It is my earnest prayer that we look through the pages of this gospel in the days to come, that God the Holy Spirit will make us see that light so clearly that we will be those who were born not of the flesh, not by the will of man, but by God Himself. In John 1 verses 4 to 5, we're told in Him was life and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And it's this light that we'll consider today as we start a short series in the early chapters of John's Gospel. This is the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and I'm thankful that you're listening today. We don't study the Scriptures merely to know the Scriptures better, but in order that we might know the God of the Scriptures better.
And as you heard R.C. Sproul just say, his prayer as we study John's Gospel is that every one of us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, would truly know the One who is the light and that we would have eternal life. Before Dr. Sproul starts this sermon series in chapter 1 of John, you can request his commentary on John's Gospel when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. You'll further fuel the outreach of Renewing Your Mind with your donation, and we'll send you this commentary as our way of saying thank you, allowing you to take your time to walk through John's Gospel with R.C.
Sproul as your guide. Well, to get this series started, here's Dr. Sproul on the opening verses of John's Gospel. Our Scripture this morning is taken from the Gospel according to St. John.
I will be reading from the first chapter, verses 1 through 18, which of course is that section of John's Gospel that we call the prologue. Here then, 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, and all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear it. It is customary in New Testament studies to distinguish between the gospel of John and the other three gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels for the simple reason that they give to us a synopsis of the life of Jesus, kind of an overview of His ministry on this earth. Now it's not as if John is not interested in giving us biographical details as well to the life and teaching of Jesus, but he proceeds in quite a different style.
His is the most theological of the four gospels that we have, and he spends almost two-thirds of the material contained in his written account devoted to the last weeks of Jesus' life. And so John, as it were, is putting a searchlight on the critically important redemptive historical activity that Jesus performs during His stay on earth. It is in John's gospel that we have the most extensive revelation from the lips of Jesus of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, which information is found in the upper room discourse that takes place on Maundy Thursday.
But we have to ask this question, why the prologue? Why doesn't John begin his gospel like Matthew and Luke do by telling us about the circumstances of the conception of Jesus and His birth to a peasant girl and so on? Rather, John begins his gospel with Jesus already as an adult, but he gives us, first of all, this brief prologue of 18 verses. Now, before I try to answer the question of why, let me just also say about this prologue that no portion of the New Testament captured the imagination and the attention of the Christian intellectual community for the first three centuries, then the prologue to John's gospel. In the church's attempt to understand the person of Christ in Trinitarian terms, the church was virtually preoccupied with this high view of Christ that is explained in the prologue as they sought to develop what was called the Logos Christology, or the understanding of Christ as the Word who is introduced here in the opening words of John's gospel. But I think that if I can guess at the reason for this is that John throughout his gospel is trying to make a case for the identity of Christ.
In fact, later he says that. He said, these things were written that you may believe, and in believing in Him you might have life. That is, John is not interested in being a detached observer and chronicler of the life of Jesus.
He is not entering here a no-spin zone. He is trying to persuade us of the truth of Christ that we might be His disciples. And so before he enters into an overview of his life and of his encounters with various people along the way in this world, he gives us a quick look at Jesus' ultimate credentials. What he's telling us in the prologue is an answer to the question that we often ask people when we meet them for the first time. We'll say to them, John, what's your name? What do you do?
Where are you from? And John is answering the question here with respect to Jesus, where is He from? Again, by way of preface. In the New Testament, there are many titles that are used for Jesus. As I've told you before, the title that occurs more frequently than any other title for Jesus is the title Christos, or Christ, which is the New Testament word for Messiah. It's used so often that we think that it's just His last name, Jesus Christ. No, the name is Jesus. The title is Christ.
And what the church is saying is that Jesus is the Messiah. So that's the number one title in terms of frequency. The second most frequent title given to Jesus is the title Lord, which was the title that served as the earliest Christian creed, Jesus is Lord. Now, in third place, way behind Messiah and Lord in terms of numerical frequency is the title Son of Man.
It's only used 82 or so times in the New Testament, but the remarkable thing about its frequency is this. Even though it's third in terms of the preference of those who write about Jesus, it is far in the way Jesus' favorite self-designation. So if you would ask Jesus, who are you? He would answer most frequently, I am the Son of Man. Now, what's significant about that, beloved, is that we have a tendency to read that title, Son of Man, as an expression of Jesus' humility, simply as an expression of Jesus identifying with our humanity.
Now, it does involve His identification and corporate solidarity with our humanity, but that's not its primary emphasis. When Jesus identifies Himself with the Son of Man in front of Jewish people of the first century, they understood what He was saying, that He was identifying with that person who was defined and described in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament as the one who comes from the very throne of God, who is a heavenly being, who has as His mission to be the judge of the world. And so when Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man, He is describing Himself not only in terms of His activity, but He's describing His origin.
