The Divine Word

John 1:1-5

John 1:1-5.

They are called Boanerges, sons of thunder. They want to call down fire from heaven on some people who are mistreating Jesus. They needed to be tempered.

Obviously, over the years, John was wonderfully tempered so much so that he is known in history as the apostle of love. The reason John is known as the apostle of love is because he refers to love 80 times in his writings, so he is genuinely to be identified as the apostle of love.

John was concerned concerning the truth. He mentions truth 25 times in his gospel and 20 times in his epistles. So, 45 times John talks about truth. 80 times about love. But 100 times in this gospel, he uses the word believe!

Putting that all together, John wants us to believe the truth so that we can enter into a relationship of love with the Lord. John uses his most familiar vocabulary. John has a father named a Zebedee. They run a fishing business in Galilee. His mother’s name is Salome.

John 19:25, she may have been a sister to Mary, the mother of our Lord, which would make him a relative of Jesus.

A small group up there, who knew each other well. Intermarriage over the years could have led to that kind of relationship. John starts out radical severe, self-serving, even as his mother asked Jesus if he and his brother could sit on the right hand and the left in the kingdom.

Over the years, the work of the Lord on his heart, the Holy Spirit further working on his heart. A few years with the beloved apostle Peter, and he becomes the apostle of love, truth, and faith. The gospel of John is in itself identified by many through the centuries as the holy of holies of the New Testament. It’s the most sacred place you can go.

In fact, if there is a most sacred chapter in the entire Bible, it would be John 17th chapter, where our Lord Jesus prays to the Father in that intimate inter-Trinitarian prayer, the likes of which appears nowhere else in Scripture.

John 17 might be the very mercy seat of the Holy of Holies. But John is often called the Holy of Holies because in this gospel, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ is fully displayed.

What was not accessible to people in the Old Covenant (namely, the Holy of Holies) has become accessible to us in the New Covenant because the veil is down. The way is open, we come boldly into the presence of God. As we enter the gospel of John, we, like a priest of old on the Day of Atonement, have access to the Holy of Holies to see the glory of Christ.

In this gospel, we will fellowship in the deepest way with the Lord Jesus. We will hear His beating heart. We will touch His wound prints, and with Thomas we will say, “My Lord and my God.” John’s gospel is simple enough for a child.

In other ways, it is sublime as an angel. It is both as gentle as a lamb and as bold as a lion, as deep as the sea and as high as the heavens. Yet its truths must be and can be contained in one human heart. It is an amazing account.

John’s message is simply this

The eternal God Himself has become human. That is John’s message.

The Creator has become a part of His creation, fully God and fully man.

Why? In order that He might save sinners from their sin, death, judgment, and eternal hell. This is the message of the gospel of John, that the eternal God, infinite, transcendent, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, everlastingly unchanging, that one true and living God who is at the same time one God and yet three persons has become man.

John 1:14, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh. “The Word” is a title given to Jesus.

Matthew 1:23, “Call Him Immanuel, which is “God with us” Because that very baby is indeed God with us. In Luke 1:32 and 35, He is to be called Son of the Most High, Son of God, because He is deity in human flesh.

This is the essential truth of the Christian faith, that Jesus is God in human flesh, God the eternal, infinite, transcendent,

all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, everlastingly unchanging God has come into His creation in human form. That massive reality is the foundation of the Christian faith. There are four gospels that tell the story. Three of them (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) give us earthly history. This synoptic Gospels look at the birth, the life, the experiences, the travels, the calling of Jesus upon His followers, the teachings, the parables, His arrest, His trial, His execution, and His resurrection. Many of the features with which we are so familiar, because they are the synopsis of His earthly life.

• John doesn’t give us the earthly story.
• John doesn’t give us the historical view of the life of Christ.
• John gives us the heavenly story.
• John gives us the supernatural view of Christ.

In that way, John is unique. Over 95% of what is in John is not in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Over 90% of this is John’s alone to declare under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in John’s gospel about the birth of Christ.

