The following is a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. As you've heard at First Presbyterian Church, it's our custom to take the opportunity afforded by the holiday season to step away from our regular studies, as we've been looking here on Sunday mornings at the book of Leviticus, to which we will return, God willing, in the new year, and instead to devote our attention during the Advent period to a series of meditations on the meaning and significance of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this year, I want to turn with you to the opening 18 verses of the gospel according to John, John's famous prologue, which we'll take the next four weeks to consider together. If you're using a church Bible, if you would go ahead and turn there with me, John chapter 1, you can find that on page, let's see, where is it? Page 886, if you're using one of our church Bibles. These opening 18 verses are, I think, justly regarded as among the most beautiful and profound prose ever written. John says this person he is describing is the Word in verse 1. He is the Creator, verses 2 and 3. He is the source of life and light, 4 through 9. He came to give believing sinners like us the privilege of adoption into the family of God, verses 10 through 13. The Word, this Word, became flesh He lived among human beings as one of us, even though he is the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, 14 through 15. Naturally, therefore, his coming far exceeds anything that the law of Moses ever conveyed to the world. And out of his fullness, he gives grace and truth to us, verses 16 and 17. He is the one, the only one, who makes the invisible God known in a spiritually dark world that so desperately needs to see His light. Verse 18. This is a dazzling portrait in its scope and grandeur and mystery. And we climb, as we work through these eighteen verses, higher and higher with John in his description of this person. And with each new facet of the character and mission of this person, the tension is building. We're meant to ask, who is this? What is his identity? Who is John speaking about? Who could he be? John knows his craft. He withholds his identity almost to the last minute so that we are held by the unfolding mystery, and then the big reveal arrives in verse 17, grace and truth came. All these glories John has been describing are unveiled. in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one John has been speaking about all along, the baby of Bethlehem, the man of Galilee, the crucified Judean rabbi. It is his portrait that John has been painting. Now, you may remember near the end of John's book, in John 20, verse 31, the apostle tells us why he wrote his gospel in the first place. These things are written, John says, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life. in his name. And so, as we read John's prologue throughout this month, that is John's agenda for us. He's not interested in providing some bare historical data, as if he were merely a reporter, you know, on the evening news, telling us the facts from the front line. He is telling us facts, to be sure, but he wants to do much more than that. His prologue, like his gospel as a whole, is designed to tell us about Jesus' identity, who He is, His mission, why He came, and His impact, what it means to follow Him, and what difference it ought to make in your life and in mine two millennia later. These things are written, that you might believe and that by believing you might have life in His name. what these verses are all about. That's what is available this month in these opening eighteen verses of John's Gospels. We stand breathless before the majesty of John's description of the Word made flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, life for you in his name. This morning, we are going to give our attention to the first four verses And I want you to notice four things in them with me that John tells us about Jesus. Four things. First, Jesus is the eternal Word. Secondly, he is the divine Word. Third, he is the creative Word. And finally, he is the living Word. The eternal, divine, creative, living Word. It is because He is these things that there is life for us in His name. Before we look at each of them, let's bow our heads together and pray, and then we'll read the passage. Let us all pray. Lord Jesus, You are the Word, and we pray that we might hear You that you might give us light and life by believing your Word, for we ask it in your name. Amen. John chapter 1 at verse 1, this is the Word of God. 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 the life was the light of men. Amen. Christmas is, I think Christmas is, full of interesting backstories. For example, Santa Claus is really the fourth-century bishop Nicholas of Myra, who famously gave secret gifts to children, and legend has it, punched the heretic Arius on the nose at the Council of Nicaea. