Word of Salvation – Vol. 19 No.37 – June 1973

 

And The Word Became Flesh

 

Sermon by Rev. R. O. Zorn, B.A., B.D., M.Th. on John 1:14

Scripture Reading: John 1:1-18

Psalter Hymnal (new): 111; 55; 382; 438; 493

 

Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Our text is a part of the Prologue by which John begins his Gospel (and which we read for the Scripture Reading).

No one can read the Prologue without being impressed with the way that John begins his Gospel.

In the very first verse, he takes us back to creation, and even before that when he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (N.A.S.B.)

Then in verses 6 and 7 he tells us of the coming of John the Baptist and his place in history as the herald of the coming Messiah.  For he says, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.”

And then at the end of the Prologue he tells us of Christ’s coming into the world to be the Redeemer of men, and the way of access to God once more.  For in verse 18 he says, “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”

So our text tells us, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Let us then see:…

Firstly, who was this Word?
            Or why John speaks of Him in this particular way.

Secondly, why did He become flesh?
            Or what the purpose was of His becoming human.

And thirdly, what our relationship to the Word must be.
            For John plainly tells us this too.

I.  WHO WAS THE WORD?

When John writes, “And the Word became flesh”, it is obvious that he expects his readers to know what he is talking about.  But is it all that obvious to us?  Some, for example, have thought that John uses this term “Word” in relation to Greek philosophy.  For “logos” in Greek means “word”, and it was a term used by the philosophers to describe the Demi-urge by which God was supposed to have created the world.  For “logos” was a technical term for the Demi-urge, or intermediary between God and the world.

Is this, then, what John is telling us about Christ?  That He is to be understood as the Demi-urge by which God created the world?  It seems rather doubtful, to say the least, for it is not at all certain that the first readers of John’s Gospel understood anything more about Greek philosophy than the average reader of the Bible does today.

Others have thought that John has the Jews in mind when he uses this Greek term “logos” to describe Christ.  For, to the ancient Jew, the law of Moses could be equated with the word of wisdom by which God created the world and by which He sustained His covenant relationship with His people.

For example, does not Proverbs 8:22-23 say of wisdom, “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way; Before His works of old.  From everlasting I was established.  From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.”?

And we have a commentary on this statement in Proverbs in the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, a book that was written about 150 B.C. by a Jew, Joshua the son of Sirach.  Joshua’s book is a sort of expanded form of the book of Proverbs, and in Ecclesiasticus 24:23 we read, “All these things (about wisdom) are the book of the covenant of the Most High God – Even the law which Moses commanded us for a heritage unto the assemblies of Jacob.”  So here we see the law of Moses equated with the wisdom that was with God from the beginning.  Could this be what John is referring to by his use of the word “logos”?  Especially when we remember that, to the Jew, the Law of Moses was not only a way of life, but the way of salvation too.  For the Apostle Paul says in Romans 2:17-20, “But if you bear the name ‘Jew’, and rely upon the Law, and boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth …!” Paul knew what high regard the Jews put in the Law as a way of salvation, for he had done the same thing himself as a Pharisee before his conversion.

But if John has this in mind in his use of the word “logos”, it is obvious that he also wants to make clear the fact that there is something or someone more basic even than wisdom or the law of Moses who was at the very beginning with God.

Actually, John uses this word “logos” to give us an added understanding of God’s creative activity, mentioned in the opening chapter of the Bible.  There, no less than eight times we hear the word of God majestically spoken, “Then God said…!”  And the world, with its skies and seas, birds and trees, living creatures and man came into being.

Genesis 1 gives us a revelation of God’s almighty power in the creation of this world.  He spoke, and whatever He wished to make, came to be.  He did not need raw material as you and I do when we wish to make something.  For there was nothing to begin with.  Just God, who spoke into being from nothing whatever it was that He wished to make.  He did not even need eons of time for the gradual evolutionary development of whatever it was that He was making.  For the complexities of cellular life, for example, even in the simplest forms of life are so great that they do not and cannot change, for to do so would bring, not evolution, but death to the organism.  Besides, and even more basically, out of nothing, nothing can come unless God is there to bring it into existence by His almighty power.

And with God there, as the Bible describes the way it was in the beginning, all He needed was His desire to make things the way He wished to, and they were made by His power in accordance with His decree.

