Not Like Us

{Intro and overview of the Gospel}

It was a quiet night. An old man sat still at a small table in a corner of the room. In front of him was a large, empty scroll of papyrus, spreading over most of the wooden surface. He sat still as if he was frozen in time. In his hand, the ink at the tip of his quill had been dried up for a while now. If his white hair and beard didn’t reflect back the flickering flame from an old lamp, the whole scene would be just like still portrait.

“What should I put down?” The old man thought. “How could we describe the indescribable? How could mere words express the glorious of glory?” His mind dashed back through times, continue to search for ways to communicate what he was trying to say. Time passed. The candle started burning out and the old man rose to refill the lamp with more olive oil. He went back and sat down at the desk and continued his thought. More time passed. The old man still sat there with his quill in hand, but the white pages still remained empty. The night almost faded away. Outside the window, the color of the dark sky started to lighten up on the eastern front. Just then, there were some noises of quill scribbled furiously on the papyrus. The old man’s face seemed to glowed as he write. A few minutes later, he stopped, reread his short writing, and this is what could be heard…

[slide on]

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning...”

Of course, all this imagery was just a way for me to help you imagine a bit about the crucial essence of the text[i]. Do you realize that before John wrote these lines, no one in the whole human history could ever conceive this idea? Many would readily think, “In the beginning was [God]”; a few may have explored the idea of “In the beginning was [the Christ]”; (Philo and other philosophers/theologians also entertained the concept of “the Word of God”) but no one, absolutely no one ever conceived of that statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[ii] Actually, John did not conceive this idea by himself. Conception was a wrong word; the correct term for this should be revelation: John received the revelation about the Word of God.

Let us pray: Spirit of God, as you have revealed to John before, please reveal to us today. Grant us insights about who you are, and move us to respond to you. Amen.

[house light on]

(Eventhough there are a few different opinions on this,) From what I have researched so far, the Apostle John wrote his gospel toward the end of his old age, around 90AD or so, about 60 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, 25 years after Paul and Peter were martyred. At the time of his writing, John was the last disciple alive, and he presided over the churches from Ephesus.

During this time, the Christians were facing multiple problems from both inside and outside the church. Inside the church, there were two major false views of Jesus emerged: the less popular one (which we’ve seen before as “Judaizing Christianity” when we studied Romans and Galatians) taught that Jesus was from God but not God; he was just a man although he could be a very good teacher, anointed prophet, even a miracle worker, but not God[iii] (that view are still common in the world today). The other false teaching (more popular at that time, which we called today “Docetic Gnosticism”) taught that Jesus is God and He only have an “appearance” of a man but not man at all[iv] - (in modern day SciFi terminology he is like a hologram from God). Outside the church, the Christians are facing increasing persecution. The first came from the traditional Jewish followers of Judaism and see Christians as heretics who abandoning the worship of God according to the Old Testament law to worship Jesus. Most Jewish community at this time started to ban Christians from their synagogue and community centers[v] (think of it as you are banned from ever entering Little Saigon again). The other persecution was from the Romans government which believed that the Christians were dangerous to society[vi] (think of it as you will always be harassed by the police because of the shaved-heads and tattoos you wear today[vii]).

Facing all that, John wrote his gospel to clearly define who Jesus is and how we should respond to Him. At the end of the book, John clearly stated his purpose for writing (in Jn.20:31) that “these [things] are written [so] that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

With that purpose in mind, the book of John has its distinctive differences in order to complement the previously written books from Matthew, Mark and Luke. Whereas the first three Gospels major on describing events in the life of Christ, John emphasized the meaning of these events. For example, all four Gospels record the feeding of the 5,000 but only John records Jesus’ sermon on “The Bread of Life” which followed that miracle when He interpreted it for the people.[viii] John carefully selected only 7 miracles[ix] from the ministry of Jesus to illustrate who Jesus is. John also highlighted the 7 claims of “I AM” from Jesus as well[x]. All of that was to lead the readers to believe in Jesus Christ, the Incarnated Word from God.

