It's Like When The British Copper Comes Along and Asks, "What's All This Then?"

John 1: 19                                           February 9, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            What is the testimony that John the baptizer gave?  Is it the stuff that came before or the stuff that comes after this verse?  Vss. 15-18 are one block of text, but John has been edited to speak only the first verse according to my translation.  Is this because the rest of it came after him?  But we talked about that. 

            The set up of the translation looks to make this verse forward looking, so we will go with that.  The Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to talk to John.  This is like FBI agents sent from Quantico, from the head office, from the brain trust.  It’s like the Behavioral Analysis Unit in “Criminal Minds”, but for theological minds. 

            Seriously, the “Jews” sent them.  Who are the Jews?  The collective nation of God’s Chosen People?  This was a lesson in sensitivity picked up in Seminary.  The Jews is in reference to the Jewish leadership, not the collective of the Jewish people.  That may seem like a minor point here, but in the latter chapters of the gospel, it will be ‘the Jews’ calling for Jesus’ death.  That has been enough for some horrible incidents in Christian history where Jews were attacked and killed, justified that they ‘killed Christ’.  This is justification for violence, rationalization for violence.  So it is appropriate, it is necessary to make that distinction.

            They sent priests and Levites.  What’s the difference?  The priests were of the ‘worship leadership’ caste and the Levites were of the ‘worship support’ caste.  That is the short answer.  The longer answer is that the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Israel, was set aside as the priestly tribe.  In the entrance to the Promised Land, they were granted cities among the other tribes.  When Jerusalem became the center of worship, their strength and presence focused there.  Within the tribe of Levi, the family of Aaron (brother of Moses) became the designated high priestly line for the worship of God.  So, religious leaders were being dispatched to confront John the baptizer.

            Being sent from Jerusalem, they were sent from the central office.  The temple was the central location of Jewish worship and, therefore, politically central.  There was a king, but imposed by the Romans.  Being sent from Jerusalem, John was apparently not present in the City.  Verse 28 gives us context to that.  John is across from Bethany, at the Jordan, conducting his ministry of baptism.

            I wonder if the ‘home office’ became involved not because of John’s ministry on its own, but when his message turned to one announcing the one who comes after him was before him and is ahead of him.  No, they are not the grammar police, but they are investigating reports of someone that a local religious type has begun to promote.  In the very touchy atmosphere of Roman occupation, that was something to pay attention to. 

            This is because the Jewish leadership has a lot of autonomy under Roman occupation to live life as they choose.  This is given to them under two conditions.  One is the smooth collection of taxes.  The other is the smooth conduct of daily life.  Oppression was fine, but the people had to remain oppressed.  Once they started making noise, that is when the Romans would take notice.  And John has come onto their radar as one making noise.  So they are coming out to take a look.  Their first question is logical.

            “Who are you?”, perhaps a polite way of asking, “What do you think you are doing?”

God: Almighty and Way Out There as well as Up Close and Personal: Jesus is the Bridge

John 1: 18                                           February 8, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            Being humans, we seem to love dualities.  Black or white, good or evil, all or nothing.  That works, to a point, putting the endpoints on a continuum.  This finds application in our experience of God as well.  Because we like two dollar words to describe things when we are thinking about God “in the trade”, generally accepted are the terms “transcendent” and “imminent”.  The one is God huge and far away.  The second is up close and personal.  This is the focus of this verse.

            John begins by telling us that no one has seen God.  That is drawn from the Jewish experience, from the law of Moses, when God came down to Mt. Sinai.  The whole mountain was declared Holy.  Even Moses, when he went up the mountain to commune with the Almighty, it was in a transcendent way, for he saw only the back of God’s ‘head’.  Moments of transcendence are powerful as a religious experience, touching something that is bigger than yourself.  It is not something easily quantifiable in human existence. 

            But the point of Jesus is to overcome that distance to bring about immanence, “Emmanuel”, God with us.  It is, as the sentence says, “God the Only Son”, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made ‘him’, God the Father, known. 

            Drawing on the previous verse, where it distinguishes between law and grace, between Moses and Jesus, the Mt. Sinai experience takes on a new perspective.  The giving of the law was a transcendent experience.  God on High giving the law to the people through Moses as a mediating figure.  But grace comes through Jesus, comes as an immanent experience, an experience that is up close and personal.  And Jesus comes with a purpose.  He has come to make the Father known to us, moves God from the transcendent to the immanent. 

            Again, it is in the human relationship terminology of “Father” and “Son”.  This is not a divine category, but a human description of a divine presence.  And it is recurring in the gospel of John.  “Spoilers”, Jesus will talk a lot about being one with the Father and, in turn, linked to us, so that grace flows up and down the conduit of Jesus. 

