Adapted from an essay of the same title, originally published September 11, 2011
I thought it was an accident. When my high school principal announced over the PA system that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I distinctly remember hearing someone in the back of the class mutter, “terrorism.”
It’s an interesting juxtaposition 24 years later. In some ways, it seems like a lifetime ago. While at the same time, I remember it like it was yesterday. Almost every year on September 11, I watch different documentaries about that day. And it’s never any less shocking that that happened.
I was struck by the thought today of how many holidays I don’t pay special attention to. I don’t care about Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or New Year’s Day. I don’t do anything special for Veterans Day or Memorial Day. I don’t always even celebrate the Fourth of July. But 9/11 is a day every year that stands out to me.
Whenever there’s a spectacularly gorgeous late summer day, September 11 often comes to my mind. And I feel like most years since that day, wherever I’ve lived, the weather has been just as spectacular as it was in 2001.
I was afraid on that day. I remember seeing images of people in some Middle Eastern countries passing out candy and celebrating. I was horrified. It seemed like nothing would ever be normal again. The day was like a movie, but it seemed as if the bad guys had won.
Ordinary people, thousands of them: boarding flights for work and vacations, sitting in their offices, responding to the first tower after it had been hit, oblivious to the horrors which were to come, and thousands of them were gone.
Just. Gone.
America rebounded. People who can’t agree on much of anything banded together and life went on. But my fear that life would never be the same has come true in many ways. America is not and will not ever be the same as she was before 9/11. 8:46 AM that morning split time for this country. Everything we speak of happened before or after the attack.
I was taking a quiz in my third period geometry class 24 years ago. I was 15 years old, and a sophomore in high school.
I’ve changed a lot over these last 24 years. We’ve all changed a lot over these last 24 years. Later during that third period math class, the principal again announced a second plane had hit a second tower, erasing any doubt that this was accidental. And I still remember what I did the rest of that day.
I hadn’t seen a television on 9/11 when I found out that the towers had fallen. When I heard about it, it didn’t seem possible, at least not to me.
Fourth period: chemistry, where we found out that the towers had collapsed. Our teacher turned on a television and we could see the horrors unfolding. It was beyond my comprehension. The chaos of that morning, for younger people, I think is hard to appreciate. We know the results of that day. In hearing the towers had been hit and that there were still other planes, it was something we had never seen before.
Fifth period was my lunch. Other information had trickled in. Rumors and speculation ran strong. Sixth period was journalism. Along with several other classes, our teachers led us to the school library where we continued to watch the news coverage. By this point, both towers had collapsed and we saw the chaos in Manhattan as the debris cloud enveloped the Trade Center Plaza. If the world were ending, I assume it would look a bit like that scene from New York.
We still had football practice that day. I still remember it was for a game against Worthington Kilbourne. After football practice, we heard planes in the distance. They were military.
In my tenth grade geometry class, as the principal announced that the World Trade Center had been struck, a young man in my math class first heard of the attack at the same time as me. I would later find out that September 11 was a seminal event in his decision to join the army. Shortly before Christmas in 2006, that fine young man lost his life for the cause of defending America and freedom. It would be impossible for me to think back to 9/11 without thinking of him. As I think of him in my recollections, it is difficult for me not to be fatalistic.
I think of kids who learn about that day now, maybe they’ve seen the same documentaries. But it’s just not the same when you know what happens from the beginning. It’s hard to appreciate the chaos. It’s hard to appreciate that when the towers were hit, people generally had no idea they were going to collapse.
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Photo: Julian Menichini. It was taken on September 5, 2001. This photo is not the property of joshbenner.org, and the owner of the copyright on this photo does not endorse this blog. For more information, please click on the photograph.
There aren’t very many days in your life where you know at the time that life is never going to be the same. Everyone knew that on 9/11.
I’ve thought a lot lately about this day and what the younger generation will understand about 9/11. I remember it like it was yesterday, and so it’s crazy for me to consider that kids in school weren’t even born when this event happened. This monumental day that was a paradigm shift in American history is just that to kids, history. They learn about that day from what people tell them and from the same documentaries I watch.
