Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Person of Christ from John 1:1–18
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.” ’
From the fullness of his grace, we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God, the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.
Now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Through Jesus Christ, amen.
There are many indications John writes his book for people he recognizes to be biblically literate, that is, for people who are already familiar with the Old Testament texts. The evidence is found in the many allusions he makes to the Old Testament where he expects his readers to pick up on what is going on.
For example, in John 3 he refers to the snake in the wilderness, and the entire context of Numbers is presupposed by the allusion. If this had been written for a group that was biblically illiterate, such allusions would not make sense. John’s gospel is filled with such things. The first of them, of course, occurs in the opening words.
How would any Jew, how would any first-century proselyte, how would anyone who has been exposed even from a Gentile background to ordinary synagogue services for a couple of years fail to pick up an Old Testament allusion in the first three words of John’s gospel? “In the beginning …” Oh, yes, you’re in Genesis 1 now, are you not? “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Indeed, the opening verses here quickly move to the creation but then move beyond the creation to what Paul would call the inner creation.
At the same time, the opening verse here is strange. It’s not strange to us who are Christians who have been reading our Bibles a long time, but it would’ve seemed a bit strange in the ancient world. For someone who is biblically illiterate today, this first verse surely is almost opaque. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Let’s begin with the word word. What does word, logos, mean? In the ancient world the word word had a very wide range of meaning, a very wide semantic range, but it can basically be reduced to two tendencies. It can refer, on the one hand, to the inner thought of something, the structure of thought; hence, the reason, the logic almost, the science of something.
That use is preserved in many contemporary Western languages where we have –logy on the end of a word, theology or thÈologie in French or Theologie in German. That’s all logos, and what it means is the science, the knowledge of God. Geology is the science, the knowledge, the inner thought structures of land. Psychology is the science, the knowledge, the inner thought structures of the psuchÈ. That use still prevails in not a few of our own Western languages.
At the same time, it commonly can refer, rather, to the outward expression of inner thought, to the message form, as it were. Then it is best translated by speech or message or something of that order. Thus, John 8:31 finds Jesus saying, “If you hold to my word, you are really my disciples.” “If you hold to my teaching …” is the idea.
We find Paul writing, “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” He does not mean the word cross is sort of stupid; he means the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. That is what is going on here. “In the beginning was the message. In the beginning was the outward expression of God himself.”
We might almost paraphrase it, as one translation does, “In the beginning God expressed himself, and God’s self-expression was with God, and God’s self-expression was God.” Why should John choose this word to describe the One who will ultimately be given the name Jesus? In due course we will read, “The Word became flesh,” and then you are into the account of Jesus.
Why give this word to Jesus? Why not use one of the other great christological titles that are far more common and familiar in the church? Why not, “In the beginning was the Son”? After all, Son, Christology, is very important in John’s gospel. Why not, “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God”?
Why not, “In the beginning was the Light, and the Light was with God, and the Light was God”? Why this expression, which was clearly not common in the earliest decades of the church and is nowhere in the Old Testament unambiguously a christological and messianic title? Why does John choose this?
One has to be careful about extrapolating reasons that are not explicit, but I think one can make a pretty good guess. If John had used one of the dominant titles in this book, if he had said, “In the beginning was the Son of God, and the Son of God was with God, and the Son of God was God” (Son of God, Christology, is important to him in the book), then he would have been demanding his readers read the entire book in the light of that title.
In other words, that flag would be, right at the beginning, a marker for how he was going to present Christ throughout the whole book. It would have, in a sense, relativized other titles and focused all attention on this one. Instead, this book is full of christological titles. Even in the first chapter, Jesus is not only the Messiah and the Son of God, he’s the Son of Man, and he’s the King of Israel. He is the One who was to come.
Instead of relativizing any of the common titles, he looks for an embracing term. You can almost see him thinking, led on by the Spirit of God as he reflects. He recalls in the Old Testament the Word of God, God’s utterance, God’s speech, was bound up with creation. Thus, for example, we read, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” (Psalm 33:6)
The word of the Lord is bound up with revelation. Again and again, we read in the Prophets, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying …” Moreover, the word of the Lord is often bound up with salvation, with deliverance. Thus, in Isaiah 55, “My word will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire.” In Psalm 107:20, when some of his people were ill, then we read God sent forth his word and healed them.