He's telling us where He comes from. And so He will say, for example, on other occasions, on other occasions, no one ascends into heaven except He who has descended from heaven. When Jesus heals people on the Sabbath day and the people cry out against Him because He's violating their rules, He said, I do this that you may know that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.
See, that's when they pick up stones because they got the message. Jesus was saying, I am the Lord of the Sabbath, and they understood that the Lord of the Sabbath was the Creator. And elsewhere when He forgives sins, He said, I say these things that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.
These are not statements of humility. These are statements by which Christ openly declares His authority as the one who has come down from heaven. And so before we get John's glimpse of the earthly visitation of Jesus, He tells us where He's from by saying, In the beginning… And here He's echoing the very opening words of the Old Testament, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. John is saying, In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
That sentence in and of itself was enough to keep the theologians busy for 300 years because on the one hand the Word is distinguished from God, and then from a different perspective is identified with God. We read, He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him.
Without Him nothing was made that was made. So that Jesus, who came to this earth, is now identified as the incarnation of that member of the Trinity for whom, by whom, and in whom all things were made. So that what John is saying in extraordinary ways is this. The one I'm going to tell you about, the one that I want you to believe in, and the one in whom there is life is the one who created you in the first place.
There was nothing made that was made except through Him. There will be two words that will appear in John's gospel again and again and again, and again and again, and those words are the words life and the word light. And he says in verse 4, in Him was life. In Him was life, and this life, this life was the light of men.
So often when the Scriptures describe the natural fallen condition of this world, it uses the antonyms of these words. It speaks in terms of death, and it speaks in terms of darkness. As I was reading through this for this Sunday's sermon, I don't know how many times I've read this prologue, but as I was reading through it this week and came to this verse, in Him was life, my own soul responded because I thought when I go back over my lifetime and rehearse the meaningful moments of my own personal experience, clearly the most defining moment in my whole life was the moment of my conversion to Christ, the moment when the lights went on, and we sometimes in a mocking way speak of people who have seen the light. Well, beloved, that's what John is saying here as he says later on, we beheld His glory, obviously referring to the amount of transfiguration when Christ began to shine, His divine nature breaking through the veil of His humanity.
And John is saying, we saw it. We saw His glory, the glory of the monogenes, the glory of the only begotten God Himself. In Him is life. And beloved, conversely, outside of Him there is no life.
There may be biological life, but not this kind of life that He came, that we might have. And this life, he says, was the light of men. And in the second century when the Christian philosophers and apologists sought to define the Christian faith over against the pagan world and to answer the critics from Greek philosophy, Justin Martyr, for example, argued the point that the great truths that were discovered in the genius of a Plato and of an Aristotle were not there by their own power. But even the pagan philosophers, whatever light they found was borrowed light from the light that comes into the world that has its basis and origin and fountainhead in Christ, Christ, who was the fountain of all truth. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it. And he introduces John and says, John came for a witness to bear witness to the light. He wasn't the light, but he was the witness to the light, the light that was the true light that gives light to every man that comes into the world. And again, this awful judgment, he was in the world. The world was made through him, but the world didn't even know him.
He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Now, here's what my prayer is for the weeks to come. I don't know the state of anybody's soul in this room.
We judge on outward appearances. Only God can look at the heart. But if we just go by the odds, the probabilities are extremely high that there are people right now in this room who do not know Christ, who are still living in darkness, where the darkness covers their heart and their soul, and they've never experienced the life that only He can give you. And it is my earnest prayer as that we look through the pages and the chapters of this gospel in the days to come, that God the Holy Spirit will make us see that light so clearly, that we will be like those that John said who did receive them, but that we will be like those that John said who did receive them, and to them God gave the authority to be called His children, who were born not of the flesh, not by the will of man, but by God Himself. My prayer is that in the weeks to come, through this word through which faith comes, you will come to know that light and come to know that life. And if you already have His life in you and you already have seen the beauty of that life and have been rescued from darkness, that you will move from light to light, from life to life, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace as we learn of Him.
You can hear R.C. Sproul's passion for people to be awakened to the truth and to come to a saving knowledge of God and for genuine Christians to continue to grow into mature saints. And that's our desire as well, as each episode of Renewing Your Mind is streamed or broadcast around the world every day. You're listening to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.
I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Each Sunday, we feature the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul, and the sermons you hear were preached at St. Andrew's Chapel, a Presbyterian church in Sanford, Florida. Each of his sermons in John's Gospel helped form the basis of his expositional commentary on John, and we'll send you the hardcover edition of that commentary when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. John's Gospel is often the first gospel that a new Christian reads, and you can be better equipped to study John's Gospel yourself or with a new Christian by walking through Dr. Sproul's commentary as he guides you through John verse by verse. This offer ends at midnight tonight, so if you'd like this commentary, request your copy today at renewingyourmind.org. We heard about the identity of Jesus today, but who was John the Baptist? Join us next Sunday to find out, here on Renewing Your Mind.
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