Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: John 1:1-18 | Date: December 26, 2021 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

John chapter 1, and I will take the time to read the entire prologue, which is verses 1 to 18. Familiar passage and most fitting for reminder during the Christmas holidays. Title of the message today, “The Word Made Flesh,” a Christmas message.

John 1, beginning with verse 1: “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. Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him and yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 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 have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father.”

And here I would like to—I don’t like to—to criticize the translations that we have. They’re all so reliable in every way, in most every way. This one is, I think, a mistake. And in fact, the translation committee for the ESV is planning to make a change here, as I understand it. And we’ll go with the reading that you might be more familiar with: “We have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John bore witness about him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.'” And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only begotten son who is at the father’s side, he has made him known.

And then again, let’s look at verse 14. “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth.” Let’s bow together.

Our Father, it’s been a season of happiness for us with our families and friends. We enjoy all of the customs and the traditions that have come to surround this holiday. We rejoice supremely in what it is intended to recall, and that is the great event of history that our Lord came to our rescue, was born, became one of us to be our Savior. Refresh our minds, we pray, in these thoughts today. Give us with that a firmer faith and a greater love for him. We pray in his name, amen.

A Redemptive Religion

At its heart, Christianity, as you know, is a redemptive religion. Christianity entails a grand revelation of God; He is three persons in one essential being. Three in persons, one in essence. Christianity entails, in fact, a distinct worldview. It entails a distinct ethic, morals, but at bottom—at its center, at its heart—Christianity is a redemptive religion. It comes into the world with a message to proclaim, a message of a Savior, a Redeemer who has come to save us from our sins. That is the center, the heart and soul of the Christian faith.

Unlike all other religions of the world, Christianity does not offer a means of self-help. It doesn’t tell you what you can do in order to be saved. It tells us of a Savior who has come and has fully accomplished salvation by himself for us, and that we may be his simply by trusting and resting in him. And that’s the good news, that the Savior has come. He has become one of us. He has died in place of sinners. He has satisfied all of the demands of justice of God against sinful people. He has provided all of the righteousness that God requires of us, and having taken our sins and having rendered satisfaction to God on our behalf, He frees us from the grip of sin, and we are then acceptable to God, and free from condemnation, and free to be His, and free to enjoy the new status, as verse 12 tells us, of children of God.

Now, in all of that, there are two related and just remarkable claims that the Christian message gives. One is that this Jesus is the only Savior from sinners. He’s the only one who can do it. He’s the only one who has done it. No one else can help you when it comes to your relationship with God. Only Jesus can. And the other claim that’s related to all of this is that Jesus is a perfectly suited Savior for every man and woman in the entire world. Any and all who come to Him in faith may be saved. He is the only one, and He is the all-sufficient Savior for any and all who come to Him for it.

And these are just remarkable claims. Christianity claims this about Jesus: that he saves others from sin, that he’s the only one who can save others from sin, and that he’s an all-sufficient Savior to save all who come to him. It’s just remarkable claims that the Christian religion gives. And of course, as I say, that’s just the heart of what Christianity is all about, to say all of that.

Now, you might have wondered—and this is what we’ll look at this morning—how is it that Christianity can make such bold claims? Jesus, this man who lived out in the backside of nowhere 2,000 years ago, was crucified in an otherwise insignificant area of the world. And by his death, we are saved, and no one else can be saved except through what he has done. And he’s all-sufficient for everyone who comes to him. How is it that we can make a claim like that? What’s our advantage? Or we can put it this way: what’s Christianity’s trump card? What is it that makes all of this so?

In a very real sense, the Gospel of John has been written to answer just this question. And the answer that he gives us—and it’s the same answer that we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels as well, although in a distinct way in the Gospel of John—the answer is simply the unique value and significance of Jesus Christ himself. We can make these claims because Jesus himself is of surpassing value. And the goal of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the goal of John in particular in a pointed way, is to tell us and to argue this very point.

The Gospel in Brief

John begins in this prologue, which is something of a summary of the entire gospel that he gives us, and he begins at the outset in this prologue to give us the gospel in brief. Let’s run through these verses quickly to grasp his message.

