Jesus Resembles God
"No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." - John 1:18
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that this might be one of the most important theological statements in the entire Bible! John, the author of this statement, was raised to be a good, devout Jewish man who knew the scriptures and who knew God. In fact, I’d say that John grew up knowing God better than 99.99% of the world in those days. This is because John’s people were the people of the Book. The very book about God and about God’s interactions with humanity. John would have been raised on the principles and stories of their book. Nowadays, we call their book the “Old Testament,” and we still believe that it contains the very words of God. We still believe that this book contains accurate information about God. But, apparently , according to John, the Old Testament just wasn’t enough to really “see” God. Can you believe that John had the audacity to say that “no one has ever seen God” and that Jesus is the one who now “made him known”? I mean, did he forget about Adam & Eve, Enoch, Moses, or all the prophets? Didn’t they make God known? What is John saying here?
Maybe John is making a comparison. I don’t think we should read him as saying anything negative about the Old Testament, but something incredibly positive about how closely Jesus resembles God. Have you ever caught a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of a window and thought to yourself, “I look pretty good.” Only to walk by a mirror to find that your hair is a mess and your shirt collar is all a mess? Maybe that’s just me. It is amazing how much better you can see all the details when you look in a good mirror. And this is what Jesus was. He was the best mirror that we have ever had of the reflection of God. The image of God that we get in the Old Testament, was like the reflection of a window pane… you can sorta make it out, it’s better than nothing, but the image is unclear and a bit fuzzy.
However, after meeting Jesus, God was no longer fuzzy. John wrote these words after living alongside Jesus as his disciple, and then after living under the influence of the Spirit for many years. John had really come to see who God was because he had seen Jesus. And that is what he wants us to experience as we read his book. He wants us to experience God as he is explained through Jesus. Let’s pray that we would this year as we study the book of John.
Josh Rose
Discipleship Pastor
Exchanged
Jesus came fully in grace and truth (v.14). He came and brought a fullness the law could not. This was hard for people to accept because they had not been able to understand or see the benefit at first. John 1:17 tells us that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The law was truth, but Jesus made it complete with grace. He gave favor that the law could not, he gave blessings the law could not, and he gave through relationships which the law could not. He gave people a chance to receive grace upon grace (v.16) all because God wanted his people to experience his favor and love. He did that then and he continues to do so today.
So how have you been experiencing grace in exchange for law? Can you take a few moments to think about how this week you received grace upon grace? It might be little things or maybe it is major things, but I want to encourage you to accept what Jesus has to offer, even if it is truth. Sometimes we need to see the truth as well and receive it in light of the grace we receive. Once you think through those things, take some time to pray and thank the Lord for what he has done.
Jeremy Johnson
Family Pastor
Jesus: “Experienced”
One of the crazy, mind-boggling things about God is that while his character is immutable, the vastness of the ways in which individuals experience him is unending. I have heard stories about people audibly hearing God’s voice as they pleaded for his direction. Others have seen his face of compassion in a moment of anguish or delight. Some have even felt his physical healing touch as their bodies longed to be restored.
I can recall a time when I experienced the visceral presence of Jesus. My dad had been battling cancer for almost a year and he was not doing well. One night as I was trying to fall asleep, I lay in bed fervently praying, calling out to God for peace and reassurance. My mind was racing with thoughts of what life would be like for my mom and the rest of my family if God were to take him home. In a moment of despair, I saw a light and heard a voice saying, “Trust me. He is going to be just fine.” I honestly don’t know if that voice was audible or if it was just in my head. And I can’t even describe the light, but I do know that it was beautiful and immensely peaceful. The words were affirming, comforting and I was completely aware that I had experienced the presence of Jesus.
John 1:14 says, ”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.” When we encounter God, we experience his presence, because he wants to be experienced. It is not because we have some unique spiritual ability, but because we have a God who longs for us to know him, to see his face, and simply experience him. He longs for us to see his glory and to know that he is full of grace and truth.