If you weren’t alive that day, and watch documentaries about 9/11, I think it’s hard to appreciate the chaos of September 11th. There’s a sense of fatalism in the documentaries. They almost always begin by contrasting the beauty of that morning against the pandemonium that was soon to burst forth.In the weeks and months after the attacks, it impacted every aspect of our society: sports were a rallying ground for patriotism. Many popular songs were written about that day and playing on the radio. New laws were enacted. Entirely new federal agencies were created. There was an ever present thought of if and when another attack would happen. The whole country was on high alert, arguably for the next 2-3 years.
As I watch documenaries, the quality of the videos seems a little more dated, the outfits people are wearing seem a little more 90s.When the North Tower was struck, no Americans knew that the South Tower was going to be hit 17 minutes later. No one had any idea that other planes were in the process of being highjacked and that other sites were also being targeted.
As the towers had smoke pouring out, the average person had no idea that they were going to collapse. From the time the North Tower was struck, three other planes crashed and both towers fell in 102 minutes.
A couple years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. It’s a special place. One of the rooms (and one of the few parts of the museum where they ask people not to take photos) features photographs of all of the victims of the attacks. Just a huge room with thousands of photos of people. It’s crazy to think that each of those photos is a person who meant something to a lot of people. They were people’s spouses, people’s parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, best friends.
All of them taken away because of evil and hatred. For many of the victims, the memorial also serves as their final resting place. From the intense fire, and from the incredible weight of the towers collapsing, and given the high numbers of casualties, remains could be hard to positively identify in the aftermath. Roughly 40 percent of victims have never been identified. The museum has a morgue where the unidentified remains are housed.
It’s still unfathomable to me. Thousands of people just living their lives, having no idea that they were about to become casualties on the front lines of a war in which they had no idea they were enlisted. The horror that people experienced above impact zones on the towers and on our airplanes. The first responders who risked their lives (and the many who gave their lives) on that day to help others.. For those people, I never forget.
It’s still unbelievable to me. There’s nothing else like it.
I think of the people in conference rooms and riding elevators who were dead without ever knowing there was even an attack. I think of the people who jumped from the towers. They were in such a horrible situation that jumping was the lesser of two evils. That still shocks me.
In the final sections of John chapter 1, several theological affirmations are made about Jesus.
In John 1:29-34, John the Baptist calls Jesus the lamb of God.
That language will continue in the following section. John 1:35-36 says:35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
Understanding what that means
In the Old Testament, the sacrificial system was instituted to show that sin needed to be atoned for. Sin required a blood sacrifice. It was a complicated and rigorous system. Sacrifices provided temporary atonement. Certain sins required certain sacrifices.
Sacrifices also required worthy animals. A person couldn’t just pick out an old goat that was about to die. It had to be a healthy animal without blemish.
All of that was meant to point to the greater sacrifice. Jesus is the perfect and spotless lamb who is the true and worthy sacrifice.
And so John calls Jesus the Lamb of God because he is the one who was sacrificed to atone for the sins of all who believe in him.
John 1:37, John the Baptist has just made this statement about Jesus and then: The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
John the Baptist points to Jesus. His own disciples leave him to go and follow Jesus.
With a respected religious leader like John, that would have been unthinkable. No one wants to lose people.A teacher doesn’t want to lose students. A dentist doesn’t want to lose patients. A hair stylist doesn’t want to lose clients.
But John is happy to point his people to Jesus.
He’s happy to lose his followers to Jesus, because that’s his entire purpose. Pointing people to Jesus.
The text says that they followed Jesus.
Verse 38:
Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?”
Quite the question Jesus asks. It has a double meaning.
Yes, it’s Jesus asking the two men who are following him. But it is also a probing question for anyone who seeks to follow Jesus.
What are you seeking?
“What are you seeking?”
What do you want from Jesus. There are many reasons why people try to find religion or turn to Jesus. But not all of them are good reasons.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, why are you following him?
Being a follower of Jesus is an end in itself. You follow Jesus because you get…Jesus. You get God.
That is the greatest promise that the Lord gives to us. Unworthy sinners are invited to know the God of the universe.
Sadly that’s not always the real heart behind a person’s desire to know Jesus.
What are you seeking?
Some people follow Jesus because they have all sorts of issues and think life will get easier.
And for awhile, that might be true.
But you’re still you. You’re still a sinful person. You still have various habits and areas of sin that aren’t productive. And life is still hard.
You get Jesus.
What about when the going gets tough? Because the going will get tough. And then where does that leave you?For some, they’re left disillusioned with faith because it didn’t give them what they wanted.
