I will be working on this throughout Friday. This is just the beginning, and I also hope to add some (hopefully interesting) background information about the beginning of this Gospel. I think the the beginning of this Gospel is one of the most important passages for the basis of Christian theology. As everyone knows, it's very very very dense and deeply meaningful. I will try to break it down verse-by-verse and write what I think it all means, although I think this will involve a lot of repetition. I ask for patience. This is just the beginning.
The Gospel of John begins on quite a different note than the other three Gospels. Unlike the others, John begins his Gospel with the beginning and takes a spiritual and theological approach to the story of Christ on earth.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Jesus as the Word, the Word as God, all one being, existing from the beginning of time.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. God is the Creator of absolutely everything.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Our life, our light, comes directly from God, and from no other source. He is our Creator.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. This little verse confounds me a bit, but I think that it shows that the darkness is not God, is not of God, and cannot consume, extinguish, or modify in way the light of God. God is the ultimate Ruler.
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. The Son of God is the Light, the Light that is the life that is in God and in every single person in this 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. Jesus came into the world to save all mankind, but was mocked and crucified instead. Each one of us has a choice to become His follower, to receive Him of our own free will. Nothing is forced. We only have to receive Him.
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…And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. God sent His Son, the Word, the Light, and He actually became man, and lived a man’s life for our salvation. We have all received this salvation, if we have chosen to accept it. It was all done for us through the grace of God.
John saw Jesus and immediately recognized Him because he “saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him” (
2 comments:
From Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms:
God could give no greater gift to men than to make his Word, through whom he created all things, their head and to join them to him as his members, so that the Word might be both Son of God and son of man, one God with the Father, and one man with all men. The result is that when we speak with God in prayer we do not separate the Son from him, and when the body of the Son prays it does not separate its head from itself: it is the one Savior of his body, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us and in us and is himself the object of our prayers.
He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, he is the object of our prayers as God.
Let us then recognize both our voice in his, and his in ours. When something is said, especially in prophecy, about the Lord Jesus Christ that seems to belong to a condition of lowliness unworthy of God, we must not hesitate to ascribe this condition to one who did not hesitate to unite himself with us. Every creature is his servant, for it was through him that every creature came to be.
We contemplate his glory and divinity when we listen to these words: 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. Here we gaze on the divinity of the Son of God, something supremely great and surpassing all the greatness of his creatures. Yet in other parts of Scripture we him as one sighing, praying, giving praise and thanks.
We hesitate to attribute these words to him because our minds are slow to come down to his humble level when we have just been contemplating him in his divinity. It is as though we were doing him an injustice in acknowledging in a man the words of one with whom we spoke when we prayed to God; we are usually at a loss and try to change the meaning. Yet our minds find nothing in Scripture that does not go back to him, nothing that will allow us to stray from him.
Our thoughts must then be awakened to keep their vigil of faith. We must realize that the one whom we were contemplating a short time before in his nature as God took to himself the nature of a servant; he was made in the likeness of men and found to be a man like others; he humbled himself by being obedient even to accepting death; as he hung on the cross he made the psalmist's words his own: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We pray to him as God, he prays for us as a servant. In the first case he is the Creator, in the second a creature. Himself unchanged, he took to himself our created nature in order to change it, and made us one man with himself, head and body. We pray then to him, through him, in him, and we speak along with him and he along with us.
Good words.
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