But John in the opening verses of his Gospel tells us more.  He tells us that the “Word” by which God made everything was Jesus!  Do we properly grasp this?  What are our words anyway?  Little, evaporating puffs of air.  Gone as soon as they are spoken.  But still, they too possess a certain power.  For words are able to influence, to bless, to burn, to create circumstances with consequences that are sometimes irreversible.  So we should not be surprised if John tells us that God’s Word, being much greater than ours, is actually a Person.  And that Person is His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ!

What is John actually revealing to us here?  Is it not that the world’s Redeemer was first the world’s Creator?  What a staggering thought!  Remember, John and the Apostles knew Jesus of Nazareth very well.  For they had been His disciples for three years.  They had heard His teaching, seen His works – had even learned to know His human weakness and frailty.  And they had seen Him crucified and die… But after three days they had seen Him alive again, having risen from the dead!

Therefore, to John and the Apostles, Jesus was everything that He claimed to be.  Was He a great teacher?  He was that, to be sure.  Was He a great example?  He was that all right, and more.  Was He a Saviour from sin?  Yes indeed!  But why?  Because only Someone who is actually God can atone for sin, conquer death, and give His people eternal life.  No one else and No one less is able to do these necessary things if a people out of a universally sinful mankind are to experience salvation.  Hence, the Saviour to be such must be none other than God Himself!

John’s statement about Jesus, as a matter of fact, agrees with what the Apostle Paul says about Him in Colossians 2:9, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.”  This, by the way refutes what Jehovah’s Witnesses say about Jesus.  Jesus is not “a god” but less than Jehovah the almighty God.  Jesus is Jehovah the true God, and the second Person of the Trinity.

You see, the Apostles want us to understand that they had been the companions of God in the flesh while He walked this earth during the years they shared with Him in His ministry.  This alone does justice to what John means when he says in our text, “…and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Only One who is properly Divine in the same way as is the Father could reflect the glory of God in the way John here describes it of Jesus.  Jesus then, John tells us, is the Divine Lord of all creation and life.  For as John says, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (Vs.3).

Therefore the Lord of all creation and life is not science, nor is it technology.  It is not even the god of some other religion.  And it is certainly not man himself.  The Maker of all things is Jesus Christ, and man is responsible to his Maker.  For what he does, what he doesn’t do, what he does wrong, what he thinks, what he is, what he will ultimately be.  How important, then, to pay attention to what John tells us about Jesus in his Gospel!  But John tells us, not only who Jesus as the Word was.  He goes on to tell us more about why He became flesh.

II.  WHY HE BECAME FLESH

We cannot think about Jesus’ becoming flesh, or the incarnation, without thinking about Christmas.  For Christmas reminds us of this great event.  John also tells us this eloquently in his first epistle.  For in 1John 4:10 he says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  Christmas is a time of giving.  And on Christ’s birthday we are to remember, first of all, the greatness of the Father’s love in giving His Son to be the Saviour of a lost world.

The significance of Christmas, as a matter of fact, is a pervasive part of the message of the New Testament.  Take, for example, Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”  Or Jesus’ own statement in John 10:10, “….I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.”  Or again, what Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us, “Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.  Yes, the Word became flesh for our redemption!

In Verse 5, John points out in a striking way the Divine initiative with respect to man’s redemption.  For he writes, “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (or: overpower it).”  John uses the word “darkness” here in a highly significant way.  When we think of darkness, we usually think of it in terms of the absence of light.  This kind of darkness is bad enough when, for example, you are lost somewhere on a dark night and can’t find your way.  Then the darkness can even become frightening!  Is this what John means with darkness?  That mankind is lost and can’t find its way to the true God?  In some sense at least this is true.

Think of the presence of all kinds of religions in this world which are not only false, but prove it by being mutually contradictory.  Think of the loss of faith in our day, and the accompanying growth of secularism.  Many have even gone so far as to fool themselves into believing that they’re not lost anymore!

But when John speaks of darkness here, he means more than mankind’s mere lostness.  For he uses darkness here in the sense of its being an active evil which is ever seeking to put out, or destroy, or overpower the light!  John gives us an actual example of what he means in chapter 3:19, where he says, “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.”

We have only to remember what John’s own generation did to Jesus.  As he says of Jesus in Verse 11, “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”  But this hatred of God and opposition to the light started already with Cain.  He hated his brother Abel “and slew him because his deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1John 3:12).