But the mistake was that they were looking for the wrong thing.
Some are led to Jesus because they’re sold a false gospel and believe that material blessing and physical health are both always the will of God for a believer.
It’s often called the prosperity gospel. It’s not Biblical Christianity. It turns our desires to stuff and not to God.
There are often blessings which result from the Christian life and living according to Biblical wisdom. But that is not meant to be the basis of being a follower of Christ.
Because the struggles still come.
If our hope is rooted in what we think Jesus will give to us, it leads to a faith that is superficial.
Plenty of Christians can see the flaws in prosperity theology. Yet we’re often still drawn to it.
Especially in America.
Why?
Because, in our heart of hearts, there’s a temptation to think that we deserve things to be good because we like to think we’re good. We pray, we serve, we give, we try to follow God.
We do these things and so it can be tempting to be angry with God when things don’t go the way we want them to.
The Bible does not promise the Christian life will be easy. It promises the opposite.
The Apostle James said to count it all joy, WHEN you meet trials of various kings (John 1:2).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:10-12)
You can find verses on suffering in almost every book in the New Testament.
Most notably, it was Jesus who was unjustly tortured and executed. He told his disciples in John 15: If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
The Apostle Paul was imprisoned multiple times in his life and later executed for his faith. He said in Romans 5:3 we rejoice in our sufferings.
Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from jail, and was later executed. John the Baptist who’s in our passage this morning. Executed.
The apostles named in our passage this morning: all of them were martyrs.
The world hates the gospel.
The Christian life is hard. And life is hard.
What are you seeking?
Certainly I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with blessings. Christians oftentimes do enjoy blessings in life, because God is good and gracious.
Living Godly lives and living according to Biblical wisdom is the best way to live and so that often bears fruit in life.
But what about when it doesn’t?
Many faithful people follow the Lord throughout their entire lives and continue to suffer and struggle.
What are you seeking? I’m not saying we should desire a life of hardship of drudgery.
That’s not the life God wants for his people. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. But if Jesus is your everything, you can find joy even in hardship, even in suffering, even in sorrow, even in pain.
What are you seeking?
Is Jesus your chief love and the thing that matters most to you?
Do you want to worship Jesus as your Lord and savior or do you think he’s a genie who will grant wishes?
As we continue in verse 38, we see their response. Jesus had asked “what are you seeking?”
They respond to the question with a question
And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), where are you staying?”
They don’t answer the question.
As they try to follow Jesus, perhaps it’s too difficult to spell out exactly what they’re seeking but they ask where he’s staying in the hopes of being with him and being able to talk to him and be in his presence.
He said to them, “Come and you will see.”
Jesus invites them in. He invites them into a relationship. He invites everyone into a relationship, into knowing him.
“Come and you will see.”
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe. This post is part of a series where I am looking verse by verse at the Gospel of John.
In one of his stand-up specials, the comedian Jim Gaffigan talks about camping. In the monologue, Gaffigan mentions that his wife enjoys camping and says that it’s a tradition in her family.
But he points out that it used to be a tradition in everyone’s family before we invented the house.
He asks “If it’s so great outside, then why are all the bugs trying to get in my house?”
During the bit, Gaffigan describes himself as being “indoorsie.”
Full disclosure.
I don’t enjoy camping. I don’t understand leaving the comfort of home, of a bed, of air conditioning, of indoor plumbing, of restful sleep. I’m not judging you if you like camping.
But it’s interesting to consider leaving my house to go into the woods.
And I think about that and I think of what Jesus left to come into the world.
Jesus left heaven to come into the world.
I like my home.
But that’s not heaven.
Jesus left the most perfect and spectacular place in creation to come into our world.
He left a sinless place to come into a fallen world. He left a place of perfect beauty for a world that has gray skies and thunderstorms. He left a place of adoration for a world where he faced condemnation.
1. A righteous God
In the opening verses of John 1, it’s establishing the divinity of Jesus.
Jesus is eternal. He exists in fellowship with God. He is God. He made everything.
But as this passage continues, it will also point to the righteousness of Christ.
Verse 4: In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Life is found in Jesus. This is true both in terms of all physical life but it is also true of eternal life that comes through Jesus.
All life is in him.
And we’re told that his life is the light of men. Verse 5 says: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Jesus was and is the true light.