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a character in a short story originally commissioned by a department store, written by a man called Robert L. May. But Rudolph was not his name in the early drafts of the story. He was, at first he was Rollo, and then he was Reginald, but Reginald the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn't really roll off the tongue quite so well, and so eventually he became Rudolph. And while we're talking about Rudolph, do you remember the famous stop-motion animation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Sponsored by General Electric that make light bulbs. One of their engineers, a man called Nick, I think I'm saying his name correctly, developed the first ever LED light bulb capable of producing red light in the visible range. It was that bulb that became Rudolph's nose in the stop-motion animation. There's all sorts of interesting backstories that are connected with our Christmas traditions. The Apostle John is writing his prologue to provide Jesus' backstory. In fact, this may be the most interesting backstory ever told. Typically, when we hear somebody's backstory, you expect to learn about their place of birth, how he was raised, his parents, his early life. But there is no nativity in John's Gospel, is there, unlike Matthew and Luke? Instead, John's prologue gives us Jesus' backstory stretching much further back than the date of His birth. Here, first of all, John tells us about Jesus, the eternal Word, the eternal Word. Look with me at verse 1, please. In the beginning was the Word. Verse 2, he was, in the beginning, with God. The first words of John 1, 1, of course, are meant to transport us all the way back to the very first words of the Bible as a whole, aren't they? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John is here revisiting the very dawn of creation. This is the absolute beginning of all that has been made. But there, John says, when everything else began, something already was. In the beginning was. the Word. He was in the beginning. He already was before everything else came to be. This Word, John describes, was not created. Verse 3, all things were made through Him. All created things come from Him, but He Himself is not among them. He is the eternal Word, the uncreated Word. That heretical priest that Saint Nick is said to have slapped at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. was a man called Arius, and Arius developed a little jingle to help propagate his opinion that the Word was merely a creature. There was, Arius said, when he was not. There was a time when all there was was God and the Word was not God at that time. The Word is a creature. That was Arius' argument. But John says—do you see this?—when the beginning began, the Word had always been. On the first second of the first minute of the first day, at the beginning of all created things, the Word did not begin to be. He had no beginning. He always was. The one that John will go on to say took flesh and dwelled among us, the infant whose first coming we celebrate, born of the Virgin, laid in a manger, who joined himself to creatureliness and finitude that first Christmas, this one has always been. without beginning, for all eternity. He is the eternal words. But there's a second corollary truth that we need to see here that goes along with that assertion. Not only is the Word eternal, John says, just to be clear, He is the divine Word. He is the divine Word. Look again at verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, again, remember, John is echoing the opening words of the Genesis creation account, which begins, in the beginning, God. Now, just think about this for a moment. I think it's breathtaking, don't you, that John would start a quotation of Genesis chapter 1, in the beginning, and then be so bold as to substitute, in the beginning was the Word in the place of in the beginning God." Whoever this Word is, John puts Him on the throne of heaven as the God who presided over the dawn of history. And lest we think that the word logos in Greek is just John's own idiosyncratic way of saying the same old thing about God, look at the next clause of verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Greek there is proston theon, toward God. face-to-face with God, in intimate peer-to-peer fellowship and communion with God. This Word, which John puts in the place of God in his echo of the creation accounts, is also somehow distinct from God. He is not God the Father. He is the Word, a distinct person. And yet as soon as he says that, do you notice John rushes on to preclude any suggestion that there is more than one God? The Word was with God, and the Word was God. So there's both distinction, the Word is not God the Father, and there is identity, the Word is nevertheless the same God as the Father. He is, as verse 14 will go on to show, as the only begotten Son of the Father. Or as verse 18 puts it, he is the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father. Jesus, John, is bold to teach us, is the only God there is, and yet he is not the Father, nor is he yet the Spirit. We do not have three gods. but one only, the living and true God. A few years ago, a young, earnest Muslim man came to see me with questions about the Christian faith. He was especially hung up on the idea of the Trinity, as you might expect, and so I outlined for him the basic contours of the doctrine. There is only one God who exists eternally in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But why do you need that? was his perplexed question. What is it that leads you to say that God is like that? It's a good question. John's answer is to take us to the baby nursing at Mary's breast, and to the man stripped and flogged and nailed to the Roman cross. This man The Lord Jesus Christ, John wants us to understand, this man shows himself to be the eternal