In Him was life, and the life was the light of men

 

 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.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.  

 

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.  He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.  That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:  who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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.  John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'"  And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.  For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has seen God at any time.  The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

 

- John 1:1-18 

 

On Saturday, we read  that Jesus and the disciples came to Jericho, and passed through on their way toward Jerusalem.  As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging.  And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"  So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called.  Then they called the blind man, saying to him, "Be of good cheer.  Rise, He is calling you."  And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus.  So Jesus answered and said to him, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  The blind man said to Him, "Rabboni, that I may receive my sight."  Then Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well."  And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.

 

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  Today the lectionary begins John's Gospel.  Right away we understand John's Gospel to be different in some sense from the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  In the Eastern Church, John the Evangelist is also titled John the Theologian, one of only three saints in the history of the Church to be designated by this formal title.   We are to understand John's orientation to Christ as fulfillment of the Old Testament, of Jewish spiritual history.  In the beginning recalls to readers the creation story of Genesis.  But here the focus is on the Creator.  Moreover, Genesis spoke of the first creation, but here in the beginning of this Gospel (today's entire reading is called the Prologue of John's Gospel), it is the new creation in Christ which is to be understood.  Was the Word ("Logos" in Greek):  My study bible comments that the Word is the eternal Son of God.  "Was" indicates existence without reference to a starting point, and it emphasizes the Word's eternal existence without beginning.  Logos can mean "wisdom," "reason," and "action" as well as "word."  All of these are attributes of the Son of God.  The Word Was with God:  My study bible says that "with" shows that the Word (that is, the Son of God) is a distinct Person from the Father and that He is in eternal communion with the Father.  The Word Was God:  The Word -- the Son of God -- is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.  Christ Himself is God with the same divinity as the Father.  My study bible adds that some twist and mistranslate this phrase to read "the Word was a god" in order to propagate a heresy, that the Son of God is a created being; that is, a creature and not fully divine.  Such a translation, it says, is unsupportable, false, dishonest, and deceptive. 

 

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  Here John's Gospel tells us that the Word is the co-Creator with the Father and the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1; Psalms 33:6, 9; Hebrews 1:2) and not simply an instrument or servant used by the Father.  My study bible teaches that will, operation, and power are one in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Therefore, we know that the heavens and earth are the works of the One who made them, while the Son was not made but is eternally begotten of the Father.

 

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.  Only God has life in Himself, my study bible comments.  Therefore, the Word, being God, is the source of life, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  The life was the light of men:  John now introduces humankind as receiver of the divine light.  By participating in the life of Christ the Son, believers may become children of the light (John 12:36; Ephesians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:5).  Moses saw the divine light in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2).  The entire nation of Israel saw it at the Red Sea (Exodus 13:21), Isaiah saw it in his heavenly vision, and three apostles saw it at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-5).   My study bible comments that darkness indicates both spiritual ignorance and satanic opposition to the light.  Those who hate truth, it says, prefer ignorance for themselves and strive to keep others ignorant as well (John 3:19).  The Greek word which is translated as comprehend means both to "understand" and to "overcome."  Therefore, my study bible says, darkness can never overpower the light of Christ, nor can it understand the way of love.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.  He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.  The man sent from God is John the Baptist.  That the Baptist occupies such a prominent place in the Prologue of John's Gospel indicates his significance in the story of Christ, and the spiritual history of the Bible.

That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  My study bible comments that Christ offers light to every person, but the world, and even many of His own, refuse to receive Him.  Therefore they can neither know nor recognize Him. Those who accept Him has His light.  In the Eastern Church, a hymn is sung after receiving communion, declaring, "We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit."

 

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:  who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.  My study bible points out that the Greek word translated as right also means "authority."  (It is a different word than is used in Greek for a right under Constitutional law.)  It is akin to "power."  It indicates a gift from God, and not an inalienable right.  Those who receive Christ become children of God by adoption (Galatians 4:4-7), and by grace inherit all that Christ is by nature.  A note indicates that to believe in His name means to believe and trust in Him who in His humanity took the name Jesus as Word, Son, Messiah, and Savior.    Adoption as a child of God is not a matter of ethnic descent (of blood), as it was in the Old Testament, my study bible explains.  Neither is a believer a child of God by natural birth (the will of the flesh), or by a human being's own decision (the will of man).   Rather, to become a child of God is a spiritual birth -- by grace, through faith, and in the Holy Spirit.  This is accomplished and manifested in the sacrament of Holy Baptism (John 3:5-8; see Titus 3:4-7).  