• The early life of Christ.
• The temptation of Christ.
• The transfiguration of Christ.

• The travels of Christ.
• The garden of agony of Christ.
• His ascension into heaven.

Because John is not focusing on the history of His life. There are no parables. The parables were earthly stories. There are no earthly stories. This is a heavenly look at the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the most heavenly of all the gospels by far.

The purpose of John is to convince the sinner of the true person of Christ.

John 20:31, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

This is a salvation book. This is an evangelistic book. In order to have salvation, you must believe in the true Christ. To have eternal life, you must believe in the true Christ. You must believe in the true Christ, not a false Christ, not a misrepresentation of Christ, not the Christ of human intuition, human philosophy, and false religion, but the true Christ.

John, therefore, gives us this immense treasure, 21 chapters demonstrating in every paragraph that Jesus is God in human flesh, that He is true God and true man, fully God and fully man. That is the Christ who is the true Christ that is the Christ that must be believed on for one to be saved.

John supports that fact about the identity of Christ by showing His divine claims, supporting those claims by the record of divine works, miracles, divine words, divine titles, and divine worship. John pulls all of that together to demonstrate that we are talking about a divine person, that’s the objective of John.

John authored three epistles at the end of the New Testament and, of course, received the glories of the book of Revelation. Here, in this gospel, he gives us his great evangelistic tract. Only when you understand Christ to be who He is and understand His person first and then His work is there any possibility that you could be saved. You must believe it. You must believe the truth. You must believe it.

When we go through this together, we are going to have reasons to affirm what we already believe as Christians. It is

going to arm us and equip us to declare the truth concerning Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ divinity is under assault and always under attack. People wanting to talk about Jesus, but they don’t want to define who He is. The message of the New Testament, the message of the Old Testament, from Isaiah 52, is that Jesus is God. He is nothing other than God, nothing less than God.

He is not a created spirit-brother of Lucifer and Adam, as the Mormons say. There are many other aberrant views of so- called Jesus Christ. The New Testament is full of evidence that Jesus is God. Philippians 2 “He thought it not something to hold onto to be equal with God but humbled Himself, took on the form of a man.”

Hebrews 1:3, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

The Scripture is loaded with evidence that Jesus is God. The titles given to Jesus and given to God, we can see the equality there.

God and Jesus both are called,

• Shepherd,
• judge,
• Holy One in Scripture,
• first and last,
• the Light,
• the Lord of the Sabbath,
• Saviour,
• the pierced one (Zechariah 12:10),
• Mighty God,
• Lord of Hosts,
• Alpha and Omega,
• Lord of glory,
• Redeemer.

The list goes on. Titles are given to Jesus that belong only to God. Our Lord Jesus is described as eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, unchanging, sovereign, all glorious, and eternal. Jesus did works that only God can do.

• He created,
• He raised the dead,
• He overpowered the kingdom of darkness,
• He forgave sin,

• He received worship on many occasions through His life and ministry,
• He declared that He had a right to be worshiped after His resurrection.

John 14 that He is the One who is the qualifier for all prayer that is to be accepted by God and answered by God. If you ask anything in His name, He hears and does it. He answers prayer as God alone can do. He does works that only God can do.

He receives worship that only God can receive. He answers prayer that only God can answer. We are going to see as we go through the gospel of John evidence upon evidence upon evidence of His deity. The summation of what John is going to show us in this gospel is found in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”

The most concise statement in the Bible on the incarnation. The Word is none other than Christ.

Why does John use the term Word? But the Word, who is Jesus Christ, is God who took on humanity. The infinite becomes finite. The eternal one enters time. The invisible one becomes visible.

The Word used in V1 and in V 14. John doesn’t explain that.

Why doesn’t John explain it? Because that was such a perfect term to use to identify Christ on the supernatural side. There was a philosophical understanding of the word, that’s the Greek term logos. The philosophers talked about logos as the reality that was visible in creation.

