Week 1 - God With Us
What we talked about In youth on Sunday
“Who is Jesus?”
For those who have spent time in church, the answer to this question feels obvious. Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the second person of the Trinity, and so on. And yet, our familiarity with Jesus can lead us to miss out on the fullness of who he is and how universally-life-altering his earthly ministry was. That’s why this Spring in Redemption Youth we are focused on answering, “Who is Jesus,” so that our students can grow in their faith, understanding, and affection for Jesus.
To help us with this we will survey 10 passages from the Gospel of John, which teach us about who Jesus is. On Sunday we started this survey by looking at John 1:1-18.
As is true when engaging with any written material—and is especially true when engaging Scripture—to understand what was written we need to begin by answering the following contextual questions: (1) Who wrote it? (2) To whom was it written? (3) What is the general purpose of the writing? And (4) what does the author hope the audience would get out of it? So before we look at John 1, let’s answer these questions.
Who wrote this and what do we know about them?
Though some will disagree, the general consensus is that John the son of Zebedee wrote this gospel. John was a fisherman who fished in the Sea of Galilee alongside his brother, James, and their father. One day while working John was called by Jesus to leave his job as a fisherman and become his disciple. John agreed and went on to be one of Jesus’ closest friends (even being referred to as the “beloved disciple”). As a result, John saw Jesus do amazing things. He saw him heal people of diseases. He heard him teach in ways no one ever had. He watched him go off and pray when crowds begged for his attention. He looked on as he was crucified. And he was amazed when he saw him raised from the dead. Overall, John’s life was forever changed because he left his job to follow Jesus.
Later, after Jesus ascended to heaven, John took Jesus’ mother and moved with her to Ephesus. There John became a leader of the Ephesian Church and spent time writing letters to new Christians. He wrote this Gospel, three epistles (1-3 John), and Revelation, some of which was penned while he was castaway to the island of Patmos.
Why did John write this Gospel? And to whom did he write?
In John 20:31, John says that he wrote this letter so that those who read and hear it would believe that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [they] would have life in his name.” Basically, John was so changed by Jesus that he wanted to share what Jesus did and said so that the lives of those around him would also be changed by believing in Jesus.
It is likely that John wrote his Gospel primarily for the Christians in Ephesus, which consisted of diasporate Jews, Greeks, and other Gentiles. However, though this was written almost 2000 years ago to a unique group of people, John’s Gospel is also written for us, and the message and stories within have the power to be as life-changing for us as they were to people 2000 years ago.
To summarize: John was a close friend and follower of Jesus, who saw the amazing things Jesus did, and wrote this letter to tell us about it so that we might believe in Jesus and have life.
So what does John 1:1-18 tell us about Jesus?
John 1:1 begins with a statement that sounds similar to the opening words of Genesis 1: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” John’s use of “the Word” (or Logos in Greek) is unique given that no other Gospel writer uses this term to describe God. However, John actually does something similar to the other Gospel writers in using this term: he takes a concept familiar to his audience and gives it a different meaning in order to challenge their preconceptions.
The familiar concept John borrows is that of the “logos.” Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Philo used “logos” to describe a sort of cosmic being that helped philosophers solve problems, as well as some kind of spirit that allowed people to understand things and unified all of creation. We could think of “logos” as similar to when someone today says, “I don’t know what’s out there but I believe in a god or some sort of higher power.” For the Greeks, the “logos” was that mysterious higher power.
Thus, John takes this familiar philosophical concept and gives it a different, greater meaning. Whereas the Greeks thought of the “logos” as an unknowable being, John says the “logos” is actually the knowable God, who has always existed and created everything. Furthermore, this God is not secret, rather he “became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
In using this philosophical concept to describe Jesus, John was therefore challenging his audience to not believe in an unknowable god that offers knowledge to the elite few, but to put their faith in the God who took on flesh so that they could know him as intimately as they know a friend.
It was this reality that led the theologian Karl Barth to say, “The saying in John 1:14 (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us) is the centre and theme of all theology and indeed is really the whole of theology in a nutshell.” God becoming a man was so miraculous that it has become the focal point out of which all Christian theology derives—for if God never became man then the crucifixion and resurrection could never have happened.
Therefore, God’s becoming a man means the following for us (this list is not exhaustive):
It means that we can know God through Jesus. For if Jesus is God then to know Jesus is to know God.
It means that God values people enough to become one himself. By becoming a person God said he values us so much he wanted to be like us, so we could see him and feel him and know him like we know our friends.
It means that God loves all of us no matter how we look or sound or smell. By becoming a person and going through everything we encounter (suffering, joy, sadness, etc), God became like us. He had his diaper changed. He had to learn to walk. He was an awkward teenager. He went through puberty. He got sick. He felt hungry. And he showed his care for all of us by entering into the worst pain and suffering we could ever think to face.
Continuing the conversation at home
During dinner or in the car this week ask your kids what they remember about the Youth lesson from Sunday. Tell them you read about what they heard. Mention to them what you found interesting or curious. Think about why John 1:1-18 is important to you and share that with them. In doing so you will show your kids that what they are learning matters just as much to you and has impacted your life too.