In other words, God’s word, God’s self-expression, God’s utterance, God’s disclosure was active in the Old Testament in creation, in revelation, in salvation, and John says to himself, in effect, “Yes, this is the embracing term that begins to capture the whole of what Jesus truly is.” John is not the only one, of course, to think of Jesus in those terms.
Although the language is a bit different, remember the opening lines of Hebrews. There we read, “In the past God spoke …” There’s word again. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at various times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us …” The version I’m reading has, “… by his Son,” which makes Jesus parallel to another prophet, but in the Greek it is more direct.
“He has spoken unto us en Huiō. He has spoken unto us in Son.” That is to say, in the Son revelation the Son is himself the ultimate Word. “In the past God spoke words to the fathers through the prophets. In these last days he has spoken in Son.” The Son himself is the final Word. The thought is very close to what John here expresses in the prologue.
Now he says, “This Word was with God, God’s own fellow, and this Word was God, God’s own self, and this, if you please, in the beginning.” That is, from the very beginning before which there is no further beginning, whenever you can predicate this of God, you must predicate it, likewise, of the Word.
Where does John draw this sort of information? I know he is borne along by the Spirit of God, but in part he is picking up Old Testament strands of prophetic revelation, is he not? Again, at the risk of caricature, of oversimplification, in the Old Testament there is a mighty strand of anticipation that pictures God himself coming down to rescue his people. “I myself will rend the heavens and come down,” Yahweh says.
Again, in Ezekiel 34 after the shepherds of Israel are condemned, Yahweh says, about 25 times, “I will shepherd the people. I will take them into the pasture. I will lead them by streams of water. I will medicate them. I will distinguish between one sheep and another. I will be their shepherd.” Yahweh says this.
Yet, on the other hand, there are many prophecies that anticipate a Davidic figure, someone in David’s line. After 2 Samuel 7, that stream of prophecy becomes very strong, and every once in a while the two streams merge. Thus, in Ezekiel 34, to which I have just referred, after God has said about 25 times, “I will …” he comes to the end of the chapter, and he says, “I will send my servant David to do it.”
In words we quote frequently at Christmas, in the eighth century BC the words from Isaiah the prophet: “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given, and he will sit upon the throne of his father David. Of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end, but he will also be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,” and the streams merge.
Then John has spent this time with Jesus himself and has come to know him. His categories have been expanded. As a result, C.K. Barrett in his commentary can write this brief note. “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.” “In the beginning, then, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What does John tell us about this Word of God and his relation to us? Five things.
1. The Word creates us.
The logic of the passage, if you are following in the text or if you are following in the outline that was provided, is: The middle clause of verse 1, “The Word was with God,” is repeated in verse 2 to prepare the way for verse 3. That’s the logic. It’s picked out of verse 1 and repeated, “He was with God in the beginning,” in order to prepare the way for verse 3. He was with God in the beginning and, thus, became God’s agent in creation. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
This too is a fairly common New Testament theme. This is not something restricted to John’s gospel. Likewise, for example, in Hebrews, chapter 1, right after the words I read comes this same theme. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us in Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.”
In the great Christ hymn of Colossians 1, there we are told something staggering. We are told, “All things were made by him and for him,” not only God’s agent, but like God himself, the very goal of creation. So this theme itself is quite common in the New Testament. One must ask oneself, “Why does John introduce this theme here?”
After all, most of the themes in John’s prologue, John 1:1–18, anticipate themes he unpacks in the rest of the book. That’s what a prologue does. It introduces things that are subsequently unpacked, and I will draw your attention in a few moments to others in these verses that are then unpacked later in the chapters that follow.
Interestingly enough, this theme is not further unpacked. It’s stated, but it is not further developed in the rest of the book. Why? What this does, of course, is several things. It does anticipate certain directions the book takes. First, it reminds us of a great truth taught and presupposed by countless Old Testament texts: all of human responsibility is grounded in the doctrine of creation.
Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone in postmodern guise, and this person responds to you, “Look, I’m happy for you if your Jesus gives you meaning in life and a sense of direction. That’s good. We all have different forms of spirituality, don’t we? With you it’s Jesus, and if he helps you, I’m happy for you. With me it’s the vibrations of crystals. I’m quite a spiritual person, and I don’t like it when you start cramming your Jesus down my throat”? Now what do you say?
