The Word with Us

A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on December 31, 2006, based on John 1:1-18

This past week, we celebrated the birth of a baby boy to a young mother and her protective husband. Matthew, Mark and Luke, the so-called ‘Synoptic” or ‘same view” Gospel writers, were all keen to present the human side of the Nativity with specific details and genealogies that we can relate to humanly, at a certain point in time. Now comes John and tells us in philosophical and poetic terms who exactly this Jesus was: the Word of God, the only-begotten son of the Father, full of Grace and truth.

Just to set the context, John was Jesus’ best friend, the ‘beloved disciple’, the who leaned upon his breast at the Lord’s supper, who received Mary as his own mother at the crucifixion when the other disciples were cowering in fear. This is John, who received the Revelation from Jesus on the Isle of Patmos, who was the youngest of the disciples, and who lived the longest and was the last surviving eye-witness to the ministry of Jesus. This man had a very important message to his world about the God-Nature of the man we call Jesus, the Christ.

During John’s lifetime, Gnosticism had come to be a huge focus of attention in the church. It was the notion that God was God and Man is Man and never the two shall meet. Gnostics viewed the Incarnation as a scandal, and even at the extreme edge, saw Judas as the hero of the Gospel narrative – someone who had the courage to recognize that God and Man do not belong together in the same human being, and therefore the Divine had to be liberated from the flesh – violently if necessary.

Gnostics used the concept of the Logos to indicate a creative principle, by which the world was created. But this Logos was not understood to be a Person, but an impersonal force or organizing idea; certainly not a Person. John’s Prologue to his Gospel comes as a broadside against this Greek philosophy and totally redefines the terms of discussion about the Divine. John tells us that “in the beginning was the Word – the Logos – and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

In just a few sentences, John captures Truth about God that has never been surpassed for its literary beauty and theological concision. The opening words echo Genesis, “In the beginning” – but the first book of the Bible focuses on the actions of God creating through his pronouncements. God Speaks and the world comes in being. In John’s Gospel, we see that the spoken Word of God is actually a Person, Jesus. This Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity became flesh and dwelt among us. God took on Flesh and became Emmanuel, God with us. In a word, he was Incarnated, clothed with flesh. This is the Event we celebrate in Advent, the coming of the Word into the world.

But John also wants us to understand that in and through Jesus everything came into being that has come into being, and apart from Him, nothing has come into being. He is reinforcing the Genesis message of God’s creative mastery over our lives. God speaks and the world comes into existence. The universe is not the result of random chance operating in a vacuum. Our lives are not random events in a senseless material world, but rather highly specific actions of an Absolute and Sovereign God, one to whom we owe allegiance and fealty as our Maker, and to whom we will give an account of all our actions.

Contrast this with what we call Postmodernism. Postmoderns don’t believe in any Logos, or in Truth as an objective category. Truth is constructed in your head, according to your experience, your likes and dislikes. There is little or no sense of recognizing an authority outside of oneself as having any claim or demand upon me. Freedom is the highest value. Nothing should ever get in the way of what I want to do. Everyone’s opinion is equally valid; it’s as if folks are saying to God, “I’ve got a right to my opinion – even if you do claim to be God.”

Postmoderns believe that every path is valid as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. Toleration is the highest interpersonal value. To assert that there is such a thing as Truth is to gain for yourself the label of Intolerant or Bigot – the unforgivable secular sin. I actually heard one of my colleagues at work say to another colleague, very seriously, “I have no tolerance for Intolerance!” I wanted to go up to her and say, “Here’s yer sign!”


