LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

[John 1:1-18]

          Introduction to the Scriptures: Obviously this is a challenging passage and we are going to challenge our minds and our spirits this morning. But it is rich and I trust we will go from this place enlightened by the Light of the World, under-standing the Father and the Son more fully than ever before.

Prayer for Illumination - Lord, in the remainder of this worship hour, I pray that your Spirit would move among us. Our minds need to be illumined, and you are the light of the world, so we know you can do that. Our hearts need to be enlivened, and you are the life of the world, and we know you can do that. So we ask that you would focus our hearts and our attention that we would really look directly into the face of Jesus Christ, that we would see Him, and, in seeing Him, that we would understand more fully who you are and what a privilege it is to know you. I know my words must be entirely inadequate, but your word is never inadequate. So let us hear your word of truth and grace and let us reflect on it in the light and power of your Spirit, through Christ our Lord, AMEN.

Message

          The human race today is at grave risk of losing touch with our only hope. In a world and at a time in history where nearly everyone talks casually about God (if they speak of God at all), the vast majority have concluded that “god” is little more than an idea which we may manipulate at will, each of us, in effect, creating a “god” with whom we are personally comfortable. You hear it all the time in our culture – “I want a god that I am comfortable with.” The realization that God is real, that He is who He is regardless of our thoughts about Him, that He is more Magnificent and more Terrible than we have ever imagined, and that He cares fervently how we act and how we relate to Him, has perhaps never been in greater jeopardy than it is in our culture today. We need to know who God really is, for one day we will all stand before Him to give an account of our lives!

          So how may we truly know God? The real God, not some figment of our imagination, the God who is? We must not allow ourselves the careless and self-serving inclination to assume He is whoever we want Him to be. We must pay attention to the way in which God has revealed His character as it truly is. And truly the most exciting discovery about God in the history of the human race is the discovery that God is at once both singular and yet, somehow, plural. This sounds to us contradictory, as it would sound, I am sure, to try to explain a three-dimensional world to one who lived in a flat two-dimensional world. It just wouldn’t make sense even if we were using the same terms. Nevertheless in Scripture and in history, the One God has revealed Himself as Trinity – as three persons within a singular Godhead. Now, you understand, this is a unique insight found in the Christian faith alone and not in any other faith.

          Last week we were introduced to the first person of the Trinity as God the Father. In the Father we encountered a God who loves us absolutely and unconditionally, though we had not anticipated that. In the Father we encounter a God who loves us as He loves His own Son. The parable of the father’s love for his prodigal son, which was our text last week, informed us of God’s heart for us, for we too are prodigals in need of the father’s love and grace.

          Let me take a moment this morning to clarify that image of God as Father before we go beyond it into some wonderful and rich territory. God’s choice of the image of a father to describe himself is not a gender issue, and I must say that today because we are particularly sensitive to gender issues. Nonetheless, it is not an arbitrary choice; it is a very conscious and deliberate choice to let us know that He is in fact like a father in the best sense. Of course God is not male. Male and female apply to created beings who, in our case, coming together as male and female – not separately but together – reflect the image of God. That is one of the wonders revealed in the account of creation in the book of Genesis. It is only together, male and female, that we reflect Him. God himself is beyond gender, although the implication of this is that He includes both maleness and femaleness within himself.

          Now if God is Father to the Son, there is, of course, in that revelation a sense in which He must fill both the roles of father and mother, for parenting is a dual effort. (By the way, that’s d-u-a-l, not d-u-e-l!) Nevertheless the Bible tells us that the Son is “begotten” by the Father. The NIV translation tries to explain “only-begotten” by saying “the One and Only,” but the word really is begotten. We don’t use that word very much. It has become a bit archaic. But to beget means to bring forth out of who we are. The Bible says, yes, Jesus has been begotten by the Father.

          Now it never says that the Son is given birth. And there is a distinction here. Giving birth, by the way, would be the mother’s role; it would also imply that He had a beginning in time. This is a necessary distinction if we are to understand the relationship of the first two persons of the Trinity. “Birthing” would imply a subordinate role for the child, but the Scriptures never allow us to assume a subordinate role for Christ as the Son. That turns out to be very important as we seek to know Christ as Lord. He has ultimate authority. He is the final judge after all. More importantly, in terms of the relationships within the Trinity, in “begetting,” the Father is the initiator, as we learned last week. He is the original source of the Son’s being, but this does not take place at some point later in time. It is true of God from the very beginning – or more accurately, eternally.

