Advent 2024: Love

Advent 2024

The Truth About God's Love: It's Jesus!
Advent 2024: Love
John 1:1-5, 14-18, 3:16-21

Stephen Charnock, 17th century Puritan theologian: “What a wonder that two natures infinitely distant should be more intimately united than anything in the world, and yet without any confusion! That the same person should have both a glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible sorrow in the humanity; that a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thundering Creator a weeping babe and a suffering man. These are such expressions of mighty power and condescending love that they astonish men upon earth and angels in heaven.”

Ecclesiastes 7:10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
    For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

D.A. Carson: Since God’s Word in the OT is God’s powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and salvation, it is right for John to apply it as the title to God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son.

Some say that the second phrase of John 1:1 could be literally translated “The Word was continually face to face with God,” but we will stick with the meaning that Jesus was in intimate relationship with the Father. Either way, perfect equality is implied in this statement.

C.K. Barret: John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.

John uses the word “life” 36 times in his Gospel, more than double any other NT writing.

John uses the word “light” 23 times, almost one third of the times the word “light” is used in the NT.

Just think of how indebted we are to John for our understanding of Jesus as both life and light!

Theophylact of Ohrid (1050-1107): Remaining what he (Jesus) was, he became what he was not.

One person, two natures – divine and human. Theologians call it the hypostatic union. Although the Angel of the Lord that made appearances in the OT was likely Jesus, as in Exodus 3, he did not fully assume flesh and a human nature until he came in his First Advent.

We know that the Holy Spirit led all writers of Scripture to use the exact words that they wrote, but God used the minds and personalities of the different writers to communicate his truth. The Apostle John employed simple vocabulary and grammar, but the truth he communicated was profound. John had lived a long life when he wrote his Gospel. He had reflected much on Jesus’ divinity, his Incarnation, his life and teachings, and of course his death and resurrection. Even more, John had reflected on the meaning of it all.