It may be it is the part of wisdom to back off a little and give at least a little more space and keep befriending the person, but sooner or later, mustn’t you say something like this? “Look, Charles, the one thing I can’t do is back off, because this God made you. He made you by the Word, who came into history as Jesus, and therefore, you owe him. The fact that you don’t see that constitutes the most abysmal danger. I would be less than a friend if I did not warn you of that. You owe him. You are not independent.”
In Scripture again and again, human responsibility, human accountability is grounded in the doctrine of creation. My mandate this week in the morning biblical expositions is to lay out some of the turning points of confessional Christianity. Yesterday, I began with Genesis 3, and two or three of you have rightly asked me why I didn’t begin with Genesis 1. Wow! It’s because I had to make some choices.
You will also observe I’ve said nothing about the Abrahamic covenant. I’ve said nothing about Sinai and the Law yet. I have said nothing about the rise of the kingdom. There are great turning points in the Bible that must be understood to make a cohesive pattern, but here I want to take a minute to go back to Genesis 1, as it were, because the very presupposition of Genesis 3 is creation.
The presupposition of human responsibility to God is the fact that God made us. We are not independent in the first place. God is not our peer, a sort of souped-up human being. “He knows a little more, but good grief, he shouldn’t flaunt it.” No, we are made by him and for him, and the first measure of our rebellion is we deny our creaturely status.
John grounds, then, everything he’s going to say about sin and unbelief and rebellion and then ultimately about redemption in this first truth. We are made by this God. Moreover, this is also a setup for a theme that develops a little later in the prologue. Verse 10: “This Word was in the world, and though the world was made through him …” There’s the creation element again. “… the world did not know him.”
In other words, our ignorance of God is precisely the more culpable. It is precisely the more heinous. It is precisely the uglier. It is precisely the more odious because we are so blind we do not recognize our own creaturely status, so when the Creator himself manifests himself amongst us, we are so rebelliously and morally blind we do not recognize him.
That is a damning indictment. Moreover, this theme also sets up for the way the book ends. The One who is one with God, God’s own agent in creation, is the very One who as the God-man hangs on a cross and dies an ignominious death of shame and pain at the end of the book. The Word creates us.
2. The Word gives us light and life.
Verses 4 to 9. Begin with verses 4 and 5. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” Some books are really designed to be read only once. Some books are reference books, and you go and dip into them again and again.
Great literature is the sort of thing you read once, maybe to follow the plotline if it’s some sort of novel, and then after you’ve read the plotline, you go back and you hear the precise intonations and overtones and flavor of a particular place in history. You watch the plot development, and you appreciate and admire the characterization. There’s not a word misplaced. There is an accuracy and a penetration of thought.
Perhaps there are even some passages in the book you want to memorize, and so you go back and read it again and tuck something away in your mind. Nowadays, we don’t bother memorizing things; we merely tuck them into a file in the computer. It’s faster. Those books are designed to be read again and again.
Even in a well-conceived piece of fiction, after you’ve read the book through quickly in order to follow the story, the story itself is dragging you on, then when you go back and reread it, you discover all kinds of clever things the author has dropped into the book you didn’t see the first time but yet you now see with new depth and penetration, precisely because now you do know where the book is coming out at the end. On the other hand, there are some books that are just lighthearted, escapist fiction that fills a few hours before you do the next thing.
The question is … What kind of book did John write? Did he write this as a throwaway tract to be read once, or did he layer the book so you are almost invited to read something one way when you first read it, but after you’ve read it two or three or four times, then you’re invited to read it another way?
There are scores of passages in John where you can show that’s what he’s doing, and the first is right here. Supposing you have not read this book before, all you have read of this book … You may know the Old Testament reasonably well, and you may have met some Christians. You may have some superficial knowledge of things.
Now someone gives you this book in the first century, and you read slowly, the way you do in the first century, not with our skim reading today, but slowly, or you might actually hear it being read slowly, and all you know of the book so far is the first three verses. “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 by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
That’s all you’ve read so far, and then you read, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not …” Tricky word there, ou katelaben autos in Greek. That is to say, shall we translate this, “has not overcome it,” “has not overpowered it,” or “has not understood it”?
