The Gospel of John

The Word was Made Flesh I

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 1- 70

Genre:

Track: 01

Dictation Name: RR197A1

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Not unto us oh Lord, not unto us but unto Thy name give glory. For Thy mercy and for Thy truth’s sake. Help us oh God of our salvation for the glory of Thy name and deliver us and purge away our sins for Thy name’s sake. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that once again Thou hast guided us safely, joyfully, through all the tribulations of this world. We thank Thee that in all these things Thou hast been at work making all things work together for good for us in Christ Jesus. Give us therefore we beseech Thee grateful hearts that day by day we thank Thee as we ought. That we might know that we are surrounded not by a world full of evil but surrounded by Thy grace and Thy providential care, by Thy mercy and Thy love. How great Thou art oh God our Father and we praise and thank Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

The scripture this morning is from the gospel of John, verses one through three. The subject: The Word Was Made Flesh. John 1:1-3, The Word Was Made Flesh.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Like the first chapter of Genesis the first eighteen verses of John condensed in short compass what could take a volume to explain because so much is comprehended within those few verses. These deal with the incarnation but they also deal as the opening verses of Genesis with the implications of the triune God. What God has done and what His work means. The Gospel of John begins with the same two Greek words as does Genesis in the Septuagint version. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament and it was in common use in our Lord’s day so that everyone who read the Gospel of John recognized immediately his repeating precisely the same two words with which Genesis begins. These two Greek words are translated as ‘in the beginning‘ in English. John deliberately chose the opening words of the creation account because what he gives us is a summary of the history of Creation and now the great work of recreation, the regeneration of all things as begun by Jesus Christ. There is also an echo of Proverbs 8:22-31 which begins:

“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.

23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.”

The great miracle, the great mystery of the incarnation, of God the Son made flesh is predicted and previsioned in the Old Testament and celebrated in the New. Paul in Colossians 1:17 declares of Christ:

“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

Consist in the Greek is a word that means all things stand together. All things are constituted in their nature and being by Him.

As they reflected on this great miracle of God made flesh the apostles were awed in retrospect at what had occurred. As the apostles and those who had been with our Lord during His years on earth grew older the last and aging men and women who had physically seen, heard and touched Christ in their old age greeted one another with joyful words. As they were taken to worship they would greet one another saying “Have you seen? We have seen. Have you heard? We have heard. Have you touched? We have touched.” John speaks of this in his first letter referring to that practice.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, that which we have seen and heard declared we unto you.”

And yet our Lord pronounced a greater blessing upon those of us who not having heard, seen or touched believed on Him. John declared that Jesus Christ is God the Word, the Son, by whom all things were made and by whom all things shall be remade. In verse one John by declaring Jesus Christ to be the word of God, God himself, sets the temper of the whole book. The other gospels are more inductive in their method, they bring you to that conclusion by recounting the history. John says here it is. The Greek word is logos, word, or speech. The creative, the claritive and binding word of God who is God the Son. Now it is a Greek word and a Greek concept but phalli, the Greek influenced Jewish thinker had taken the word and adapted it to really biblical meanings.

And John takes that word already familiar to people throughout Judea and throughout the dispersion and uses it because it says certain things that are very important. God the Son is eternal, preexistent, it is he that spoke the law and who spoke to the prophets. So that the Old Testament is as much Christ’s word as the Sermon on the Mount. Those who want to separate the Old and the New Testaments are trying to divide Christ and it is blasphemy. The word is identical with all that God is and has done, Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the wisdom or word of God. In Him deity and humanity are in perfect union and peace but without confusion, without any intermingling. In the beginning means before the creation existed or was made. Thus we are told that in the first three verses first before creation the word eternally was and is and shall be. Second we are told that nothing saved God existed the word was with God because we are then told third the word was God. In Genesis 1:1-3 we are told that the Holy Spirit was with God when creation began. In John 1:1-3 we are told that the word was before Creation and active in Creation. Because we are created in the image of God we are speaking communicating beings. We are made in the image of the word, of speech, of communication. But notice what happens: when men depart from Christ, when Christian culture wanes, what do the ungodly say is the problem then? A communication gap.

