John 1:1-5 | The Character of God's Light

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible again and open it with me to the Gospel of John and the first chapter.

He isn't just a baby.

Let that rest in your mind for a moment.

He isn't just a baby.

He has always existed, even though we celebrate his birth.

Neither death nor birth changes the essence of his being.

He whose arms groped weakly as an infant had long possessed fingertips strong enough to set the stars in place.

He who learned and grew, determined before the world began to conquer death and bring true life to the world.

We're right to celebrate the Lord's birth.

The world should celebrate it joyously.

Give gifts to one another in celebration of his gift to us.

But do not let your eyes pause too long on the newborn swaddled in a feed trough without carefully preparing your heart, mind, and soul.

For without the proper preparation, you might be tempted to see that newborn as merely another child brought into this world.

Without the appropriate preparation, you might see him more like Herod did, as one who can be dismissed by mere command.

He isn't just a baby.

The infancy narratives in the Gospels are a tiny portion of Jesus' biographies, but they introduce us to something and someone beyond our comprehension.

Most of you keep returning week after week after week, and day after day, pouring your heart and mind into the scriptures because he is incomprehensible.

There is so much to know about him that there is more and more to always know.

He was a baby.

But in the Christmas infancy stories, he is immeasurably more than a newborn.

His newborn status merely introduces us to the rest of the story.

We see this reality most clearly, I think, in John's Gospel.

John's Gospel has been compared to a swimming pool that is shallow enough for a child to play in, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim in.

It's also the place to go to most clearly see God's light in the person of Jesus Christ.

Webb has read for us the text already, but let's read it one more time, just a portion of it.

John chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

I'll read through verse 5.

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 that life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness.

And the darkness has not overcome it.

Amen.

In John chapter 8, Jesus shouted in the Temple Commons, I am the light of the world.

John 8 · chapter mention

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

That's an audacious statement.

In his book Mere Christianity, some of you have probably read that, C.S.

Lewis contended that a trilemma, not a dilemma, but a trilemma exists for anyone who encounters the Lord Jesus Christ.

Based on Jesus' claims that Lewis saw in the scriptures, he said that each of us is faced with the reality that Jesus either told the truth, which means he is the Lord God, that he was lying about his identity, or thirdly, that he was mentally unstable.

You haven't read Lewis's Mere Christianity.

Maybe you've read Josh McDowell's More Than a Carpenter, in which he took those three elements of the trilemma and said, Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic.

But it's one thing to think about Jesus as an adult, as a 33-year-old shouting in the temple to the temple worshipers that he is the light of the world who brings light and life.

It's entirely different to think about a newborn infant being the light of the world who brings the light.

Swaddled infant lying in the manger is the light of the world.

Jesus has declared that he is the light who brings life.

He is more than a baby.

Now that I've taken you on a mind-numbing theological and philosophical journey, let's pause that trajectory.

Your brain might already be tired, and that's okay.

Let's move in a simpler direction that children can understand while still remaining deep enough for elephants to swim.

John chapter 1 sets the stage for John's metaphor of light.

John 1 · chapter mention

Here we find three critical characteristics of God's light in the person of Jesus Christ.

These characteristics are the premise and the foundation of Jesus' declaration in John 8 that He is the light of the world.

Meaning these characteristics were not only true when Jesus stood and proclaimed them in the temple three decades later, they were true as he lay swaddled in the manger.

Three characteristics of divine light that bring us into a right relationship with the swaddled infant who is the light of the world.

First, we need to understand here that the light of the world is divine.

There's no way to get around this, no matter what some religious groups want to say.

The light of the world is divine.

John uses two metaphors here: the metaphor of word and the metaphor of light.

Notice, though, that John informs us in verse 2 that the word of verse 1 is a person.

He.

The word is a he.

And that person is later identified in verse 17 as the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that word, who is a person that we know as the Son, existed in the beginning before the world.

Before plants and animals and people.

The light of the world existed before lights.

Being in the beginning.

In the beginning was the word.

He was in the beginning.

That implies that he is uncreated.

He existed when everything was made, even before time itself.

He is eternal, and to be eternal is to be divine.

Now notice that John says that person who is the word is the light of humanity.

