Real Life in the Divine Word: Intro to John’s Gospel
John 1:1-13,
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
The first Sunday of a new year is a good time for a new series — and to give spiritual focus to a new year. New years are like new beginnings. The old is gone. It’s over. You can’t change it. Now the new has come. All of 2025 lies ahead. What might this new year bring? And who might we be together as a church in 2025?
I’m not sure we could find a better new-year’s passage than these opening verses of John, because what they mainly do is celebrate Jesus. That’s how we will start 2025 as a church: making much of Jesus, considering him, enjoying him, marveling at him — which is how John opens his Gospel.
Three Excellencies of Jesus
The apostle John, who will five times call himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (13:23; 19:26; 20:2, 7, 20), knew Jesus as closely as anyone during his earthly life. And as his dearest friend and companion, he begins his Gospel in awe, in a spirit of worship. Perhaps you felt the dramatic flair as you heard these verses read.
John begins like a show that opens with fog on the stage. He talks about a particular person, but uses images, and doesn’t reveal this person’s name until verse 17. This person is the Word, he says, capital W. The Word of God who is with God and is God.
And he is the true Light. Other lights are secondary at best, and he eclipses them when he shines in his full strength.
And this world was made through him, John says, and he came into the world he made, and the world did not know him.
Who is this person? We’ll see next week in verse 14 that he became flesh, human, and dwelled among us. Then finally comes verse 17: the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through . . . Jesus Christ.
So, John begins in this dramatic, worshipful spirit with elevated and “rhythmical prose.” These opening verses are not poetry, but they are stylized, carefully chosen words with short, punchy sentences and striking repetition of key words:
Verses 1–3: beginning, word, word, God, God, word, beginning, God, made, made, made.
Verses 4–5: life, life, light, light, darkness, darkness.
Verses 7–8: witness, witness, light, light, witness, light.
There is fog and rays of light as John introduces and anticipates the key themes that are to come. And as John worships in these opening verses, he celebrates three particular excellencies of Jesus Christ.
So, here’s our plan: let’s celebrate with John these three excellencies of Jesus as we begin 2025.
1. Jesus Is God’s Word to the World (verses 1–3)
That is, he is the divine Word. This is the lead image in these verses; John starts with Word and comes back to Word in verse 14. Until he names him as Jesus Christ in verse 17, he is the Word.
Why Word? John could have started, with his dramatic flair, in so many ways. Why start with Word? Why not Son, S-O-N? Why not sun, S-U-N? Why not Christ or King or Lord?
John writes in Greek. And the word for word in Greek (logos) has a certain intrigue. It often was invested with philosophical significance. Logos was provocative, yet at the same time, its connotations were not too fixed and singular. It was flexible enough for Christian use.
But more than that was the Hebrew background. The Old Testament is chalk full of the divine Word: God’s word to his prophets, and God’s speaking through them to his people. And John starts with “In the beginning,” which brings to mind Genesis 1, where the Bible begins with “In the beginning...”
And you know what (or who) is the sleeper in Genesis 1? The Word of God. Eleven times Genesis 1 says, “God said”; four more times, “God called”; two more times, “God blessed.” If you ask, How did God create the world? What did he do to create? How did he act in Genesis 1? The clear answer is he spoke. He said. He called. He blessed. He made the world through his Word (as Hebrews 11:3 says, “the universe was created by the word of God”).
But more than even that, as we’ll see in this Gospel, Word anticipates the fullness of Christ, in his coming, as God’s final, decisive Word. Jesus is not just a revelation of God, and even a very special revelation of God. He is the climactic and decisive revelation of God to humanity.
As verse 18 will say, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”
And Jesus will say to Philip in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is God’s Word to humanity.
All God’s lowercase words are preparing the way and pointing to his uppercase Word, Jesus. God’s singular word, for all time, for all humanity, is Jesus.
So, John begins his Gospel in verses 1–3:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Here John bundles together two essential truths about this divine Word. One, the speaking, self-reveling, self-disclosing of God almighty — is God himself: “the Word was God.” And this divine Word is not just God’s own self, but two, he is God’s eternal fellow. He was “with God” — which is not an adversarial with but a with of peace, love, mutual joy, shared life. It’s a with of intimacy, companionship, personal relationship — a with-ness of persons before creation.
The divine Word is God and with God. One divine essence, as the church would learn to say, and (here) two divine persons, as we’ll soon see in this Gospel — Father and Son. (And soon enough a third divine Person will emerge!)
What do we mean, then, when we celebrate Jesus as the Word of God? As God, he is fully divine, fully God, God himself. And as God’s Word, he reveals God, perfectly. He proceeds from God to reveal God. He makes God known to us. Jesus shows us God and tells us about God. He is God himself and the climactic and final place that we look to, and listen to, that we might know God. He is the divine Word who became human: Jesus Christ.
Tangible Word in 2025
So, how might we make it tangible here at the outset of a new year? What difference might it make in 2025 that Jesus is the divine Word, God’s word to us?