          Now in our experience, “being” arises when the father initiates and the mother receives. The unique role of God as Father is precisely that He is the “initiator” in all this – not the receiver. No other image would make this clear without distorting some other aspect of His being. The first person of the Trinity is Father. That is what God wants us to know about himself. We are not going to do any better than the terms He has chosen. He is not mother; He is not brother, even though His being includes the characteristics of both mothers and brothers. Neither is He king, or partner, or friend, although at times He assumes all those roles. But He is, above all, the original source – the initiator of all that exists. What He is, is Father. We need to know that first of all.

          But as the Source of all Being, there is more we should know about Him. It turns out He is not aloof or disconnected. He is Father. And the image of Father, better than any other term in our language, expresses that. Therefore, the Nicene Creed reminds us, “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” And then it goes on to remind us we also believe in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds. . . . begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” As the “begetter” the Father initiates, and bequeaths His essence – His substance and nature – to His Son.

          So all that is very significant. It is more than we can explore in detail today, but it is significant, and the image is not chosen by chauvinistic theologians; it is the image chosen by God Himself. And our invitation to call God Father comes directly from His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. This, by the way, in no way reduces the importance of the role of mother. In receiving the initiative of the father, the mother is the one who bears the fruit. Nothing can be given if it is not received, and nothing can be accomplished if what is initiated is not accepted or received. But here is the important and unexpected thing: in relationship to God, it is we who are the recipients. We are all feminine before God. That is why we are called the “bride of Christ.” And as we receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, initiated by the Father, our lives begin to bear fruit. You see there is an analogy here to our own relationships as well as our relationship to the triune God. Fundamental realities are being expressed here to help us understand who we are and who God is.

          So in recognizing God as Father, we recognize Him, first of all, as the source of all that is. But at the same time we recognize that He is in no way an impersonal force. Rather He is loving, He is responsible, He is even a self-sacrificing person. Now keep in mind that we would not learn this simply by observing that God was the original Source of all that exists. People believed that for a long time and still found God to be aloof or distant, perhaps cold or impersonal. We learn of God’s compassion and care by observing His relationship to His only-begotten Son, the second person of the Trinity. It is that Son we want to explore today.

          Indeed, it is the unexpected introduction of a second person in the Godhead which turned all previous thinking about God upside down and inside out. Just when everyone was sure they knew all about this sovereign, transcendent, all-powerful, all-knowing God, remote perhaps and untouchable in His unchallenged authority and singularity, just when they thought they understood this God, a man named Jesus appeared. And what a man he was, unlike any other in history before or since! In fact, what they encountered historically in the person of Jesus was so stunning that they simply had to find a way to come to terms with it, though it seemed to contradict everything they thought they knew. How could they possibly make sense of what they had encountered in the absolutely unique and remarkable person of Jesus?

          Here was a man, first of all, who in some way seemed to fulfill all the Old Testament prophecies about a divine visitation, about God coming among His people. As He came to the public’s attention, He spoke with an astonishing authority which seemed to supercede even Moses and the prophets, unimaginable to those who heard Him. He seemed to speak almost exclusively about himself as the answer to all the world’s problems. He was the bread of life; He was the light of the world; He was the resurrection and the life; He was the way, the truth, and the life. No one, He said could come to the Father but by Him. He suggested that everything written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms was ultimately about Him. He claimed the ultimate allegiance of all His followers, and said He alone could offer them eternal life. Yet with all those stunning claims He seemed to those who followed Him to be genuinely humble and even meek.

          He never seemed self-serving. He went out of His way to love and care for the unlovable at any cost. Yet in actions which would have seemed unbelievably arrogant in anyone else, He even offered to forgive the world’s sin, and claimed that He would be the world’s final judge. He performed spectacular miracles, calming a storm, healing congenital blindness, even raising the dead! And He was good. Everyone agreed He was good – good with an absolute and unfailing goodness that astonished His friends and confounded His enemies. Who was this man? They had no categories for Him.

