This study
presents Jesus from the perspective of John's gospel.
The other books of the gospel tell the story of Jesus. but
we find John focusing on distinct theological themes, which
contrast such terms as life and death, light and darkness,
belief and unbelief, truth and falsehood, love and hate.
In
John's gospel we have the deepest spiritual and theological
teachings of Jesus.
John's
gospel emphasizes Christ's deity to a greater extent than
the others.
John began not with Jesus' birth, but with a statement of
Christ's pre-existence as God.
John's purpose in writing this book was to unveil the Man,
Jesus, and to reveal Him as God.
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
the purpose of this message as well -- that we may come
to a greater level of faith and belief in who Jesus Christ
is so that we may experience more of the abundant life He
has to offer us.
Special Marks of Jesus' Divinity - John 1:1-18.
John
1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing
was made that was made.
John starts
out by showing and proclaiming that Jesus was God from the
beginning. He then goes on to show us how to respond,
from the heart, to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
The other
Gospels begin with the birth of Jesus or with an account
of His human ancestry. Matthew and Luke emphasized
that a man, a human being, was actually born in the normal
way to a young woman named Mary. John, on the other
hand, tells us immediately that the Child born was the eternal
God! He begins to point us very vividly to special
marks of His deity. In these first few verses we have
some powerful statements as to who Christ is.
Jesus Is Revealed as Being Pre-existent with the Father.
The first
mark of divinity that John draws us to is the fact that
Jesus was eternally existent with the Father. John
takes us back to eternity by identifying Jesus as "The
Word" who was in the beginning.
John
1:1-2
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God.
There
are other passages of scripture throughout the Bible that
identify Jesus as being pre-existent with the Father as
well.
Micah
5:2
"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come
forth to Me the One to be ruler in Israel, Whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
Hebrews
7:1
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most
High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of
the kings and blessed him... without father, without mother,
without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor
end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a
priest continually.
John
8:58
Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you,
before Abraham was, I AM."
Revelation
22:13 "I
am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the
First and the Last."
He Is Shown and Revealed as the Creator of the Universe.
John
1:3 All
things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was
made that was made.
Again,
we see this in other passages of Scripture as well.
It is not an isolated thought. It is in agreement
with what other writers of the New Testament had to say
as well.
Colossians 1:16
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and
that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were
created through Him and for Him.
Hebrews
1:8-10
But to the Son He says: "Your throne, O God, is forever
and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your
Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of
gladness more than Your companions." And: "You,
LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of Your hands;
He Is Proclaimed As Life.
John
1:4
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
No one
but God the Father, unbegotten and uncreated, inherently
possesses life-in-himself. He is in His very being
`the living God'. Human beings, in common with all
other living things, do not possess life-in-themselves;
their life is derived from God, the source and stay of all
life. To the Son alone, begotten but not created,
has the Father imparted His own prerogative to have life-in-Himself.
– F.F. Bruce.
This was
not something that began with the incarnation; but is an
eternal act, part and parcel of the unique Father –
Son relationship which existed already in the beginning.
John
5:26-27
"For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted
the Son to have life in Himself, "and has given Him
authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son
of Man.
In the
eternal order of the Father, as Father, imparts to the Son,
as Son, that life-in-himself, the Son reveals that life
to men and women. Jesus
has come to impart His life giving spirit into each of our
lives through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Because He
is the resurrection of Life He imparts the eternal spirit
of life into our beings.
John
11:25-26
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.
"And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.
Do you believe this?"
Jesus Is Proclaimed as the Light of the World.
Another
term that is used to describe Jesus' deity is that of light.
Light and darkness are often moral terms. Light represents
moral purity, holiness, righteousness, and goodness.
In contrast, darkness as a moral term represents evil, all
those warped and twisted ways in which sin had perverted
the good in man, and brought pain to individuals and society. The moral
light is one of the most powerful and pervasive evidences
of God's existence. eg. of Peter after catching the
fish.
Luke
5:8
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying,
"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"
The deep-seated
conviction that there is a moral order to things is present
in every human society. But society is in darkness;
even though some sense of moral order and rightness exists.
People in every society choose to do what they themselves
believe is wrong.
This moral
awareness in a world running madly after darkness is another
testimony to us that light comes from the pre-existent Word.
Light, like creation and life itself, shouts out the presence
of God behind the world we see. –
Lawrence O. Richards.
John
8:12
Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light
of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness,
but have the light of life."
Jesus Was Also Proclaimed As Being Full Of Grace And
Truth.
Finally
we see Jesus portrayed as the Word becoming flesh being
full of grace and truth
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.
When the
Word became flesh we were given new light – a revelation
that the divine morality is "grace and truth".
In Jesus we see a morality that goes beyond law and can
only be identified as grace.
In verses
9-13 we see grace portrayed when the Creator entered
the world He had made. He came to His own people,
to whom He had given life. But His own people would
not receive Him. He was rejected, scorned, and ultimately
crucified. In spite of this, He reached out to individuals
who would receive Him and He gave the right to become children
of God.
As you
will see, as you begin to study and meditate in the Gospel
of John, the theme of Jesus, the Living Word, dominates
the Gospel of John. Jesus, full of grace and truth,
revealed to us the relationship which God the Father had
always yearned to have with humankind. As His sons
and daughters, a way of life is revealed to us by the splendor
of grace rather than by human devises.
We must
see Jesus as He is, God's ultimate Word of revelation.
We must hear His Word, come to understand and believe in
Him. When we trust ourselves to Jesus, forever, and
daily, we will learn what it means to "have eternal
life in Him."
