John’s Gospel – Lesson 1

Audio

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew focuses on Jesus' kingship, Mark on Jesus role as servant, and Luke on Jesus' humanity. These three Gospels are called synoptic because they give an overview or comprehensive view of the life of Jesus. That is not the purpose of John's Gospel. John is concerned with your theology and doctrine. John wants you to know about Jesus' divinity and the Gospel. He is not concerned with giving you a timeline for Jesus life or even covering all the events that John knew of in Jesus' life.

 

There is no reason to think that the authorship of this book is in dispute. John refers to himself within the Gospel as the disciple "whom Jesus loved" and the author had all the characteristics that John would have as an eyewitness and a Jew. The Gospel was probably written late in John's life. The language is simple but the concepts are profound. John puts into relatively simple Greek all the theology you could ever want. You could spend your life studying this book of the Bible and not exhaust the truth in it.

 

John gives the reason for writing the book in chapter 20 verse 31 when he says it was written "that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31). Fundamentally then John wants to focus on the person and work of Jesus. History is still there but John wants to make sure that you know who Jesus was and how He brought salvation to you. John wants you to have the correct belief (doctrine) so that in believing you will have salvation.

 

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

 

This almost sounds as if we had jumped back to Genesis 1:1 but rather than the earth being in view we have Christ and the Trinity in view. John begins with the deity of Jesus and it is in the forefront of this Gospel. This verse and many others teach us fundamentals that we have the blessing of Church history for understanding. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are distinct persons and yet are each in essence fully God and there is only one God. We do not believe a contradiction and that is because we believe that God is three in person and one in essence. We are limited in our understanding of the Trinity but that doesn't seem strange to me. I think it would be more surprising if God were easy to understand "up close and personal". In part I think that because we seem to have such a hard time understanding ourselves and others. The key point to remember is that you are not proposing a contradiction in which God is both three and one at the same time and in the same sense. The sense is different here. God is three in person but only one in essence.

 

You'll almost surely be exposed to error on the topic of the Trinity. The Church periodically drifts from sound doctrine and then eventually responded when called back to sound doctrine repeatedly. For example, modalism is a heresy that teaches that God is one and pretends to be each of the persons of the trinity at various times. Think of a cup with a bulldog at one position, a tiger at another position, and a yellow jacket at a third position so that you can only see one mascot at a time. It isn't a cup many of us would be comfortable with. Scripture teaches that the three persons of the Trinity are actually distinct persons. They are not the same person. If you order materials from "LifeWay" then you may be exposed to this heresy by the writings of TD Jakes. However, in the last few weeks there seems to have been a change in what Lifeway distributes from TD Jakes. The heresy being taught was condemned by the Church before 500 AD. Even if stubborn people didn't purposely teach false doctrine about the Trinity we would still find those who are young in the faith inventing these same errors as first approximations trying to understand God. However, being young and untaught is different from being stubborn and un-teachable. We may all make mistakes with imprecise language but we need to allow Scripture to correct us and we need to be discerning about what materials we use. If we wish to study error, then the materials of a man who is a modalist might be of value but we would not wish to be exposed without exercising discernment. If you are exercising discernment then you'd keep the works of a heretic off the shelf with the milk. Mixing the error in with the milk is how we drift away.

 

John 1:2-5

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

Even here we begin to see the "economy" of the Trinity. What I mean by that is we see the roles in perfect unity and harmony practiced within the Trinity. Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. He was in the beginning with God. In perfect agreement the Father created through the Son who submitted so that all things were made through Him. Nothing was made without the Son because the Father and Son were in perfect harmony and unity. Also from the foundation of the earth in this Gospel we see the foreshadowing of the pact between Father and Son for redemption. The Son had life within Him. The Holy Spirit brings this life and men have life because as men to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

 

John points back to the beginning of Genesis in which "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" Genesis 1:2. We were lost and without hope living in the kingdom of darkness when the Holy Spirit was sent and we were moved into the Kingdom of Light. The light is shining and the darkness of fallen mankind has not extinguished God's work.

