Bible Study Notes – Gospel of John 1:1-18

We begin a study of the Gospel of John, “Encountering Jesus.”  The great apostle of love writes this gospel to share the human side of Almighty God whom Jesus personifies during His earthly journey.  In Jesus, we glimpse the essence of God’s unconditional love.  Jesus declares the “Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.”  In Jesus, God identifies directly with our daily challenges.  As we study John, we will focus upon Jesus’ teachings and the life changing encounters of the people who meet him.

The gospel of John divides into two halves: The Book of Signs (chapters one to twelve) and The Book of Glory (chapters thirteen to twenty-one).  In the first half, John renders a portrait of Almighty God in the Person of Jesus Christ in which He utilizes miracles, signs and wonders to empathize directly with human suffering and limitations.  Jesus performs seven supernatural acts to demonstrate God’s unfailing love for humankind.  Each miracle shows God’s abilities to overcome daily adversities.  At the wedding at Cana, Jesus turns water into wine; thereby demonstrating human thirst of the soul can only be satisfied with the Word of God.  Second, Jesus heals a Roman official’s son.  In this miracle, Jesus shows his followers that God’s love and power extends to everyone who genuinely believes.  Third, he heals a lame man at the pool of Siloam who lives in that condition for thirty-eight years.  In so doing, he shows only God can heal deep, longstanding and pervasive human brokenness.  Fourth, he feeds five thousand hungry men not counting women and children.  In response, Jesus teaches his disciples that physical hunger lingers throughout a person’s natural life but spiritual hunger which is far greater will only be satisfied by a relationship with Almighty God. 

Next, Jesus walks on water to demonstrate God’s infinite abilities which transcend natural laws of which God is the Author.  Within His sovereign prerogative, He suspends natural law to accomplish His purposes and even glorify Himself.  Sixth, Jesus heals a man born blind who is forty years of age.  This healing reflects the spiritual and existential blindness of average people although they have physical sight.  The religious leaders could not see the grace and love of God in this miracle.  Their allegiance to tradition, theology and Law blind them from seeing God’s love and mercy.  Lazarus’ resurrection from the dead is the seventh and final sign.  It is the supreme miracle!  In Christ, Almighty God conquers death and permanently relieves humankind of our greatest fear.  These seven miracles redress human thirst, brokenness, hunger, natural challenges, blindness and death.  Actually, the children of Israel face similar adversities during their four decades wandering in the wilderness.  As the Word becomes flesh and dwells amongst us, Jesus demonstrates God’s to journey with us during our earthly pilgrimage.  John paints a portrait of a loving Father and Son who walks beside us.

The Book of Glory contains Jesus’ main teachings before His arrival in Jerusalem enroute to the Cross of Calvary in which He suffers His passion as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world.”  In the thirteenth chapter, Jesus teaches the disciple about servant leadership as he washes their feet in the midst of the Passover meal.  He also deals with betrayal and denial as he foreshadows God’s faithful forgiveness of all sin.  Jesus teaches about the Holy Spirit in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters; as he prepares the disciples for his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to heaven.  He tells them He must leave in order for the Holy Spirit to come but the Spirit will be their Comforter, Counselor and Friend.  Further, He will lead and guide them into all truth and remind them of Jesus’ teachings.  More specifically, in the fifteenth verse, Jesus instructs the disciples to remain connected to the “True Vine” because apart from Him they cannot accomplish anything. 

The great and tremendous “High Priestly Prayer” is the seventeenth chapter.  On the night of His betrayal and denial, Jesus spends an extensive period of time in prayer seeking divine empowerment to fulfill His destiny.  Remarkably, in this prayer, Jesus prays even for twenty-first century Christians!  After his arrest, Jesus undergoes religious trial in which the Sanhedrin convict Him of blasphemy and a secular trial in which the Roman governmental authorities convict Him of insurrection in trumped up charges.  The nineteenth chapter records Jesus’ crucifixion as his disciples completely desert Him; the fickle crowds who received countless free healings give their assent; and his women followers watch in total powerless silence.  Mary Magdalene symbolizes each disciple, past, present and future, who encounters our resurrected Lord and Savior; in the twentieth chapter, John offers his account of the resurrection.  He wants the reader to know a similar fate awaits him or her if he or she believes unconditionally.  Finally, John concludes his gospel with an unfailingly loving account of Peter’s restoration.  Again, each disciple has the assurance of a similar restoration after genuine repentance.  Summarily, the Book of Glory depicts a grand canvass in which God fulfills His covenant with humankind in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Accordingly, anyone who believes on His Name enjoys abundant life on earth and shares in Christ’s glorification in eternity.

This week’s passage, The Prologue, offers an introduction to the Gospel of John in which the apostle depicts Jesus as fully God and completely human.  The opening eighteen verses illustrate Jesus’ divine origins although the Gospel reveals His empathy with human pain and suffering.  John reveals Jesus as the Word of God who participates in creation.  Actually, He creates everything as nothing is made without Him.  For disciples, this means the Father always intended salvation, healing and wholeness for each of us.  He further intended to send Jesus, though the infidelity and disobedience of our father Adam temporarily thwarted the His desire for blissful communion with humankind, to perfect the plan of creation through the gift of His life as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world.”

Consider the following ideas and questions as you study the passage.

