The Witness
John 1:19-34
The Witness
John 1:19-34
Main Idea: A faithful witness of Jesus knows who they are because they know who Jesus is.
I. Know Who You Aren’t (1:19-21)
“He was so great that people could make this mistake. They wondered whether he was himself the Christ, and they wondered about it seriously enough to question him. Now if he had been a son of pride, not a teacher of humility, he would not have taken steps to make them think that, but he would simply have accepted what they were already thinking.”
~ Augustine, Works of St. Augustine
II. Know Who You Are (1:22-28)
“There’s no power in John’s baptism, no force or capacity of its own. The content of his baptism is simply this: ‘Among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me’ (John 1:26–27). John’s baptism is testimony, a pointing to the coming Messiah who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
- John Webster, Christ Our Salvation: Expositions and Proclamations
III. Know Who Jesus Is (1:29-34)
Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice to which all other sacrifices point, and he accomplishes what no other sacrifice could by dealing with sin once and for all (Heb. 9:25-10:18).
Isaiah 53:7: The Suffering Servant (Lamb)
Leviticus 16: The Day of Atonement
Exodus 12:6: The Passover Lamb
Genesis 4:4: The Greater Offering
Genesis 3:21: The First Sacrifice
Genesis 22:7: And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Genesis 22:8: Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.”
The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14-18
The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14-18
Main Idea: Jesus has come as God in the flesh full of glory, grace, and truth.
I. Incarnation (1:14a)
John brings his doxological prologue to a crescendo, marveling that the preexistent, eternal, divine ‘Word’ (1:1) of God incarnated and “became flesh.” This Word that seemed impersonal to the Greeks is actually a person; the Word that was inaccessible to the Jewish people has come in flesh and blood.
The doctrine of the incarnation tells us that the Son of God became a man, without ceasing to be God. Jesus is uniquely fully God and fully man (cf. Col. 1:19; 2:9).
“If your intellect has never been staggered by the reality of the incarnation, you don’t know what incarnation means. It doesn’t mean that Jesus was a little baby. It means that the eternal, infinite, divine one - worshipped by cherubim and Seraphim, creator of all things, sustainer of all things, infinite in his being, wisdom, power, majesty, and glory - who at a word could dissolve the world that had sinned against him - was willing to come into this world, and assume our flesh, in order to become our Savior. It’s overwhelming.”
~ Sinclair Ferguson
Hebrews 2:14-15, 17: Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery… Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
II. Tabernacled (1:14b)
“Dwelt among us” is lit. ‘tabernacled among us.’ The ‘tabernacle’ and the tent of meeting represented two big realities for God’s people:
God’s Presence: The tabernacle was the way that a holy, righteous, and unapproachable God could “meet” and commune with his chosen yet sinful people (cf. Ex. 25:8; 33:7-11; Jn. 2:19; Heb. 10:20).
God’s Glory (cf Ex. 40:34; 1 Ki. 8:10-11)
III. Glory (1:14c, 18)
The idea of beholding God’s glory was an impossible reality before the incarnation of Christ; an encounter with God’s glory was always indirect, overwhelming, and terrifying (cf. Gen. 32:22-32; Isa. 6:1-5).
Exodus 33:18–20: Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
But now, in Christ, the Word made flesh: “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” God’s glory used to be contained to the “holy of holies” in the tabernacle and temple, but in the incarnation of Christ the veil has been removed, and the one who “is at the Father’s side” (lit. ‘in the bosom of the Father’) is the “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and the “radiance of the glory of God’ (Heb. 1:3).
2 Corinthians 3:16, 18: “…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed … And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
IV. Grace (1:14d, 16-17)
‘Grace’ and ‘truth’ correspond to the frequent OT pairing of “steadfast love and faithfulness.
Exodus 34:5–7a: The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”
“[Christ’s] grace is a truthful grace; not grace in fiction, or in fancy, not grace to be hoped for or dreamed of, but grace every atom of which is fact; redemption which does redeem, pardon which does blot out sin, renewal which actually regenerates, salvation which saves completely… [Christ’s truth] is not the kind of truth which censures, condemns and punishes; it is a gracious truth, truth steeped in love, truth saturated with mercy. The truth which Jesus brings to his people comes from the mercy seat.”