Verse 4.

John will tell us in his first letter, 1 John, that God is light.

And in him is no darkness at all.

I said we were going to leave the deeply theological behind it.

That's not true.

We can't do that.

Only God can be a person who is, by his very nature, light.

Only God exists in personhood and light.

He isn't just a baby.

That swaddled infant is the eternal God, the true light of true light, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.

He is literally Emmanuel.

God with us.

John further describes this person, this word, this light as omnipotent, creating everything that is.

Light itself would not exist without this person creating it.

Verses 1 and 2 take us back all the way to the beginning of the story in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

In the beginning.

Verse 3 declares that the word, the light, made everything, and without him nothing would exist.

That's why the writer to the Hebrews would later say in Hebrews chapter 1, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son.

The son that he appointed to be the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

This son is the light, the radiance of the glory of God.

The exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

While he was upheld in the arms of his mother, he at the very same time was upholding the universe.

He is more than a baby.

That word has always been entirely, eternally God.

And that word, the Lord Jesus Himself, brought everything else into existence.

Jesus would later declare that he is the light of the world because he is the incarnate, that the flesh taking on deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, the eternal creator living within time, the light surrounded by shadow, bringing light and life to all who receive him.

As the divine light, he is the light of all lights, the giver of light, and he can bring light to any heart, mind, or soul, even this very moment.

He can make himself known in the darkest of hours.

In the darkest of places.

Gather round him and worship.

Honor him as Emmanuel.

He is more than a swaddled infant.

Come.

Bring your gifts.

Bow before him and worship him with humble heart.

For this, this infant is divine.

There's a second hypocritical characteristic of light, and that is that the light here is life-giving.

The word life is crucial to John.

He uses this word thirty-six times in his book.

Over and over and over again, we find life presented to us.

But what kind of life is this?

You're familiar with the Greek word bios or bios.

Think of biology, right?

The study of life.

This is often used to refer to life as we know it, the physical world, everything that exists in this world.

However, the apostle John did not use the word bias.

He's not speaking about physical, created, biological life.

We might be tempted to think that, though, since verse 3 speaks of Jesus creating work.

But it's not.

John never uses the word bios in his gospel.

That's kind of surprising.

Speaks all about life, but never about this kind of life.

There's another word, often translated as life, where we get our English word psyche.

It means spirit or soul.

It's frequently used in the New Testament to refer to a person's entire being, who we are.

John uses this word a few times, mostly in John chapter 10, where Jesus speaks of laying down his life for the sheep.

John 10 · chapter mention

But that's not here.

The most prevalent word for life in the Gospel of John is a different word that you might not know.

It's the word Zoe.

That seems to point to the fullness of life, true life, complete life, perfect life.

Thirty-six times John uses this term to show the kind of life that Jesus came to give.

It's the kind of life that is similar to his life.

It is an everlasting life.

For example, you just hold your finger here in John chapter 1 and look over at John chapter 3.

John 1 · chapter mention John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3, verse 14, the Lord Jesus said, You all remember when Moses in the Old Testament made that image of a snake and put it up on a pole and lifted it up for everybody to look at to be saved?

John 3 · chapter mention

He says, just like that, so also the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal Zoe.

Life.

Same word in verse 16.

Give his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting Zoe.

Verse 36.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal Zoe.

Whoever does not believe the Son shall not see the Zoe, but the wrath of God remains on him.

We could keep going.

36 times.

So as you can see, this life is not natural to our world.

It exists in God, but it does not exist naturally in this world of death and decay.

And that's a reality that by and large our world refuses to accept.

Our world wants to have everlasting life.

Just not the way that they need to receive it.

Some say that life, all of life, is eternal.

We go in cycles from life to death and back to life again.

But the Bible doesn't teach that.

Some say that life merely ends, that there's nothing more after this life.

Scripture doesn't approve of that kind of teaching either.

Our world does not want to believe that the kind of life that is spiritual and everlasting, that is true life, is found only in God, more specifically by faith in the Son.

Squaddled in a manger.

This is why John wrote his book.

His purpose is recorded in John chapter 20, verse 31.

John 20:31

These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have Zoe in his name.

John doesn't care about your biological life.