If all you’ve read of the book so far is the first three verses, you are thinking in the realm of creation and the like, are you not? So when you read, “In him was life,” undoubtedly you’re thinking of the life of creation, and darkness … Well, you know the Old Testament, “In the beginning God the heaven and the world,” and the first thing God creates is light, and the light overcame the darkness.
There was no light before God created light. There was only darkness. So also here: “In him was light, and the light was the light of men. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness could not stop it from happening. The darkness could not overpower it.” Isn’t that the way you would read it? Then you read through the book a few more times. Now you discover when John uses the word life he’s regularly talking about eternal life.
When he’s talking about light, he does not mean the light of creation; he’s talking about light in a revelatory and moral scheme of things. Thus, for example, John 3:19. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Then in John 8, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” Read through this sort of thing a few times, and now you come back to this text. Now how will you read it?
“In him was life, eternal life, the life that prepares men and women for all eternity. That life was the light of men, that which orientates them the knowledge of God, which is moral and deep and God-centered. That light shines in the darkness, not the darkness of nothingness before creation, but the darkness of unbelief and moral rebellion, the darkness of our miscomprehension, the darkness of our self-authenticated independence. The darkness has not understood it.”
The word in the Greek means something like to seize upon. It can be seize upon in a physical sense of overpowering, or it can be seize upon in a kind of mental sense of grasping and understanding. The closest English verb to cover this realm is perhaps the verb to master. You can master an opponent in wrestling.
You can overpower him. You can overcome him, but you can also master Coptic Sahidic or microbiology or nuclear physics. In that sense you learn it; you understand it. If you read the text the first way, you want overpower here. If you read it the second way, you want understand. The question is … Which way are we supposed to read the text? What does John mean?
The answer is yes. He wants us to read it both ways because one of his points is precisely God’s very agent in creation itself is God’s very redemptor. The very agent of God in creation is also the One who brings in the new creation, who brings us life, and the very light of God in creation is in anticipation of the light of God in redemption and morality and truth and openness before God’s gracious self-disclosure.
Both interpretations are true, and John means them both. One is constrained by the immediately preceding context. The other is constrained by the development of the entire book. John wants you to read it both ways. Keep reading John. That’s why somebody has said John’s gospel is like a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim. It is simultaneously one of the simplest of the Gospels and one of the most profound.
It is at this point John the writer introduces John the Baptist. He introduces, in other words, the theme of witness. “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light.” In other words, John the writer has not introduced a new theme. He’s still talking about the light.
Now it’s not the light at creation; it’s the light that has come into the world to which someone has borne witness. Already, in other words, you are beginning the shift toward the theme of light in the rest of the book. “The light shines in the darkness; the darkness has not understood it, has not comprehended it. There came a man; his name was John, and he came as a witness to testify concerning that light so through him all men might believe.”
He wasn’t the Light himself. He came to bear witness to the Light. No, the true Light was not only there at creation; the true Light, verse 9, that gives light to every man was coming into the world. Here you have the anticipation of the incarnation made clear in verse 14. It is worth pausing for a moment here to think through what this means.
Christianity is a profoundly historical religion. If you could somehow prove Gautama the Buddha never lived … I don’t know how you could do that, but supposing you could. If you could somehow prove Gautama the Buddha never lived, you would not destroy Buddhism, because Buddhism is a worldview which stands or falls by its internal self-consistency. It does not in any necessary way depend on the existence of Gautama himself.
Supposing you turned to Hinduism and somehow you could prove Krishna never lived … In Hindu thought there is one great truth which manifests itself in countless millions of deities. If somehow you could prove Krishna never lived … I don’t know how you could do that, but supposing you could, you would not destroy Krishna. You can always go to a Shiva temple down the street. There are millions more. There is no historical contingency in Hinduism, historical claims, no historical contingency without which Hinduism falls.
Come to Islam. Supposing you are entering into intelligent, courteous conversation with a local imam and you ask this question, “Do you think God could have given his revelation to someone other than Muhammad?” what would he say? He might misunderstand your question and initially be a little bit upset.
“No, we believe he has given the final revelation to Muhammad. He gave other revelations in preparation for this to Abraham or to Moses or to Jesus, but the final revelation he did give to Muhammad.” You would reply, “That’s not the question I’m asking. I’m not denying that for the moment nor affirming it as a Christian. I’m merely saying could you conceive of the possibility Allah might have given, had he chosen to do so, his revelation to someone other than Muhammad?”