          As He approached His own death, the end of His life on earth, He told His bewildered followers that in seeing Him, they had actually seen God! Three days later, after His body had been horribly mutilated on a cross, the unthinkable happened. He stunned the world by walking out of His tomb more alive than anyone could have imagined, and they just knew the world had been turned upside down. Somehow they had to deal with something absolutely new in history. After explaining that He and His Father would return, along with a Counselor whom He called the Holy Spirit, to dwell with them, even to live in them, to transform them, and to establish His kingdom among them, He simply vanished from their view with a promise to return!

          How do we deal with the historical person of Jesus Christ? The writers of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) simply tell us what they have seen and heard. It is a wonderful account, very straightforward. They are as incredulous about this whole thing as we would have been. They attempt to relate what they have observed in the light of the Old Testament prophets, who seem to have anticipated something like this, but they really do not know what’s going on. They raise profound questions of enormous consequence, questions they are not able to answer. But it is John, as well as the apostle and theologian Paul, who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, spend time reflecting on all this and begin to make some sense of it all. John, of course, was Jesus’ closest friend and associate. We are not talking about John the Baptist now, but John the disciple. If anyone on earth would have opportunity to see and consider all of Jesus’ words and actions, it would be John. He was with Him from the beginning of His ministry. He’s the man we really ought to listen to. John knew Jesus better than anyone else in the world knew Him.

          So we turn to John, as we have today, to learn what it was that he saw and came to understand, under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, about this man, Jesus. And what we read in John’s gospel absolutely takes our breath away! Here is what John says about the man Jesus: [John 1:1] “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now John was writing to a mixed audience of religious and secular Jews, along with a diverse population raised on the prevailing Greek philosophy. The term John used here for word was the Greek word Logos. “In the beginning was the Logos.” Most of John’s audience would have been aware that Greek philosophers for many years had used that term to speak of the fundamental, rational principle of the universe – the creative, organizing force of the universe, or, as the Greeks often said, the world’s soul. Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, had used the term Logos to speak of the order which he saw in the universe. It was, for him, the fundamental, stabilizing, directing principle of the universe.

          Now the Greeks did not think of the Logos as personal in any way. It was just a principle or a force, but it was the supreme force which originated and permeated and directed all things that existed. John, of course, was going to say something quite different about the Logos. He was going to cut right across that great philosophy which had prevailed for centuries, because he would declare to the contrary that the Logos was fundamentally personal and passionately involved in the world. To his Greek audience that would have been entirely new, but they would have known what he was talking about, and they would have seen how remarkable this statement was. The “Force” – (“May the Force be with you”) – that Luke Skywalker encountered in Star Wars was about to put on a human face!

          John’s Jewish audience, on the other hand, would have looked at this quite differently. Their attention would have been caught by his opening words, “In the beginning . . . .” They couldn’t have missed that. They knew that phrase. In Hebrew it was baraysheeth, the very first word in the Scriptures, and the name of the original book of Moses. Baraysheeth – “In the beginning, . . . “ ”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” They all knew that. And the introduction of “the Word” would turn their attention immediately to the fundamental display of God’s power in that creation account: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” – the power of God was evident in His word going forth into the world!

          This was the word of God in action, creating ex nihilo, “out of nothing”! “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth,” Psalm 33 says. Then it goes on, “Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him. For he spoke, and it came to be [That’s the power of God’s word!]; he commanded and it stood firm.” Or, as we read often from Isaiah, the prophet,

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. [Isaiah 55:11]

Oh, the Jews knew the power of God’s word. This was an incredible concept for them:

The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic. . . . The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning. The voice of the LORD shakes the desert; . . . The voice of the LORD twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry, “Glory!” [Psalm 29]

So the word Logos was already rich with meaning for all John’s hearers, and he was going to make it richer still. Yes, in the beginning was the Word, the creative power out of which the universe was born. There never was a time when the Word was not. It pre-exists all things and is responsible for them being what they are. That is what the word involves.