 

In these five verses we have an opening that teaches us about the Trinity and foreshadows the entire Gospel according to John. The Holy Spirit, through John, gives a tremendous introduction to the Gospel.

 

John 1:6-8

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

 

This is John the Baptist or John the Baptizer. He had a very special role. I'm sure I've heard a sermon or two on how we all need to bear witness about the light. Nobody has the role that John had. He was baptizing the Jewish Nation. That was a radical move since the baptism rituals were saved for gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism. John was stirring up controversy but his ministry was another of God's gifts of grace to a people whose hearts had drifted away. God's holiness along with the nearness of the redemptive work and the impending judgment on the Jewish Nation had such an impact on John that his life manifested itself as an Old Testament prophet. This lifestyle stirred up additional controversy because the Jewish Nation hadn't had a prophet in the 400 years since Malachi. So God sent a prophet, the last of the Old Testament prophets if you want to think of it that way, to point at Jesus and call Him the Lamb of God.

 

John 1:9-13

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

John gives us another reason to love the True Light and that reason is "Common Grace". Grudem defines common grace as "the grace of God by which he gives people innumerable blessings that are not part of salvation." We can summarize common Grace in the following categories:

 

1. The Physical Realm – praise God for the beauty of creation and how He provides for us in creation,
   
2. The Intellectual Realm – praise God that even though we are fallen creatures we are able to act rationally and distinguish error in many ways. The blessings of science and technology are the result of common grace even though we may be poor stewards of those blessings at times,
   
3. The Moral Realm – praise God that even though we are fallen creatures mankind is restrained and prevented from all the evil that would be pursued otherwise. Even most atheists act as if there were a God who requires them to be moral,
   
4. The Creative Realm – praise God for the creativity of the arts, music, athletics, cooking, writing, and crafts,
   
5. The Societal Realm – praise God for government and organizations in human society, and,
   
6. The Religious Realm – praise God for the way He blesses the unsaved through the actions of the saved.
   

 

Have a look at Grudem if you'd like to see a more detailed description of the function of Common Grace and read about Special Grace. So the True Light that is the source of all this blessing was coming into the world and deserved all praise and honor and glory from every creature. However, the world did not know Him and His own did not receive Him.

 

In Special Grace or that Grace that brings salvation we see Grace prevailing against the darkness. The True Light was coming into the darkness but it was not overcome by the darkness because Christ knew those who were His and He was bringing another birth. We'll see even more clearly how this works in later chapters but your new birth put you in a new place with regard to God. You are no longer a child of wrath but instead you are born by the will of God as His child. We say this first step is monergistic because there was one worker and that worker was God. If you are a Christian then, in response to the Gospel (the Call), He changed your heart in such a way (Regenerated) that you received Him and believed Him (Conversion) and your sins were covered (Justification) so that you were then in God's family (Adoption). That process is part of what is called the "Order of Salvation" or "ordo salutis". Of course there is no holy paperwork that delays each step. It is considered a process in a logical sense but it is something that happens in an instant.

 

John 1:14-18

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.' ") And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

 

It is important to remember that the Word is eternal. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. He had no beginning and He will have no end. He "became flesh" as in pitched His tent among us. The Apostle John is giving you a firsthand account of the glory of the Son and also the Apostle John is giving firsthand testimony to the witness of John the Baptist. We see that we have all received from His fullness both in Common Grace and in Special Grace if we are Christians. We also see that Jesus was the end of the law for righteousness sake because of the grace and truth he brings.

 

Even the end of this section is very Trinitarian. We can't see God but God who is at the Father's side has made Him known. Christ made our every prayer Trinitarian. That is because we pray under the leading of the Holy Spirit to the Father with our sins forgiven and clothed in the righteousness of the Son who is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. I hope you'll keep that in mind as you take communion this morning.