The imam will reply, “Of course. God is sovereign. He will do what he wishes. The revelation is not Muhammad. He’s the one who bears the revelation. He’s the one who conveys the revelation. We believe God has given it to him. We are certain of this, but if God, sovereign as he is, if Allah, blessed be he, chose to give it to somebody else, then, of course, it could’ve gone to somebody else.”
It is not even coherent in Christianity to ask the question, “Could God have given his revelation to someone other than Jesus?” because Jesus is the revelation. He does not merely convey it. The Light enters into the dark world and becomes a human being. This is preparation for the great doctrine of incarnation about to be articulated. This revelation did not come in some way to every human being or every race at every time.
It came through a first-century Jew, a particular man who could be seen and touched and handled and to whom witness could be borne, which is one of the reasons why in the New Testament one of the most crucial truths for getting at the essential content of the gospel is the theme of witness. I don’t know how, but somehow if you could prove Jesus never lived, you have utterly destroyed Christianity.
Paul insists if you could prove Jesus did not rise from the dead you have utterly destroyed Christianity. First-century Christians had no place for our doublethink in which we can say, “Well, it’s not whether or not the tomb was empty that is important but whether or not you believe it was empty. It’s not whether or not he rose from the dead but whether he has risen from the dead in your heart that is important.”
No, a thousand times, no. In the New Testament everything turns on the sheer facticity of things that take place in contingent history to which witness can be borne. If the witnesses are lying, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, if this thing did not happen, then far from commending such faith as in some sense more spiritual or in some sense superior, Paul condemns it as essentially false.
He says, “We are of all men most to be pitied, for we believe something that isn’t true, and in that case we’re still lost in our sins.” Paul has no place whatsoever for a faith that is not grounded in truth. In the contemporary world the word faith means several different things, but most commonly it means something like subjective religious preference, “You have your faith. I have my faith,” abstracted from questions of truth.
In the New Testament the word faith has several meanings. Never does it mean that, not once. Faith’s validity in the New Testament always turns on the objective truthfulness of that which is believed. Always. Here then you have powerfully set forth for us right at the beginning the Word gives us light and life and enters as light and life in the stream of history to which historical witness can be borne.
3. The Word confronts us and divides us.
Verses 10 to 13. Here we return to the large theme of human lostness I introduced yesterday from Genesis 3. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” In other words, the heart of human guilt is first and foremost bound up with ignorance of God. It is bound up, in other words, with the de-godding of God. It is bound up with idolatry.
It is not first and foremost bound up with rape or racism or lying or cheating or perversion of power or the like, all of which things are ugly and indefensible, but it is first and foremost bound up with not knowing God when we jolly well should. It’s bound up with the de-Godding of God. It’s bound up with idolatry. John emphasizes this sheer ugliness by reminding us we were made by him, and when he came into the world, instead of intuitively knowing him as we should have, as we would have had we been sinless, we did not know him.
“He came to that which was his own.” The idiom suggests to his own home, his own family, his own people, but his own people did not receive him. This is not because the Jews were worst but because the Jews were typical. We’re told in the preceding verse the whole world didn’t recognize him and his own covenant people didn’t recognize him.
Is there then no hope, no exception? This is part of a large theme you find again and again in the Old Testament. Is it not God berating people for not knowing him? Hence, Isaiah 65 finds God saying, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imagination—a people who continually provoke me to my face.”
Is there no hope? Yes, there is, verses 12 and 13, but not because there is an intrinsic difference in the human race. Some are good, and some are bad. The whole world does not know him. Then, of course, some do receive him. Some believe in his name, and to these he gives the right to become children of God, an expression that is not transparent, so John unpacks it a little bit.
He says, “These are not children in a merely human sense of natural descent nor human decision or a husband’s will in an age when most sexual encounters began with initiative on the male part. No, these have been born of God.” Now, of course, John is preparing the way for the exposition in John 3 on the new birth. I wish I could run down this track and expound that at length, but I will set this aside. The Word confronts us and divides us.
4. The Word incarnates God for us. ‘
The word incarnate is simply enfleshing. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.” If I were to say to you, “For God so loved the world that he …” what would you say? You know what the passage is, don’t you? You could tell me, I’m sure, the chapter and the verse.
