Reading Through John Devotionals – Week 1
See all Devotionals: https://graceforohio.org/category/reading-through-john-devotionals/
Day 1
If you know how the other gospels (Matthew and Luke) start with the first Christmas, John’s first verse might be a surprise. There are no angels, shepherds or a baby in the manger. Instead, John takes us back to the very beginning… in fact, before the beginning.
We are invited to stretch our imaginations back past our earliest memories, past the earliest thing we know about our families, past all the history we know, back and back to the very start of the universe.
If John’s first words sound familiar, that’s because they’re meant to. The first words of the Bible are: ‘In the beginning, God…’ (Genesis 1:1). Now John says, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ Here in John’s Gospel, we discover something new: that in the beginning, before the universe itself came to be, before time itself, the Word already existed.
Not only was the Word there before the universe began but the Word was with God. There was never a time when the Word did not exist alongside God.
More than that, the Word was God Himself. The Word was not just present at creation but the One through whom everything was made. Think for a moment of every mountain, ocean, plant, animal, every human being on Earth. Then expand your mind. Think of every star, planet, comet, every faraway galaxy. Everything was made through the Word.
Whatever we know of John’s Gospel, as we think about these opening sentences John is obviously dealing with much more than the history of his own life and times in the first century Middle East. What he has to say takes in the whole sweep of time and space. And if it really includes the beginning of everything, then it includes us too. Whether we’ve read John’s Gospel a hundred times or never before, he invites us to listen in, to change our perspective… to go back to the very beginning.
And that’s just the first three sentences.
Day 2
John has much more to tell us about the Word. This Word is one in whom there is life. This is much more than saying that the Word is alive. In Him is life itself; He can create life. Life flows from Him. If we think about it, this is a logical next step from what we read in verse three. If nothing was made without the Word, then He must be able to give life. This is unlike any human being, even the most creative; unlike us, the Word can create from nothing.
But there is more to this life even than that. In John’s Gospel life generally means more than physical life. It speaks of spiritual life, also called eternal life – life in relationship with God that starts now and lasts forever.
We have a hint of this here because the life is also called light – revelation – of who God is, what He is like and what we are like. If we read on in John’s Gospel, we will see that life and light are golden threads through the book, not stopping with how we came to be but how we can truly know God and be known by Him.
And just as light fills John’s Gospel, so it is set against darkness. Darkness is more than simply the absence of light. In John’s Gospel the darkness is not neutral. Look at verse 5: it tries to overcome, to destroy the light. This shouldn’t surprise us as we look around our world and see the darkness of human evil. And if we’re honest, we can even see darkness in our own lives… would any of us want to have our hidden thoughts made public?
In other words, the light comes into the real world, the world as we know it. But John is not giving us a description of an even battle between good and evil, where we wait to find out which of the two forces will win. According to John, the darkness has not won. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
Day 3
John now changes his focus, telling us about his own time and place. He introduces us to another John: John the Baptist. John was a preacher and huge crowds came to hear his message. We’ll see more about him later in John’s Gospel.
For now, we learn three important things about John the Baptist. First, he was given his job directly by God. In many ways, John is the last Old Testament prophet – someone chosen by God to carry His message about the promised King, or Messiah. John is an important man… he is the one who first points to Jesus in chapter 1.
John the Baptist is a great prophet. But, secondly, he isn’t the light himself. John’s job is to be a witness to the light. Just as a witness in a court case wants to explain clearly what has happened, what is true, to testify to the facts, John’s great task is to point to the light.
Thirdly, we can see why John was given this job. He is witnessing so that all can come to believe, to put their trust in the light that has come into our dark world.
This means that we should know from the start that this gospel is written with a clear aim in mind. Both John the writer and John the Baptist were convinced that Jesus was no ordinary person but God Himself, the Messiah that God had promised over thousands of years. At the end of his gospel, John tells us that Jesus did lots of things that didn’t make it into his book, but that ‘…these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). John the Baptist’s aim is exactly the same: that we believe in Jesus as the light and have life in His name… whether that’s for the first time or to grow in our faith.
Day 4
If you stopped reading at verse 8 and had to write what comes next in John’s Gospel, what would you say? It is amazing that the creator God, full of life and light, would come into our dark world. Surely everyone would be full of joy and wonder!
