Monday | Week 1
Passage: John 1:1-51
Years ago, when I was a few years into my faith-walk and even fewer into adulthood, I read that if I want to show someone who Jesus is, a great way is to read through John’s Gospel with him. The other gospels, I read, focus on what Jesus did. John focuses on who Jesus is.
The advice made sense; after all, God tells us that His word is sharper than a two-edged sword. It needs no help. I thought it best, though, to first study John myself before trying it out on someone else. I was soon glad I did. I had difficulty getting past the first five verses.
Probably nowhere else in scripture is there such a concise, profound—maybe even explosive—portrait of Jesus Christ. He was there WITH God in the beginning, and He IS God. He was the agent of creation. In Him is life, and light, and no darkness can shut out that light.
Go back and read those verses again, slowly and thoughtfully. Jesus is not only the little baby we celebrate at Christmas; He is the living Word of God who created all things, whose glory we saw when He walked on the earth, and who—because He IS God— fully revealed God to us. He is, in fact, the only way we can know God.
Quite a different picture than that of a helpless, cute little infant in a manger, isn’t it?
John the Gospel writer also tells us about another John, the one called John the Baptist. He attracted a lot of attention when he preached repentance and baptized those who came to him — so much so that people thought he was the reappearance of Elijah, or the Prophet whom Moses foretold. But he was not. He came only to testify about Jesus, the one who would come after him, but who was also there before him.
Because John’s testimony was so powerful, some of his own disciples became disciples of Jesus. And these called others whom they knew, and they came too. We know from the rest of John’s Gospel, and from the other gospel writers, that these men sometimes had difficulty understanding exactly what Jesus was going to do, and why. But they recognized immediately WHO He was—the Son of God, the Messiah, the one about whom Moses wrote: The Word become flesh.
Discussion Questions
John calls Jesus “the light of men,” and “the true light.” In what ways does light “overcome” darkness? How has Jesus brought light into your life?
We read that John the Baptist “came as a witness to testify about the light.” Why did Jesus need a witness? What impact did John the Baptist’s witness have?
John says that Jesus “gave the right to become children of God.” Is being “children of God” different from being “created by God”? How?
How did each of the disciples named in this passage whom Jesus called respond to His call? Have you responded in a similar, or different way? How so?