            There is a verse toward the end of the Love Passage in 1 Corinthians 13, where Jesus is called the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Here, John is laying out for us how Jesus is the ‘way’ to God, something that will be laid out in far more detail in the chapters to come.

Sidebar:  God, translation, and gender identification.  What follows is more a reflection of my own thoughts and considerations on this topic, a summary of the present location of this ongoing reflection of my own experience.

So, God is not a man.  Simply put, a man is a created being and, therefore, entirely other from God, the Creator.  But a male dominant metaphoric representation of God is laid out for us, God the Father.  This defines how translations of Scripture use male dominant language in the use of ‘he’ and ‘him’ in designation of God.

            The abuses of that tradition are described earlier so I am not going to repeat them here.  But I am going to lay out my presuppositions in terms of referring to God.

            I do not dismiss the use of “Our Father” from traditional renderings, as in the Lord’s Prayer.  And “Father” is so ingrained into my expression of the First Person of the Trinity, that I use it a lot in personal renderings-but I work on lessening that frequency.  I work harder at removing male pronouns in my language when referring to the First Person of the Trinity because of the abuse that has come down to us in the sins of gender hierarchy. 

            I struggle between avoiding abusive language and redeeming a Biblically-given referential system to the Divine.

            In terms of the Second Person of the Trinity, of God the Son, of Jesus, for me that is far clearer.  God came to earth in the form of a male and that is how I feel comfortable following through with pronouns and other gender identifications.  There is, in Jesus, a clear line to the redemptive nature of God in gender relations.

            When it comes to Holy Spirit, that seems most clearly ‘gender neutral’ in how God expresses Godself in this Third Person of the Trinity.  There has been controversy here.  In the rendering of “Wisdom”, an expression of the Third Person of the Trinity, it is of the feminine gender-grammatically speaking.  For a time, the idea of the a feminine third person of God to balance the masculine first (and second) person of God, the divine “sofia”, made its way in PCUSA theological thinking.   

            Recently, a theologian expressed the Holy Spirit as the Divine Love, an attempt to describe in human terms what it means that “God is Love”, essentially an intelligent manifestation of Love in immanent-up close and personal-relationship with us.  So up close that it indwells us.  That makes some powerful sense to me. 

            So, this sidebar is an attempt to capture a moment in my own thinking.  Here is how I relate to God in terms of gender and the expression of God as a religious leader.

Law and Gospel: A Debate Starts Here

John 1: 16                                           February 5, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            Law versus Grace, the no-holds-barred wrestling championship of the Bible!  Moses versus Jesus, the champions standing in for each.  Well, that is how it will develop.  Paul has some complicated passages dealing with the interrelationship between these two Summaries.  Because that is what they are.  Law and Grace (and truth) are code words, technobabble, that summarize huge concepts in God’s Word. 

            If this all seems really scary, it does not have to be, if we can get a handle on what each one means.  These distinctions are found in the broadest divisions of the Bible.

            Think Old Testament and New Testament.  The central figures around whom each are organized are Moses and Jesus.  Jesus is the easier one to understand, the whole gospel is about him.  He is the Reason for our Religion.  But unlike creation, which came ‘ex nihilo’, out of nothing, Christianity came out of something.

            It comes out of Judaism, the Jewish faith.  Jesus was Jewish.  Where the structures of our faith, as Christians, come out of the New Testament, on what Jesus taught us, on how we apply those teachings to our lives, those of the Jewish faith are based on the Law of Moses.  Also called the Torah, these are the first five books of the Bible.  Their authorship is traditionally assigned to Moses, but that opens up a whole other set of discussions. 

            Those five books are organized around the founding event of the establishment of the People of God, the Israelites, the Jews as a nation, that event being the Exodus.  What began as a slave caste in Egypt ended up as an organized nation about to take possession of the Land that God promised to them.  It begins with the history of and the founding of the Chosen People when Abraham was Chosen, and it concludes with an entire book laid out in the formula of an ancient covenant, Deuteronomy.

            This is the Law.  It includes the usual ‘do’s and don’t’s’ but also has municipal codes, rules of religious conduct, of religious holidays, an extended ‘holy architecture’ of the tabernacle where God was to be worshipped, and it tells the history of the people.  The ‘Law’ is far more inclusive than just what is legal and what is illegal.  It lays out the story of God and the People who came into covenant with each other, a covenant marked by a law set by God, known to us in its most basic form as the Ten Commandments.