(Interestingly in the book of John, he used the word “believe” 98 times but they are always a verb form, no noun at all[xi]. So, for John, faith is not something you posess, but something you do.) But what it exactly meant by “Believe in Jesus”, or “Accept Him”, or “Receive Him”? The Gospel of John is also the only book where we can gain a deep insight to the heart of Jesus’ private disclosures to His disciples. Starting from chapters 13 through 17, John relayed to us the final teachings of Jesus during the Last Super just before He was crucified. The answers about what it meant to be a believer and follower of Christ can be found there. Finally, from chapters 18 through 21, John retold the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus to bring us life, and how that life started impacting the lives of His followers.

In a nutshell, I hope you can see an overview structural outlines for the Gospel of John. (show slides). As we study through the book of John in the next few months, I hope we can keep the big picture in mind as we explore the details of the book.

0) {Who is the Word?}
John opening his book with “1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.”

Note that he intentionally introducing “the Word”, and not using the name “Jesus” here. Why? Because “Jesus” was just a name for “the Word”, when He was in human form, but “the Word” Himself had always been existed[xii]. What do we learn about “the Word” here?

(1) {The Word is eternally God[xiii]} First, that He had always been there from the beginning. In fact, that’s exactly why John was using the phrase “In the beginning was the Word” to bring us back to the scene of creation in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… And God said… and there was… And God said… and there was…”

So, who created the Word? Did God created the Word as the Mormon or Jehovah Witness claimed? No, “The Word is not like us!”

You see, we human-being as well as anything else in the physical universe exist in time. Everything will have a lifespan, a beginning and an end. But The Word (like God) while existing in time is unlike us in that he is not limited to time. He created time! Therefore He is not bounded by time; He has no beginning and no end, for he exists even from the everlasting past to the everlasting future.[xiv]

(2) {The Word is equally God} Secondly, the Word was equaled with God in relationship and revealed God to us. See the word “with” there? In the original language, it meant “face to face in communion with”. But if only (a) “the Word was [having face to face fellowship with] God”, and (b) “The Word is not like us!”, then (c) the flip side of this is that “We don’t have face-to-face-communication with God!”

Matt. 11:27b stated: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” And so you see here an infinite closed loop: “No one knows the Son except the Father” and “no one knows the Father except the Son”, so how could humankind ever come to know God? The Bible answered, except for “those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him!” It is precisely because God is not like us, therefore God will need to reveal Himself to us. Humankind can never search for or discover God, He has to reveal Himself to us. That’s why John later on wrote in verse 18, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only (another title for the Word here), who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” The mission of the Word, according to the text here, is to “make the Father known.”

In the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is sitting at his desk in school, taking a test. He is quite dismayed when he reads the first question: Explain Newton’s First Law of Motion in your own words. In the second frame, a big smile comes across his face as it is obvious as he has an idea. In the third frame, he begins to write: “Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.” In the final frame, having made the answer in his own words, Calvin sits back with his hands behind his head and says, “I love loopholes.”
Which brings me to this question… What is the word? [xv]

(William Hendrickson summarized the functional aspect of the Word so well:) A word [normally] serves two distinct purposes: (a) it gives expression to the inner thought, the soul of the man, doing this even though no one else is present to hear what is said or to read what is thought; and (b) it reveals this thought (hence, the soul of the speaker) to others. Christ is the Word of God in both respects: he expresses or reflects the mind of God; also, he reveals God to man.[xvi]

In fact, because of Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, I believe that was why John use the title the Word (Logos) for Him here in this introduction. In the Old Testament, the Word of the Lord came on or to numerous people and often in the prophets, (“Thus said the Lord”) all in the context of revelation from God to us. Hebrews 1:1-3a said the same thing, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, 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, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

(3) {The Word is essentially God} Thirdly, the Word Himself was God.