Because as we separate ourselves from the word we have a problem of communication, we who were created in his image to be communicating beings or for whom speech is basic. Because we are created in the image of God we are speaking, communicating beings, by identifying Jesus Christ as the Word of God John tells us that through Him God is communicating to us, revealing Himself to us in order to reestablish communion with fallen mankind. Because God has made all things, all things are revelation of God, they witness to the triune God and the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. It is blasphemous to try and prove that God is. Nothing can exist apart from him and all things derive their meaning and proof from Him. God in His grace and mercy chose first to reveal Himself to the human race in order to destroy the work of the destroyer. Then second He chose a family and a people, Shem and Israel, third He later narrowed this to the tribe of Judea, fourth God chose a royal line as the line of promise, the house of David. Fifth, the chosen person was declared and predicted centuries before His coming. Some theologians speak of three creations, the first is described in Genesis 1, the second takes place when we are born again in Jesus Christ, the third is the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. The culmination of the renewal of all things begun in Christ. Others have called attention to the fact that in the beginning can mean also at the root of the universe, at the root of the universe.

God the Son is at the root of all of creation, by Him were all things made and without Him was not anything made that was made. In verse two we are told that God the Word was in the beginning or at the root of the universe, that is, as its creator with God. We are not told that God was the word but that the word was God and with God. This makes clear that while we have one God we have here in these verses two different persons of the Godhead described. The doctrine of the trinity is at the heart of all scripture. John here combines the first two clauses of verse one to prepare us for the great creative and regenerative work of God the Son. Nothing in creation is to be understood apart from Christ as creator and also therefore Lord and King. This means that God is not the unknown God but the fully expressed God in the word, Jesus Christ, not exhaustibly expressed but truly expressed to us. We cannot as Dr. Van Till so often said and wrote: know God exhaustibly. We would have a mind, have to have a mind equal to the mind of God to know God exhaustibly but we know Him truly. Because unlike us fallen though redeemed creatures inconsistent this side of glory the triune God is self-consistent in all His being. So that what God reveals of Himself in His word and His son is totally consistent with all the inexhaustible and endless reaches of the being of God. So we can know God truly. Then we are told when we know the Son we know the Father, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.

Our Lord speaks of His identity with the Father and yet His separate person in these words among many others. All men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. John Calvin translated word or logos as speech, God was always totally self-conscious. For the Word was in the beginning with God. Now we do have an unconscious side to our being but God is total self-consciousness. There’s no lost memory in God, we forget things which sometimes we dredge up out of the unconscious. God is total self-consciousness. Known unto God is all His works from the foundation of the world. God the Son, God-speech. God was always totally self-conscious. There is not nor ever has been an unconscious or a subconscious aspect to God’s being. Many verses tell us this graphically, Psalm 121:3-4 tells us:

“ He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”

Because Greek philosophy had an evolutionary doctrine of being and of God that was at its best it had an idea of an evolving god, basically the Greek doctrine of God was of the first cause, simply because logic required that there be a first cause. Other than providing that first cause God was of no account to Aristotle who made the most of the concept. John uses the term word or speech to tell us that God who never changes is eternally the same as is God the word, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever.

In Revelation He is described as He who is, who was and is to come. A person who shall indeed come. Now that statement and revelation echoes a very famous saying in the great temple of Isis, the goddess where the veiled figure of Isis had the inscription: I am the one who is and who was and who is coming, coming into being. In other words, what I am tomorrow cannot be said because I am a developing becoming being. In the beginning is again repeated in verse two. John is requiring us to remember Genesis 1:1-2 and the creation of all things by God the father and God the Spirit. In John 1:1 he tells us that God the Word was equally fully present and active at the root of all things and their creation so that we are told that all three persons of the Godhead are distinct and yet in perfect harmony in their work of creation and recreation. As the spirit moved over the face of the waters in the first creation so too the spirit will move over the face of the deep in man’s being to make us a new creation and Christ’s death and resurrection are the means whereby we have atonement and regeneration. In verse three we are told of the word all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. The word as creator is again declared in verse ten, there is a reference here to Psalm 33:6:

“ By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.”