            The Law.  Thoroughly confused yet?  It is what Jesus and both John’s, the Narrator and the Baptizer, came out of.  The work of Jesus is the progression of God’s plan from the Law to the other term of interest, Grace.

            What then is Grace?  And why do I separate it from Truth in this interpretation?  Honestly, Grace is easier to hang a definition on than Truth.  The Truth comes in the basic structure of the Covenant behind both Law and Grace.  “I shall be Your God, and You shall be My People.”  That’s in Deuteronomy somewhere.  Like I said, Leviticus (as I felt the shame to look it up), Leviticus 26:12.  The purpose of the Covenant has not changed, but the mechanism has.

            It seems to me that the popular understanding of the Law among Christians is ‘the carrot and the stick’.  God offered the carrot when they behaved and the stick when they did not.  The carrot was prosperity in the land their God had given them.  The stick was foreigners coming in and taking their stuff, including their freedom and independence.

            What is Grace?  Well, John (the Narrator) is holding it in contrast to Law, coming through Jesus.  Grace comes to us by what Jesus has done for us by His death and resurrection, carrying out the Plan of God that we would be made right with our Lord, believing in Him and receiving eternal life.  This gospel speaks of this grace that comes in Jesus.  And it is no longer the carrot and the stick, it is a free gift of God.

            Notice the verb distinction.  The Law was given (by God) through Moses, Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ.  First, the Law was given by God, then God came in the form of the Word made flesh.

            Final note, this is the first time Jesus is explicitly named in John’s Gospel.

The Dangers of the Voice of the Nitpicker in Reading God's Word

John 1: 16                                           February 4, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            We will receive grace upon grace. 

            But first, if you look at the structure of verses 15 and 16, it looks like they are trying to tell us that John the baptizer is only being credited with the words in verse 15.  Follow the quotation marks and he does not appear to talk again until verse 20.  But that leaves us with an issue.  Was John the baptizer given the one line and then we switched back to the narrator’s voice for verses 16-18?  That is how the punctuation is set up.

            Why is that so important?  Well, for one thing, if the whole section is written by John the baptizer, it is more dialogue and information than he shares in any of the other gospels.  It becomes like a criminal investigation.  What did the John B. know and when did he know it? 

            Does John B. (John the baptizer) know that from “his” (Jesus) fullness, we have received grace upon grace?  What is grace?  In this case, it is not the friend of Aunt Bethany who died years ago (obscure movie quote).  We know already from John the Narrator (John N.) that Jesus is the provider of truth and grace.  But in this case, when Jesus is full, it is from that state that we have received grace upon grace.  But before we tackle the content, what about the context?  Who shared it?  Because in verse 19, John N. tells us that this is the testimony given by John B.  Was it just verse 15, or was it the whole paragraph?

            Does it really matter?  Well, it got me.  I think John B. should be credited with the entire section, verses 15-18, because that is identified as his testimony.  But the question of who said it is not nearly so important as what was said. 

            In the fullness of Jesus, we have received grace upon grace.  What is the fullness of Jesus?  I would suggest that it is Jesus in the accomplishment of His mission upon the earth, looking forward to a time past his life of instruction, his death of obedience, his resurrection of triumph, and our celebration of his giving the believer the power to become a child of God.  So John N. (narrator) is looking from the beginning of his gospel to the triumph of Jesus’ work at the end of his gospel.

            So what about the voice of the nitpicker?  This is the voice that picks at things just because they can.  How would John the baptizer know about the fullness of Jesus’ ministry when John the baptizer would not live to see it?  Because John the baptizer is going to be executed before the fullness of Jesus’ ministry comes to pass.  How could John the baptizer possibly have known all this stuff?  And if it is not John the baptizer speaking, John the Narrator has given us a very awkward construction.

            The Voice of the Nitpicker in my mind has hijacked the real center of this verse, the grace upon grace we have received from Jesus in the completion of His mission, to who said what.  Grace upon grace.  What does that mean?  Grace 1: God came down and dwelt among us as Jesus, not considering being God as something to be grasped.  Grace 2: Jesus gave his life for us out of love.  Grace 3: Jesus rose again from the dead and, in that resurrection, gave us all resurrection, resurrection unto eternal life.  Grace 4, or perhaps Grace Zero: Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness.  Yes, all those graces are spoilers as to what is coming in the gospel.

            The power of the Nitpicker is as the voice that makes me pay close attention to the text.  The danger of the Nitpicker is that close attention to the text can be on the minor bit which then rises up to submerge consideration of the important bits.  These can make for fascinating technical arguments, but do little to advance our understanding of the depths of God’s Word.