If I were to say, “He was wounded for our transgressions … he was bruised for our iniquities.” Of course, I’m using English. You might have said something in French or in Bulgarian or whatever. If I had said to you, “Car Dieu a tant aimÈ le monde qu’il a donnÈ son Fils unique, afin que …” and then those who are French would know what the next bit is. In that case it was from the Louis Segond version. Somebody else might be using something else, but you would know, wouldn’t you?
It is enough to make some allusions to pick up a whole passage in context. In these next verses, 14 to 18, the writer makes multiple allusions to one Old Testament passage. If you see those connections, then the verses before us become doubly rich. That passage is Exodus 32, 33, and 34. Be of good cheer, I’m not going to expound all three chapters, but let me draw your attention to at least a couple of significant points.
In Exodus 32, 33, and 34, Moses comes down from the mountaintop with the tablets of the Law. He finds an orgy of idolatry at the bottom, and Aaron is implicated in this horrible mess. Moses smashes the tablets of the Law, and God says, in effect, “Get out of the way. I am provoked by their idolatry. They should be destroyed.” Moses intercedes, and there is one of the most plaintive passages and exchanges in all of Holy Writ. That’s chapter 32.
In chapter 33, Moses now feels extraordinarily abandoned. The people have disappointed him. The tablets of the Law have been smashed, and his own spokesman, his brother Aaron, has now defected and is with the idolaters. Moses is alone. One of the conditions on which he had taken on this assignment was precisely that Aaron would be his spokesperson. Now Aaron is gone.
This is before the tabernacle has been built. After all, the instructions for the tabernacle came with the revelation. The tabernacle has not been built, but there was already a tent of meeting, chapter 33, verse 7. “And Moses used to take this tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting,’ ” and he goes and seeks the face of God.
In verse 12 of chapter 33, Moses says to the Lord, “You’ve been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.” Now that Aaron is gone, who will go with him? “You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you and remember to find favor with you. Remember this nation is your people.” “It’s not my people. I can’t get them out of this mess. It’s your people. What will you do?”
The Lord replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” God has already said in the wake of this sin when the tabernacle is built he will no longer build it in the midst of the tribes, three on the north, three on the south, three on the east, and three on the west, lest his wrath should explode against such terrible sin. Now he is saying, “My presence will go with you.” Moses picks up on this.
“If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” That question must be pressed today. What will distinguish the church in Europe from everybody else in Europe, if it is not the presence of the living God?
God replies, “I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you.” From that point there is no further talk of building the tabernacle away from the people. When it is built, it is built in a gracious act of condescending mercy amongst the tribes. Moses says, “Now show me your glory.”
It is as if Moses understands the only thing that will anchor him in this desperate hour is a renewed vision of God that will carry him in perfect confidence. “Show me your glory.” God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” God will not relinquish his sovereignty. “ ‘But,’ he says, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’ ” Mark the passage well. John picks it up.
Then you recall what happens in chapter 34. Moses is hidden in the cleft of a rock, and the Lord goes by and intones. As he intones, Moses is hidden. After the Lord has gone by, Moses is permitted to peep out and see the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of the Lord. As the Lord goes by, he intones, chapter 34, verse 5, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness …”
That pair of words is very common in the Hebrew Bible, checed ‘emeth, love and faithfulness. Checed is regularly God’s covenantal mercy. His ‘emeth is his reliability. It can be reliability in promise. It can be reliability in word, in which case it means truth. “… abounding in love and faithfulness …” It can equally be rendered abounding in grace and truth.
Now come back to John 1. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling …” He tabernacled, he tented, amongst us. Do you see what the claim is? Do you think God manifested himself in times past in the tabernacle? Let me tell you where the true tabernacle is. The true meeting place between God and his people is in Jesus, the true tabernacle.”
This prepares the way for the teaching in John 2 about Jesus as the temple of God. Everything now points forward to the rest of the book. “We have seen his glory.” Glory is a common Old Testament theme, but glory in connection with everything else that is found in these verses points you back to the glory Moses saw. Moses is going to be referred to in a few moments. How is the glory theme developed in John’s gospel?
