John 1:14-18

00:00:00:19 – 00:00:15:50
Clint Loveall
Welcome back, friends. Glad to have you with us as we continue through the Gospel of John in chapter one. Picking up with verse 14. And there is a lot to unpack here in verse 14. So I’m just going to read that verse for you will go through it and then hopefully we’ll get a little further than that.

00:00:15:50 – 00:00:47:13
Clint Loveall
But this is a, this is a key verse for John. And certainly for the opening chapter. Verse 14. And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth. So this is in many ways, I think, a foundational verse for how John understands the gospel, how John understands Jesus Christ.

00:00:47:18 – 00:01:20:34
Clint Loveall
And it hinges on these opening words the word became flesh. Now the church would later reflect on that and give it a fancy name incarnation, the the idea of being in the flesh incarnate. Kanté, you may know in in many Latin languages is is meat or flesh. So in Kanté in the flesh and this is. This stands out in religion.

00:01:20:34 – 00:01:58:03
Clint Loveall
Greek and Roman religion had the idea that gods came to earth, that they would sometimes disguise themselves. But this idea that God becomes human, that God participate in a flesh and blood life. This is this is new. This is novel. This is unique. Again, it would take Christians almost two decades to give this some theological framework, but we find it right here in the first chapter of John.

00:01:58:08 – 00:02:16:46
Clint Loveall
And this becomes absolutely pivotal for our theological understanding of what the gospel is trying to tell us about who Jesus is and the partnership that God and Jesus share in reaching out into the human world.

00:02:16:51 – 00:02:44:19
Michael Gewecke
So up to this point, we have already talked about this idea of the word and the word here in your Bible should be capitalized, at least in a modern translation. And what that’s telling you is that the word here, the logos, is connected to not just the personification of Christ, but it’s also connected to these wider conversations about, the philosophical idea of order, which is connected to the Old Testament.

00:02:44:20 – 00:03:07:34
Michael Gewecke
We’ve talked about all these things in previous studies. If you haven’t already, go back and listen to those. But the thing I want to point out here, Clint, is the fact that up to this point, you might be able to make a case that the word is this idea that the word has some connection to philosophy, that the word is and that is rooted in, in the academic kind of thing.

00:03:07:39 – 00:03:36:15
Michael Gewecke
But when you look now, when you get to verse 14, that is dispelled completely. We now know with 100% confidence that there is something new and generative happening here, because no one in the history of thought certainly, Jewish thought, and the connection to the Old Testament, no one had conceived of the idea of the eternal reason, the eternal ordering set apart by, from creation itself.

00:03:36:16 – 00:04:07:51
Michael Gewecke
No one considered that to be a thing that God would enter into by God’s own nature. And so here we have in clear language that that the word, the order, the reason that the way that the universe was constructed took on flesh and lived among us, and that that statement is an astonishing word. It may not be 2000 years after the the church’s beginning, after the resurrection, after the ascension.

00:04:07:51 – 00:04:33:14
Michael Gewecke
You know, for us who grew up in the church, maybe words like this strike us as normal or common. We may be heard a sentiment like this before, but I don’t know, Clint, that we could overstate how substantial of a turn this is in the history of thinking about God and God’s relation to the world. And here John just says it with a kind of simplicity and clarity to just lay it out and make it abundantly clear.

00:04:33:23 – 00:04:44:37
Michael Gewecke
When the word takes on flesh, it is Jesus Christ fully entering into the creator there, becoming a human, the very human that he was instrumental in creating.

00:04:44:42 – 00:05:18:16
Clint Loveall
I think in this case, the unpacking comes in the telling of the stories. Certainly, that continues in the life of the church. As I mentioned, theologically, we will reach for words like incarnation and Trinity and dual nature. There will be, an entire section of our church language devoted to trying, trying to express and explain this mystery. But John says it as simply as he can.

00:05:18:18 – 00:05:48:36
Clint Loveall
The word became flesh and was with us. And then notice we have seen his glory, the glory of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth. So what are we? We are witnesses. We are those who have seen and that will become those who testify. But here we are, those who have, with our own experience, witnessed the word becoming flesh.

00:05:48:41 – 00:06:30:52
Clint Loveall
And what is the character of this in flesh word? It’s grace and truth. Unearned favor and truth. The word, the living word, the the flesh word is full of grace and truth. And John loves both of these words. We will get to them on multiple occasions. But as you follow the sentence here, the word becomes flesh is a living word among people who have witnessed the father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

00:06:30:57 – 00:07:00:47
Clint Loveall
That covers a significant amount of what we will come to call the gospel. And it is presented here not as theology lesson. You know, this isn’t, say, Paul in Romans with a lot of explanation and a lot of digging in. This is presentation, this is preaching. And John gives us a tremendous amount of meaning in these in this short, rather short verse.