            The danger of the Nitpicker is particular acute when it seeks to retroactively force the Bible into its own categories.  What does that mean?  Well, the Nitpicker wants a clear delineation of dialogue, because that is what the Nitpicker expects in the books he reads today, both in fiction for clarity, and in historic narratives for accuracy.  To retroactively superimpose these expectations on the gospel is then going to cheapen my experience in God’s Word because it does not fit with my expectations.  He…me…my, not a gender discussion.  I am the Nitpicker.

            It becomes a presupposition that I will read into the gospel my expectations of literary structure, instead of allowing the literary structure inform my expectations. 

            The literary structure of John’s Gospel is to point to Jesus and what Jesus accomplishes (grace upon grace).  It is written from a time and point of view where the fullness of Jesus has been accomplished.  The Gospel is not a “whodunit” where we follow the clues to find out.  The gospel is a “Jesusdunit” (pardon that really awkward phrase) and this truth of our salvation is declared all along the way.     

John Talks and We Get the Potential of Prepositional Mayhem.

John 1: 15                                           February 3, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            “Prepositional hell…”  I put that in quotes because hell has a much less pleasant application in the Canon of Scripture. (see the Sidebar for what ‘canon of scripture’ means.)  First, ‘John testified to him…’  Who is ‘him’?  Jesus, transferring over ‘Word made flesh’ from the previous verse.  It is easy to read this, without context, as John is testifying to this person, that John is witnessing to Jesus about Jesus.  “To” can also mean ‘about’, so John is testifying about Jesus, testifying ‘to’ who Jesus is and what Jesus is about.

            Is that way too much time spent on a single preposition?  How about what comes next?  ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’ Jesus comes after John, but ranks ahead of John, because Jesus was before John.  One of the things that a writer is supposed to have is an opening line that grabs people.  I had a ‘what if’ moment.  What if this was the original opening to the gospel?  John is sitting there on Patmos and smiling to himself as he reads what he’s finally put down on the scroll.  If Patmos was something of a colony of exiles, I imagine him turning to his fellow inmate and elbowing him, glancing back between the scroll and the inmate, almost ‘wink wink, nudge, nudge’.  Finally, he has to say, “What do you think of that?  Opening line to end all opening lines.  If they don’t get hooked by that…”

            His fellow inmate looks at the line and…maybe sighs if this is not the first time they have done this.  Maybe is plaintively honest when he says, “John, you turn a phrase, but what does it mean?”  That is a good question.  To answer that question, John rewrites his introduction.  He finds an even more powerful opening, “In the beginning was the Word…”

            Secondly, says the fellow inmate, “Who is John?  Is that you?  You said it wasn’t.  But you want to start this name with the guy with the same name as you.”

            Once the introduction is written, the fellow inmate, pressed into reading John’s notes, might observe, “So…the Word comes after John the baptizer because that is who John is testifying to, the Word came before John the baptizer because the Word was in the beginning.  And the Word is ahead of, superior to, John the baptizer because the Word was in the beginning and because he is the light and life, he is full of truth and grace, he has power to made believers children of God, and like that?”

            “Exactly,” John the Gospel guy might reply.

            “I think you should lead with that,” the fellow inmate might reply.  If this were a movie script, it might end with John looking thoughtful as the scene fades to black.

Sidebar: ‘The Canon of Scripture”.  This Canon with one ‘n’, which the search function of this term on Microsoft “Word” results in “a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.”  In this case, the rule under judgement is that the Canon of Scripture includes those books of the Bible inspired by God, those books which are authoritative.  This is opposed to “cannon” with two ‘n’s’ that blows stuff up. 

            Another place where ‘canon’ is referred to in literature is in regards to Sherlock Holmes.  The ‘canon’ is what was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to distinguish it from the vast amount of other writings by other authors using Doyle’s characters and setting.

            What is the Canon of Scripture?  Because there is more than one list.  For the Presbyterian Church, the sixty six books that we accept are listed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, section 2.  They also have a purpose, “All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life”.

            There is a long and involved history of defining the ‘canon’ of Scripture that requires far more than a ‘sidebar’ can provide.  For us, the New Testament was established by the 300’s AD and the Old Testament was formally listed at the Reformation. 

            Interpretively, what ties all these books together is, for us, Jesus.  It is all part of God’s plan to reveal Godself through God’s Holy Word. 

Introductions One and Two: Next We Get To The Actual Talking...

John 1: 1-5                                                          February 2, 2021

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

            So we have received the divine introduction of Jesus.  From ‘in the beginning’, before Creation itself, there is the Word (spoiler: Jesus).  He is the light and the darkness has not overcome it, neither the darkness from which creation’s light was made nor from the darkness of sin that threatens the world.