The light of Christ shines in a dark and sinful world. Verse 9 says The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
In this metaphor, light is good because it is light which provides illumination, truth, and enlightenment.
John 8:12, Jesus says: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life
Jesus will talk at greater length of light in darkness in John 3. The Lord contrasts light and darkness with good and evil specifically.
He’ll talk of himself as the light that is in the world and people who love the darkness of sin more than the light of God.
the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Light and darkness is an almost universally recognized metaphor for good and evil.
The light is associated with the goodness, and righteousness, and truth of God.
John 12:46, Jesus says:
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
Jesus associates life through following him because he is the light. He is righteous and holy.
Numerous texts in the New Testament speak to Christ’s sinlessness.
2. A blind humanity
So far, we’ve been talking about the divinity and righteousness of Jesus.
He is sinless. He is the light of the world.
But the world is both sinful and blind to Christ.
John 1:10-11 says: He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
The God who created the world was not recognized by his world.
The only appropriate response to the Lord entering into creation would be to bow down and worship him, to behold his glory, to listen to his teaching, to bask in the glow of his light.
But the world was so sinful that that was not what happened. He was despised and rejected. His teachings led many to hate him. And his teachings still do that.
The world is often offended by the very words of God on earth. The world hates the gospel.
1 Corinthians 1:18 says: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God
People dislike the exclusivity of Jesus. They dislike that they have to turn to him for salvation. People dislike his moral teachings which expose our sin. The world loves its darkness, and when the light of Christ shines on our darkness, many reject the light.
everyone who does wicked things hates the light
Our passage says that the world did not know him.
The world did not know what they had.
John 1:10 says He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (John 1:10).
Jesus came to his world. It was his creation. And the world did not know him, the world did not respond to him as it should have, the world did not worship him.
And it’s doubly ironic by the fact that Jesus came to the world that he made in order to die to save a world that was sinful.
How sinful?
So sinful that the world didn’t even accept our own creator when he came into the world.
Many did not recognize Jesus for who he was.
3. A worthy savior
John 1:10-11 focuses on the world and its failure to receive Jesus.
But that’s not the case for everyone. In John 1:12-13, the Apostle writes: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Jesus is God. He is the light of the world. His world has largely rejected him, even though the world desperately needs him.
But there are those who receive and believe in the message. That is the good news of the gospel. Notice that it doesn’t say opportunity. It doesn’t say chance.
If you believe in Jesus, because of his tremendous goodness and grace, he gives you the right to become a child of God.
It has nothing to do with human goodness but our salvation is entirely by the will of God.
Of Jesus, John has already said “he was in the world” and that “he came to his own” and that the light was coming into the world.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe. This post is the third in a series looking through the Gospel of John. For more posts in this series, please click here.
Growing up, I didn’t go to church, but I always thought “there’s gotta be something out there.”
As a kid, I had cousins who were raised Catholic and who went to mass every week. They had a crucifix in their house, and there was this person on it. I didn’t know who he was, or why he mattered, or why he would be on display in someone’s house.
As a junior in high school, I took a humanities class where we spent a quarter of the year studying world religions. It was fascinating to me.
The idea of God made sense.
The idea of a good and loving God made sense. But I didn’t understand where Jesus fit into that. I heard he died for our sins, but I didn’t understand the significance of that.
If you had God, then why did you need Jesus?
I didn’t know who Jesus was. I didn’t understand passages like John 1. It’s a passage that tells a lot about Jesus. And it’ll explain why he matters.
John 1 passage has some of the loftiest verses in the Bible about Jesus:
John 1:1-2 says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
It can be so easy to read verses like those for a few seconds and just continue on with the rest of the passage. But it’s a mountain of meaning.
John 1:1-3 makes four affirmations that are four of the most fundamental truths that you possibly can know about Jesus.
1. Jesus is eternal
“In the beginning was the Word.”
John opens up by referring to Jesus as The Word.
I take it almost as a title for Jesus in the beginning of John. In the Old Testament, it is through the word of the Lord that God creates, speaks to his people, makes his promises, and points people to truth.
In Jesus, we see the ultimate disclosure of divine love, wisdom, truth and salvation, and so it is therefore fitting to refer to Jesus as the Word.
In the beginning was the Word.
That means that there was never a time when the Word was not.
And this is very important because right from the beginning of John, it confronts a common error that has existed in the church essentially since the time of Christ.
