IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

GOSPELS 7 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD 

We started the Gospel series where all four Gospels gave of the account of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, being baptised by John the Baptist. Some of John the Baptist’s disciples began to follow Jesus, and after his forty days of temptation in the wilderness he regathered some of these disciples by the sea of Galilee and they followed him into greater Galilee where he chose the twelve Apostles and performed many miracles and healings before returning to his hometown in Nazareth. 

But we now need to go back to the first section of Chapter one of John’s Gospel and fill a gap which contains something that is unique to John’s Gospel. It is the magnificent account of the creation of all things in the Universe through Jesus the Word – Logos – of God. Jesus as the Logos is the eternal creative articulation of the will of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the eternal supernatural activity that acts upon that creative Word of Jesus in every situation. That is what happens for us as we receive the word of faith that comes into our lives when Jesus speaks to us concerning the will of the Father - and we see the powerful work of the holy Spirit bringing into being the fulfillment of that Word for our life and our situation. That is our prayer life.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos – the creative life and design and purpose  giving utterance of Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He (Jesus) was in the beginning with God. 3. Everything was made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Artificial Intelligence, without any sketch or drawing plan but simply by writing a descriptive string of imaginative mere human words into a computer program can generate a video animation of weird hybrid creatures that move, like a rabbit with the scaly tailed end of an echidna, and fish that walk and talk – and it looks real. It is an illusion that is hailed as a creative wonder. But God through the one creative Logos Word of Jesus has created orchids that look like laughing monkeys, flowers that look and move like dancing fairies, and insects whose magnified faces contain an exact image of a rabbit’s head, and the African Grey Parrot can have a vocabulary of 2000 words. There are many millions of these works of art in God’s creation gallery from microscopic ballerina marine creatures at the bottom of the ocean to trillions of galaxies in the Universe. So people can say words and make things appear real and alive but they cannot create life. Illusion is not life, and it is not truth – more about that later.

Vs4. In Him (Jesus) was life and that life was the light (phos) of Mankind. 
The word used for life in that verse is zoe, which means the fulness of essential and spiritual life - as opposed to bios – which speaks of lower life forms.

Jesus possesses the zoe life in its fullest and most divine sense and Jesus became the source and embodiment of eternal life for humanity. Jesus is also the illumination of the truth and the revelation of that life. He is the way, the truth and the life. He show us the way to understand and live in God's will, and through his light and truth humanity can experience lifegiving salvation of the soul. 

Vs5. And that light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it (katalambano – hold it down, supress it, enclose it)
That verse tells us that the illumination of that truth about knowing God and knowing his will is able to bring that revelation into the darkness and obscurity and delusion of the world, and the darkness of the world cannot overcome or overwhelm it. If darkness tries to enclose or surround light it is overpowered by light.
And in the same way, if we are full of the light and truth of Jesus in our minds and hearts of faith, the delusional and manipulative words of darkness that try to penetrate the light of our truth will dissipate and come to nothing. They are unable to move us from our conviction of the truth that the Holy Spirit reveals to us about Jesus and the Father.
The Apostle Paul said ‘For God, who Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Jesus Christ. (2Corinthians 4:6)                                                                                                                                                                                       

John goes on to write in the next verse (vs 6) that John the Baptist said he himself was not the light but he was sent to bear witness to that light which was Jesus, so that everyone (pas) - all of humanity - might believe through Jesus. John says (vs 9) ‘that Light was the true Light which gives light (the revelation of God’s zoe life) to every man that comes into the world’ (every human being that arrives on the planet). 
John then writes (vs 10) that Jesus who made the world came into the world, to his own, but the world did not know him or receive him. John writes that Jesus would give power and freedom and liberty to those who did receive him and they would grow into mature sons and daughters of God the Father. He said that those people who received him and believed in him would be born from above from God, not just from human reproduction. 
Being born of God is one thing but growing up is another thing, growing in the power of The Spirit into grown up sons and daughters on a journey of volunteering to do what pleases the Father.

John writes (vs 14) that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, (flesh =sarx – humanity that can choose to go it alone) and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten (monogenes – the One begotten Son) of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

Jesus was the only human being who became ‘flesh’ (‘humanity that can choose to go it alone)’ that was born directly from the Spirit seed of the Father (monogenes – the One begotten Son) – born from above and into the earth through his earthly mother Mary. We are not born from above directly as Jesus the only begotten Son was from the Father. We were born from above through the spiritual seed of Jesus himself, the Logos, ‘truly God and truly Man’. Jesus was always truly God and became truly human – we were always truly human and became partakers of the Divine nature (2Peter 1:4). The bible says that we have been born again (anagenna??- born anew from above), not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God (Logos – Jesus) which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23). 

Jesus prophesied and explained this new birth to a man called Nicodemus, whom Jesus referred to as the Teacher of the Jews and who confessed that Jesus could not have done the things that he did unless he was the Christ, and Jesus answered him and said "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again (gennao anothen – born from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3)

This final verse (vs 14) that we have been discussing, about Jesus the Logos becoming flesh and dwelling among us caused a split between Christianity and both the religious Jews and the educated Greeks when the Apostle John wrote it. Religious Jews believed that the Word of God always was and still is the Torah of the words of the Law through Moses, and it was blasphemy to say the word had become a Person, so they rejected John’s Word Logos for that reason. It’s all about words.
The Greeks believed that Logos was a word that described the philosophical concept of the designing and sustaining and ordering principle of the Universe – it could not possibly be a Person! so they rejected John’s Word Logos for that reason. 

But Christians believe that Logos is a Person, Jesus, the Logos, who is the articulation of the Father’s will in all situations. The Bible says that Jesus the Logos upholds all thing in the Universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) – that is what is real and what is real will last.

The world imposes a superficial reality on many aspects of social and moral and scientific truth by taking words and giving them new meanings that suit its own ideologies. That turns non truth into truth and non-virtue into virtue and even non science into science, and that is an exercise of darkness trying to overcome light.
But when darkness tries to enclose light, the darkness has to finally break up and disappear. And when Logos light and truth penetrate darkness the darkness also finally breaks up and disappears.

God has created humanity in his own image and does not want humanity to live in bondage to darkness. God looked upon a world in bondage to darkness in the days of Noah, and he looked upon Abraham and Lot in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he looked upon the earth in the days of Pharaoh and Moses where his people had been enslaved in bondage to darkness and he brought deliverance through people of faith who heard his word of salvation. 

As we allow the incorruptible seed of the Logos of Jesus to grow within us we can confidently pray and believe John’s word which says ‘that Light was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world’ and ‘that light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it’

That was promised in the beginning, and I believe that promise is ready to start finding its fulfillment once more. Let us nurture that Logos seed of life and light and truth, and let us water it by our faith and love and let us bear witness to it by our lives, and let us offer it to those in our world. We can know and believe that what is real and lasting will overcome what is ready to pass away.