          Moreover it is not just a force, it is a word remember, it is an expression. As an expression it reveals the heart of the One who expresses it, the one who speaks it. So if there is a Word behind the universe, a Word from the initiator, the creator, we may have access to the mystery of life itself and being itself! Maybe we can learn something about why the universe is here at all. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” the second phrase says. Technically, the preposition here is towards. It’s awkward in the English translation; “the Word was towards God,” is not something we would have said. But it is telling us that it is facing Him, like a reflection in a mirror, as we illustrated for the children. It is oriented towards the Source of all being; it takes its shape from Him. There is nothing in the one which contradicts the other. They are inseparable. The one reflects the other wholly. There is an essential relationship expressed here between God the Father and this Word – this dynamic, creative, living power.

          Are you still with me? “In the beginning was the Word . . . the Word was with God,” and then the most far-reaching observation of all, “the Word was God.” They are “One,” and yet there is a discernable distinction between them. He does not say, God was the Word – he leaves open the possibility there is more to God than this – but the Word was God, a distinction made and yet they may be identified with one another. Whatever one may say about God, one may also say about the Word. Remember that great Hebrew declaration of faith, Adonai elohaynu, Adonai ekhad. The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Here the Word and God are distinct, yet nevertheless One, he is telling us.

          And then, the most astonishing thing of all, “He,” verse 2 says – the personal pronoun now not just the abstract – “He was in the beginning with God.” You mean this apparently impersonal “Word” or “Logos” was a person? To a Jew like John, this would have been unthinkable! Yet at the same time for him it had become undeniable because of what he had seen and experienced, undeniable because it was more than a philosophical concept now. John was indeed talking about a person, a person he knew, a person whom he had listened to, whom he had seen at work. This Logos is no subterranean fire, it’s no mystical force, it’s no impossible mathematical formula. The Logos is a Man, he is telling us, in fact the very man whom John himself had come to know intimately. “He was in the beginning with God.” It takes one’s breath away!

          Then he goes beyond this to explain what this man is all about in verses 3ff.: “Through him all things were made; [in fact] without him nothing was made that has been made.” Everything owes its existence to the Word, this fundamental principle, this creative power. Interestingly, however, the Word is not alone in this task. Everything is made “through” Him, implying that it originated elsewhere but is in some way given form by and through Him. The apostle Paul picks up this same distinction in 1 Corinthians 8:6 where he spells out carefully,

Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came [there’s the initiator] and for whom we live [everything is from Him and for Him]; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

In those prepositions rests a whole theology. The two are at work together on this project of creation, and they are at work together on the process of renewal in our lives, but each has a distinctive role. In fact, we learn later, the Holy Spirit is at work in creation and redemption as well, each with a unique role. The Father is still the source, the originator, the initiator of these acts. But the second person of the Trinity now, the one who touches the material creation in a unique way that the Father does not, joins the Father in this act of creating and redeeming. Being of one substance and one nature, they share a single divine will and desire to accomplish this creative expression of God’s will, but each brings something unique to the project. Remember Jesus said, I don’t speak a single word that I haven’t gotten from the Father. He initiates it all. I’m simply reflecting it to you in the world.

          “In him [that is in the Word],” John tells us next, “was life, and that life was the light of men.” There is life also in this Word; not just an organizing principle, but life itself. That life will not have originated in the Word, but it was in Him from the beginning nonetheless, and that life, that mysterious, animating force which stirs the dust to conscious being, will flow from Him into the material world. It will slither through the water and roam the land. It will take wing and burst into song! And in all of us, and all our ancestors before us, it will awaken a sense of the numinous, a possibility that we may somehow touch the very face of God!

          Indeed, that life will light the darkness, he tells us. As light bursts upon the dark and formless universe at the invitation of God’s word in the very beginning, so will this Word, to whom we are now being introduced, bring us the light of hope, the light of knowledge, the light of righteousness. If the first person of the Trinity is the source of all good things, the second person of the Trinity, the incarnate Christ, bears those good things into the material world where we may have access to them as well. This is a very significant thing for us to learn. It is in Jesus Christ that we touch the living God with our hands, our eyes, and our minds.