00:07:00:52 – 00:07:28:31
Michael Gewecke
The amazing theological meaning of a text like this is that when the Word of God takes on flesh, that Jesus is assuming or taking upon himself the whole of the human condition. And there’s an old theological saying that that which is assumed or taken on by Christ is the very same thing that can be redeemed or can be saved.

00:07:28:31 – 00:07:56:20
Michael Gewecke
And so the theological promise that John lays out for us here is that when we see Jesus Christ living out the the order and reason of God, the creative power of God in human flesh, we see that Jesus has then taken upon himself the ability to show us what grace and truth means for all of humanity. In other words, there’s a claim being made here.

00:07:56:20 – 00:08:23:36
Michael Gewecke
Claim that because God has taken on flesh and Jesus Christ, that every word that follows in this book is now going to be an illustration, a testimony, a witness to the extent to which Jesus Christ has come to save. And we’re going to see it laid out with specific characters. We’re going to see it laid out in very broad teachings, from the micro detail to the macro story.

00:08:23:38 – 00:08:49:12
Michael Gewecke
Everything that follows this is now going to be geared towards us. Understanding of a deeper level, the extent to which God is willing and actually has already gone to build a salvific connection to God’s people. Friends, that that’s great news. And yes, it’s clothed in some very dense language which has taken on substantial theological meaning over the course of time.

00:08:49:12 – 00:09:19:12
Michael Gewecke
But but don’t miss here that the grace and the truth is the ultimate outcome of God’s action in taking on flesh the purpose of incarnation is ultimately to have grace and truth put on display. And that’s the spirit that’s going to lie behind this entire book. And also I would I would also argue it goes back to some of the conflicts that Jesus is going to have with the Jewish leaders.

00:09:19:19 – 00:09:43:51
Michael Gewecke
It makes them all the more intense because God’s wisdom is incarnate in Jesus Christ, and they don’t see it for who he is. So it both magnifies the amazing nature of God taking up flesh in Jesus Christ. It also magnifies that the chasm that happens between those who don’t see and can’t witness. And this serves to do both at the same time.

00:09:44:06 – 00:10:08:45
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And then the next word we get is from a witness, the parenthetical in verse 15, John testified to him crying out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me. And if that sounds like a difficult sentence, this has to do with the connection and the role given John the Baptist.

00:10:08:45 – 00:10:42:55
Clint Loveall
This is John. That’s the reference here. John the Baptist, not John the author, John the Baptist, who will say to those who follow him, he is more he. He is above me. This is the one. So John, having witnessed it, now, testifies to it. He comes after me, but ranks before me, and from his fullness he continues. Here John, the author continues, from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, a double portion of grace.

00:10:43:10 – 00:11:07:30
Clint Loveall
The law indeed was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only son who is close to the father’s heart, who has made him no. So this idea from his fullness, right? What is he full of? Grace and truth. We’ve already been told that filled with grace and truth.

00:11:07:30 – 00:11:35:01
Clint Loveall
And from that fullness we receive more than enough grace. Grace upon grace, a double portion of grace, more than we need, more than we know what to do with. There is. There is heaping helpings of grace delivered to those who look to Christ because he is filled with it. And then we get some precursor here. The law was given through Moses.

00:11:35:06 – 00:11:59:59
Clint Loveall
Grace and truth came through Jesus. John is anticipating some of the conflict and some of the discussions that are coming later in the story, but a masterful job here of setting up what’s coming next. And you could tie much of what we’re going to encounter in the coming chapters of the gospel back to just a simple passage like this, or I should say, a short passage.

00:12:00:00 – 00:12:06:36
Clint Loveall
Not really a simple passage, but this short passage is foundational for a lot of what John’s going to do.

00:12:06:41 – 00:12:41:53
Michael Gewecke
I just want to very quickly make sure that we take a look at verse 17 here closely, so that we understand that the interplay between grace and truth is put into connection with this idea of the law being given through Moses and we see this in the Pauline epistles for sure, fleshed out this, this connection between the law that was given the old order and the way that Jesus Christ transforms, that law transforms our understanding of what was happening in that law, so that we might understand that God is able to give us grace.