Now back to John for a little black and white theology. Jesus, he says, is our Life and this life is the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not and never will be able to overtake it. Jesus came to a people who sat in darkness awaiting the fulfillment of the prophetic Word. They were yearning to be free of the oppression of the Romans. But Jesus came to His own people and they did not recognize Him. Instead, just as they did to all the other prophets, they killed Jesus. But the great loss of the Jewish people was our gain. For while the Jews rejected Christ, ‘as many as did receive Him, he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name’(v.14). This is a clear cut case of something either being True or Not. Jesus is either the Messiah or Not. The postmodern wishes to assert, “That’s not true for me”, as if one’s acknowledgment of facts is sort of like picking out an outfit: “Does this alb make me look fat?”…

Postmoderns can’t stand the idea that something is True and something else is not true. Yet at the same time, they can’t quite get away with just making things up as they go. They want to have something behind their preferences to back them up. So they bring in Science, or more to the point pseudo-science and try to say things like “Being Gay is Genetic”, not realizing that the Word of God never bases values or ethics on genetics. When the Bible says “Don’t lust, fornicate or commit adultery” there is no sympathy whatsoever for any special pleading that I may be heterosexual and so have to Lust, fornicate and commit adultery. “I can’t help it, it’s my genes…” doesn’t cut it with God.


Truth is all about Judgment. Alexander Solzehitzen says “One word of Truth outweighs the Universe. When Truth comes to us, it judges everything that isn’t True by virtue of its simple existence. Truth separates Good from Bad, Reality from Unreality and the perfect from the imperfect. Truth can be our ‘enemy’ as it exposes the lies and deceptions in our lives. That’s why people reject God’s free offer of salvation; it exposes their own lies and self-deceptions.

But in Jesus, Truth and Grace come together. Jesus is described as being full of Grace and Truth. Because He lived a sinless life, Truth has been satisfied in Him. Because he offered himself freely on our behalf, we receive Grace instead of judgment. Grace is undeserved favor. It’s what you get when you don’t get what you deserve. It comes as a gift, not because of anything we have done.

One of the great things that happen when we receive Christ as Savior is that we receive the gift of adoption as Children of God. Not only are we forgiven of our sins, but we become part of the family. We receive Grace upon Grace. While the Jewish people claimed to be the sons of God through being descended of Abraham, we Christians are born not of Blood, nor by any action of our own wills, says John, but by the gracious will of God. We are born of the Spirit. That is, God makes alive those who receive Jesus as Christ and Savior. Believing in Christ is not a work of the will of man, but an acceptance, a recognition, or appropriation of something God has graciously provided – Salvation. Those who receive Christ as Lord are born of the Spirit and legally adopted into the family of God, becoming joint-heirs along with Jesus, of the Grace of Life.


Folks, this is what the world needs desperately. Some of us met at 1410 Charleston Avenue on Friday to walk through the house and to pray over the property. While we in the midst of praying, a man named Tom walked up to us and said, “I saw you all praying over here and I thought I’d come and get some of that for me. I’m an alcoholic and I need to be free from alcohol”. So we laid hands on Tom and prayed for him. And while we know that addictions are insidious and usually require years of work to maintain sobriety, we also know that virtually everyone who kicks an addiction starts with a sense of spiritual poverty and ends up having a spiritual renewal. People like Tom and Walter from last week need God with them to help them overcome the terrible pull of drugs and alcohol. They’re not looking for a Postmodern philosophy that affirms them in their dysfunction, they need the New Birth that comes through believing in Christ as Savior.

In Acts 13:33, Paul preaches in Antioch and refers back to Ps. 2:7. “Thou art my Son, Today I have begotten Thee”. Here, Paul uses the word begotten to refer to God having raised Jesus from the Dead. Hebrews 1:5 quotes the same verse, again invoking the sense of God begetting His son in the act of raising Him from the Dead and seating him at the right hand of the Father. In a similar way, we are begotten as God’s sons when we are saved from the death-grip of Sin over us. And this is why Jesus Christ came into the world – to save sinners by raising them from death.

We, who have been saved by His redeeming grace need to reach out and take that same redeeming Grace into our world and help people like Tom and Walter find the fullness of Grace upon Grace which comes to us through Jesus, God’s only son, the One who is close to the Father’s heart and has made him know to us. Amen.