Kingdom Caring
Kingdom Caring
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When the world had its beginning, the Word was already there; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God. This Word was in the beginning with God.
THE beginning of John’s gospel is of such importance and of such depth of meaning that we must study it almost verse by verse. It is John’s great thought that Jesus is none other than God’s creative and life-giving and light-giving word, that Jesus is the power of God which created the world and the reason of God which sustains the world come to earth in human and bodily form.
Here at the beginning, John says three things about the word, which is to say that he says three things about Jesus.
(1) The word was already there at the very beginning of things. John’s thought is going back to the first verse of the Bible: ‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). What John is saying is this—the word is not one of the created things; the word was there before creation; the word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and the world began. John was thinking of what is known as the pre-existence of Christ.
(2) John goes on to say that the word was with God. What does he mean by that? He means that there has always been the closest connection between the word and God. Let us put that in another and a simpler way—there has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God. That means no one can tell us what God is like, what God’s will is for us, what God’s love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.
Let us take a simple human analogy. If we want to know what someone really thinks and feels about something, and if we are unable to approach the person ourselves, we do not go to a mere acquaintance who has known that person only a short time; we go to someone whom we know to be an intimate friend of many years’ standing. We know that the friend will really be able to interpret the mind and the heart of the other person to us.
(3) Finally, John says that the word was God. This is a difficult saying for us to understand, and it is difficult because Greek, in which John wrote, had a different way of saying things from the way in which English expresses them. When Greek uses a noun, it almost always uses the definite article with it. The Greek for God is theos and the definite article is ho. When Greek speaks about God, it does not simply say theos; it says ho theos. Now when Greek does not use the definite article with a noun, that noun becomes much more like an adjective. John did not say that the word was ho theos; that would have been to say that the word was identical with God. He said that the word was theos—without the definite article—which means that the word was, we might say, of the very same character and quality and essence and being as God. When John said the word was God, he was not saying that Jesus was identical with God; he was saying that Jesus was so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart and in being that in him we perfectly see what God is like.
So, right at the beginning of his gospel, John lays it down that in Jesus, and in him alone, there is perfectly revealed all that God always was and always will be, and all that he feels towards and desires for men and women.
John 1:14
So the Word of God became a person, and took up his abode in our being, full of grace and truth; and we looked with our own eyes upon his glory, glory like the glory which an only son receives from a father.
HERE we come to the sentence for the sake of which John wrote his gospel. He has thought and talked about the word of God, that powerful, creative, dynamic word which was the agent of creation, that guiding, directing, controlling word which puts order into the universe and intelligence into human beings. These were ideas which were known and familiar to both Jews and Greeks. Now he says the most startling and incredible thing that he could have said. He says quite simply: ‘This word which created the world, this reason which controls the order of the world, has become a person, and with our own eyes we saw him.’ The word that John uses for seeing this word is theasthai; it is used in the New Testament more than twenty times and is always used of actual physical sight. This is no spiritual vision seen with the eye of the soul or of the mind. John declares that the word actually came to earth in the form of a man and was seen by human eyes. He says: ‘If you want to see what this creating word, this controlling reason, is like, look at Jesus of Nazareth.’
14:13 The disciples of John have delivered the news to Jesus, and Jesus withdraws by himself. While grief may be part of the reason, the act of withdrawing after hearing news has occurred twice in the Gospel (2:22; 4:12), and in both circumstances the reason was because of potential danger. Jesus takes this boat trip alone, whereas in the next boat trip the disciples will be with him. The crowds hear about Jesus traveling alone in the boat and begin to come out of the towns and follow him along the land. Although not yet indicated, the disciples are evidently part of this crowd following him by land, as they will be present once he arrives on the shore.
Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them
15 When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.
But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”
14:17 The response to Jesus’ command borders on incredulity. The emphasis on their response is indicated both by the present-tense verb “say” and by the emphasis placed on their minuscule provisions through the point-counterpoint set, emphasizing the “nothing” at the front of the clause.
18 He said, “Bring them here to Me.” 19 Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. 20 So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. 21 Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
The miracle is a spiritual lesson for disciples of every generation. The hungry multitude is always present. There is always a little band of disciples with seemingly pitiful resources. And always there is the compassionate Savior. When disciples are willing to give Him their little all, He multiplies it to feed thousands. The notable difference is that the five thousand men who were fed by Galilee had their hunger satisfied only for a short time; those today who feed upon the living Christ are satisfied forever (see John 6:35).