Verses 1 to 4: “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 was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

All right, verse one again: “In the beginning was the Word.” Now, anyone who’s familiar with the Bible, and you’ve begun reading it at all, you know that these first opening words of the Gospel of John are intended to draw your attention back to the beginning of the Bible. “In the beginning.” Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning, Moses writes, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There’s the beginning of all things, the beginning of time, the beginning of matter, the beginning of all created things there at that point, Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning.”

John draws our attention to that point and says, “In the beginning, the Word was.” So at that point—and you’ll remember this from our studies in Genesis in Sunday school, those of you who were there for that—in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The direct implication is the eternality and the self-existence of God. He’s been there forever, and now at the beginning, he creates, and all things move from that point onwards in history. John takes us to that point now and says, “In the beginning,” and instead of working this way in time, he points the other direction and says, “In the beginning, the Word was.” He already was. And so clearly already he is telling us that this one whom he calls the Word here is eternal.

And he’s associated with God in some way, and he’s going to give us a little more detail about that as well. In the beginning was the Word. Now look at the rest of verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. So here we have one who was from eternity, with God. So he’s distinct from God in some way because he’s with him, and yet he’s eternal. And so in the rest of the verse he says, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So he’s identified with God, and eternal as God, and yet in some sense distinct from God. And here we have the rudiments of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. These two persons, whom he calls here the Word, and he refers to, as we know, the Father as God, they are distinct and yet co-eternal. Both are God, and yet they’re distinct in some sense. Distinct persons.

Alright, so we have the eternality of the Word, we have the distinct personality of the Word in the second part of the verse, we have the affirmation that He is God in the last part of verse 1, and now verse 2: “He was in the beginning with God.” So we have here again a reference back to Genesis 1:1. In the eternal relations of the Trinity, these two always were in fellowship with one another from eternity.

And then verse 3, he takes us to Genesis 1 again: “All things were made through him. And without Him was not anything made that was made.” So not only is He eternal, He is God, He is with God, in relation with God from eternity, yet distinct from Him in personality. And now verse 3, He’s the Creator, who everybody knows is God. But he is the one in particular who’s assigned the creation here. All things were made by him and in fact there was nothing made that was not made by him. Everything that is was made by him. So you have two categories. You have creator and creation. God and everything else. And this One who is the Word is not part of creation, part of everything else. He’s the One who made everything else. He is God who made them. Way back at the beginning, He was already there, in fellowship with God forever, and in fact now, verse 3, He is the Creator. So He’s the Creator, He is Himself, uncreated, He is God.

All right, he starts out with that bold affirmation then about this one whom he calls the Word. Now in verses 5 and following, we have a brief account of his arrival in the world. It’s announced. It’s announced by John the Baptist. We’re given the world’s response at large. They rejected him. They wouldn’t have him. Even Israel, his own people, didn’t recognize him. Those who were waiting for him, he came and they wouldn’t have him.

But verse 12, his unique value is stressed: “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” In trusting relationship with the Word, we have that inestimable privilege—in fact, the right now, by right, in association with Him through faith—by right, we are children of God. Unspeakable blessing.

The Word Became Flesh

And then verse 14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Word became flesh. Now, to appreciate that statement, you have to think back into context, beginning at verse 1. Who is the Word? It’s the one who was with God, who was God from all eternity, in fellowship with God as with him. He is the one who’s the creator, the eternal one. He’s God, became flesh.

And then it says he dwelt among us. And the word John uses here is a strange one. It’s not the way we talk. It’s not the way they talked in John’s day. But he’s making a point. The Word became flesh and tented, tabernacled among us. That should ring a bell. The idea is supposed to recall the Old Testament. Now we have the tabernacle, which was the place of God’s residence, the place of his unique presence among his people. You remember that was where the glory of God was in the tabernacle, and then later in Israel’s history, because of Israel’s rebellion, the glory of God departed from the temple. He wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t dwelling with his people in that unique sense.

And now we have a new moment in redemptive history. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. That is, what that tabernacle foreshadowed, what it spoke of, has now come as a reality in the person of Jesus Christ. In him, God, in all his glory, tabernacles among us. And so he says, “We have seen his glory.” The glory of the Old Testament tabernacle was the glory of the presence of God. And John says here, “We’ve seen that. We’ve seen it in Jesus.” And that glory manifests itself in the full revelation of grace and truth.

