Joh 1:1-5 | KingComments | STEP | If we describe a person, we can do so from different angles. For example, we can highlight someone as the father of a family. In addition, a description of the same person is possible as a colleague in a company or as a neighbor. In this way we see how four evangelists – under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – report the life of the Lord Jesus during His stay on earth. In the four biographies we have in the Bible, the Gospel according to Matthew declares the Lord Jesus as King, Mark presents Him as Servant, Luke describes Him as true Man and finally John writes about Him as the eternal Son of God. The purpose of this Gospel is to look at the Lord Jesus as God the Son. For this reason, the call: “Here is your God” or “Behold your God” ( ) has been chosen as the subtitle for this book. On the one hand we read that no one has ever seen or can see God ( ; ). On the other hand, of the Lord Jesus to be the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father is said that He has declared Him ( ). That is magisterially described in this Gospel. One of the correctors gave his impression of this Gospel as follows when he submitted his last corrections: ‘We are dealing with a limited bed of the stream, but the stream itself is not limited. And that is a happy thought. … It was a great privilege to be able to read and contemplate this Gospel so intensively. I just feel like I understand it even less now than I did before. For it is so wonderfully rich. Thankfully, it’s enough to believe in His Name and having life thereby.’ Ger de Koning Middelburg, November 2009, new version 2016, translation February 2021 The special character of the Gospel according to John The Gospel according to John has a special character that has affected everyone who has paid some attention to it, even though it has not always been clearly understood why. It not only impresses the thoughts, but it attracts the heart in a unique way. The reason is that this Gospel presents the Person of the Son of God as having become so humble that He can say: “Give Me a drink” ( ). This Gospel is clearly distinguished from the other three Gospels. In the other Gospels we find valuable details of the Savior’s life on earth, such as His patience and His grace. He is the perfect expression of good amidst evil. His wonders are all but the curse of the fig tree, wonders of goodness, manifestations of Divine power revealed in goodness. We also see more and more clearly how He Who in this impressive way reveals God in goodness and grace, is rejected. John shows Him to us in a quite different way. He introduces us to a Divine Person, God revealed in the world. This Divine Person is eternal life in Whom this becomes visible and with Whom the world and His own, i.e. Israel, have no connection from the beginning. This Gospel is not about the needs of the sinner, but about the desires of the heart of God as Father to have children with Him in the Father’s house. In addition, except in a few places, this Gospel is not about heaven. It is nearly always about grace and truth in the Son here on earth. Therefore, in addition to the desire of the Father’s heart to have children with Him in the Father’s house, we can also notice in this Gospel His desire to share the blessing of the Father’s house with His children right now. Purpose of the Gospel according to John John writes his Gospel to disprove the influence of the so-called ‘gnostics’ (literally ‘knowing ones’). These people deny all certain knowledge about God and Divine things. They also deny both the actual Divinity and the actual Humanity of the Son. The purpose of the Gospel is expressed by John in John 20 ( ) and connects to that. Because of the noticeably increasing influence of islam on Christians, this Gospel is also relevant in that respect. I read the following in the monthly magazine ‘de Oogst’ of April 2008: ‘To sell out the divinity of Christ for the sake of a good relationship with Islam testifies to the erosion and decline of Christianity. … Recently, a Willow Creek researcher wrote that he expected a great deal of blessing from the increasing cooperation between Christianity and islam; Christians and muslims should form an ever greater unity. After all, they are both people of the Book, they worship the same prophets together, they agree on many religious matters, such as prayer, sexuality, sin and family. And also on a social level there are many similarities between Christians and muslims. They will become allies in the cultural struggle of the coming years.’ Fortunately, this Gospel is still in God’s Word and we can still read it and arm ourselves against the devil’s wiles. The writer John Although John does not mention his name anywhere, he does speak of himself as the disciple “whom Jesus loved”, that is, he was loved by the Lord ( ). John begins his Gospel by presenting the Lord Jesus as “the Word,” the Logos. That is: just as words express thoughts, so is He the perfect expression of Who God is. That is why we do not have a genealogy of Him here, as we do in the Gospel according to Matthew – because of His kingship – and in the Gospel according to Luke – to show that also as Man He is the Son of God. In the Gospel according to Mark we don’t find a genealogy of Him either. There the reason is that for a Servant it is not important what His genealogy is. In the Gospel according to John it is impossible to think of a genealogy, for how could that be with the eternal Word, Who is the eternal Son? John first establishes the eternal existence of the Word. The words “in the beginning” refer back to everything that has a beginning, and then establish that the Word “was”. It therefore looks back beyond the first words of the Bible, where we read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” ( ). However far we can think back, wherever we can think back at the beginning of something, we see that the Word “was” there, that It existed. The Word Itself is without a beginning. It is eternal. The second thing John says is that the Word was “with God”. That clearly indicates that the Word is a Person, that the Word had and has a personal existence. Third, John mentions that the Word was also God Himself. These three features of the Word form the starting point of his Gospel. In order to understand the representation of the Son in this Gospel, these three features must be known and accepted by faith without reservation. John describes Him in his Gospel as the eternal Son Who is truly God Himself. To underline the three features, John says concisely once more: “This was in [the] beginning with God”, with God as the Eternal One. The Word was and is as Person as eternal as God.