Not only “the Word was with God”, but verse 1 ended with, “and the Word was God.” Even secular people don’t have a problem with this truth much.
In a 1983 Gallup poll Americans were asked "who do you think Jesus is."
70% of those interviewed said Jesus was not just another man.
42% stated Jesus was God among men. (this is What the Bible said)
27% felt Jesus was only human but divinely called.
9% states Jesus was divine because he embodied the best of humanity.
Also, 81% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians. [xvii]

But then there is a mysterious paradox about the nature of the triune God. For us finite human being, it made no sense at all, “How could something be with something else, yet it was the same thing with what it was?” We’ve always have a hard time trying to explain to people how could Jesus was God, yet He prayed to God and not talking to Himself. This is what you need to remember: “God is not like us!”

You see, as a finite human-being existing in space, I can touching another person and know that this is where I stop and the other person begins. But God is not like us. God is infinite. Without any finite boundaries, where do God the Father stop and the Word begin? Or where do the Word stop and the Spirit begin?

In the first few centuries, quite a few Christians have tried to understand this mysterious nature of the triune God, and even the nature of the person of Jesus. After a few hundred years of examining different attempts to comprehend this mystery, the church declared that all of these attempts are heretical ideas, and we should just accept what God say about Himself through His Word without further analysis. It should be so, for how a pot could truly understand the potter? We are mere creatures with limited understanding, there is no way we can truly understand the one who gave us our mind.[xviii]

Verse 2 simply underlined the nature of the Word one more time, “He was with God in the beginning.” Jesus had always been preexisted with God even before He came to earth, even before creation of the universe, even before time begins. The triune God had always been there, in perfect happy communion even with or without us. God doesn’t need to create the universe in order to be God. God doesn’t need to create us so that He will have someone to love, or so that He will have an audience to praise Him. No, God is not like us at all, He just simply be Himself! Out of His being, everything else in the universe was created and come to being, from the physical matters like atoms and energy to the metaphysical like life and souls and angels. Out of the abundant Love between the Father and the Son in the triune God, love spilled out through out the universe even for us to love one another, and for Him to love us.

Verse 3 said, “3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Who is “him” here? (From the grammar here,) He is “the Word”, the same second person in the triune God.

4) John said firmly that the pre-existed Jesus was the Creator of everything in the universe. Jesus was not a created being! He is our creator! From Genesis, we can see clearly that “Through him all things were made”, God spoke His Word and the universe came to being. Even when God wasn’t speaking at all and made human out of dust, the Word was there as the creator, for “without him nothing was made that has been made.” So, there is our fourth point, He’s not like us: He is the creator, we are His creature.

But the Word didn’t just create the world and just leave it there. Verse 4 and 5 said, “4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood a it.”

5) In the Greek language there are two words for life: the first is “Bios”, from which we have the word “Biology”. This is a life as existence sustained over a period of time. This is the kind of life as we know it. However, the second word, which John used here, is “Zoe”, a life real and genuine, a life active and vigorous, the absolute fullness of life. This is a Life from God, and not like ours kind. Note here that John said, “In him was life” and not “[through] him was life”. The Word is not a mere agent creating Life. But originally and throughout eternity, Life resided in the Word. Life here refers to the fullness of God’s essence, His glorious attributes: holiness, truth, knowledge, wisdom, love, power, sovereignty. This full, blessed life of God is said to have been present in the Word, and this from all eternity[xix] and at one time humankind experienced it: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

Did you notice the verb “was” there in past tense in verse 4 and then the verb tense changed to the present in verse 5, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”? What went on there? Where darkness came from?

What John referred to here was the tragic event when humankind chose to leave God by disobeying Him. At the Fall of Eden, we chose to sin against Him; we lost the “Zoe” Life when we no longer reside in God. Since then the darkness of sin reigns over the world. Human nature automatically inclined to produce sins in our life. Our “Zoe” became “Bios”, just mere existence in time, lost without God.

6) But God didn’t give up! The Bible said that “The light [continue to] shines in the darkness.” And “the darkness has not [overcome] it” (as another possible meaning of the word in your footnote)[xx]. From the slaughter of the lamb in the garden to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, to the Mosaic sacrificial ritual for atonement in the Old Testament, to the giving of Law and the Prophets: the Word of God continue to shine in darkness to give guidance and hope of restoration for the fallen human race.

