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This morning we are taking a break in our sermon series to check in with our Bible in Two Years reading campaign. Every two months I preach a shorter sermon on something we’ve been reading over the last couple of months, and then there is an opportunity for small group discussion at the end of the service. The New Testament readings lately have been from John’s gospel, and so I wanted to spend some time looking at John’s gospel, specifically the introduction and what John tells us about who Jesus is and what His mission during His time on earth was.

John begins His gospel by speaking of Jesus, but he uses an expression which would have had special meaning to his hearers – the Word; in Greek, the Logos. Logos was an expression that would have had a rich meaning for John’s Greek readers – it was the expression of divine thought; the whole contents of divinity. For Philo, a Greek writer, Logos was an abstract idea used by God or the gods in the creation of the world. It is a pure, unknowable, abstraction of God. And John takes this familiar expression and uses it to communicate so important truths about the real expression of divine thought, the Logos of God, Jesus, who was no unknowable, abstraction, but became flesh.

Let’s read John 1:1-18:

John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. ⁶ There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. ⁹ The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. ¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'" ¹⁶ From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.