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.  John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'"   That the Word became flesh is a clarification of the way in which the Son and Word of God came to God's people ("That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him").  It points specifically to Christ's Incarnation.  My study bible tells us that the Word became fully human without ceasing to be fully God.  Christ assumed complete human nature:  body, soul, will, emotion, and even mortality -- all that pertains to humanity with the exception of sin.  As both God and Human in one Person, Christ pours divinity into all of human nature, for anything that was not assumed by Christ would not have been healed (St. Gregory Nazianzinus).  The Word dwelt among us:  In the Old Testament, God's presence dwelt (literally "tabernacled" or "tented" in the Greek) in the ark of the covenant and later in the temple.  Here, my study bible explains, the eternal Word comes to dwell in and among humanity itself.  His glory is a reference both to Christ's divine power shown by His signs and wonders (John 2:11; 11:4, 40), and also to Christ's humble service to humankind, shown most perfectly on the Cross (John 12:23-32; 13:31).  In these ways, Christ reveals that He is the One sent from the Father.  Only begotten of the Father:   My study bible says that the Son has no beginning, but has the Father as His source from eternity.  Christ is called only begotten as there is no other who is born from the Father (The Holy Spirit exists eternally from the Father through another mystery called "procession" -- see John 15:26).  Full of grace and truth:  As used in the text, this phrase is complementary to both "the Word" and "His glory."  Grace is Christ's uncreated energy which is given to us through His love and mercy.  Truth would include His faithfulness to His promises and covenants, and to the reality of His words and gifts.  

And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.  My study bible explains that in saying we have all received of His fullness, the Gospel confirms that God's grace can fill human nature to the extent of actually deifying it.  In Christ, it says, God's children become gods by grace (John 10:34-35), without ceasing to be human.  A traditional analogy given by the patristic writers is one of metal thrust into fire (such as when a metal object is being formed).  The metal takes on the properties of the fire; i.e. heat and light.  But, at the same time, it does not cease to be metal.  So human nature permeated by God takes on properties of the divine nature.  Grace for grace is a Semitic expression which signifies an overabundance of grace.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has seen God at any time.  The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.  To say that no one has seen God at any time is to say that no one can see the nature, or essence, of God.  To see God is to die (Exodus 33:20).  Only One who is also divine can see God (and thereby "know" God as God knows God).  Therefore the Son is the only One who can authoritatively declare God to the world.  This revelation of God's energies can be received by the faithful.  Moses saw the "back" of God (Exodus 33:21-23).  Isaiah saw God's glory (see Isaiah 6:1; John 12:41). 

 

 This Prologue of John's Gospel is so essential to the faith as to have given us a great deal of what the Church confesses in the Nicene Creed.  We can read its roots in this text that is given to us today.  Moreover, this Prologue of John's Gospel gives us the foundation of Christian theology, its verses providing us with literally centuries of thought as the foundation to what we understand of God and God's ways of interacting with the world, and especially of the Incarnation.  And, of course, one feels that it shall continue to do so for centuries to come.  When we begin to think about God, to ponder the full essence of God through the relationship we experience through time by Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, these passages simply serve to deepen both our experience and the mystery that we enter into through faith and through the life of Christ.  All of it complements everything we read in the Synoptic Gospels, and it always remains remarkably consistent with Jesus' acts and life that we read therein.  There is so much here to consider, and its truths are so deep, that I would wager the material involved here is inexhaustible in terms of ideas regarding Christian theology and understanding of the nature of God and of our creation by God.  The whole of life itself -- and, of course, of creation itself -- must be seen as a gift of God in this context.  We cannot simply think of ourselves as existing simply as a cosmic accident, or through some happenstance of biological process, or of having appeared in the universe as a kind of exception to the cosmic order.  In fact, none of these things can explain our existence as it is given to us by this Prologue and fulfilled in the Gospels in the story of Jesus Christ.  Here we are absolutely and positively told that we exist through divine creation, for a purpose, by a God who loves us, and who, for some divine reason known to God our Creator, wants to save us by keeping us in divine relation to God.  This is called grace, and through that grace, God makes it possible not only for us to become more like God, but also to become closer to God in a communion that involves not just us, but really the whole of the creation.  Life only exists in God as Source of life, and from there life is given to us.  In fact, an entire cosmos and all that is in it is "enlivened" and given purpose, meaning, fulfillment, and even adventure, in the sense that we are all headed somewhere and for some purpose, as evidenced especially by the Incarnation of the Son into our world as one of us.  We are not just here fumbling our way through something impossible to understand or to find meaning within.  We are here for a purpose created by God, given life by God who loves and cherishes us, who sent God's Son to live and to die as one of us, and to do so for us, so that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10).  You matter to God as I matter to God, as the grass is clothed more beautifully than Solomon in all of his glory (Luke 17:27-28), as the little sparrows matter to God (Luke 12:6-7) who created all, and for a purpose known to God.  This Prologue of John teaches us about love, as John's Gospel will go on to express more and more fully as we progress through its chapters, because God is love (1 John 4:8), and so sends us the Light so that we might be filled with that light.  All of this is simply done for us, for our world, for all of creation, so that we might find our way into deeper communion and deeper life.  Let us reach toward the light and grasp the grace we are offered.