00:12:41:58 – 00:13:14:47
Michael Gewecke
We see that fleshed out in much more theological form in some of those letters that Paul wrote. But I just want to make it clear here. This is a verse from a narrative gospel telling the story of Jesus Christ. And here we see right in the telling of Jesus’s story, that very same connection that that though the law in the Old Testament may have been a binding understanding of what it means to be connected to God through a covenant, in other words, the law represented what you needed to do to be able to do your part in this relationship.

00:13:15:00 – 00:13:38:34
Michael Gewecke
What we discover with Jesus, to use that language that you just use claim is grace upon grace. It’s a double portion of grace. Why? Because we’ve been found needing it. We need that level of grace to be connected to this God who has come to take on flesh for us. In fact, we needed that God, the one who created us, the one who created the order of the universe.

00:13:38:34 – 00:14:03:57
Michael Gewecke
We needed that very one to enter into that world so that he might do for us what we could have never done for ourselves. This is, of course, we’re in a reformed tradition. And so there’s a lot of those themes that just you know, come right to the top of a text like this. But even if you’re not in whatever Christian family you might find yourself in, this is deeply center that the heart of the faith, because it’s centered on Jesus Christ.

00:14:03:57 – 00:14:21:43
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the amazing gift of this prolog in John is it sets up for us the enormity of who Jesus is. And then that invites us to explore the implications of that. Does so what what does this mean in the words to come?

00:14:21:48 – 00:14:51:46
Clint Loveall
I also think it gives some explanation, or at least some background to some of the conflict that will develop from this. So if you read this carefully, there are two things that, to some of the early readers of this would have sounded blasphemous. First, the idea that the word becomes flesh, that this living manifestation of God becomes human, that is a that is a near blasphemous idea in the Jewish worldview of Jesus time.

00:14:51:46 – 00:15:22:06
Clint Loveall
And then secondly, this idea that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, grace might be moderately offensive in that context, but the idea that the law needs a truth delivered on top of it or in, to supplement it, and that truth comes through Jesus. The idea that you would have law versus truth, that is going to be a deeply offense of idea as well.

00:15:22:06 – 00:15:33:47
Clint Loveall
And so as John lays these ideas out, you can begin to see the underpinning of some of the conflict that he’s going to focus on as he tells us the rest of the Jesus story.

00:15:33:52 – 00:16:04:10
Michael Gewecke
The conflict that Jesus experiences is absolutely equal to the claim being made about who Jesus is. And I think it’s easy to miss that as a Christian, that what Jesus claims is world changing. It is universe turning upside down level of transformational imagination. What Jesus claims the kingdom is a transformational kingdom. And this book. Clint, I don’t know if you agree with this.

00:16:04:15 – 00:16:46:34
Michael Gewecke
I think a proper a metaphor that might partially apply to this book is like getting put in a roller coaster and you just you’re going to be coming down some of these hills and you’re going be making these turns, and at times it it’s just going to have an amazing amount of force behind it. Because the claim that John is making is that the creator God, the spirit being God, is best revealed in a physical human being because Jesus, the one who could be touched and eaten with and hugged and and laughed with and cried with, that, Jesus reveals the heart of God.

00:16:46:39 – 00:16:57:33
Michael Gewecke
That is an amazing claim. And if we can just get a grasp on the enormity of it, then we can understand the importance of listening for the rest of the book to come.

00:16:57:37 – 00:17:26:13
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think you will see. You’ll continue to see a lot of these themes as we unpack some of the rest, even of the first chapter. But we have gotten already in just what, 18, 19, 18 verses. We have already gotten a significant introduction to our narrator, the person taking us on this journey, telling us this story, sharing with us this truth, preaching this sermon to us.

00:17:26:18 – 00:17:49:03
Clint Loveall
I think already we’re beginning to see some of the points that he finds most important, some of the emphasis that he will put the most stress on and and some of again, the beginnings of some of the conflicts it will create. And so a really interesting introduction already that has given us some clues as to where we’ll go from here.

00:17:49:12 – 00:18:06:32
Michael Gewecke
Hope that the conversation conversation’s been inspiring for you, that you’ve learned something new in it, maybe been encouraged. Okay, if you have, give this video a like if you’d like to join us for the continue into this study. This is literally just the beginning. You want to see where John will take us in the study and exploration of Jesus Christ?

00:18:06:32 – 00:18:12:10
Michael Gewecke
Definitely subscribe so you can be with us. We will be back tomorrow and look forward to studying with you. Then.