Last time we looked at how this One-Who-was, The Word, was WITH God and WAS God! In the beginning. This Word was already existing back in the beginning - because, John says, He WAS God. And He was with God, meaning facing/directed towards God, but also somehow separate. This is John’s mind-blowing conclusion after doing life with Jesus for three long amazing years. He hung out with Him, reclined on Him at dinner, had a front row seat - for love, wisdom, miracles, resurrection: somehow this Jesus - He was/is God.
Now. The deity of Christ. People have struggled with and have been denying that Jesus is God from the very beginning. It IS a fair question. How could a flesh-and-blood person - who bled, AND died - be the eternal God? How can this finite human being also be the infinite God? AND if there is only ONE God - which God Himself told all the Jews, then how could one God be two? How does [1+1=1]? To any respectable math major, that’s lunacy. To a respectable Jew, it’s heresy. Hear O Israel, God is how many? This is why the Jews eventually DO decide to kill Jesus - because there is no denying, HE was claiming to be God [Jn 10.30-33]. John knows this. Full well. But he also knows Jesus. Very well. Front row seat, remember? He knows what he’s writing here - yet John’s inescapable conclusion as THE first-hand witness is that Jesus really is God.
Of course even Christ-followers have struggled with this truth, that Jesus is God. It came to an early head [300 years after Christ]. A church elder in [Alexandria] named [Arius] was actively teaching that Jesus was an exalted person but not God. Emperor Constantine called together hundreds of bishops for a [council in Nicaea]. Together they came up with what is known as [the Nicene Creed].
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God;
begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made.
It may not make logical sense - but it makes the best sense of the truths of Scripture. [The Word WAS God]. God of God. Always was God. There was never a time when Jesus was not God. He was/is not a created being, some lesser God. In the beginning, the Word was God. The One Who used words to form everything in existence out of nothing. Exactly what John says next: [v3: All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.] And again, He was no [puppet] in this process. If He was merely a puppet, there’s no need to kill Him as a lunatic heretic.
And this is why John hammers this truth home right from the get go. He knows we need to understand the truth, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus, The Logos, was in very fact, God. Always was. The Word was (and is) God. This is a foundational truth of the Christian faith. The truth about Christ, about Who Jesus is.
Because Jesus was tried, and convicted, and executed, He was killed not so much for anything He did, but for Who He was. For Who He claimed to be. He was put on trial for His identity - and isn’t that still the case today? People generally have a lot less angst about His teachings, or His miracles, but when His words and deeds point to the claim that He was - and is - God, then folks bristle. They begin to protest, and push back. And why is that?
There’s the obvious intellectual hurdle - how can a man be God, and vice versa? How can one God be two? Again, John doesn’t try to explain it for us. He’s saying, look, I was with Him for three years. I saw what He did. I heard what He said. And I’m telling you the truth. You know that I’m telling you the truth [21.24]. And this is what WE believe. These two truths - the [Trinity] and the [Incarnation] - two of the core teachings of the Christian faith, they’re what we call an antinomy [two things which cannot both be true, yet must be true]. This is what makes the best sense of all the teachings of Scripture. And if you try to hold to only one side or the other, you deny part of the truth. And you diminish Christ. You minimize Who Jesus is.
THIS is where we find that there IS something else in play here, something far deeper, far more nefarious. It goes back to the very beginning in fact, to the Garden - and before. It’s the age old rebellion against the supremacy of God, led first by the [serpent] of old, and carried out by the masses of rebellious humanity ever since. All people reject God, and His rule over our own lives - and over creation. A rising tide. We’re loathe to be accountable to God in any way whatsoever. Desperately trying to put anything else in His place in my heart. I so want to be able to do whatever I want, and I don’t want any consequences. So I reject the idea that there is a God Who cares about what I do, Who cares about me. A Jesus Who makes me accountable. Cuz Jesus primarily came to deal with my sin, to pay the penalty I owe as a result. And because I resist the idea that I am accountable to any God, I must resist the idea that Jesus is God. I must oppose that however possible - and the world has been trying to come up with ways to throw shade on that truth, to minimize Jesus for hundreds and hundreds of years. I doubt that Jesus is God. I doubt that Jesus is Who He says He is. Doubting Thomases.
The world totally tries to minimize Jesus. They reduce Him to an [afterthought]. Or a curse word. Look at the non-Christian religions, look at the cults - they all minimize Jesus. He didn’t die for our sins. He certainly didn’t rise from the dead. He’s definitely not God. Rather than make much of Him they change God’s Word and try minimize Jesus. But that’s not what God does:
Phil 2.9-11 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Acts 2:33 “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. Nor what Paul does: Phil. 1:20 according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
Exalted. Enlarged. Magnified. This is what God the Father has done for His Son. Jesus. The One-Who-Was. Exalted Him, magnified Him, made much of Him. This is what Paul aspired to, in everything he did and said, to magnify Jesus, to somehow turn up the magnification factor on Jesus [like what telescopes can do for things like the orion nebula]. So did John. This is what John is doing, right out of the gate. Making much of Jesus, magnifying Him. Big picture, don’t miss this, make no mistake - Jesus is God. ALL things through Him.
Because what happens if/when you begin to say that Jesus is NOT God? Once and if I ever begin to try and minimize Jesus, to somehow make Him less, to make Him out to be less than Who He is, than Who He always was, always has been and always will be, less than Who He needs to be in my life - then my faith itself will diminish. My hope of eternal life will diminish. My joy will diminish. My world grows dark [v4!]. It all begins here: In the beginning was the Word and the [Word was God]. All things came into being through Him (and FOR Him). [God With Us] My experience of life grows bigger and brighter as my view of Jesus grows. How big is Jesus to me?
Is. 44:24
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb, “I, the LORD, am the Maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone."
Col. 1:16
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through Him and for Him.
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