They believed in a logos spirit, some non-personal power source, some non-personal energy entity. They believed in some abstract kind of principle of reason, some non-personal force floating around in the universe, some non-personal entity of wisdom, because they understood that you couldn’t have the creation in which they lived without having some source for it. But they believed it was impersonal or, even better, non-personal.

Even the common people saw the logos, the philosophical identification of this powerful, non-personal force in the universe as being responsible for the way things were. John comes along and says, “Let me introduce you to the fact that the logos is not an impersonal force, the logos is a person.

The logos is a person, not an impersonal reality, but a personal God who came into the world in the man Jesus not just a concept but a person. Beyond that, for the Jewish people, they didn’t need an explanation because the phrase “the Word of the Lord”

appeared so many times in the Old Testament. The Word of the Lord was simply the revelation of God.

Hebrews 1:1-2, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; As the Old Testament is the written Word and the revelation of God, the New Testament is the account of the incarnate Word in the person Jesus Christ. So, Jesus is the Word in that in Him God speaks, and that concept was well established among the Jews. “The Word of the Lord came to so-and-so.”

We read that through the Old Testament. The Word of the Lord came often to the prophets, and it often came to the fathers, and it was the will of God expressed and communicated through Revelation.

The Word of the Lord is the expression of God to people. There’s no greater illustration of that, or representation of that, manifestation of that, demonstration of that, than Jesus Christ. He is God speaking to us. If you want to hear from God, you can read the Old Testament, and you will hear what God spoke to the fathers and the prophets who wrote that.

But if you want the fullest revelation of God, you go to the New Testament because God most fully spoke in Christ. So, John is telling us that Jesus is the incarnation of God. Jesus is the exact representation of the nature of God.

God speaks in Christ most clearly, most fully, and savingly. So “the Word became flesh” Ginomai. Though God is immutable, God is pure, eternal being and is not becoming that is, is not changing, developing, growing. Jesus is pure, eternal, constant, immutable, unchanging being, yet He enters into creation and takes on humanity, which is in the process of becoming.

Jesus starts out in a womb, and He becomes a child, and He grows in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man.

The One who is pure being becomes a man, becomes flesh and dwelt among us. He is not a vision. His humanity is not an apparition. His humanity is not a phantom. He didn’t take on the appearance of humanity or some specter of humanity or some illusion of humanity, He took on flesh and dwelt among us.

Philippians 2, He was made in the likeness of men. He partook of flesh and blood.

Hebrews 2:14, Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, For 33 years, the fullness of the Godhead.

Colossians 2:9, For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;

The Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, fully God and fully man. Not half God, half man, fully God and fully man. That is John’s message through this book. Fully God, and fully man.

Any assault on His deity is a heresy. Aany assault on His humanity is a heresy. To demonstrate that Jesus is fully God in human flesh, emphasizing the deity aspect, John takes us through three very important truths. There are three things that demonstrate the deity of Christ.

1. His preexistence with God,

2. His coexistence with God, and

3. His self-existence with God. 1. Jesus Preexistence of God. V 1, “In the beginning was the Word.”

What beginning? The beginning of Genesis 1:1, is the beginning. If we don’t qualify “the beginning,” then it’s “the beginning.

Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In that beginning, the Word was.

What is the importance of that?

The Word was already existing. That is to say, the Word, who is none other than the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was already in existence when God created everything that exists. If Jesus is not a part of the creation, then He is not a part of time and space. If you are not a part of time and space, then you are eternal.

A very important statement. John affirms His preexistence. Jesus existed before the beginning of everything that exists. He was already existing. The imperfect tense of the “to be” verb, the verb eimi. The imperfect tense means continuously. He was continuously existing already when the beginning began.

He didn’t begin with the beginning. He is not a part of the creation. He is not a created being. He is an already existing being. Time began with creation. Time began on the first day when God created and the second day and the third, and on time has marched until time will one day end, and we will live in eternity without time.

But since time began, the starting of time was the starting of creation. This being, the Word, existed before time and, therefore, is outside of time and, therefore, is eternal. At the point that everything began, He already was, describing continuous existence before creation the eternal pre-existence of the One called the Word.