‏ John 1:1-5

Introduction

If we describe a person, we can do so from different angles. For example, we can highlight someone as the father of a family. In addition, a description of the same person is possible as a colleague in a company or as a neighbor. In this way we see how four evangelists – under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – report the life of the Lord Jesus during His stay on earth. In the four biographies we have in the Bible, the Gospel according to Matthew declares the Lord Jesus as King, Mark presents Him as Servant, Luke describes Him as true Man and finally John writes about Him as the eternal Son of God.

The purpose of this Gospel is to look at the Lord Jesus as God the Son. For this reason, the call: “Here is your God” or “Behold your God” (Isa 40:9) has been chosen as the subtitle for this book. On the one hand we read that no one has ever seen or can see God (Jn 1:18a; 1Tim 6:16). On the other hand, of the Lord Jesus to be the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father is said that He has declared Him (Jn 1:18b ; Jn 14:9). That is magisterially described in this Gospel.

One of the correctors gave his impression of this Gospel as follows when he submitted his last corrections:

‘We are dealing with a limited bed of the stream, but the stream itself is not limited. And that is a happy thought. … It was a great privilege to be able to read and contemplate this Gospel so intensively. I just feel like I understand it even less now than I did before. For it is so wonderfully rich. Thankfully, it’s enough to believe in His Name and having life thereby.’

Ger de Koning

Middelburg, November 2009, new version 2016, translation February 2021

The special character of the Gospel according to John

The Gospel according to John has a special character that has affected everyone who has paid some attention to it, even though it has not always been clearly understood why. It not only impresses the thoughts, but it attracts the heart in a unique way. The reason is that this Gospel presents the Person of the Son of God as having become so humble that He can say: “Give Me a drink” (Jn 4:7).

This Gospel is clearly distinguished from the other three Gospels. In the other Gospels we find valuable details of the Savior’s life on earth, such as His patience and His grace. He is the perfect expression of good amidst evil. His wonders are all but the curse of the fig tree, wonders of goodness, manifestations of Divine power revealed in goodness. We also see more and more clearly how He Who in this impressive way reveals God in goodness and grace, is rejected.

John shows Him to us in a quite different way. He introduces us to a Divine Person, God revealed in the world. This Divine Person is eternal life in Whom this becomes visible and with Whom the world and His own, i.e. Israel, have no connection from the beginning. This Gospel is not about the needs of the sinner, but about the desires of the heart of God as Father to have children with Him in the Father’s house.

In addition, except in a few places, this Gospel is not about heaven. It is nearly always about grace and truth in the Son here on earth. Therefore, in addition to the desire of the Father’s heart to have children with Him in the Father’s house, we can also notice in this Gospel His desire to share the blessing of the Father’s house with His children right now.

Purpose of the Gospel according to John

John writes his Gospel to disprove the influence of the so-called ‘gnostics’ (literally ‘knowing ones’). These people deny all certain knowledge about God and Divine things. They also deny both the actual Divinity and the actual Humanity of the Son. The purpose of the Gospel is expressed by John in John 20 (Jn 20:30-31) and connects to that.

Because of the noticeably increasing influence of islam on Christians, this Gospel is also relevant in that respect. I read the following in the monthly magazine ‘de Oogst’ of April 2008:

‘To sell out the divinity of Christ for the sake of a good relationship with Islam testifies to the erosion and decline of Christianity. … Recently, a Willow Creek researcher wrote that he expected a great deal of blessing from the increasing cooperation between Christianity and islam; Christians and muslims should form an ever greater unity. After all, they are both people of the Book, they worship the same prophets together, they agree on many religious matters, such as prayer, sexuality, sin and family. And also on a social level there are many similarities between Christians and muslims. They will become allies in the cultural struggle of the coming years.’