When Jesus performs the first miracle in Cana of Galilee in John 2:11, we hear the disciples saw his glory, but eventually the glory theme transcends itself. You get to John, chapter 12. Where is the glory revealed? In John’s gospel Jesus is glorified and manifests his glory in the cross and resurrection and ascension.
“Show me your glory.” “I will make all my goodness pass in front of you.” John says, in effect, “Do you want to see the glory of God? Do you want to see the goodness of God? Let me introduce you to Jesus, the goodness and glory of God par excellence, manifest supremely in the One who bore our sins in his body on the tree, the Lamb of God, and then who returned to the glory he had with the Father before the world began, full of grace and truth.” It’s the same expression, grace and truth par excellence.
Again, this is cast in the context of witness. John testifies concerning him. Here is incarnation. The expression is exquisite, and it must be understood very carefully. After all, not every doctrine about who Christ is is to be accepted. In the early church there was a wide variety of errors that came down to us.
On the one hand, some saw this godlike being was a lesser god. We call that heresy Arianism. It is still amongst us in Jehovah’s Witnesses. Others adopted as an Apollinarianism a kind of empty shell Christology in which God enters a human being, but he does not in any sense become a human being. Others saw there was just one nature in this human being. There was sort of a medical transformation. God somehow touched the fetus in Mary’s womb, and it was transformed into a kind of God-person. That was Eutychianism.
This text will not allow those sorts of misinterpretations. “The Word became flesh.” It became what it was not, but the rest of the book insists at the same time the One who was with God, the Word, and the One who was God, the Word, never ceased to be God. Hence, this Jesus in this gospel keeps saying things like, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” or you get to the climactic confession of Thomas after the empty grave, “My Lord and my God!”
Do you know how your friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses understand that passage today, who are the counterparts, of course, of ancient Arians? Do you know how they understand that? They say Jesus finally shows himself to Thomas, Thomas sees the wounds, and he says, “My Lord! My God!” In other words, the first thing dear ol’ Thomas does when he sees the resurrected Christ is blaspheme.
Moreover, if that were what he was saying, the little word and is incomprehensible. You could just about imagine, if you have a very good imagination, somebody saying, “My Lord! My God!” Not a first-century Jew, but maybe somebody today who likes blaspheming more than most first-century Jews did. But “My Lord and my God,” is a confession. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled for a while among us.” I close.
5. The Word supremely manifests God to us.
The point is made in verse 18, drawn from Exodus 33. “No one has ever seen God.” No. “But the one who is himself God who is at the Father’s side has made him known.” Verse 16 is translated in many different ways. Let me translate it for you very literally and show you its import.
“From his fullness we have all received grace instead of [replacing] grace.” The explanation is the next verse. “For …” There’s that explanatory for. “For the law was given through Moses.” That’s back to Exodus 32, 33, and 34. “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Do you see what is being said? When God gave the Law, it was a great and glorious grace. It was a wonderful gift from God.
Now from the fullness of this Word made flesh, we have received a grace outstripping a grace, a grace replacing a grace, a grace instead of a grace. “For the law was given through Moses, full of grace and truth.” That’s true. The Law was given through Moses, but Christ came to us full of grace and truth, grace and truth par excellence. So if you want to see God disclosing himself in glory, do not peek out of Moses’ cave and catch the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God. Look at Jesus.
The first time I began to understand this passage, I was an undergraduate student studying chemistry at McGill University, a long time ago now. Down the hall from me was a middle-aged man. I was still a teenager. He was a middle-aged Pakistani, a Muslim, a devout man. He had left his wife and two children behind in order to come to McGill in order to do a PhD in Islamic studies. McGill has one of the finest Islamic institutes in the world.
I befriended him. He befriended me. He was trying to convert me; I was trying to convert him, except he knew a lot more than I did. I remember taking him to a Christian church, the first time he had ever been in a Christian church. As we walked down the hill from the residence to catch a bus to go around the mountain to the church, he said to me, “Don, you study mathematics?” “Yes.” My minor was in mathematics. “If you have one cup and you take another cup, how many cups do you have?” I was doing mathematics, so I said, “Two.”
“If you have two cups and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?”
“Three.”
“If you have three cups and you take away one cup, how many cups do you have?”
“Two.” I could tell where he was going.
“Do you believe the Father is God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe Jesus is God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe the Spirit is God?”