That is why Jesus borrows a title that God uses to describe His own eternality. When Moses wanted to know the name of God, God said, “My name is I AM that I AM. My name is the verb ‘to be.’ My name is Eternal Being.” Repeatedly in the gospel of John, Jesus will say, “I AM,” “I AM,” “I AM,” “I AM,” “I AM,” - the verb “to be” - and He will even be so bold as to say to the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58), “I AM.” He only speaks of Himself in the present continuous tense because there never was a time He didn’t exist.

V 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” The Word was with God it is repeated in verse 2. V 2, “He was in the beginning with God.”

V 1, “the Word was with God,” V 1, “In the beginning with God.” Repeats twice: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God.” “He was in the beginning with God.” This is an emphasis to make sure we don’t miss the point.

When the beginning began, He already existed. He existed as God. He is outside time. He exists as the eternal God. He not only exists as the eternal God, and He existed eternally with God. This is very important because what it tells us is that not only is He the eternal God, but He is distinct from the eternal God.

This is where we come to understand that there is one God and yet there are three persons. Here we find two of them. He is God, the Word was God, but the Word was also with God.

How can you be God and with God? Only in a Trinitarian way can that be explained, to be God by nature and yet be a distinct person, being with God.

There is a beautiful illustration of this relationship that could well be the intention of the writer of the Proverbs.

Proverbs 8:27-31, When He prepared the heavens, I was there,

When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 When He established the clouds above, When He strengthened the fountains of the deep, 29 When He assigned to the sea its limit, So that the waters would not transgress His command, When He marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him, 31 Rejoicing in His inhabited world, And my delight was with the sons of men.

A record of creation from a most wonderful perspective. Could this be the testimony of the One who is the Word who was with God when God was doing the creation? We know from Genesis 1 that the Holy Spirit was there, brooding over the face of the waters and bringing shape into creation.

The whole of Trinity is involved in this creative work. Yes, God the Father is the Creator, of course. Yes, the Holy Spirit participates in creation, of course. The Holy Spirit is the One who moves over the inanimate creation and brings life to it.

But listen again to the explanation of how they work together.

Hebrews 1:2, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

God has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. God is the Creator, but the agent of creation that He uses is the Son, the Word. There are about 25 million of them who believe there is no Trinity but there’s only one God, and sometimes He acts like the Father, sometimes He acts like the Son, and sometimes He acts like the Spirit.

They have no idea what’s going on at the baptism when you have the Son being baptized, the Father saying, “This is my Son, in whom I am well-pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. Of course there are many other questions they can’t answer, but they didn’t come to their heresy by reason.

They came there by demonic revelation. It is He who is the agent through whom the Father creates. God in the Old Testament, for example, is the judge of all the

earth. Yet in the New Testament, the agent of judgment is clearly Christ, because He has committed all judgment to Him. Now you are getting into the inner workings of Trinity. Not important for me to sort all that out. Only to the degree that we know Scripture, what it’s saying to us, can we do that anyway.

Simply Jesus was God, He was also with God as a distinct person. So, we have His pre-existence. John starts with the fact that when we are talking about Jesus, we are talking about a pre-existent, eternal God, not a part of creation.

In Mormonism, they not only believe that Jesus is the created spirit/brother of Adam and Lucifer, but they believe the God of the Bible is created by another god. 2. Co-existence. V 1, “the Word was God” If Jesus preexisted time and space, if He preexisted creation, if He existed already before anything was created that was created, then He must be uncreated.

If Jesus is uncreated, He must be God.

All angels were created. All fallen angels fell from a creation in which God had made them holy, and they defected and rebelled and fell. Every person in the universe is a created being except the Creator Himself. This is a powerful expression.

The Word was God! Theos ēn ho logos, literally in the Greek, God was the Word. Powerful Greek expression. Jesus talks in His prayer to the Father.

John 17:5, And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. Equal level with God. In Philippians he says Jesus did not hold onto but gave up for the sake of incarnation.

Colossians 2:9, For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; He is a full deity.