Son, the Word made flesh, who dwelled among us. He is our God. Before Abraham was, he said, I am. That's who he is. He is the great I am himself, and yet he's not the Father. He is the Son. John would say to my young Muslim friend, it's the person and work of Jesus Christ that drives us to no other conclusion. We know Him as the God-Man. It's to account for the fact of Jesus that we are required to articulate the doctrine of the blessed Trinity. No other conclusion can make sense of the data, you see. And just so we're clear, the alternative actually leads to a terrible distortion of the truth about God. Think again about that young Muslim. He believes that God is a single, solitary, undifferentiated monad. In his view, God is and can only be one singular, isolated person. But if that is what God is, my Muslim friend then cannot say that such a God is love. He might be power and wisdom or even holiness. But he can't be love in himself necessarily and eternally, for the simple reason that love demands an object, doesn't it? Love requires a beloved. But if there is no proston theon, God toward God, God with God, the Word with God, who was God, if there's no God face-to-face with God, That means that before there were any creatures, when all there was was God, there could be no love in him. But if my Muslim friend were then to object and turn around and reply, well, God became love after he made creatures, so that there was something other than God for him to love now, he'll have to admit that God changed. that the existence of creatures called something into being in God that wasn't there before. And that means, you see the implications of this? Now, if God can't be love without us, now God is actually dependent on creatures for some essential aspect of his being. And that's impossible not to mention altogether monstrous. The glory of the Christian gospel is that in Jesus Christ, God reveals Himself to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. The great mystery is that our one God, whose singular being is indivisible, is nevertheless three Persons. He is Father, Son, and Spirit, each turned to the other in fellowship and love eternally. God did not become love when in desperate loneliness He made us. No, no, He was love eternally in the communion of the blessed Trinity and in His great mercy and grace. He sweeps us up into that fellowship to be loved by Him and to love Him in return through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the eternal Word. He is the divine Word. Thirdly, John says, Jesus is the creative Word. We've already noticed the echoes of the creation account from Genesis 1-1, but John doesn't leave the matter at mere allusion and inference, does he? Look at verse 3. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. That's crystal clear, isn't it? All things are made through him. He is unmade. Everything else is made. He made them. He is the agent of creation. Think again about Genesis 1. How did God make the world? And God said, let there be, and there was. He spoke light and form and life into being by His Word, and John is saying here, that Word was His Son, the agent of creation, the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, by calling Him the Word, John is doing more than providing an allusion to Genesis chapter 1. Jesus is the logos, that's the Greek name for Word. He's the Word, a title that would have rung with profound significance in the Greco-Roman intellectual world into which the New Testament was first written. Greek philosophy used this word logos to speak about a principle woven into the fabric of creation itself that gave order and cohesion to all things. So, for example, in the 6th century BC, Heraclitus mused on the fact that the world is constantly changing. Everything's in a state of flux. You can never step into the same river twice, he said, by way of illustration. It's always changing, isn't it? And so how can there be order in the world? There is order all around us. How can there be order? His answer is the logos, the word. brings order, provides stability, makes things make sense, the divine Word. Plato even said, it may be that someday there will come forth from God a Word, a Logos, that will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain. One commentator responds to all of that and says, in a stroke of divine genius, John seizes on this Word and says, listen, you Greeks, very thing that has most occupied your philosophical thought and about which you have been writing for centuries, the Logos of God, has come to earth as a man, and we have seen him." This means that the babe born in a manger is the one who gives meaning to life in this world. John wants you to know that a life without knowing Jesus without knowing the logos of God is a life lived at cross-purposes with the divine mind. It cannot be a life of lasting meaning. You were made by the Word to know Him and find your purpose and significance only in Luke, wherever else you may, you will always miss your true significance and purpose until you find it in the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the creative Word. All things were made through Him. John can draw two columns In the left-hand column he puts all created things, all life, all matter, angels, demons, heaven, earth, hell, everything, everyone, every place. They're all created things. And then in the right-hand column he