The next few days were hard but at the same time, I felt a contentment that was new, reassuring, and difficult to describe. The truth was that my dad was going to be just fine. So fine in fact that just a few days later God took him home to spend eternity with him, whole, healed, and complete. Eighteen years later I still miss him, but God’s presence has continued to bring me a peace that goes beyond my comprehension.
When have you experienced Jesus? What did it feel like to be in his presence? The beauty of experiencing the presence of Jesus is that in so doing, we encounter a peace that transcends our understanding regardless of the outcome. Life doesn't always turn out as we hope, but we can be reassured that in the presence of Jesus, we will experience peace.
Lynette Fuson
Care & Counseling Director
Embodied
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” - John 1:14
“He is the image of the invisible God” - Col 1:15
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” - Col 2:9
The best part of Jesus’ humanity is the confidence believers can have that he relates to us. Jesus experienced life as we know it. He knows what laughter, pain, and the temptations of the flesh feel like. He relates. He gets it.
The best part of Jesus’ divinity is that his sacrifice for us meant more than any other person’s death. He paid off our debt. He washed us clean of our sins.
And yet,
“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” - John 1:11
There have been countless arguments against Jesus being fully human, and countless more against accepting his perfect life, death on the cross, and resurrection as a foundation for one’s life, faith, and practice. From the early Gnostic heresies believing that everything physical and tangible was evil, therefore, Jesus’s humanity must have been an illusion. To modern Islam’s claim that when Jesus was nailed to the cross, it was only a ghost of Jesus appearing there or another person’s body swapped in his place. To people around us that just don’t care a lick about Jesus.
Jesus came to his own and was not welcome.
Am I welcoming him today? Are you?
It fascinates me that one of the best way believers can tell if they are staying close to Jesus is how much they see him in the lives of people around them. Matt 25:40 - “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Jesus is the embodiment of God on earth and through his presence and perfection we get to welcome him by the ways we invest in and welcome the needy ones around us today.
John Riley
Becoming
John 1:11-12
Over the last 5 months, our family has been having work done on our home. New flooring throughout the house and new cabinets and countertops in the kitchen. That means we’ve been outside our normal rhythm and routine for a while. We are so grateful for the way everything is coming together, but the process of having work done can be challenging.
What we’re experiencing in our homes is something we all experience in life. Let’s face it, growth and change can be painful. We are all in process and Jesus, the Master Carpenter, is at work in each of us in unique ways. At the beginning of John's gospel, he wrote,
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… (John 1:11-12)
When John wrote “Become children of God” it seemed so easy - like it happens automatically and instantaneously. While it’s certainly true that our positional standing with God changes in the moment of faith, there’s still remodeling of our life that Jesus does. There are ways that he invites us to change; thought patterns he calls us to transform and ways of living that he empowers us to change. I praise God that the work of remodeling is his work and done by his power, but it’s a process.
Jesus is always working, so we are constantly in the process of becoming. Becoming his children. Becoming who he designed you to be. Will you embrace the journey afresh today? It might be painful, but it’s also beneficial. Pause for a moment and consider the work Jesus the carpenter is doing in your life. What phase of construction do you sense you’re in? Are you in the process of demolition? Are you in the rebuilding phase? Do you sense the work coming to completion in one area and maybe beginning in the next? Stop and pray that you would be an empowered partner in the remodeling work Jesus is doing in you.
Ryan Paulson
Let there be Light
In 2021 NASA rocketed the James Webb telescope into orbit around the sun and it is seeing galaxies rushing away from each other at greater and greater speed, defying gravity. It makes no sense to scientists. It also saw a galaxy more than 33 billion light years away. After endless decades of man studying the heavens, science still only understands 4 percent of the universe. Did you know that 95% of our universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter and we don't know what it is? So scientists infer that there must be “unseen elements” at work.