God was the Word.

Four words in Greek, the clearest, most direct declaration of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ in all four gospels that God was the Word. So, Jesus is preexistent, outside time and space, before anything that is made is made.

Jesus is co-existent. He is fully God. These are essentials for salvation faith. 3. Jesus self-existence. Jesus self-existed. This is obvious. If you are not created, then you have existed outside creation. You must be self-existent.

Pre-existent, co-existent, self-existent.

How do we establish that? V 3- 4, All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. This is a reiteration essentially of what we read in Hebrews, that God made all things through Him. In Him was life.

Here is the proof of His self-existence. Everything that exists came into being through Him.

A positive declaration. Simple, clear, flawless evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ is eternal deity. Everything that exists, He made. It all came from Him. He didn’t come from anyone or anything. Everything came from Him.

1 Corinthians 8:6, yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

God is the Creator. The Holy Spirit is an agent in creation. But at the end, God does all His creating through the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. This doesn’t deny God as Creator. It doesn’t deny the role that the Holy Spirit plays in bringing order to creation. But it says that the Son of God is the agent by which the creating is done.

We know the Old Testament says that God is Creator. You can read it all through the Psalms. Psalm 102, a wonderful testimony of God’s identity as Creator.

Isaiah 40, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 45 in the Old Testament talk about God as Creator. Genesis 1 and 2.

Mark 13:19, For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be.

Romans 1:25, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. All through the New Testament, God is referred to as the Creator. Of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom God made everything that He made, as we read in Hebrews chapter 1.

• The positive confession is that “all things came into being through Him.”
• The negative confession is “apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being.”

We have the positive declaration and the negative. Not one thing exists that He didn’t make. The Creator of everything that exists must necessarily, then, be uncreated. If He is not a part of the creation, then He’s uncreated. This is necessary. Only the eternal God is uncreated.

The Jews would agree with that. Only the eternal God is uncreated. If Jesus is the Creator of everything that is created, then He, too, is uncreated. Therefore, He is the eternal God. Jesus is God yet while He is God, He is with God. He is God and yet is distinct from God.

He is God and yet is the means through which God creates, which again emphasizes His distinction. Again, the argument is simple. Since God the Son is the Creator of everything that exists, He must be outside the creation and that would be to be uncreated. He must be outside time and that would be to be eternal.

This also leads to very obvious conclusion. V 4, “In Him was life.” In Him was life. Jesus didn’t get life from someone. Nobody gave Him life. In Him was life. Now, this starts to get you to a place you can’t escape from.

We start thinking about God being eternal and being eternally alive, never a moment when He did not exist.

This is more than our feeble mind can handle the eternality of God. But as an essential part of His eternality as evidenced by His creation was life. He was alive and the source of life. That is such a profound statement.

“In Him was life.” The word used is not bios, because we are not just talking about biological life, which is one form of life. But the word is zōē, which has to do with spiritual life, the life principle, the reality of life.

When a little baby comes into the world, that baby has biological life, and that’s the functioning of the human body. But there’s another kind of life existing in that little baby that can’t be quantified, it can’t be found and can’t be located and can’t be tied to DNA.

It’s a spiritual life. It’s an essential life that is not observable, and that’s the life that comes from God. Of course, God has in Himself the components that create biological life at every level all the way from the simplest one- celled animal to the most complex being, the human being.

Even the complex being of the supernatural realm of angelic beings.

God has the power in Him for all that kind of life, including and stretching to the reality of spiritual life. Spiritual life lasts forever. So, in Him is biological life and spiritual life, by which He can create the physical world, which will die, and by which He creates eternal beings who will never die. In Him is life.

When we are looking at the Lord Jesus Christ, we are looking at the One who is Himself life.

John 14:6, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

We can’t look at Christ in any other way. A massive statement. He is life. He is the fundamental reality of all that exists. It’s in Him we live and move and have our being, have our existence. All that exists because they have life from Him. In Him was life.