puts only God. Only God goes in that column. He is sui generis. He is in a category of one. There is no other, the unmade Maker, the uncreated Creator. And yet this God, John says, is Jesus Christ. No creature can or ever will cross from the left-hand column into the right-hand column. No creature will ever become God. But the God who alone occupies the right-hand column, who created all things, He became a creature that first Christmas. Without ceasing to be what He had always been, the God of glory and grace, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. One of us. For all John's soaring, exalted prose, and all these huge ideas that he packs with masterful economy into these opening words, he's really crystal clear about this. He wants you to know that your Creator came all the way down, all the way down, and became a creature in Jesus Christ. transcendent deity joined to mundane humanity in Jesus Christ, so that you and I, so that we could know Him, come to Him, meet Him, have Him for our own, so that He might be found by you, accessible to you, so that you can come to Him. That's what Christmas was about. transcendent deity coming in pursuit of you to welcome you, that you might know Him. And that brings me to the last thing I want you to see. He is, Jesus is the eternal Word, the divine Word, the creative Word, and finally, He is the living Word. Look at the first part of verse 4. We'll come back to verse 4, God willing, next week, but look at the first part of verse 4. In him was life. Notice carefully, John doesn't say he was alive. He doesn't say he had been given life. He says, in him was life. He uses the same construction that he used back in the first verse. to tell us the Word was in the beginning. And now here he says there was life in him. Life inheres in him. He is the one in whom life exists, as it were, as its natural habitat, its true home. He is its source, its origin. He is the first and the last, the living one. That's how he describes himself again to the apostle John much later in Revelation 118. We are all given life, aren't we? We're all given life. But he is the living one. Life is in Him. Now, do you remember John's purpose for writing this gospel? At the end of John's gospel, John 20, 31, what did John say? These things were written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have what? That you may have life in His name. Why did He come? What is Christmas really about? It is about the coming of the living Word, the living One in whom is life, because life comes from Him. He gives life, new life, to everyone who trusts in Him. New life. Did you know that in the Middle Ages, another bit of Christmas backstory, In the Middle Ages, on December 24th, Christmas Eve, the church actually developed what came to be called the Feast of Adam and Eve on December 24th. Isn't that fascinating? Before they celebrated the birth of Christ, they remembered Adam, as if December 24th was a last look at the old creation. before December 25th proclaimed the dawn of a new creation in the birth of the last Adam, the Lord Jesus, the Word by whom all things were made. without whom nothing was made that has been made. This word took flesh and dwelt among us. The infinite joined himself to the finite. The creator joined to the creature. The immortal God became mortal man. He who fills the universe was born of the virgin and slept in a manger. And at the climax of His earthly ministry, the eternal Word by whom God spoke the light into being, He was shrouded, do you remember, in utter darkness as He hung there upon that cross? The One in whom was life, the Living One. He bled and died. Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut its glories in when God, the mighty Maker, died for man, the creature's sin. Why did the Word who created all things come among us as a creature, a mere man like this? The One in whom was life, He came to die. He came to die. for sinners like me and you, to bear our penalty and secure our pardon, so that you could live, that you might have life in His name. He is the eternal Word, the divine Word, the creative Word. and He is the living Word. God is talking to you. Do you see that? At the very least, that's the significance of this name for Jesus, isn't it? The Word. God is talking to you in Jesus. He is God's message, His invitation to you to come and trust Him and take from His nail-pierced hands the life that is His to give. For all the majesty of these opening words, our response, the response John is calling for, is profoundly simple. What is it that John's gospel wants from us? What is it that the coming of Jesus demands from us? Faith. Trust Him. Rest upon Him. Bend your knee to Him. Surrender yourself to Him, and He will give you life. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we bow before You. You are our God. and our King, and our elder brother, and our friend. How we bless You, eternal Son, uncreated Word, that You became a man. So that now, even now, united to deity, there reigns on the throne of heaven glorified humanity. so that human beings, little, frail creatures of dust, sinners, like all of us, can draw near to You through Him. Lord Jesus, we adore You and we pray that You would help us then to come to You and to take from Your hands the life You died to provide that You may be magnified in our new lives as we learn to live for You, for we ask it in Your name.