Sorry to say it, John doesn't think much of your psychological life.

He thinks more of Christ's psychological life being given for you.

No, John cares that you have true life.

And that true life is only found in the true light.

So as we think about life in the Gospel of John, we must distance ourselves from biology.

We must not think in terms of science or human psychology.

We must think about the first three to four to five verses of John chapter one.

This is God, this is eternity, this is a word so great that it can bring things into existence by mere command.

In him is life.

Biological life is given existence through his creative power, but that's not the point in verse four.

This is true life.

This is spiritual life.

This is life eternal, life that overcomes death, life that must be received from the hand of God through a new birth into a living hope.

You're familiar, I'm sure, at least if you've grown up in the educational system learning history.

You're familiar with the legend of Juan Ponce de Leon.

Spanish adventurer who supposedly searched the land of Florida for the fountain of youth.

Well, modern science has overtaken the fountain.

Life spans are regularly measured worldwide, and life expectancies are generated for every population group.

Scientists meticulously track diet trends, activities, lifestyles, and environments to understand what contributes to longevity of life.

In fact, Hall of Famer Ted Williams, several years ago, famously had his body cryogenically frozen after his death in hopes that one day science would be able to revive him.

John takes all of those hopes for true life and just tosses them aside.

Nothing in the created world will ultimately exceed no matter what human beings attempt to do.

No matter what they seek out in the created world.

Instead, John points all of us to the real, the true fountain of life.

Psalm 36, verse 9 tells us, for with you, God is the fountain of life.

Psalms 36:9

The search for true, eternal life is a search for a person.

And that person is the eternal Son of God.

We find him.

Or a time swaddled in a manger.

But the light of the world swaddled himself in human form only to die so that you and I might have Zoe life.

But where is your hope for life?

Is it in science?

Is it in medicine?

Is it in your accomplishments?

Making something of yourself?

Is it in church?

Are you hoping that by being here this morning on a Christmas service that you can check off the box for church attendance that admits you into eternal life?

Think that God will admit you into his heaven because you've been a quote-unquote good person?

Do you think that God will open up the gates to his heaven because you, in your all-perfect wisdom, think you've been a pretty good quality person?

Is your search for real life found in your family?

Or in your job?

Maybe you're humble enough to admit that you don't know where to look.

Praise God.

Maybe you feel hopeless and uncertain about this life and the life to God.

Friends, the scriptures point us all to Jesus.

He is the fountain that you want to run to.

He is light and life.

If your search for true life isn't anything but Jesus the Messiah, you will go through physical life, the BIOS life on a pointless search that will only end up destroying your psyche and leaving you without Zoe.

But John lifts up Jesus as if to say, look to him.

In him is true light and true life.

And as Jesus says to Martha later in the book, the one with the life Jesus offers will never ultimately die.

The Bios life will end, but the Zoe life will not end.

And that life is the light of men.

This light was born to die.

Crushing the shadow as he rose from the dead.

And as the life-giving light, he can bring hope to any darkness and true light and true life to any dark and lost soul.

You must believe it.

And that's a wise choice to make.

Because the third characteristic of light that we see in our text is that the light of the world is unstoppable.

You will either join it or be crushed by it.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John is still speaking about Jesus here.

He is the word.

As the world needs light to exist biologically, humanity needs the light of Christ to have true life forever.

The problem, John says, is that darkness seeks to overcome the light.

Darkness wants to consume, but light dispels darkness.

Think of a dark room in your basement that has no outside light to it.

It's just all enclosed.

You enter that dark room holding a single candle.

The candle's lit, obviously.

And as you enter that dark room, it's as if the light of that single candle forces darkness to retreat to the corners of the room.

Oh while the darkness is seeking to take hold and overcome the light.

Some of your Bibles have a translation here that is a little bit different.

The darkness has not overcome.

Some say comprehend does not comprehend it, some say does not understand it.

That last word in verse 5 there, second to last word, has not overcome that verb.

Means to take or to grasp something.

And it's in an intensive form here that means to seize it with force.

Same word is used in chapter 12 of John, verse 25, that helps us see how John uses this word a little more clearly.

Jesus says to the people around him, the light is among you for a little while.

So walk while you have the light, lest darkness seize you.