Fortunately, this Gospel is still in God’s Word and we can still read it and arm ourselves against the devil’s wiles.

The writer John

Although John does not mention his name anywhere, he does speak of himself as the disciple “whom Jesus loved”, that is, he was loved by the Lord (Jn 13:23 ; Jn 19:26 ; Jn 20:2 ; Jn 21:7 ; 20).

The Word

John begins his Gospel by presenting the Lord Jesus as “the Word,” the Logos. That is: just as words express thoughts, so is He the perfect expression of Who God is. That is why we do not have a genealogy of Him here, as we do in the Gospel according to Matthew – because of His kingship – and in the Gospel according to Luke – to show that also as Man He is the Son of God. In the Gospel according to Mark we don’t find a genealogy of Him either. There the reason is that for a Servant it is not important what His genealogy is. In the Gospel according to John it is impossible to think of a genealogy, for how could that be with the eternal Word, Who is the eternal Son?

John first establishes the eternal existence of the Word. The words “in the beginning” refer back to everything that has a beginning, and then establish that the Word “was”. It therefore looks back beyond the first words of the Bible, where we read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). However far we can think back, wherever we can think back at the beginning of something, we see that the Word “was” there, that It existed. The Word Itself is without a beginning. It is eternal. The second thing John says is that the Word was “with God”. That clearly indicates that the Word is a Person, that the Word had and has a personal existence. Third, John mentions that the Word was also God Himself.

These three features of the Word form the starting point of his Gospel. In order to understand the representation of the Son in this Gospel, these three features must be known and accepted by faith without reservation. John describes Him in his Gospel as the eternal Son Who is truly God Himself. To underline the three features, John says concisely once more: “This was in [the] beginning with God”, with God as the Eternal One. The Word was and is as Person as eternal as God.

The Creator and the Light of men.

The eternal Word, Who is Himself without a beginning – He “was” – has given a beginning to all things. Here we come to the first verse of Genesis 1 (Gen 1:1). The Word came not into being Himself, but is the origin of all things (Col 1:15-16; Heb 1:2 ; 10). All things have a beginning, “came into being”, and that beginning is due to “Him”, which is He Who is the Word.

To avoid any escape from this fact, the second part of Jn 1:3 repeats the first part, but in a negative representation of the facts. It is the foolishness of the evolution theory –falsely called “knowledge” (1Tim 6:20) – to try and explain the origin of all things without Him. But the heavens are telling of His glory (Psa 19:2) and He can be understood through His works (Rom 1:19-20).

Here we see the utter distinction between everything that has come into being and the Lord Jesus. If anything has come into being or has been made, it is not the Word, for everything that has come into being is made by the Word.

This does not mean that He also created evil. God is good and everything that comes out of Him has that character. In Him there is no darkness at all (1Jn 1:5). Nothing can come out of Him that is contrary to Who He is. To assume that He also created evil limits His goodness. He did create beings, angels and men, who were and are capable of doing evil, but He did not create evil itself.

The whole creation was created by Him, but in Him was life. He is the source of life (Psa 36:9). He didn’t receive life from somewhere, but it sprang from Him as the origin. Therefore He is connected with a special part of His creation: men (Heb 2:16; Pro 8:31; Lk 2:14).

All the words used by John under the guidance of the Holy Spirit are short and simple, but clearly possess Divine fullness and meaning. They are like the sword of the cherubim guarding the tree of life (Gen 3:24). That sword turns in all directions to keep Him, as He is, unblemished in our minds.

The life He reveals is also “the Light of men”. It is in this light that the believer walks. Light reveals everything. By coming into the light man can receive life. If a person has light, he only has it in the Word that is life.

When life, that is the Lord Jesus, is revealed on earth, the Light shines in the darkness. When God created the light in the darkness in the beginning, and the light shone in the darkness, the darkness disappeared (Gen 1:3). When life is revealed and the light shines, the darkness does not disappear. There is no other light for men than “life”.

God dwells in unapproachable light, Whom no man has seen or can see (1Tim 6:16), but in the Word the light shines in the darkness. It shines, not ‘shone’, for it still shines, but the darkness has not understood it, that is, it is a given fact, that it is unchanging.

In summary, in Jn 1:1-5 we have the testimony of the Spirit concerning the Word. We see it first in relation to God, then in relation to creation and finally in relation to man.