Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 2 Study # 1
October 2, 2022
Broadlands, Louisiana
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Thesis: God miraculously produced a man to send into the world to provide an "agent of faith".
Introduction: We have already seen John's presentation of God's "Word" as His "messenger" for "Life". God's "messenger for Life" is His Son Who is a full participant in "Godness" and is the One Who called all creation into being with nothing being omitted. God's "Word" is the Creator of The Universe and all it contains. Thus, both the creative activity and the production of "words" that address it have their existence by reason of the Word, the Son of God, for the express purpose of making "Life" available to men.
But, there is a problem: The Darkness. This Darkness represents the antithesis of God's purpose of "Life". Thus, the Word is presented as "The Light" and the boast is that "The Light is still shining in spite of the worst that The Darkness could do to/about it".
This morning we are going to look further into the activities of "The Word As Light" for the purpose of "Life".
- I. The Further Action Of The Word Of God For The "Life" Of Men.
- A. No matter what action, or actions, are taken in respect to God's production of "Light" in the presence of "Darkness", no man will live who cannot "see".
- 1. The action of creation does not, of itself, produce "Life" for men who are blinded by The Darkness.
- a. It does not matter that men have discovered "quarks" (which they, by reasoning on the basis of cause/effect, claim to exist, and thereby condemn themselves for refusing to use that same basis when dealing with the "God" issues) and "The Hercules Corona Borealis Great Wall" (which they believe to be the greatest single accumulation of quarks in the universe -- ten billion light years across), they have not been brought to "Life" by those discoveries.
- b. The reason that God's creation activities, from the smallest created thing to the greatest created thing, has not brought men into "Life" is that men do not believe that these created things are the works of Jesus Christ and that His efforts are directed to produce "Life" for them.
- 2. The key to this reason is bound up in one word: "believe".
- a. This key word tells us two things.
- 1) That the power of The Darkness is the power to keep men from "seeing" unto the understanding of "faith".
- 2) That the power of The Light is the power to enable men to "see" unto "faith".
- b. It does not matter what God does if men refuse to "believe" that He has taken action to bring them to "Life".
- B. Therefore, we are told by John about another action that was taken by God to make "faith" possible.
- 1. Our text tells us five things that God did to make "faith" possible (though we will not be able to examine all five this morning -- I wanted to "pick up the pace", but I got intrigued by the details).
- a. First, He engaged in another "creation" within His Creation.
- 1) The translations of the opening phrase of 1:6 are significantly weak: they do not make the point John wanted to make.
- 2) Biblehub.com lists more than 30 English translations of this verse. The most common choice of translators is "There was a man..."; the second most common choice is "There came a man...".
- 3) Both of these translation options tell the truth; they simply do not tell the particular truth John wanted his readers to understand.
- a) That a man "was" does not tell us enough about how he came to be: "was" is the past tense of "is", the verb of "being" (being used in verses 1-4 six times and translated consistently "was").
- b) That a man "came" (erchomai) does not tell us enough about how he "came".
- i. The first time John used the legitimate word in Greek for "came" is in John in 1:7 (erchomai) [that John added his second phrase, "...having been sent from God...", indicates that the first phrase does not tell us this so that a second phrase has to be added to explain the first].
- ii. The issue of "coming" is the issue of the second phrase, not this first one.
- 4) The particular "truth" that John wished his readers to understand is brought into the "Light" by the word (ginomai) which John used for the fourth time when he wrote verse 6.
- a) The first three times John used this word are all in verse 3: where it is translated in the version of the NASB that I have as "came into being" and it actually means "arrived on the scene as an existing (i.e., "created") entity".
- b) These first three uses are dramatically emphatic: "through Him all things arrived on the scene as existing entities"; and "without Him not one thing arrived on the scene as existing entities which have arrived on the scene as existing entities".
- c) These repetitious uses all point to one fact: The Word "created" everything that exists on the scene since "the beginning".
- d) Thus, John's point in returning to this verb in verse six is this: "A man arrived on the scene as an existing being"; meaning, The Word "created a man to come on the scene".
- i. This "point" is this: nothing the Word "created", so that it was "on the scene" when "faith" was the issue, was able to generate the "faith" that was needed.
- ii. That "faith" was needed is made clear by 1:7.
- i) That "faith" was needed is expressed by the "blinding presence of The Darkness".
- ii) That "faith" came to be possible is expressed by the fact that "The Light" was "shining", but men couldn't "see" it.
- b. Second, this "man" came on the scene, as a special creation of The Word, because God "sent" him.
- 1) This is the first time John mentions anyone being "sent".
- 2) The word means "to be sent away from the presence of the one sending" and, in many cases, the "sending" was rooted in the authority of The Sender with His authority vested in the "sent one".
- 3) The fourth time John refers to someone being "sent" is in 3:17 where we read "...God sent the Son into the world...that the world might be saved through Him".
- c. Third, this "special creation man was sent from God" with an extremely important "name": John.
- 1) This name, John, is a critical detail (compelled by God through Gabriel in his instruction to Zachariah, the father of "John").
- 2) This name
- a) Is the actual name of the "special creation of God" in the form of a "man".
- b) Introduced the traumatic truth that upset the entire theological system of the Jews in the first century of our calendar.
- c) Is the most crucial issue of "life" for those who "believe" because all that they "do" that is acceptable to God is "done" by the "grace of God" (1 Corinthians 15:10).