And that error is thinking Jesus is created. Or thinking that God made Jesus. Or thinking that he was a really good man who was given a promotion and became divine.
He was in the beginning.
This is something that John repeatedly emphasizes in his writings.
In the beginning of First John, he again speaks of Jesus’ eternality in the opening verse when he says: That which was from the beginning, (1 John 1:1)
We also see John referring to Jesus as an eternal being in the beginning of the Book of Revelation.
In a vision of Jesus, John says: When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last
Jesus is the first and the last. He is eternal.
He has always existed. This is something that will continue to unfold throughout this passage, but Jesus is not a created being.
2. Jesus has fellowship with God
The verse continues “and the Word was with God.”
Another absolutely monumental and profound reality from this passage. Think about this for just a moment.
The Old Testament is filled with lofty language of the majesty of God. Rightfully so. Exodus 33, Moses wants to see the glory of God (Exodus 33:18).
God tells Moses in Exodus 33:20: you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live
It’s because God is so vibrant, and righteous, and full of life that it is completely overwhelming for fallen and finite people.
But in that story, we see the glory of the Lord is revealed to Moses and Exodus 34 tells us that when Moses came down from the mountain, his skin was so radiant from beholding the glory of God that people were afraid (Exodus 34:29-30).
He shined so brightly that he had to wear a veil.
1 Kings 8, the Ark of the Covenant is brought into the Temple. And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord (1 Kings 8:10-11).
The glory of the Lord was so overwhelming that the priests could not stand to minister.
Isaiah 6, the prophet is given a vision of the throne room of God and he is terrified:
Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
The presence of the Lord is completely awesome as you behold his glory and majesty and life.
If you’ve ever stood at a great waterfall, as the hundreds of thousands of gallons of water crash over the edge every minute, you can feel the power and rush of the water.
That’s awe inspiring in its own right, but it’s no comparison to encountering the eternal and almighty God of the universe.
And yet, with Jesus, we’re told that the Word was with God. Jesus can see God, he can behold the glory of God because he himself is glorious and righteous.
In the beginning, there was fellowship with Jesus and God the Father. Not mentioned in this section, but also with the Holy Spirit. God did not make us because he was lonely or bored or because he needed us.
God had always existed in fellowship with himself. It is eternal and perfect.
This passage does not build the entire Doctrine of the Trinity by itself, but it’s very helpful in understanding a Trinitarian theology.
God is triune.
Jesus was with God.
Something else that matters is that this passage is showing distinction between Jesus and God.
Jesus is not simply God the Father coming into the world.
Rather he exists in fellowship with God. There is no dysfunction in the Holy Trinity. Only perfect unity.
That’s something that’s really hard to wrap our minds around because we’re sinful and fallen. Our relationships and families have dysfunction. Even good relationships, we still have times of hurt or disagreement. It’s all we see and all we know.
And so it is hard to imagine a perfect relationship where there’s no keeping score, where there’s never any resentment or bitterness. Where there’s no sin.
But really that says a lot about us as people. That we’re so dysfunctional and hurtful and sinful that a perfect relationship almost seems weird to us.
Jesus has a perfect relationship with God and that in itself is helpful in understanding the restoration that Jesus brings into the lives of people.
Jesus died to mend the broken relationship. But it’s because there is perfect fellowship within the Trinity that this is possible.
3. Jesus is God
The text continues “and the Word was God.”
The central theme of John’s Gospel. The Lordship of Christ.
Something to consider…
This would have been such a radical idea in the first century.
There’s a prayer that Orthodox Jews recite daily, in many circles, multiple times a day that’s taken from the book of Deuteronomy.
It affirms both that there is one God and also gives the command to love God.
Deuteronomy 6:4-6
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
Everyday, multiple times a day reciting these words. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. It was, and is, at the very bedrock of the Jewish belief system.
And John was Jewish. And Jesus was Jewish.
Yet without contradiction, right off the bat in his testimony of who Jesus is, John says “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John believed and here affirms that Jesus is God.
That is the Orthodox view of Christianity throughout the history of the church.
Jesus is God.
He’s a person of the Trinity.
Borrowing from Wayne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology:
Historical, Orthodox, Biblical Christianity believes the following
There is one God.
God is three persons.
Each person is fully God.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Again, you can’t build an entire theology of the Trinity from this passage alone. But this passage affirms that Jesus is God and also that there is distinction between Jesus and God.
