Book of John — Session 1: The Word Made Flesh

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Session 1 of 21Book of John

The Word Made Flesh

Chapter 1; The Logos hymn meets a Roman world

Where this chapter sits

See the full timeline →

Right now: John the Baptist begins his ministry (AD 28)

Setting: Bethany beyond the Jordan, then Galilee

By Bea Zalel

John 1

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.
In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John.
He came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that through him everyone might believe.
He himself was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.
The true Light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.
He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God—
children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John testified concerning Him. He cried out, saying, "This is He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me.'"
From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father's side, has made Him known.
And this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, "Who are you?"
He did not refuse to confess, but openly declared, "I am not the Christ."
"Then who are you?" they inquired. "Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No."
So they said to him, "Who are you? We need an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet: "I am a voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way for the Lord.'"
Then the Pharisees who had been sent
asked him, "Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"
"I baptize with water," John replied, "but among you stands One you do not know.
He is the One who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."
All this happened at Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"
This is He of whom I said, 'A man who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me.'
I myself did not know Him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that He might be revealed to Israel."
Then John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and resting on Him.
I myself did not know Him, but the One who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit descend and rest is He who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.'
I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God."
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.
When he saw Jesus walking by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!"
And when the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.
Jesus turned and saw them following. "What do you want?" He asked. They said to Him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are You staying?"
"Come and see," He replied. So they went and saw where He was staying, and spent that day with Him. It was about the tenth hour.
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John's testimony and followed Jesus.
He first found his brother Simon and told him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated as Christ).
Andrew brought him to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas" (which is translated as Peter).
The next day Jesus decided to set out for Galilee. Finding Philip, He told him, "Follow Me."
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the same town as Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the One Moses wrote about in the Law, the One the prophets foretold—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Nathanael asked. "Come and see," said Philip.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit."
"How do You know me?" Nathanael asked. Jesus replied, "Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree."
"Rabbi," Nathanael answered, "You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"
Jesus said to him, "Do you believe just because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these."
Then He declared, "Truly, truly, I tell you, you will all see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Inline text: Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. Compare with the John 1 chapter in your preferred translation via the link above.

Theme

The Fourth Gospel was almost certainly written between 85 and 95 CE. Most scholars place its writing in Ephesus, a major city on the coast of what is now Turkey. The first readers were a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles that had recently been pushed out of its local synagogue. Scholars call this the "aposynagogos" experience, a Greek word meaning expelled from the synagogue. John 9:22 and 16:2 keep returning to this wound because it was still fresh. Older readers could also remember when the Roman general Titus burned the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. Around the same time John was being written, the rabbis introduced a synagogue prayer called the "Birkat ha-Minim," a curse on heretics that many scholars believe was aimed in part at Jewish followers of Jesus. So when the gospel speaks of light and darkness or of "his own people" not receiving him, the first readers heard a fresh grief and not a piece of abstract theology. Bauckham argues that this community still saw itself as deeply Jewish even after being kicked out. They were Jews and Gentiles trying to hold a torn family together.

Hear the opening of the gospel through a 1st-century Jewish ear first. "In the beginning" is not a metaphor. It is a quotation. Every synagogue-trained reader catches Genesis 1:1 in the first three Greek words. In Hebrew, the "word" of God is "davar." It is the active speech of God that made the world. By the late Second Temple period, Jewish thinkers had begun to picture this divine word together with personified Wisdom. Proverbs 8:22-31 shows Wisdom present at the founding of the world. Sirach 24, a book well-known in Greek-speaking Jewish communities, sings that "Wisdom found her tent in Jacob." Brown points out that John's prologue reads as the high point of this wisdom tradition rather than a break from it. A Jewish reader hears the announcement that God's long-promised wisdom has finally come to live among his people. It is not foreign and it is not new. It is the completion of Israel's own song.

Now hear the same lines through the ear of a Greek-educated Gentile. "Logos" was not a strange word for him. It was one of the most important words in Greek philosophy. About five centuries earlier, Heraclitus had used "logos" to name the rational principle that orders the universe. The Stoics later expanded the idea, teaching that a "logos spermatikos," the seed of reason planted through every part of reality, holds the world together. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher writing in Greek-speaking Egypt who died around 50 CE, had spent his career trying to connect the Hebrew "davar" to the Greek "logos." So an educated Gentile picking up John's scroll hears something startling. The cosmic principle that holds atoms and stars and human reason together has, the writer claims, walked into history with a face and a name. The categories he has used to think about the universe are about to be filled by a person.

Verse 14 is where both audiences flinch. "The Word became flesh." The Jewish reader has been shaped by the second commandment, which forbids any image of God. The idea that the unspeakable Name now has fingernails and gets hungry is offensive on a level we underestimate today. The Greek reader has been shaped by Plato, who treated matter as the lower and corruptible part of reality. The divine simply does not enter it. The Greek verb here is "skenoo," which literally means "pitched a tent." It points back to the wilderness tabernacle of Exodus and the "shekinah" glory that filled it. The claim is enormous. The same glory that the priests once could not stand before is now visible at eye level. It lives in a body that gets tired. This is the scandal at the heart of John. It is not a soft Christmas line.

The chapter ends with John the Baptist and the first disciples. It is worth knowing that they are not literary inventions. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing about 90 CE in his "Antiquities of the Jews" 18.116-119, gives an independent account of John the Baptist as a real popular preacher who was executed by Herod Antipas. His movement was big enough for Rome to notice it. He may have had loose ties to the Essene community at Qumran. The first disciples Jesus calls, including Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael, are Galilean villagers. Galilean fishermen lived inside a brutal economy. They were taxed twice, once by Herod Antipas and again by Rome. They often leased their fishing rights from rich Herodian elites at rates that swallowed most of a catch. Infant mortality in their villages ran 30 to 50 percent. Subsistence farming left no margin for a bad year. They had no reason to expect that the "logos" of the universe was looking for them by name. He found them anyway, standing in wet sandals and mending nets.

Supporting cross-references

Genesis 1:1-5 →Proverbs 8:22-31 →Isaiah 40:3 →Hebrews 1:1-4 →

Discussion questions

If your community had been pushed out of the synagogue and had just watched the temple burn within your parents' lifetime, which lines in John's opening hymn would feel like personal comfort rather than abstract doctrine?
Read Proverbs 8:22-31 next to John 1:1-5. What changes for you when you hear the opening of John as the high point of Israel's Wisdom tradition rather than a stand-alone poem about Jesus?
Where do you still hear the philosophical "logos" of Heraclitus, the Stoics and Philo in how your neighbors talk about "the universe" or "a higher power" today? How does verse 14 cut across that language?
The Greek verb "skenoo" deliberately points back to the wilderness tabernacle and the "shekinah" glory. Why do you think the gospel writer chose the picture of a tent rather than a temple for God coming in a body?
Sit with the daily life of a Galilean fisherman: double taxation, child mortality, leased fishing rights and no margin for a bad year. What does it mean that the "logos" of the universe sought him out by name?

The Word Made Flesh

John 1

Theme

Discussion questions

Further reading