          And it is precisely Jesus Christ whom John identifies at the climax of our text in verse 14. There we learn that this Word which expresses all that is good, all that is right, all that is true, and all that is beautiful – this Word “became flesh [Can you believe it?] and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory [we’ve seen it!], glory as of the only Son from the Father.” And in verse 17 he finally names this personal Word. This “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” This is who I am talking about, folks! John says, you need to know this. And then he explains, in the final verse, “No one has ever seen God; the only [begotten] Son, who is in the bosom of the Father [sharing His essence; the one who alone knows the Father’s mind and heart – the Father’s only Son] has made him known.” That is why Jesus could say, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

          Do you understand the significance of what John has just told us in these few verses? Without Jesus, we are left, at best, with the stern and distant Allah known to Islam, or at worst, the nebulous speculation about God found in every other world religion! But we have really seen nothing, like the children this morning speculating about who I might be without having seen my reflection in the mirror. But we have seen Jesus Christ, and so we come to know the Father.

          Let us review what we have learned from John, then. We have learned that this Jesus is, as He told them, One with God the Father and yet distinct from Him. To express that distinction, He will be called God’s only-begotten Son, although this does not imply anything less than complete equality with the Father whose essence, whose very substance He shares, although they are distinct persons.

          They share also the same profound tasks, although they exercise different functions or roles. But He is the Word from the heart of the Father which has been spoken into the world in order that we might come to know God as well, that we might have access to the God who must otherwise remain totally unknown us. Therefore in Him, in Jesus Christ, we actually come to know the unknowable God. That is how important Jesus is. The highest privilege we have as human beings is to know the God who created us, and we come to know this God in Jesus Christ.

          It is absolutely essential that we never lose sight of the significance of who Jesus is. Don’t let anyone tell you He is less than John has just described. Don’t let anyone tell you He is one of the great moral teachers. If He is mistaken about the fundamental thing He taught – His “oneness” with the Father – then He is not a great teacher. In fact, He is a charlatan and a liar. But the fundamental revelation of God in the New Testament is that in Jesus Christ we in fact do see the very face of God. That is the only explanation for the person of Jesus who stunned us with His appearance in history.

          The writer to the Hebrews, introducing this overwhelming truth that in Jesus Christ God has drawn near to us, shares a profound insight in his explanation of the person of Jesus. We put it in the bulletin this morning:

In the past God spoke [there’s the Word of God] to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days [ho, ho, you have to hear God’s voice now] he has spoken to us by his Son [“the Word made flesh”], whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being [within creation], sustaining all things by his powerful word.” [Hebrews 1:1-3a]

That is really the same thing that John has just described – Jesus is utterly oriented towards the Father, like an image in a mirror. Paul says in Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God.” Here the writer says Jesus is “the exact representation of [God’s] being, . . .” that is who Jesus is, and that is how we come to know God.

          What it is critically important for us to see in this description is that in Jesus Christ you and I can actually come to know God! No place else can we do this. No place else! That is the meaning of Jesus’ comment. “No one comes to the Father but by me.” You cannot see God if you do not see Jesus. In the end, we will not get to know God by observing the mysteries and the intricacies of the physical universe. We may learn something about Him there, but we will not actually know Him. We will not get to know Him by exercising our intellect or by examining our hearts. We will not get to know Him by trying to find the common denominator in all the world’s religions. We will not get to know Him by reading religious literature or listening to the visions of the great saints.

          But we will absolutely come to know Him by listening to and observing His Son, Jesus Christ, who reflects into our world “the radiance of God’s glory” who is, in fact, “the exact representation of his being,” within the material world. Understand, “No one has ever seen God,” as John says at the climax of our text, [He is beyond vision; but] the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father [in intimate relationship with Him], he has made him known.” This is wondrous and profoundly important news. If you know Jesus, you know the essence of God, and you know the heart of God. Do you know Jesus?

Closing prayer - Father, obviously, as John introduced his gospel about Jesus with these words, we need to know and understand them. They challenge our minds; they may challenge our whole view of life and the universe. But if we don’t understand them we’ll understand nothing about who you are and who we are and what our faith is all about. So I thank you for this revelation of who you are in Jesus. I thank you for what we see and what the world has seen and universally loved in the man Jesus. The world hasn’t always loved Jesus’ followers. We haven’t always deserved their love, but Jesus has always deserved our love, our respect, our admiration, our attention, and ultimately our hearts. So, Father, as we reflect on who you are, as we have seen you represented in Jesus Christ, we ask that you would let your Spirit move freely in our hearts to shape us also in the image of God as we see it in Jesus, for it is in His name that we pray, AMEN.