Thus we already have been told in verses one through three that the word is God, he was active in creation, the whole of the law and the prophets and his self-revelation as well as the word of the Father given to us by God and his grace and finally that all things were made by his fiat word, by the breath of His mouth. We are told that all things were made by Him and then this is qualified by a statement ‘and without him was not anything made that was made’. All things were made by the Father through the Son who is the revelation of the Father, all things, the whole universe was created by the triune God. There was no matter, nothing before God created it. The new testament celebrates the greatness of God the son, God the son, the revelation of God the Father.

So that throughout scripture we are taught that God created us through the word, through he who is speech, meaning, expression, the word above all things. Some of the verses celebrating this are Ephesians 3:9:

“And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:”

Colossians 1:16:

“ For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:”

And Hebrews 1:2:

“Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.”

One more, Revelation 4:11:

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

We are told among other things in these verses that first the mystery and meaning of life is set forth by God through Jesus Christ who created all things. He is the word, the meaning, the speech, the expression. Second all things were created by and for him for his purposes. Third Christ is also the heir of all creation and we are a part of his inheritance from the Father. Fourth we are here not only to serve God but for His pleasure, in the Greek, the word translated as pleasure can be translated also as desire or will. It means here that God created us simply because he willed it. Creation itself is an act of grace. Peter speaks of life as a grace from God. In verses one and two the relationship of the word to the Father is declared. In verse three his relationship to creation is set forth. The word by all things were made by him is more accurately through. All things were made through Him so that the stamp of Jesus Christ of God the Son is upon all things. In Exodus 3:14 God identifies Himself as He who Is or I am that I am. In the Gospel of John Jesus makes clear that He and the Father are one. That He is very God of very God, he therefore declares: I am the bread of life¸ I am the light of the world, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the true vine. As we go through the Gospel of John we shall see how our Lord himself reveals to us these things through what John terms, echoing Moses as we say last week, signs and wonders. Let us pray.

Our Father how great and marvelous is Thy work, Thy word and Thy grace and mercy to us in Jesus Christ. Make us strong in him that we might be communicators of the word of life even as the world having separated itself from the Lord of Glory goes dumb in its speechlessness, in its isolation from the Lord. Bless us in Thy service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] What was the question?

[Repeated Question]

[Rushdoony] Life has value, yes, because He made it and He sets the value upon it. And hell is a descent into meaninglessness because it’s an abandonment of God. That’s why the figure of speech or the term used for hell in the Old and New Testaments has reference to a city dump. Nothing in a dump is anything but useless meaningless trash. Nothing in a dump has any relationship to anything else so it is the opposite end of speech, of the word, of meaning. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] That is the position of classic orthodoxy, that the angel of the Lord is our Lord in his pre-incarnation appearances. And the theologians over the centuries have gone into that question in great detail and clearly shown how we should so understand it. Any other questions?

Well we’ll continue next week with the prologue to John, it is so fundamental a statement that apart from this we would miss the heart of the meaning of the bible, Old and New Testaments alike. Let us now conclude with prayer.

Our Father, how great Thou art and how glorious is Thy word written and incarnate. Make us joyful in Thy revelation of Thyself, make us ever mindful that greater is He that is in us and with us than he that is in the world. Teach us so to walk day by day that we are ever mindful that we are more than conquerors in Christ our Lord. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, may our Triune God bless you and keep you, guide us all the days of our life that we may serve Him and know Him then in His glory. In Christ’s name, Amen.