The Prologue of John’s Gospel (John 1:1–18) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

3:06 He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear it. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we stand in awe at the words that we have just heard from sacred Scripture. None of us has the capacity to penetrate the depth of the riches that are contained therein. But as we contemplate them briefly this morning, we beg for the assistance of Your Spirit of Truth that He might illumine these words to our understanding. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

4:03 It is my hope and my intention over the next twelve months or so to preach through the gospel of John. I won't be doing it verse by verse because I doubt if the Lord has prepared enough days for the rest of my life to complete that kind of exposition. But I will look at the major themes that come to us in this gospel, God willing, in the weeks and months to come. And it's for that reason that I wanted to begin this morning by looking once more at the prologue, which I trust at least some of you will recall we looked at already during the Advent season. But I want to look at it from a little bit different perspective this morning as we prepare for the weeks and months ahead of gleaning the riches of this gospel.

5:13 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. This 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.

6:28 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.

8:06 In the church's attempt to understand the person of Christ in Trinitarian terms, the The church was virtually preoccupied with this high view of Christ that is expressed in the prologue as they sought to develop what was called the Logos Christology, or the understanding of Christ as the Word who was 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.

8:59 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.

10:05 We'll say to them, 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.

11:01 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.

11:58 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 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 is 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.

12:58 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, 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 You may know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins." These are not statements of humility.

14:19 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. 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 three hundred years because on the one hand the Word is distinguished from God and then from a different perspective is identified with God.

15:14 And since we looked at that somewhat closely during the Advent season, I'm just going to remind you that it's there as pregnant as it is in significance and is the basis basically more than anything else for the church's confession of Trinity. 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.

16:14 There was nothing made that was made except through Him. We will see, I hope, in the weeks and months to come that there will be two words that will appear in John's gospel 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.

17:19 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, and 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.

18:17 Well, beloved, that's what John is saying here as he says later on, we beheld His glory, obviously referring to the Mount of Transfiguration when Christ began to shine His divine nature, breaking through the veil of His humanity. John is saying, we saw it. We saw His glory, the glory of the monogamous, 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.

19:23 In the second century, when the Christian philosophers and apologists sought to define the Christian faith over and 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 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, who is the fountain of all truth. And the light shines in the darkness.

20:27 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. Many years ago, I was being interviewed by Dr. James Montgomery Boyce in Philadelphia for his radio program.

21:28 And we were talking about John 3.16. Everybody knows what that says. God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. Whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Jim goes on to say to me, he says, R.C., everybody knows John 3.16. He says, what's John 3.17 say? John 3.17. That He sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but through the world, through Him should be saved. So the examination kept going. He said, okay, let me hear John 3.18. And I said, this is the condemnation that men loved the darkness rather than the light. And he said, why is that?

22:28 And on his radio program I said, because their Eads are deevil. That was the end of that interview. I can hardly read that text anymore without thinking, because their deeds were evil. See the world is already exposed to the condemnation of God because we prefer the darkness to the light. 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.

23:43 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, 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.

24:47 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. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, How is it that You could call us Your children and that You would allow us to catch even a glimpse of the light that has come into the world? Father, forbid that we should stay in darkness.

25:49 For we ask it in Jesus' name, in whom there is life and light. Amen.