All right, we’ll come back to that. Verse 15, then, we have John telling us of the Word’s pre-existence again. John bore witness about him. Of course, he’s talking about Jesus now, but he names him the Word. John bore witness about him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.'” So here’s John, who’s actually some months older than Jesus, announcing that he is to be preferred before me, even though I’m older, because he was before me. He’s existed from eternity.

And then verses 16 and 17, again he highlights his unique value: “For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Where the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” All right, so now he names him, Jesus Christ. It’s immediately obvious to anyone familiar with Christianity at all, anybody familiar with the New Testament at all—it’s immediately obvious from verse one on that he’s talking about Jesus.

But notice again now, and I’ve skipped over it largely until now: the title that he gives Jesus beginning in verse 1. He doesn’t call him Jesus until the very end of the prologue. Verse 1, “The Word.” In the beginning was the Word. The Word who was eternally with God, who himself is God. That’s who he’s talking about: the Word. Now why does he call him the Word? It’s a strange title. Why would someone be named the Word? Maybe we could ask it a little more fully: why would anyone be named the Word of God? And I think that helps get the answer, doesn’t it? He is the one who reveals God. Jesus is God speaking. In all that Jesus is, as well as in all that he says, and all that he does, he is God making himself known. And in that sense, he’s the Word of God. He’s God revealing himself. God making himself known.

This is a very important point for John to begin with as he goes through his gospel, as we’ll see. So he is God in his self-revelation. God speaking. The Word of God. And then verse 14, “The Word became flesh and we saw his glory.” God revealing himself now in the incarnation of the Word. The Word was made flesh. That’s incarnation. That’s God becoming man. In God becoming man, God is speaking. God is making himself known.

And then verse 18 caps it all off to tell us that was the point he was trying to make all the way from the beginning of the prologue, verse 1. Verse 18: “No one has ever seen God.” He’s spirit. He’s invisible. He’s unseeable. “No one has ever seen God. The only begotten who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” There’s the significance of the incarnation. He has made God known. This is God’s climactic self-revelation. Now we can know God, we can see who God is in his self-revelation, climactically, in his Son becoming man. And so John says, “We saw his glory. The glory of God, full of grace and truth.” God made flesh, revealing himself.

Now the writer of the letter of Hebrews picks up on this only in different terms. You might remember how the book of Hebrews begins in that grand way: “God, who at various times and various places has spoken various means to his people.” God has made himself known, speaking to the prophets here and there, and here through vision, here through direct words, piecemeal, all through history, God has been speaking to his people. God, in various ways, who has spoken to his people, has now spoken in his Son. There’s this climactic sense of God supremely revealing himself in Jesus, and that’s what John is emphasizing here.

Now with all of that, you cannot help but see that John is driving the point here of the deity of Jesus Christ. He is God from eternity. He is with God from eternity. He has come now as man to reveal God as the one who uniquely can reveal God because he is himself God. And this is a point John drives throughout his gospel. He begins with his big statement of it in the prologue that Jesus is God revealing himself. And then throughout the gospel, he emphasizes it, and then it comes to a climactic ending as well.

In chapter 5, Jesus speaks of his unique prerogatives as the Son of God, and he even has the boldness to say that if you don’t honor the Son as you honor the Father, you don’t honor the Father. The strongest affirmation of Jesus and of his own deity, we find high points like that throughout the Gospel of John. John chapter 8, when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” John chapter 10, he tells us, “I and the Father are one.” All these affirmations of the deity of Christ throughout the Gospel pick up on what we have here in the prologue.

And then it comes to a climax at the end of John’s Gospel, and you remember doubting Thomas. “I’m not going to believe. Not unless I see him and touch him myself, I’m not going to believe it.” And then he sees him, sees Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. You remember what he says? “My Lord and my God.” And then John stops the narrative and says, “This is why I’ve written this to you, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through him.”

And so this is John’s purpose in writing his gospel: that in Jesus, God has come in the flesh. It is as if to say, before you read my account of Jesus throughout the gospel—and he gives us these various events in the life of Jesus and these various sermons that Jesus preaches throughout his career—before you look at that, you need to know this about him: He is God making himself known. And so when you get to chapter 2 and you find him turning water into wine, John wants you to keep in mind this is God making himself known. When you come to chapter 3 and you find him talking to Nicodemus, giving him the way of salvation and speaking of himself being lifted up, keep in mind, this is God making himself known.

