The God We Worship: The Son Who is God

The God We Worship:
The Son Who is God
John 1:1-18

It is mind stretching to think about God. As we looked at God the Father last week something became obvious, you cannot talk about the Father without talking about the Son. We would not know about the Father without the revelation brought by the Son. Today we want to begin looking at the Son.
I. The Word
Christianity revolves around Jesus and who he is. There is no simple answer and we shouldn’t expect one, we are after all looking at God and who he is and what he has done. The answer depends as much on faith as it does on understanding.

John gives us a picture of Jesus. In language that obviously reflects Genesis 1:1 we read about the Word. Who and what is this Word that John is writing about? He tells us the Word is God and even more the Word is with God. How can this be? There is no claim here that there are two gods but there are two persons who are one God. The Word is the source of creation. The Word is life and the Word is light.

Are you confused? Don’t feel bad because it is confusing. How can this be? Why is this being revealed to us? When we are confronted with mysteries like this we tend to throw up our hands in frustration. I hope you won’t do that because there is an important reason God reveals this to us. It is found in verse 14.

II. The Word Became Flesh
John writes, “The Word became flesh.” I suppose it would not be necessary for us to know about the Son or the Father if it weren’t for this. God must have known how confusing this would be for us with our limited knowledge and perspective and yet we need to come to grips with this amazing knowledge. The Word that was with God and is God became a human being and lived among us.

Every December much of the world celebrates Christmas though few seem to recognize why the birth of Jesus is so significant. God, the maker of heaven and earth became a man, was born as a small, helpless infant. How could even God accomplish such a thing? Paul writes later that Jesus, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing”, (Philippians 2:6-7). The concept here is that Jesus emptied himself in order to become a human being. This was not a coerced action but the Son chose to take the role of redeemer and submit himself to the Father.

What would it take for you to become someone other than who you are? I thought about this as a missionary and tried to enter into another culture and understand it. If I were to become a Luo I would have to change my parents and that would change my skin color. I would have to give up being an American. I would have to give up most of my education, how to drive a car. I wouldn’t be married to Diane. I would gain some things in return but life would be very different.

What did Jesus give up to become a human being? He gave up equality with the Father for a start and we can go on from there. We can only imagine and then realize it is probably beyond our imagination. Scripture says that he was “made a little lower than the angels” (Hebrews 2:7); he became a human.

There is a critical truth in trying to understand the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. It is this, “Difference in function does not indicate inferiority of nature.”[1] The Son is not the Father but the divine nature is one. The fact that Jesus became human and took a position of submission to the Father does not mean inferiority in his nature.

The analogy of us as humans gives us a glimpse into this. When God created human beings scripture says that God created them male and female (Genesis 1:27). Men and women have different functions. Many times those functions are culturally defined but they are also defined by biology; we have different functions but male and female are equally human. Even though culture has often given greater value to men we know as Christians that before God there is no difference as Paul wrote in Gal. 3:28. Difference in function does not mean inferiority in nature.

When Jesus became a human being he gave up equality with God but he did not give up his nature, he is still God. It is this incredible fact that John communicates in his gospel. All the gospels are revelation of the man Jesus as he goes through the world and the dawning awareness of those who know him that he is not only man but also God. This awareness is revealed in the confession of Thomas in John 20. Thomas had seen the miracles. He had heard his teaching. He had seen his death. Now he is confronted with the resurrected Christ and he cries out, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:28.

III. The One and Only
John uses a particular word in referring to the Son. In older translations it is translated “only begotten” but in the translation I use it is translated “One and Only”. This is probably a better translation of this word. It carries with it the idea of uniqueness. If you remember my first lesson in this series we talked about this very quality of God. It is no surprise that John uses such a word to describe the Son who is God. It is this unique “one and only” Son who came from the Father “full of grace and truth.” The Son can reveal the Father because he has existed at the Father’s side and knows the Father. It is this “One and Only” Son that the Father has given to the world as a gift to save the world because the Father loves the world.

What a marvel this is. The Word became flesh for us because of the love of the Father. These few verses of John are heavy with meaning and we can barely scratch the surface in this lesson. I want to close with John’s words in John 1:12-13, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.” To those who receive the Son, believe in the Son, God grants that we can become children of God. We are all God’s creation but we are not all His children. That right belongs to those who receive the Son.
John, later in one of his letters, writes these words for us, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life,” 1 John 5:11-12. We struggle to understand and yet in the end what is important is to believe what God has said. That is the way of the life that God desires us to share with Him.

Livonia Church of Christ: October 16, 2005

[1] James R. White, The Forgotten Trinity, Bethany House Publishers: Minneapolis, 1998, 66.