• John 1:1 parallels Genesis 1:1.  The apostle of love assures his readers and followers that Jesus is God.  He is with the Father from the beginning.  Actually, Jesus is the architect of creation and the universe.  As a person encounters Jesus, he or she receives a gracious opportunity to recreate himself or herself into Christ’s character.
• John emphasizes, in the third verse, nothing is made without Jesus.  Anyone who encounters Jesus has access to the same creative power that yields an infinite universe.
• The fourth verse of this passage resembles Colossians 1:15-20.  The fullness of the godhead dwells in Jesus in bodily form.  In the paradox of the Incarnation, Jesus perfectly personifies divine love, holiness, mercy and grace.  As the teaching of the Law and the preaching of the Prophets proved insufficient to motivate humankind to give fidelity and obedience to Almighty God, He sends Jesus into the world to demonstrate His love.  Jesus is the light of God which refuses to be extinguished by the sin of humankind.
• John essentially summarizes the prophecy of Isaiah in the next three verses.  John the Baptist is the forerunner of whom Isaiah speaks when he proclaims a voice will cry out in the wilderness.  “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His paths.”  In a sense, John the Baptist is the last prophet as he heralds the coming of Christ and the new “Law of Divine Love.”
• It is significant that John clarifies the role of John the Baptist who is not the Messiah but the one who announces His coming.  Later in the gospel, John the Baptist says “I must decrease so that He may increase.”  John the Baptist is one of the most self-actualized people in human history.  He knows his purpose and mission and he unconditionally accepts himself. 
• Liberation theologians take particular interest in the next couple of verses.  The true light of divine love, truth and justice manifests itself in the world through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  However, the world does not recognize the most supreme revelation of God in human history.  Arguably, the world did not recognize Jesus because He comes to earth as an illiterate, uneducated carpenter born into a very poor family in a village that people disdain.  For thousands of years, the Israelite people expect a Messiah in the image of King David who would restore Israel to her former military and political glory.  Understandably, they would not receive a carpenter as their Messiah.  However, liberationist theologians posit Jesus’ incarnation proves God’s preferential treatment for the poor and insistence upon justice and equality in all segments of society to enable the poor to actualize their inheritance as children of God.
• More regrettably, Jesus’ own people did not receive Him.  They become the human instruments through which His unjust crucifixion occurs.  You can imagine the disillusionment of Jesus as He considers this hard reality.  His own people whom He came to save reject Him!  In one gospel account, Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem because of their rejection of the Law, Prophets and Him.
• Human history is replete with visionaries who are rejected and betrayed by their own racial and ethnic brothers and sisters: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, The Black Panther Party, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Michael Collins, Che Guevara, Oscar Romero, etc.
• John 1:12 offers abundant and eternal life to anyone who believes.  “Yet to all who receive Him, who believe on His Name; He gives the right to become the children of God.”  Genuine faith in Jesus Christ affords the benefits of God’s covenant with humankind to anyone regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, language, or origin.  Jesus initiates a new covenant which includes anyone who believes.  Each celebration of Holy Communion reminds recipients of God’s mysterious gifts of this new and everlasting covenant. 
• As he concludes his book, the author of Hebrews issues a benediction in which he prays his readers will receive bountiful blessings from the God of peace who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep.  From creation, God in His infinite foreknowledge designs a plan of salvation utilizing Christ’s blood as the seal of an everlasting covenant.
• Inheritance as a child of God is not a matter of human biology but a matter of faith in God’s redemptive plan accomplished by Jesus Christ.  God graciously gives abundant and eternal life to any person who has faith.  God gives rebirth to any disciple who asks.
• Moreover, God manifests Himself in flesh to join our earthly and human journey.  “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.”  Literally, Christ pitches a tent with us during the wilderness of life.  John’s writing conjures the imagery of Israel’s wilderness wandering years between liberation from Egypt and entrance into the Promised Land.  In Christ, Almighty God identifies meticulously and directly with the daily challenges of human existence.  Christ is Emmanuel, God with us.
• The evangelist utilizes the fifteenth verse to remind his readers of John the Baptist’s pivotal role as the forerunner of the Lord.  John the Baptist alludes to the pre-existence of Christ who from the beginning of time, as the architect of creation, would fulfill the divine plan of salvation.  As Christ exists before John’s conception, Jesus is preeminent.  With enviable humility, John the Baptist fulfills his purpose of announcing the arrival of Jesus in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
• From the fullness of Christ, each disciple receives God’s infinite grace.
• Indeed, God gave His Law through Moses to reveal His divine character and perfect holiness.  Yet, humankind remains incapable of adhering to the Law.  The burden of nearly 7000 commands overwhelms the average person who earnestly seeks a closer relationship with God.  However genuine a one’s desire to obey, one will violate inevitably one or more of these laws; thereby impeding one’s heartfelt intent of developing a greater relationship with God.
• Through Jesus Christ, God bestows grace and truth upon humankind.  The gospel through grace accomplishes the restoration between God and humankind that the Law is unable to do.  Moreover, Jesus personally reveals God’s unfailing love, unmerited favor and enduring truth to all generations.
• The evangelist concludes this incredible Prologue to the Gospel with a summary statement of the eternal nature of Jesus Christ who is the One and Only Begotten Son who has seen God and more significantly submits to human existence to reveal God’s character and love.