But we can’t afford to point the finger at others, for if we’re honest, we’ll have to admit that we ourselves are guilty in this matter too.  We know that it’s easier to tell a lie if it’s to our advantage than to tell the truth; to be dishonest than to be honest; to perform the works of darkness rather than of the light.  Yes, it’s easier to be selfish, to be indifferent to the welfare of others, to be proud and self-satisfied with ourselves.  To promote the works of darkness that oppose the light!  Let’s face it.  Man is hopelessly lost in his sins, unless the Lord finds him and saves him from their power and penalty.  And this is what John’s Gospel is all about – the Lord Jesus coming into the world as the light to dispel the darkness.  Or as the Good Shepherd coming to find and save sinners who, as lost sheep, had gone astray.

Thank God, salvation is of the Lord!  And so our Christian faith isn’t something that man has thought up in order to save himself.  For what hope would there be in it for the likes of us who are lovers of darkness by nature?  No, our Christian faith is centred upon what God has done for us in Christ!

But this brings us in the third place to the consideration…

III.  WHAT MUST OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE WORD BE?

Obviously, it must be more than the ancient Jew’s regard for the Law.  True enough, God’s ancient covenant people had received God’s law through Moses.  John himself reminds us of this in Verse 17, “For the law was given through Moses…!”  And that law had been written on tablets of stone by the finger of God Himself.  No wonder the pious child of God might say, “I will never forget Thy precepts; For by them Thou hast revived me” (Ps.119:93).

But it’s so easy to become like the Pharisees, and forget that God’s grace must ever precede and accompany the law.  For the law on tablets of stone does little good as long as it has not been written upon the fleshly tablets of the heart by the Spirit of the living God, as the Apostle Paul, a converted Pharisee, reminds us in 2Cor.3:3.  Yes, even becoming an expert in the Word of God does little good if that Word does not lead one to Christ.  For as Jesus warned the un-believing Jews of His day, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me” (John 5:39).

Actually, the broken law condemns the sinner.  For God’s Word says, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them” (Galatians 3:10, Deut.27:26).  And therefore a primary function of the law is to be a teacher to lead the sinner to Christ for salvation (Galatians 3:24).  John also points this out by contrasting what God gave through Moses with what He gives through Jesus Christ.  For in Verse 17 John says, “The law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.  In other words, the law points to the grace and truth which can be found only in Christ – to which our text also directs us.  Furthermore, our relationship to Christ as the Word must be more than a simple dependence upon fleshly relationships, no matter how good they might be.  For in Verse 13 John speaks of being “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

In other words, depending upon godly parents, or covenant baptism, or one’s own outward respectability to win God’s favour and to attain the final goal of heaven is not good enough either!  We may indeed thank God for godly parents, and for God’s covenant faithfulness ex-pressed in baptism – yes, and even for outward respectability.  But need I remind you that the Pharisees had all of these if not more?  And yet Jesus could call them children of the devil! (John 8:44).  Why?  Because they were trusting in these things rather than in Christ for salvation.

What a solemn warning Verse 13 gives!

It’s so easy to be familiar with the Gospel, but not really know the Christ of that Gospel.  It’s so easy to be formally associated with the church through baptism, church attendance, etc., but not be a vital part of the body of Christ.  It’s so easy to put one’s confidence in one’s religious background or pedigree, but not really belong to the family of God.

Such were the Pharisees and many Israelites of Jesus’ day.

Are there any like that here?

What then must our relationship to Christ as the Word be?  It must be a vital, personal relationship, as Verse 12 makes clear.  “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”

Christ came to fulfil the righteousness of the law for lost sinners and to pay the penalty of that broken law for them by His sacrificial death.  Then He became the conqueror of death and the giver of eternal life by His resurrection from the dead.  Moreover, He is a revelation of the glory of God to men in need of a vision of that kind of God; and in fact, is the exclusive means by whom lost men may be brought back to God.

But all of this does no good unless one accepts Christ as his own personal Saviour and Lord.  In fact, it is even worse than this, for to hear the Gospel but not to receive the Christ of that Gospel only adds to one’s condemnation (John 3:36).

And so John writes, “These things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. (John 20:31).

That’s the purpose of John’s Gospel.

That’s the purpose of this message.

That’s the purpose of God’s having brought you under the sound of the Gospel.

Listen to the testimony of one who has become a child of God through faith in Christ, as it is expressed by the hymn-writer, Charles Wesley:

“Long my imprisoned spirit lay
 Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
 Thine eye diffused a quickening ray –
 I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
 My chains fell off, my heart was free,
 I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

May, by God’s grace in Christ, this be your testimony too.

Amen.