John's using it in very much the same way here.

Darkness is wanting to seize anything that has a semblance of light.

In John's gospel, darkness is not simply the absence of light in the created world.

It's another metaphor to describe everything in the world that is at war with God.

It describes the enemies of God.

It represents all the forces of sin and evil.

Every human being is born into this darkness.

We are conceived in sin, born in sin, and live in sin, and as such, we are part of the darkness that rules this world.

We exist in the realm of death and darkness, and a brilliant light suddenly shines into that realm of darkness.

Suddenly, because John suddenly changes verb tenses here to underscore what he's doing.

The light shines actively, presently, continuously in the darkness.

The word, the Lord Jesus, the life was in the beginning.

He was with God.

He has always existed as God.

He brought everything into being as it is.

And now in this very moment, John says he shines.

It's as if Jesus were to suddenly appear in the void of space on a moonless night, and you see him shining.

To dispel the darkness.

That's what light does.

The darkness seeks to overtake it, to subdue it, to push it out.

But the darkness, John tells us, has not overcome the light of Jesus.

Isn't that why we're here?

To celebrate the coming of the true light of the world.

We're here because the darkness has not overcome it.

Your candles might go out.

Even your LED light bulbs will die.

Your electricity might be gone.

But darkness will never overcome the light of the world.

Because he was in the beginning.

He made the lights.

Because he is the light.

And as the light, he brings life.

That light and that life will never be stopped.

Light as we know it is highly complex.

If I understand it very simply, in a technical way, electromagnetic radiation emanates from a source in various wavelengths.

The speed of light, a little over 186,000 miles per second, is one of the standard principles of modern physics.

Light is necessary for life.

Plants need light for photosynthesis, and humans and animals need the oxygen that that process produces in order to breathe.

We need heat from the light.

You know what's fascinating?

We're used to the cold here in North Dakota.

If the sun suddenly went out, they tell us that the average temperature on Earth would drop below zero within a week.

The average temperature.

Slowly dropping to negative 100 within a year until it eventually drops to minus 400.

But light here in John is a metaphor for something much more significant than particles and waves of electromagnetic magnetic radiation.

And light and life are tied together.

It's the phrasing that we see in verse 1 in the same way that the word was God and was with God and the word was God in the same way.

The light is the life of men.

The true life that is Jesus is the true light of humanity.

The true life that is Jesus is the true life that the light that needs, that the world needs.

The light we need is not so much the light that comes from bulbs, the flames of candles, or the sun.

The true light that we need comes from Jesus the Messiah.

That's why Jesus says later in John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

In fact, look there with me.

John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

I want you to see this.

John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

Verse.

Verse 35.

So Jesus says to the crowd, verse 34, that's surrounding you.

So walk while you have the light, lest the darkness seize you.

The one who walks in darkness does not know where he's going.

How many of you have gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and all the lights in the house are off and you stumble around and jab your toe into something?

Yes, an amen?

That's your life without the light of the world.

Over and over and over and over again, you walk in darkness, you stumble in darkness while the darkness is attempting to seize you.

You don't know where you're going.

But while you have the light, believe in the light.

Who is the light?

Jesus.

That you may become sons of the light.

Eternally present is the light of all lights.

Mighty in power is the light before lights.

This light of the world stepped into time's dark shadows.

Descending to die is the light of all life.

Banishing all darkness is the light who brings life.

And so John wrote that we might believe and that by believing in the light of Christ we may have true life.

So where are you?

Are you peering into the void?

Seeking the swaddled infant like Herod to dismiss and to destroy so that you might live your own life in your own way?

Or are you seeking him like the shepherds and the magi to bow before him in awe and worship?

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, may we see you truly, not just today, not just this week, but always as the light of life.

May we come to understand who you are and come to understand the light and the life that comes from God so that we might trust in you and follow that light and walk in it, that darkness might not overtake us.

By your grace and your mercy, fill us with your spirit so that we might worship you in spirit and in truth, with faith and understanding, coming to the fountain of life.

Lord, we do not want to be found in the end, not having embraced the light, but instead having been seized by darkness.

May we in our worship and in our awe maintain a sense of your incomprehensible nature.

You are the great I am, the one who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.