1) {How are we to response?}

So, how are we to response to the Word of God, who is not at all anything like us? There are only two responses possible: you either be a reflector or be a rejecter.

a) {Be a reflector (like John) v.6-8}

First, the reflector. Verses 6 through 8 interrupted the flow about the Logos to introduce a man: “6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.”

John the Baptist (not the author, John the Apostle) was the last of the Old Testament prophets who reflected the shining light of the Logos to humankind. Incidentally, Luke said of him in Luke 3:2b, “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.” Here, the author makes sure that the readers understand that John the Baptist was not like Jesus at all. John was a man, Jesus was the Word. John came, Jesus was always existed. John was sent by God, Jesus Himself was God. John testified about the Light, Jesus is the Light. John is the agent to lead people to believe, Jesus is the ultimate object for people to believe in.

It may be obvious, but I would like to remind many of us that we, (like John) are not the True Light. We are mere witness of the Light. We are called to be reflectors of the Light.

I was told that many of you serving in various ministries have been very discourage lately. You serve, but it seems like everything is getting stagnant, you don’t see any positive results, in fact it seems like things are getting worse. May I remind you that: you have no power to change anyone, you are not the Light. God called us to faithfully reflecting the Light, not to produce positive results. If the True Light shines in darkness yet darkness could not understand it, would you stop reflecting the Light? The only response a reflector should do is to examine itself. We need to examine ourselves for faithfulness and make sure that we didn’t get too dirty ourselves that the Light can no longer reflect through us. But at the same time we should keep in mind that only God can produce results. So don’t beat on yourselves to badly if you don’t see any results yet. Just keep on being faithful, be as clean and as clear as you can so the Light can shine through and leave the results to God!

b) {Or be a rejecter and Shut him out v.9-11}

The second response is that we can be a rejecter. Here we read in verses 9 through 11, “9The true light that gives light to every man (that mean the Word above, He) was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

[xxi] What an irony! What a tragedy!

2) {Conclusion: The choice is ours v.12-13}

So how would our response be to a God who is not like us? It is because God is not like us, that’s why He need a way to communicate to us, that’s why the Word of God constantly trying to express God to us. The Word of God even came to us in the human flesh as Jesus to reveal God to us, but even so He is not like us. He exposed us of our sin, He overwhelmed our mind with His ideal, He threatened our autonomy! So what should we do? We could go on, don’t bother to understand Him, don’t recognize Him, don’t receive Him. After all, that is the usual response He has always been getting from the most of the world anyway, even from most of his own church people. Go ahead; eliminate Him, for He is not like us anyway! And we killed Him indeed!

Philip Yancey told of a true story, and it is almost too awful to tell: about a boy of twelve or thirteen who, in a fit of crazy anger and depression, got hold of a gun somewhere and fired it at his father, who died not right away but soon afterward. When the authorities asked the boy why he had done it, he said that it was because he could not stand his father, because his father demanded too much of him, because he was always after him, because he hated his father. And then later on, after he had been placed in a house of detention somewhere, a guard was walking down the corridor late one night when he heard sounds from the boy's room, and he stopped to listen. The words that he heard the boy sobbing out in the dark were, "I want my father, I want my father."[xxii]

So I must warn you that down the road, the agony of hell is not the fire and brimstone, or of pain and suffering. No, the true agony of hell is eternal separation from God, where no one could ever listen to your sobbing regrets in the dark, “I want my father, I want my father.”

Or, we can respond to His wish and receive Him. Verses 12 and 13 said, “12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” The phrase “he gave the right to become children of God” here not only conveys just the legality of adoption into the family of God but also denote the transformation to become more like God. John emphasized it again, it’s like we are being “born of God”, becoming like Him, just like Jesus was like Him.

God is not like us in anyway, but He came and invited us to be like God, by “become children of God”. Will you respond to Him? Will you receive Him?