And all through the gospel, the same way, when he offers himself as the bread of life in chapter 6, this is God making himself known. We see him in chapter 7, chapter 8, calling himself the light of the world. This is God making himself known. When he speaks of himself in chapter 10 as the shepherd of God’s people, that’s a title given to God in the Old Testament. This is God making himself known in Jesus. And even later in John’s narrative, when you see him under arrest, you need to be startled. This is God making himself known, and now under arrest by wicked men, and then flogged, and beaten, and crucified, and then risen. In all of this, this is God making himself known, and John sets us up for that at the beginning of his book to tell us, this is how you understand Jesus, and apart from this, you can’t really understand him well at all.

The Two Leading Mysteries of the Christian Faith

Well, this is John’s distinctive, the distinctive of the Gospel of John. John does not begin with a Davidic genealogy. He doesn’t begin with a manger, an angelic announcement of a birth; John begins in heaven. He begins in eternity past. In the beginning, the Word was already there with God. He was God, eternally. He’s the Creator. And He became flesh and made God known. And otherwise, no one has ever seen God. But now, verse 18, in Him, He has made God known.

And he tells us that this God whom Israel had confessed, this one God, monotheists, this one God was in fact a plurality of persons. As the gospel unfolds, we find that there’s God the Father, there’s God the Son, there’s God the Spirit—three equal persons sharing equally the being of God and what it is to be God. From eternity, these three have existed in perfect, glorious fellowship with one another. And then he tells us the second person, who elsewhere is called the Son, who has that relationship with God—the Father and the Son. This one, who is the second person, amazingly stepped out of that glory which he had forever shared with the Father and the Spirit. And verse 14, he became flesh. He became one among those whom he had created.

An amazing thing. And to emphasize the point, John describes Him in the most plain and the crudest of terms. He doesn’t say just “the Word became man.” That’s obviously what he means, but what he says is, “The Word became flesh.” This stuff. He took on everything that we are, took on all the limitations of humanity to become all that we are. All that humanity is, He became. He wasn’t just acting a role. The Word became flesh. It was a real incarnation. Now that’s just a startling thing, and when you read verse 14, “The Word became flesh,” don’t just gloss over that. Understand what he’s saying here, that the eternal God became one of us. It is meant to be a startling, stupendous event. God became one of us.

And this is the leading distinctive of John’s gospel. John does not teach us anything about Jesus in substance that’s different from the other Gospels; it’s just that his starting point is different. In the Synoptic Gospels, we start with his birth, or with Mark, his life, but we start with his life and his career, his birth, and we see the birth narratives and the angelic announcement in the manger, and we find all of this, and then along the way, we find out that this Jesus who’s been born is God, come to save. But John doesn’t approach it that way. John starts back further. He starts back in eternity, starts in heaven, says he became flesh. And from the get-go, we are to understand this is who Jesus is as we read through the narrative of his life. To understand Jesus, we have to understand his eternal origins. And his birth then was not just a birth; it was a coming. The coming of God as one of us.

In other words then, to understand Christmas, we have to come to grips with the two leading mysteries of the Christian faith. I’ve told you this many times. To understand the Christmas event, we have to come to grips with the two leading mysteries of the Christian faith.

Number one, the Trinity. That God is one—one in substance, one in being. He is the only God who is. And yet this one God who is manifests himself in three persons, equally divine, equally glorious, equally powerful, equally eternal, in perfect relationship with one another from eternity as Father, Son, and Spirit. One God, three persons.

The other leading mystery of the Christian faith, the second, is the two natures of Jesus. It is that second person of the Trinity who became flesh and dwelt among us. The Father sent the Son, and the Son comes from the Father to us to become man. We’ve seen this before in terms of the messianic hope in the Old Testament. The hope of this great Messiah who would come. One strain: this is a son of woman. This is the son of Abraham that’s coming. This is the son of David who is coming. He’s a man who is coming. It’s David’s son. It’s Abraham’s son. It’s the woman’s son. It’s her seed who is coming. A child will be born. A son will be given. And yet at the same time, we read prophecies that God himself is coming. God is coming to his people. He will shepherd his people, Israel. He will come to the rescue of his people. We’ve got these two tracks of prophecy running through the Old Testament, and they all converge in the incarnation of Jesus. Here, God has come to the rescue of sinners in the person of the Davidic son, Jesus Christ.