~ Charles Spurgeon, Good Tidings of Great Joy
This grace and truth do not come in small or partial doses; it is “from his fullness that we have all received grace upon grace” (1:16; lit. ‘grace in place of grace’). This emphasis is on the superiority of Jesus to Moses; while Moses gave the first grace of the Law, Christ came to bring the fullest grace of himself.
The fullness of this grace and truth is seen most clearly and supremely in the paradoxical “glorification” of Jesus Christ in his crucifixion (cf. 12:23).
“The Crucified One is the true king, the kingliest king of all; because it is He who is stretched on the cross, He turns an obscene instrument of torture into a throne of glory and reigns from the tree.”
~ F.F. Bruce
In the Beginning
John 1:1-13
In the Beginning
John 1:1-13
Main Idea: Jesus is the divine logos, life, and light who has come to make us children of God.
I. The Word (1:1-5)
John begins his gospel account with an obvious allusion to Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning… was the Word (Greek: ‘logos’). This ‘Word’ had numerous cultural reference points in the 1st century:
Greek Philosophy: The Stoics understood the logos to be the rational principle or impersonal force that originated and organizes the world as we know it.
Jewish OT Thought: The ‘word’ was God’s agent for accomplishing his divine will, including creation (cf. Gen. 1:3; Ps. 33:6) and revelation (Isa. 55:11). God’s Word is his “divine disclosure.”
John emphasizes “the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” describing the gloriously incomprehensible yet revealed doctrine of the Trinity.
“We worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”
~ Athanasian Creed (5th century AD)
The ‘Word’ was God’s agent of creation in eternity past: “all things were made through him” (1:3; cf. Col. 1:16-17; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2).
“Why would a triune God create a world? If he were a unipersonal God, you might say, ‘He created the world so he can have beings who give him worshipful love, and that would give him joy.’ But the triune God already had that—and he received love within himself in a far purer, more powerful form than we human beings can ever give him. So why would he create us? There’s only one answer. He must have created us not to get joy but to give it.”
~ Tim Keller, King’s Cross
This eternal, divine, creating ‘Word’ is the:
1. Life-Bringer: As the “Life” (cf. 5:26; 11:25; 14:6) Jesus brings both physical life and spiritual life to existence. This life is not merely about quantity but quality (cf. 10:10)
1 John 5:11–12: And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
2. Light-Bearer: As the “Light of the world” (cf. 8:12; 9:5), Jesus drives out the darkness both in creation (cf. Gen. 1:3) and in salvation (cf. 12:46).
1 John 1:5-7: This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
II. The Witness (1:6-8)
Consistent with the other Gospels, the ministry of John the Baptist is emphasized in relation to Christ. John was “sent from God” for a specific task: “to bear witness about the light, that all might believe in him” (1:7).
John 20:30–31: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
“The Word and the Life and the Light are coming into the world. But they are not going to conquer this darkness the way a bolt of lightning brightens the night. They are going to conquer it by lighting millions of cold, dead human torches with the oxygen of the gospel and the mysteriously spontaneous combustion of the new birth. And that gospel will come through human witnesses.”
~ John Piper, “John Was Not the Light, But a Witness to the Light”
John 5:39–40: You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
III. The World (1:9-13)
There are only two responses to the coming of the “True Light” into the world:
Rejection & Blindness (1:10-11): This is our natural state outside of the illuminating light of Christ (cf. 3:19-20). Jesus experienced rejection generally from all of fallen humanity (Rom. 3:23) and more specifically from his own people, the Jews (cf. Rom. 9:4-5).
Receiving & Believing (1:12-13): For those who have been ‘born again’ and regenerated by God, they receive and believe in Jesus by faith and are given the status of “children of God.”
1 John 3:1: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are
“You can sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s Holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”
~ J.I. Packer, Knowing God