Well, for one, know this about yourself, and learn to live in light of it: you were made to receive a Word from God. Or, say it this way, God made you to hear his revelation and respond to him.
One of the strangest things about you, next to your nose, is those holes in the side of your heads. Have you ever thought about that? You have holes, God-designed holes, on either side of your head. And you know what those holes are made for? Words. Not just sounds and noises. Mainly words. The height of human hearing is receiving words.
God made us to hear the words of our fellow humans, and he made us to hear him through his word, whether read or heard from someone reading aloud or heard through preaching. God made our souls, our inner person, to feed and live by hearing words through our ears. Like Jesus said, battling Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, and quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Try this for 2025: What if you attempted to have God’s Voice, through his Word, be the first voice you heard in the morning? Not the word of texts and emails and notifications. Not the anxious voice of national news. Not the endless scores and numbers of ESPN and fantasy football. Not the broken English your aunt posts to Facebook, or the clips from your niece on TikTok.
What if day after day, the first voice you heard was God’s through his Word, Jesus, through his word, the Bible? How might your soul live, really live, if you started the day hearing God himself, feeding on God himself, in Jesus, rather than on the gravel of news and other noise?
2. Jesus Is Our True Light (verses 5–9)
Divine Word is the main term, but true light is the dominant image (light appears seven times in verses 4–10).
In the rest of the Gospel, we’ll see light is about salvation from our sin and the death sin deserves. But here, right after verses 1–3, light is first about creation. The Word shines in his world and makes sense of the world like no other light. Verses 4–9:
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
Three quick clarifications. First, look at the word “overcome” in verse 5. Other translations have “comprehend.” A good word that’s a close equivalent in English is “grasp” (another is the verb “master”). You can grasp someone physically and overcome them; you can also grasp something mentally and understand it. I think that’s what John means here: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” This anticipates the rejection theme we’ll see again in a few moments, and throughout this Gospel.
Second, see the word “true” in verse 9. We will see this over and over. When John says “true,” he doesn’t just distinguish true from false, but the real and genuine from rival claims — true bread, true worshipers, true drink, true vine. Sometimes, he means ultimate. The light that came before was true (in nature and in the Old Testament), but now the true light has come, the ultimate light. It’s a contrast with what came earlier and anticipated what was to come, and has now come, in Jesus.
Creation itself and all the more the Old Testament and Israel and its temple and regulations gave light. But now the true light has come, the definitive light, the climactic light, the ultimate light.
Which leads, third, to that phrase “gives light to everyone.” What does John mean that Jesus, “the true light . . . gives light to everyone”? Or better, how does he shine on all humans?
His shining on all humans does not mean he saves them all, or even that all humans hear the name and full story of Jesus. They will not hear his name and the truth about him if Christians don’t send and go and tell. What “shine on all humans” does mean is that Jesus divides humanity. His light divides the world. We’ll see this in verses 10–13. Before the light comes, all are in the darkness of sin and death:
John 3:19,
“…this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
John 12:46,
“I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”
Because of sin, our world is in darkness. The divine light shines enough to condemn through creation. And the divine light shines through the law and prophets and God’s first-covenant people. Then in Jesus comes the true light, and for two thousand years, he has been the decisive issue in the world. What you do with Jesus, how you respond when the true light shines on you, either leads to life, or keeps you in the grip of death.
Which brings to mind a famous statement by C.S. Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
Jesus, the true light, is the one person who makes sense of the world. Or, Christianity is the faith that makes the most sense of the world in which we live. Its account of the world’s goodness in the doctrine of creation. Its account of the world’s pervasive darkness in the doctrine of sin. And its account of hope and redemption in the coming of the Divine Word, the true light, to secure for us real life. Which leads to the third image, and the one that meets us most deeply where we are as humans, as we’ll see in verse 12.
3. Jesus Gives Us Real Life (verse 4)
The Gospel of John has much to say about life: God’s life, human life, spiritual life, abundant life, and the most frequent mention, eternal life. For now, we’ll just touch on this theme, and then we’ll enjoy it scene by scene in the coming months.
Just as the backdrop or contrast for light is darkness, so the contrast for life is death, or perishing (10:28), wrath (3:36), and judgment (5:29). Life begins with God. Jesus, like his Father, has life in himself (5:26). He creates and gives life, and he is able to give spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead because of sin. Jesus is “the bread of life” (6:48), “the resurrection and the life” (11:25), “the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6).
In verse 4, Jesus, as God, is the source of all created life: “In him was life.” As God, he breathes life into all who live. But they are born into sin, and walk in darkness, under divine wrath and the just sentence of death, destined to perish forever. But Jesus lays down his own life to give life to his people (John 10:11, 15, 17; 15:13).