You might think “that’s so hard to wrap my mind around.”
You’re wrong.
It’s impossible to truly wrap your mind around. You’re not God. We don’t have to know exactly how it’s simultaneously true that we have one God, who is three persons, and each person is fully God.
But the Bible affirms all three of those statements. I mentioned a few minutes ago that the belief in one God was central to Jewish belief.
It’s central to Christianity too. We also believe in one God. But God is triune.
Throughout his ministry, we see Jesus showing his divinity through his miraculous signs.
We see his victory over death. We see his perfect and holy life. He’s God.
All of this taken together in our passage we see: that the Word was with God shows there relationship and distinction.
That Jesus is God shows his divinity.
Again, this matters tremendously.
And we have all of these affirmations right from the beginning of John’s gospel.
If Jesus were not God, then he would not be a worthy sacrifice for our sins. If he were just a great man, he would still be fallible. If he were just a great teacher, he could still be wrong . If he were just a great leader, he would still be finite.
But he is the perfect God of creation. He entered into a sinful creation to redeem humanity.
It also matters because if Jesus were less than God, then not only would he be unworthy of our worship, but the very act of worshipping him would be blasphemous.
From the beginning of the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
We’re told elsewhere in the Bible that God is a jealous God. But the gospels show people worshipping Jesus. He never corrects them or deflects worship when that happens.
That is either blasphemous or warranted. There’s no middle ground.
John’s Gospel is that it constantly confronts us with absolute claims with Jesus. Chief among them is that Jesus is God.
That’s an absolute claim. It’s either true or it’s not. If it’s true, the only response is to believe in him, to worship him, to trust in him. If it’s not, the rest of this gospel is meaningless and blasphemous.
4. Jesus made everything
Verse 3: All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Again this is speaking to the divinity of Jesus. All things were made through him. All means all.
The ground, the trees, the sand of the beaches, the stars in the sky, the air we breathe, the materials we use to build things, all of it was made by Jesus.
He made every person. Each of us has billions of cells in our bodies. Incredible complexity and structure just within our own bodies. The universe is incredibly big.
I thought this was a fun exercise. So the distance between the earth and the sun is 93 million miles.
If that distance was represented by the width of this one sheet of paper, the distance of our entire galaxy would be a stack of papers 453 miles high.
One stack of papers a mile high is about 15 million sheets of paper. Times 453 miles. With each sheet of paper representing 93 million miles.
And that’s just our galaxy.
There are one hundred billion galaxies.
If you could have an atlas of every galaxy in the entire universe and each page represented an entire galaxy, and if you spent just one second on every page and continually turned pages in the atlas, it would take you more than 31,000 years to flip all the way through the atlas.
The universe is incredibly, unfathomably big.
There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world. Yet there are more trees on earth than there are stars in our one galaxy.
And that’s just looking at the amazing size of of our universe. There is amazing creation within our world.
New species of animals are still being discovered. And they’re not all insects or really small animals.
Since 2000, there have been new species of primates discovered. We don’t even yet know everything on our own planet.
Yet Jesus made it all.
There are other passages in the New Testament which speak to this fact.
Colossians 1:16: For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
We see this language as well in the opening chapter of the Book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 1:10 referring to Jesus says:
You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
Jesus is the creator. He made everything.
And John states it both ways.
He made everything.
And also there’s nothing that he didn’t make.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
He’s a mighty God.
It’s a lofty passage. It’s a confrontational passage. You affirm these truths or you don’t.
Our society often likes to treat Jesus as something you can take or leave.
Gravity isn’t something that you can take or leave.
Arithmetic isn’ t something that you can take or leave.
Breathing isn’t something that you can take or leave.
Jesus isn’t something you can just take or leave. Jesus isn’t just a nice person or a nice idea. He’s the Lord of creation.
Many cherry pick certain teachings. Others treat him as a great teacher or a great religious leader.
Jesus isn’t one good teacher among other great teachers. He’s God.
The sages of other major religious traditions were born. Buddha wasn’t there in the beginning. Mohammad wasn’t there in the beginning.
But in the beginning was the Word.
There have been great leaders in the world who have influenced nations and movements. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi. Some like to just act like Jesus was a wise peace maker who came with a good message.
He’s so much more than that. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word created all things.
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This post is the second in a series in studies on the Gospel of John. For more passages in this series, please click here.
