is talking about the incarnation of the Son of God and how he shows us God’s glory. The only other time in history when God showed so much of himself and revealed so much truth about himself to his people was when he gave his law at Mt. Sinai to Israel, by the hand of Moses. The religion of John’s Jewish relations was based upon this revelation. But God had done something new and greater and the Jews must recognize this greater revelation if they are to remain in the flow of God’s story for his people. We have anticipated here for us how John will be presenting the revelation of God in Jesus as superceding the revelation to Moses. For, though the outward way in which God revealed himself through Jesus was much less impressive to the human mind than the way he revealed himself on Sinai, if rightly understood, it was even more impressive than Sinai and therein we do see God’s redemption for us and a greater revelation to us of the truth of his love.
All of this dashes deism into pieces. You will recall that deism is the idea that God set all the creation in motion and then distanced himself from it, to allow it to run on its own without his involvement. It was supposed to be the religious belief of the fathers of our country. It was not, of course, but in the case of a few. I recommend Richard Weaver’s history on the subject. Well, there is no deism in John 1. Instead of finding a Creator distanced from his creation, we find him in the creation. Not only, as Bishop Wright says, is God acting to bring the story of his creation to completion, he does so by becoming a character in the story itself. He steps out of eternity into history; out of heaven into humanity. He becomes Jesus of Nazareth. He is no distant Creator; he is in his creation with us.
The Scripture says that when he came to us, he came at the perfect time. To continue our metaphor, he came at just the right point in the story. He wrote himself into the plot and stepped into the world he had made at the perfect place. As a good author, he had everything planned out this way.
J. K. Rowling says that, before she started writing her Harry Potter series, she had already created 40 different characters as classmates for Harry so that, when the time was right, she was ready to put new people into the story. If Rowling and other authors have carefully planned the appearance of their characters in their stories, how much more God, the Author of Authors? You and I are in his story. He has placed each one of us in the story of history at just the right time and place. And then he sent his Son into this story where we live that he might be our light and life. He came that we might know the glory of our Author, and that he is full of grace and truth. He came to give himself, in all his light and life-giving Reality to be to you whatever you need as you play your part in the story. He shines His light in your darkness. Have you received him? Do you receive him? If so, you will experience his reality as a child of God – a new creation, in Jesus.
Amen.
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