This life is eternal, indestructible life, and it begins now, in the heart, in this earthly life (4:14 and 6:27, 33, 35; 6:63; 8:12; 10:10). We drink and eat now, by faith, and have divine life already in our souls by the Holy Spirit. And this spiritual life now leads to eternal life, which is the most important meaning of life. (Life eternal is already in those who believe: 5:24, 39-40; 6:53-54)
And what is the essence of this eternal life? John 17:3: “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Death and Life in Verses 10–13
How, then, does the life that is in Jesus relate to verses 10–13? Remember we said that Jesus, the true light, divides humanity. All are born into darkness. The light shines, and some come to the light; others turn from the light. Verses 10–11:
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him [the rejection theme we saw in verse 5]. 11 He came to his own [that is, his own land or home], and his own people did not receive him.
The point here is life. Those who reject him, who is the life, do not have life — life in their souls now, and eternal life in the age to come.
But then, verse 12:
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right [“authority”] to become children of God, 13 who were born [birth! That’s life!], not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
There are two key elements here in having this life that is in Jesus. First is the legal, the “right.”
What does John mean by “the right” to be children of God? This is right, not might. It’s not power; it’s authority. Official, formal, objective arrangements have been made such that there is a new covenant people, new covenant children, who are not based on ethnicity but faith. Not on first birth, but on new birth.
When the Divine Word himself came, when the true light arrived, he brought with him a new formal arrangement for the people of God. Their right to be God’s children, heirs of all his promises, and recipients of all privileges comes not through natural, human birth. John says: “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man.” How, then, does it come?
That’s the second element: the subjective. The heart. The inner person. You are not born into his new-covenant people, but born again into his people. We call this “new birth.” What is it?
God himself is the source of this new life in the soul. It is birth “from above,” birth by his choice, spiritual birth in his timing. Our action and choice is not determinative but God’s. But we experience it.
The cry of this new life, then, is believing in Jesus — not just faith (noun) but believing (verb). It’s active, not static. John emphasizes this in his Gospel by never using the noun for “faith” (pistis), while using the verb “believe” (pisteuō) 98 times.
Which leads us to John’s stated purpose for why he wrote this Gospel, 20:31:
“…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
That would be worth memorizing and praying regularly for yourself and others in 2025: John 20:31: Father, help me to believe and keep believing that Jesus is the Christ [long-promised human hero-king], the Son of God [both rightful king of Israel and eternal second person of the Godhead], and that by believing I may have life in his name.”
If you’re with us this morning, and you do not yet believe, this Gospel was written that you might (for the first time) believe and experience real life in your soul, and one day, eternal life.
And if you believe in Jesus already, as perhaps most of us do in this room, this Gospel was written that you might keep believing, and grow stronger in believing, and deepen and enrich your experience even now of the real life in Jesus.
The essence of this new life is not the external, outward circumstances of our lives that we’re so prone to focus on. The essence is in us, the inner person, the heart, the desires.
And so we end with the word “receive” in verse 12: “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Receive Jesus with Joy
What does it mean to “receive” Jesus? To receive him is to believe in him, but in what way? How do you receive him?
You can receive something you don’t like. You can receive a blow to the face. You can receive a pink slip. You can receive a traffic ticket. That’s not the kind of receiving we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about receiving as a burden, or receiving with apathy. Jesus means to be received as a treasure.
What’s so amazing about this new birth, from God, is that he gives us a new heart. He puts in us new desires, so that when the divine Word comes to our ears, when the true light comes to our eyes, God’s own life in us doesn’t recoil from Jesus, or ignore Jesus, but receives him with joy. I believe in him. I enjoy him. I prize him. I treasure him.
This heart is the heart of my prayer for us as a church in 2025: that we would receive him with increasing delight. Week after week, in the Gospel of John, glad reception. Give me more of Jesus. No apathy. No boredom. No burden. But eagerness. Joy.
Our question for a new year is this: Where are you going for life? Where are you going for joy? Where are you trying to satisfy the deepest longings of your soul?
Are you trying to drink it? Eat it? Watch it? Play it? Perform it? Accomplish it? Scroll it?
I sat down next to a guy on a plane a couple months ago, just scrolling vigorously. Like he wanted life. He wanted joy. Like his soul was thirsty and he was trying to find something to satisfy. And he kept scrolling and scrolling, and I thought there’s no way he can do this for more than a few minutes. And he scrolled like that, seeming so thirsty, for the whole flight from Atlanta to Springfield, Missouri.
Are you like that, in front of a screen, at your job, in your eating and drinking, in your relationships, in your exercise, your automobile, your home decor — just vigorously clawing to find satisfaction there?
What would it mean for you to “have life” in Jesus in 2025? Really have life? What needs to go? Or diminish? And what do you need to receive with joy more often and more deeply?
Church Alive in ’25
And so we come to the Table to feed on Jesus for spiritual life, and drink in his grace, for life in our souls.
Cities Church, let’s seek to be fully alive in 2025 — alive in Jesus, and alive to Jesus.
If you have new-year’s resolutions, fine and good. Eat better. Exercise. Fine. Good secondary resolutions. But what are they serving? What’s the focus? What if the focus were this: real life in your soul — Holy Spirit given and sustained affections for Jesus?