Yet, clearly the “unseen elements” were created by the same hand of God who said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth.’ Genesis 1:14. Could it be that the inferred unseen element is God the creator himself in all of his majestic and unfathomable glory?
In his book Whisper, Mark Batterson said, “Did you know that embryologists have recently captured the moment of conception via fluorescent microscopy?” What they discovered is that at the exact moment, a sperm penetrates an egg, the egg releases millions of zinc atoms that emit light. Sparks fly, literally! The miracle of conception is a microcosm that mirrors God’s first four words, let there be light.
John 1:5 tells us that, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it and James 1:17 says, Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
It is no accident that God created light first, his first miracle. Light is the source of vision, the key to technology, the first link in the food chain, and the origin of energy. Without light, we aren’t healthy physically or mentally. Those four words from God, in the beginning, are still forming galaxies defying gravity and not making sense. I love how God leaves some things dangling out there that may never be explained or understood by the man he created, still how exciting that some keep trying and slowly, very slowly, God allows more to be discovered. He is still and always will be in control.
Finally, Jesus said, Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life and referred to himself as the light of the World. Jesus was proclaiming that He is the exclusive source of spiritual light. How can we reflect His light in our lives?
Deb Hill
LOGOS
The word Logos in the Greek mind (we study its usage in the Greek mind because the book of John was written in Greek and the concept of logos is Greek) has a significance that heightens its meaning for us. Here we distinguish between significance and meaning because concepts do not grow in meaning, but they often grow in weight or significance. For example, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 9:6-7 (written around the 8th century before Christ) that a virgin will give birth. It is likely that the people in Isaiah’s day thought one thing about Isaiah’s prophecy that people much later in Paul’s day after the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ saw much more clearly. If this is true, then, the concept of the Logos, used in the Old Testament (cf. 2 Sam 7:4) but was also prevalent in Greek thought gains in weight and significance when understood in terms of how God revealed Christ through the apostle John. Merrill Tenney said, “To the Hebrew ‘the word of God’ was the self-assertion of the divine personality; to the Greek, the formula denoted the rational mind that ruled the universe.” Neither usage quite captures the concept of Logos as John used it.
How did John use the concept? In the book of John, John uses Word [Gr. ὁ λόγος] to mean “the Word.” The word ‘the’ used before the noun points to a specific identity that John wants to make known to his readers that Jesus is the Word—God’s final revelation of Himself. In his prologue (John 1:1—5), Jesus is the Word: the Word which existed before the creation of all things. He is the Word that exists in a coequal relationship with God from eternity past. He is the Word that brought all things that exist into being. All things include knowledge, wisdom, life, light, beauty, and love meaning He is their source and possesses them in a univocal and superlative way in which no being except the triune God can possess them. He is the Word who became human and lived among us. He is the Word that is the source of life. He possesses life in such a way as to say He owns it and that life which He possesses was the Light of mankind. That light continues to shine and the darkness can neither dampen it, bring it under its control, nor understand it. My friends, this should give us great hope and encouragement as the days grow colder and the light seems dimmer.
As Eugene Peterson puts it: Jesus is the Word who became flesh and moved into our neighborhood.
Leroy Hill
Zóé Life
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4)
The zóé life is often referred to as the God life; meaning it is a life that goes deeper than our mere existence; it implies a fuller, richer, deeper, eternal life. This is the kind of life Jesus described in John 10:10; “He came that we might have life (zóé) and have it abundantly.” We can easily forget or take for granted that we walk in eternal life now. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
We were meant to rise above this world and live in the heavenly places with Christ. These unseen spiritual blessings manifest as an understanding and appropriation of the life of God in our daily living. Do we live as those who are accepted in the beloved; forgiven and redeemed; do we bask in His love and grace embracing His goodness and unconditional love toward us? Is the Holy Spirit alive and well leading and guiding us to God’s very best for our lives? It’s important to ask ourselves these questions because Jesus also warned us that there is a thief who comes only to steal, kill and destroy. It is these spiritual blessings the thief comes to take away in order to rob us of the zóé life that God intended. Are you tired of just going through the motions? Decide today to enjoy all that God has given you through Christ. Embrace the zóé life!