The New Testament reflects this in so many different passages, some of them very famous for Christmastime. 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 9: “He who was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.” There’s the whole Christmas story. He who was rich, God from eternity, became poor, became one of us. Why? So that we, through his poverty, might be rich. Paul gives it in a bit lengthier statement in Philippians chapter 2. He was in the form of God, from all eternity God, and yet surrendered that glorious appearance, was found in fashion as a man. Was God from eternity, now a man. Still God, but now a man also. Two natures, both God and man. Whatever it is to be God, Jesus is that. Whatever it is to be man, Jesus is that. He’s God and man. God come to the rescue as man. He is one of us. And he was obedient as a man to God all the way to death, the death of the cross, and so God now has highly exalted him as the triumphant mediatorial king.

As you can imagine, there have been various heresies that have crept into the church over these two leading mysteries. In particular, this one about the two natures of Christ. Believe it or not, the first heresy to come into the Christian church regarding the two natures of Jesus was not a denial of his deity. That came later in Arianism. We have that today in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The first heresy to come into the Christian church was docetism. It comes from a Greek word, dokeo, which means “to seem” or “to think.” He seemed to be man. He appeared to be man. It seemed like he was, but he wasn’t. It was a phantom. It was God appearing. He was God, all right, and they affirmed his deity, but he wasn’t really a man. And you see that in 1 John, John’s first letter, when he talks about those who have denied that Jesus has come in the flesh. That’s the first one, heresy coming in.

And we had others—that he’s not God or man, he’s something in between. He’s a strange combination of both. He’s not quite God, but he’s something certainly more than man. And you have these difficulties trying to wrestle with it. And the only way to articulate it is what’s come down to us from the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Chalcedon, which the church has universally recognized: that the only way to come to grips with the biblical teaching is to say he’s both God, in all that it is to be God, and he is man, in all that it is to be man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld in Him this great revelation of God.

So as I say, verse 14 is just a startling thing. The Word became flesh. Stunning. Greek mythology knows a lot about the gods charading as man—not really becoming man, but charading as man—and they’ll come on their adventures, goddesses and gods coming down from lofty Mount Olympus and come down in disguise as a man and they have their adventures and as soon as it becomes a little sticky, they throw off their disguise and they show off for who they are and they return back to Mount Olympus. But never in all of that did anyone ever imagine God actually, actually becoming man, taking the limitations of humanity, taking the risk, so to speak, of enduring the adversities of humanity.

But this is what our Lord has done. The second person of the true triune Godhead actually, verse 14, became flesh. Truly man, truly God. The God-man come as man, taking to himself the limitations of humanity and experiencing them all in his human nature. Come as man to stand in the place of men, to offer himself as substitute for our sins.

And this in brief, is Christianity’s trump card. This is the advantage we have. This is how we can say without flinching that Jesus is the accomplished Savior and He’s the only one. He’s the only one who’s qualified and He’s qualified to save anyone. He is uniquely qualified. The entire gospel message turns on this Christmas event of God becoming man and coming to our rescue. Our hope before God is not grounded in some imaginative idea that someone more or less like us somewhere at some time did something. Our whole hope is grounded in the fact that Jesus Christ is a fully qualified Savior because he is God become one of us who offered himself for us and in our place before God to render satisfaction for our sins.

The Gospel of John is written to persuade you—to persuade me—that Jesus Christ is just the Savior we need. He’s well able to do for us everything that God requires of us. And he’s fully able to bear the whole load of our sin because he is the Word made flesh. Again, verse 14, the Word became flesh. It’s a stunning thing. It’s the most stupendous event in all of history. And all of history turns on it. It’s the whole ground of our hope. The Lord from heaven come as one of us to save us. We could not hope for anything less. And we dare not trust in anything else. God made flesh for our salvation. Amen. Let’s pray.