“Yes.”
“So if you have one God plus one God plus one God, how many Gods do you have?”
I was studying chemistry, for goodness’ sake. How am I supposed to handle this? My answer wasn’t very good. I said, “Look, if you’re going to talk in mathematical terms, let me at least choose the branch of mathematics. Infinity plus infinity plus infinity equals … what?”
For the non-mathematicians among you, it means infinity. Three times infinity minus infinity equals zero. In fact, nowadays there are some branches of infinity mathematics where that isn’t true either, but we’ll let that one pass. He didn’t know that. So he laughed. This was the level of our theological discussion. It wasn’t very profound.
Somewhere about November I discovered he didn’t have a Bible. He had never had a Christian Bible. I was a bit thick, so I gave him one. He said, “Where do I start reading?” I didn’t know any better. I said, “Well, maybe John’s gospel.” I showed him where it was, he started reading John’s gospel, but he didn’t read the way Westerners read. “How many pages can I clear tonight?” Rather, he had an Eastern tradition of reading where you stop and you think about it and you turn it over in your head and you go back and you memorize it and read it again and so on.
At Christmas I invited him home. He had no place to go, and he came home with me. That Christmas my father spent most of the time in the hospital with heart problems. We left poor Mohammed Yusuf Guraya largely alone as we were dealing with my father in the hospital. My parents at that time lived near Ottawa.
Toward the end of the break, my father was clearly going to make it, and I asked my mother, “Could I have the car and take Guraya around?” because, after all, he had seen very little. He was basically parked at home while we were at the hospital. So I took him here and there and brought him to the Parliament buildings in Canada.
I don’t know if you have seen them. They’re a pseudo-gothic structure, really quite beautiful on the Ottawa River. In those days there was much less security. We went to the rotunda at the back where there’s a lovely library and the hall with a sort of rogues’ gallery of Canada’s prime ministers, the Senate chamber, and the House of Commons. (Yes, they do have that mixed terminology.)
Eventually, we came back to the rotunda, this little party of 30 with a tour guide. There are some huge pillars, and at the top of each pillar there is a fluted arch with a figure in it. Our guide said, “This is Aristotle, for government must be based on knowledge. This is Socrates, for government must be based on wisdom. This is Moses, for government must be based on law.” He went all the way around.
At the end of the tour, “Any questions?” Guraya pipes up. “Where is Jesus Christ?” I didn’t know where this one was coming from. The guide didn’t know where this one was coming from, and so the guide did what guides do. “I beg your pardon?” So Guraya did what foreigners do in that case. They think they haven’t been understood because of their accent, so he spoke more slowly and more loudly. “Where is Jesus Christ?!”
Now we had three groups of tourists listening to this Islamic Pakistani ask where Jesus is in the House of the Canadian Parliament. The guide sort of stumbled, and he said, “Why should he be here?” Mohammed looked shocked, and he said, “I read in the Christian Bible the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Where is Jesus Christ?” I thought, “Preach it, brother.”
Do you see? Devout Muslims do not need to be reminded of God’s sovereignty or of God’s rights or of God’s law or of God’s demands, but already the person of Jesus had captured his heart, for he came full of grace and truth, one with God and creation but dying in our place as the Lamb of God at the end of the book.
Before there was a universe,
Before a star or planet,
When time had still not yet begun—
I scarcely understand it—
Th’eternal Word was with his God,
God’s very Self-Expression;
Th’eternal Word was God himself—
And God had planned redemption.
The Word became our flesh and blood—
The stuff of his creation—
The Word was God, the Word was flesh,
Astounding incarnation!
But when he came to visit us,
We did not recognize him.
Although we owed him everything
We haughtily despised him.
In days gone by God showed himself
In grace and truth to Moses;
But in the Word of God made flesh
Their climax he discloses.
For grace and truth in fullness came
And showed the Father’s glory
When Jesus donned our flesh and died:
This is the gospel story.
All who delighted in his name,
All those who did receive him,
All who by grace were born of God,
All who in truth believed him—
To them he gave a stunning right:
Becoming God’s dear children!
Here will I stay in grateful trust;
Here will I fix my vision.
Another poet writes …
Meekness and majesty, manhood and deity,
In perfect harmony the Man who is God.
Bow down and worship for this is your God.