People come along with some nonsense about Jesus being a created being, this is where you want to take them. He is not the Jesus of the cults. He is not the Jesus of the liberation theology realm. He is not the Jesus of Liberalism.

He is the Jesus who is fully God, fully man, who is the means by which everything that exists. Not only is He the means that came into existence, but Hebrews 1 says, “By His power, He upholds all things.” He not only gave life, but He sustains life. He not only created, but He sustains the creation because in Him was life.

John makes a wonderful statement. V 4, “The life was the Light of men.” While we might distinguish between life and light, we can’t do it here. V 5, And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

What John is saying is the life is the same as the Light of men. It’s the same phrase the life was the Light as the Word was God. It’s the same Greek construction. John is connecting life and light. The One, who was the life, became the Light of men. That’s why He was incarnate. That’s why He came into the world, to shine light into the darkness, to reveal God.

The life was the Light. That’s an equal statement and a parallel statement.

The life and the Light in this case are the same. The Light is the revelation of life.

John 8:12, “I am the Light of the world whoever follows me will never walk in darkness.” Jesus is the life manifest, and called Light, the metaphor of light against the darkness of fallenness. Jesus is the eternal life source, the eternal divine life, manifest in the world like light shining in the darkness. Amazing. V 5, And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

What it is really saying is the darkness doesn’t katalambanō the most vivid way to explain that would be to pounce on and overpower, pounce on and overtake. The One, who is life, has come into the world and is the Light of the world and the darkness cannot overpower or cannot overwhelm it.

Darkness cannot overcome light. Light always overcomes darkness.

You go into a pitch-dark, isolated place in a room and light one candle, and the light will overpower the darkness. The life of God, the eternal One, the eternal life, Jesus, comes into the world as light, and He lights the world, and He’s continuing to light the world. The darkness can’t overpower it.

What is darkness?

Luke 22:53, When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize Me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

This is when hell is going to throw everything they have got. The darkness refers to Satan, demons, and the whole complex of darkness. All that the domain of darkness.

Colossians 1:13, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, Satan’s world, Satan’s realm, of which all men are a part, the devil, he is the prince of darkness. This is the kingdom or domain of darkness.

The demon darkness cannot overpower the Light.

Darkness has tried to do it. Satan tried to destroy the Messianic line many times. Satan tried to kill all the babies and catch the Messiah in the slaughter when Jesus was just a child. The demons came after Jesus repeatedly.

They tried to get Him every way they could. Satan himself comes at Him at the temptation to get Him to bow down, to get Him to violate God’s Word. Satan does everything he can in the garden, to get Him to go the other direction from the will of the Father and the sacrifice of the cross.

Jesus, through His travels, ran into demons everywhere He went who came after Him, assaulting Him for all time. Since the promise of God to bring a Redeemer, Satan has done what he could to extinguish the Light, the Light that has now come in Christ.

But the darkness, all the demon darkness, all the forces of hell and all their accommodating human evil cannot successfully shut out the Light. The Light still shines.

Conclusion

This opening of the gospel of John is such a powerful statement of the person of Christ and His impact on the world. The demon darkness cannot extinguish the Light. The Light is shining in the world, it is shining in the world, it has been shining in the world for long time. It was available to any who would listen, who would hear.

Romans 10:21, But to Israel he says: “All day long I have stretched out My hands To a disobedient and contrary people.” You should have heard and believed it.

Romans 10:18, But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: “Their sound has gone out to all the earth, And their words to the ends of the world.”

The message of the Light has gone out to Israel, to the end of the earth. The darkness can’t extinguish the message. But you must believe it.

Romans 10:17, So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

John 8:24, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” You don’t want to die in your sins.

You don’t want to die in your sins and go to everlasting hell, but you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am He, that I am the one described here in these opening five verses and proven in the rest of this amazing gospel.

Do you believe that Jesus is God in human flesh? That is the foundation of saving faith. If you don’t believe that, you will die in your sins, unforgiven, and bear the full punishment for those sins. Put your trust in Him and His sacrifice on your behalf and your sins are forgiven.

John 1:12, But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in

His name