But John tells us that this is not what happened. As the light came into the world, He was not accepted, welcomed or celebrated. He was simply not recognized – in the original Greek that John wrote in, the word can also be translated as ‘known’ or ‘understood’.
As Jesus came to His own people, they rejected Him. If we read on in John’s Gospel we will see this happening again and again. In fact, we’ll see that it is often the most religious people who are most against all that Jesus says and does. We might like to believe that by nature people are longing for the light and seeking God, but according to John’s Gospel, that’s not the case.
This is very challenging! It is difficult to accept that what Jesus says in John 3:19 is true: that ‘people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil’. We prefer to stay where we are rather than accept what God says about the darkness in our lives and our need for forgiveness. Yet without this truth the coming of the light, and Jesus’ death and resurrection are meaningless. Why would we need light if we are not by nature in darkness?
Day 5
It is wonderful news that John’s Gospel does not end at 1:11! Despite the darkness of our world and our own hearts, and the rejection of the light by so many, here is the most amazing promise. All.. whoever, anyone, who does accept the light and who comes to believe in Him – that is, not only to believe that He existed or is important, but to put their confidence fully in Him, are given the right to become children of God.
Let that sink in for a moment. Imagine the child of the wealthiest and most powerful person you can think of. Maybe you’re thinking of the son of a top businessman, a royal princess, or a baby born into a political family who is destined for greatness. Their resources and privilege are nothing compared to those who know Jesus.
And who is this promise for? It’s not about the family we come from, our natural descent. We don’t have to be born into any particular group of people. It doesn’t matter if our parents are Christians, have another religion, or have no faith at all.
In fact, it’s not about being religious at all. This isn’t just for ‘good people’. The human decisions we take to try to please God don’t count for anything here. This is about being born of God. This is His initiative and His decision; we could never deserve or earn it. But notice that it’s also open only to those who put their trust in Jesus’ name. We can’t simply say we all are God’s children… there is a call to believe, and we must respond.
Day 6
How is it possible that anyone, whatever their background, can become a child of God? How can a God who is outside time and space connect with us? John’s amazing claim is that the Word, the one who is God, who was before the beginning, who is the light, became a person: flesh and blood like us. He lived in a real time and in a real place. He had an address, a job, and a family. If we read on in John’s Gospel, we’ll see that just like us He felt sadness, hunger, and pain.
There’s another layer of meaning to this. In the original Greek that John wrote in, the word he uses for ‘dwelling’ means ‘tented’ or ‘tabernacled’. This looks back to Old Testament times, when a tent called the Tabernacle was the way that God showed His presence with His people. So the arrival of the Word is the arrival of God’s presence with people.
What evidence does John give to back this up? He says that he was there! He says that he saw the glory of the Word firsthand. John became convinced that this glory could only be because the Word was the Son, the one sent by God the Father. John describes Him as full of grace, God’s undeserved kindness, and truth, the answer to all our searching.
This is who John the Baptist was speaking about. What he says is mind-blowing. In one sense, the Word came after John – John spoke about Jesus before His public life and ministry began. But the Word is much greater even than John the Baptist… because He existed before John was even born.
Day 7
And so we come to the end of John’s introduction. How can we see the glory of the Word, who is the light and the Son? Grace! And there is no shortage of this grace: this is an abundance of undeserved kindness from God that makes it possible for ordinary people like us to know Him.
Verse 17 begins with ‘for’, or because, and explains more of what this means. Moses, the great Old Testament prophet, was given the law by God for His people in around 1300 BC. This good law was given out of grace. This is the grace already given in verse 16.
But the grace and truth that comes with the Word is different: the Word fulfills everything the Old Testament promised and goes far beyond it making us right with God and giving us power to live as His children.
At last John tells us the Word’s name: He is Jesus Christ. And we come to the punchline of what John has to say. It is obvious that none of us can see God. But Jesus Christ makes the invisible God known. Jesus is the one in deepest, closest relationship with God, in fact He is Himself God! And so He is the only one who can show us God. This is how the grace of God flows to us.
As we’ll discover if we keep reading John’s Gospel… if we want to see what God is like, we need to look at Jesus. If we want to know what God has said, we need to listen to Jesus. And if we want to become children of God, we need to come
to Jesus.
Day 1-7 Sourced from “God Made Known.” View the plan on YouVersion here: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/42669-god-made-known-john-11-18
See all Devotionals: https://graceforohio.org/category/reading-through-john-devotionals/