John 1: 6-14                                                   

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

                Now the light has entered the world.  John the baptizer came to testify to the light (but he is not the light).  He came into the world, the true light for everyone.  Then to those who received him, who believed in him, he gave power to become Children of God.  This is the Word, of creative might and equivalent of God.  He became flesh and lived among us, which will be recorded in John’s gospel moving forward.

            This is the second part of the introduction, concluding in the Word made flesh, in Jesus come down to be among us. 

            It is a unique beginning among the gospels.  It is the final lesson in our lessons and carols service at Christmas because it does not hearken back to the birth of Jesus on earth-that is acknowledged in verse 14-but because it hearkens back to Creation itself.  Jesus was at Creation.  He was not created, but is the creator.  He and God are identified, father and son are laid down as the metaphor for us to understand, in human terms, what their relationship is.  Why?  For us.  He is the true light that enlightens everyone, but not everyone recognizes or accepts the light. 

            The word ‘love’ does not occur in this passage, at least not explicitly.  But as the role and the message and the power of Jesus are laid out for us, it is implicit through the entire fourteen verses. 

            For me, the first section of John 1 is the “Creation Introduction”, the Word that is the light in the darkness.  The second section of John begins with the introduction of John the baptizer and ends with ‘the Word made flesh’ and what that means for us.  The next section will be verses 15-27, John’s testimony now recorded for us.

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

 

So Why Does God Self-Select "Us" as God's Pronoun? Also, the Origin of Father and Son?

John 1: 6-14                                                    February 1, 2021

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

            So here is the transition from Creator to Creation.  And the Word became flesh.  The Word, that was with God and was God in verse one.  The Word, through whom all things were made.  The Word, who brought life into being, who brought the light into the darkness.  I have named him Jesus from the very beginning.  John has not, because John has been building up to this.  Here is the ministry of Jesus.

            Jesus because flesh and lived among us.  That shall be the bulk of the gospel account, Jesus as flesh ‘among us’.  And now the witness of John, the gospel writer, of the disciples, “we have seen his glory”-eyewitness account-“as of a father’s only son” who is “full of grace and truth”. 

            “…as a father’s only son…”  I think John here is establishing the human metaphor to describe the relationship of God and the Word.  They are equated, but they are also distinct.  The Father and the Son, this is how God reveals God’s…what is the word?  Essence? Structure? Or is it more basic than that?  To structure it in time and space, where we humans are bound, was there a discussion that went something like,

“Okay, we are God and created the hairless monkeys…how do we explain what they can never comprehend?  Their brainbox is a fine bit of creation, but it has its limits, no matter what they believe,  What, in their relationship, can we use to explain what we are?  Because, in the human language, if we are to give them a pronoun to describe us, it will be ‘we’ and ‘us’.  What about husband and wife?  Well, they are going to screw up that with their sins.  Father and Son…they are going to be gender limited in their perceptions of authority, but that is what we have to work with, and in the progression of revelation, they should catch up that gender hierarchy is the result of sin and they can, in the Holy Spirit, overcome it.  Until then, we will have to work double time on them through the Spirit so they don’t get caught in thinking that the Father is some old white guy up in heaven and the Son is some blond, blue eyed Scandinavian suddenly born in the Middle East…”

            Yes, I know God loves us, this whole Gospel is an accounting of that.  But given how we humans are, I cannot help but think that if there is some kind of divine expression of frustration, we humans were enough to make the Lord express it.

            What I see John establishing is how it is we, as humans, as those who have believed in His Name and been given power to become children of God, how then we can understand not only our relationship with the Creator, but the Creator’s self-understanding, expressed to us hairless monkeys (for any Young Earth Creationists reading this, consider this to be anthropomorphizing satire of how God would consider the pinnacle of God’s creation-in light of the reality that we fell from grace). 

            But the takeaway is not trying to label the relationship of God and the Word, but on the content of that relationship, that content which is there for us, “grace and truth”. 

            These two sections, vss. 1-5 and 6-14, they form the introduction to John’s Gospel.  He takes us from the Word that was ‘in the beginning’ to the Word ‘made flesh’.  Transcendent power to imminent relationship.  That means God all-powerful to God down close and personal.  Tomorrow will be a summary before we move forward with the next verses on Wednesday.

Sidebar: Dividing up the verses in mini 'chapters', this is what I am doing, not what John has done.  As the Greek has no punctuation, neither does it have chapter and verse.  This is a human construct to facilitate quoting…chapter and verse…  As with anything, we do the best we can, depending on the Spirit of God to lead us.

Pastor Pete