Margy Hill
The God Who Knows You
In the opening stanzas of Genesis, we learn that God simply spoke the cosmos into being. However, the intricate planning behind the "design" of this universe was done by an all-wise and loving Creator. He did not simply explode the vast material of the cosmos into existence and wait to see what would come out. He intentionally designed every detail of what He was about to create and then brought it into existence through the power of His Word. This command included all of the physical laws of the universe from intergalactic movements to the interaction of the smallest subatomic particles. None of it occurred by chance. It was all done by intelligent design. And the most amazing thing about this creation is that God then breathed "life" into a lifeless cosmos.
Many generations of human history later, the Apostle John was inspired to write the gospel that bears his name. One of the key revelations given through John is that the creative "force" behind the birth of the universe was far more than just an explosive energy field - it was actually a person, God's Son. John declared “All things were made through him...” (John 1:3) and reveals that the Word of God is actually a "divine person" eternally co-existing within the Godhead. John then tells us that in the fullness of time, the Word came to earth in human flesh. The eternal, all-powerful Word that spoke the cosmos into existence eventually became the incarnate Word - a babe in a manger. We call him Jesus of Nazareth.
Thus creation was in reality a very "personal" event. In fact, you can say it was an act of love from the heart of God. Author Michael Reeves in his book Delighting in the Trinity writes "Since God the Father has eternally loved his Son, it is entirely characteristic of him to turn and create others [i.e., humanity] that he might also love them." So, in a sense, God created an entire universe in order that we human beings would have a place to live and breathe and be loved by God. It doesn't get more personal than that!
As we look at our increasingly technological world today we get a sense that civilization is trending more and more in the direction of the impersonal. We see this in so many ways in our culture - computerization, self-checkout, artificial intelligence, and automated everything! But at the heart of the universe is still a God existing in eternal intimacy as three divine persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And amazingly that triune God desires to live in a personal love relationship with us! May we each open our hearts to receive the full embrace of God's love through his Incarnate Word!
Dave Korinek
Reimagine
Are you familiar with the painting of the Rubin Vase (CLICK HERE to view a Rubin Vase example)? It is perhaps the most famous optical illusion ever created. In it, Rubin, a psychologist, creates a masterpiece where there are two things that can be seen. In black you see two faces looking directly at each other. In white, you see a really nice curved vase. Which one you see depends on which one you’re looking at, and whether or not you even expect to see more than one thing!
For centuries, followers of God and readers of Scripture looked at the creation story, not realizing it is a Rubin Vase. But why would they have had any reason to think otherwise? The narrative from Genesis 1-2 is God and Lord God-centered, with the exception of one verse that mentions the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. So, and rightly so, as they contemplated how things came into being, they never considered that there was another, equally true way to understand how what was made, was made.
All of that changed when John sat down and put pen to paper. In verse one of chapter one, he lets us know that there is another way to see creation. He shows us what we were not looking for - it is also Jesus who is intimately involved in making what was made (“without him, nothing was made that has been made.”). It is the ultimate Rubin Vase. When you look at creation one way, you see God. When you look at it another, you see Jesus. And since Jesus is God, either way, you see God!
Sometimes in our hectic lives, we look at our situations and our stresses and we forget that they are, indeed, a Rubin Vase. What matters is what we focus on, or more importantly, Who. And so, do we look at our circumstances, or do we look at Jesus? Do we focus on the creation or the Creator? Do we even think to look for Jesus at all?
Today, may you be enabled by the Spirit of God to see the Son of God in all that is going on in your life. If you need to, ask Him to help you see Him instead of what crowds Him out.
I plan to join you in this prayer.
Scott Smith
Care Pastor
