Talk

The light shines

31 August 2025

John 1:1-8

SummaryPassageTranscript

Cases of ‘mistaken identity’ can be embarrassing – especially when we fail to recognise whom it is we are speaking to. John’s Gospel begins by spelling out precisely whom we are dealing with when it comes to the Lord Jesus. This most famous of texts leaves us with little excuse for not reading further.

John 1:1-8

The Word Became Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. ⁸He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

This transcript has been automatically generated

John chapter 1, verses 1 to 18. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 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. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word 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. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me. And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

Over the summer, a friend of mine, his son had got into rowing at a very high level. And was rowing for his school. And my friend was invited to the big regatta at Henley, and he knows very little about rowing. And to his surprise, on arrival at Henley, he was invited to sit in the launch that follows— that’s the small boat that follows the rowers up the river. And this guy helped him into the boat, and he seemed remarkably unimposing.

He didn’t get up, so he didn’t see how big the guy was. And my friend, who knows little about rowing, started to ask this guy in the launch questions about rowing. My friend’s an inquisitive kind of guy, He wanted to know everything. He got sensible answers, and so he thought, now’s the moment. And he and his son had had a bit of a dispute about the recent Oxford-Cambridge boat race, which is a big race, happens between Oxford and Cambridge in the spring up the Thames.

And so he put it to this guy in the boat who seemed to know so much, you know, was not the decision made by that umpire on that day entirely inappropriate and absurd? And was he and not his son actually correct in the thing got it completely wrong. Now, the umpire was a polite sort of person and courteous, and he sort of said, well, I suppose there are many ways of seeing things, and it depends slightly which way you see it. You can see where this is going. Anyway, the race finished, and my friend left the launch and thanked the guy who’d been so friendly and made his way to the marquee where all the friends and family of the rowers were assembled.

And his telephone was abuzz with messages. He couldn’t think why so many people, you know, we saw you on the telly and all this sort of stuff. And people swarmed around him, and he him, you know, what was he like? And my friend said, what was who like? And it turned out that the man in the launch was none other than Matthew Pinsent, CBE, winner of 10 World Championship gold medals and 4 consecutive Olympic golds.

Now, I don’t know if you— anyway, he was duly highly embarrassed. I don’t know if you’ve ever been embarrassed by that kind of mistaken identity. And I guess you might say that John’s aim as he opens up this Gospel is that none of us should ever make such a foolish mistake. Just flick forward to chapter 20 and verses 30 through 31. It’s on page 1093.

It’s right at the bottom of the right-hand column, page 1093, John 20. And here John tells us why he is writing this account of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these, that is, these signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Now you can see from our reading in verse 14 of chapter 1 that John himself is an eyewitness We have seen his glory.

And John’s aim in recording this is that we might just for ourselves see who Jesus is, that we may come to believe in Jesus, in the evidence that he gives, and then that we ourselves might have eternal life. In his name. Personally, I think that this account was written very early. Those who date the Gospel late do so essentially on the shoulders of people who have argued that John couldn’t have developed such sophisticated views of Jesus as we find in this account without the community of the church fashioning such views about Jesus over decades. And I think that’s an extraordinary presumption.

John tells us that he’s been told by Jesus such sophisticated understanding of who Jesus is, and it seems perfectly reasonable to think that he wrote it down for us as he was instructed to do. Well, in the opening 8 verses, all we’ve got time for today, we have the divine eternal existence, the divine creation power, the innate divine life, and the divinely appointed historical witness. Let’s begin with his divine eternal existence. The structure of the opening 24 words, so well known, perfectly crafted. In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. There’s a beautiful symmetry here and right at the centre, The Word was God. We are dealing with the first cause, with the prime mover, with the self-existent, the self-sufficient, the sole initiator of all things.

Before there was light, there was life. Before there were things, there was thought. It was not random chance that was in the beginning, as if in the beginning it was some sort of impersonal accident. It wasn’t unanticipated collision. That was in the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The famous, now deceased physicist Stephen Hawking posited that it was gravity that was in the beginning as the first cause. His book, The Grand Design, explains that the negative energy of gravity can balance the positive energy required to form matter allowing for the spontaneous creation of a universe. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Well, that kind of dodges the issue. What was before gravity then? And the equally— well, not perhaps quite so famous mathematician John Lennox responds, what serves to obscure the illogicality of such a statement is the fact that it’s made by a scientist, and the general public assume that their statements of science and take them with authority. That’s why it’s important to point out that they are not statements of science, and any statement, whether made by a scientist or not, should be open to logical analysis. Immense prestige and authority does not compensate for faulty logic.

And what all this goes to show is that nonsense remains nonsense even when spoken by world-famous scientists.

The word word is fascinating, isn’t it? In the beginning was the word. Why does he introduce Jesus of Nazareth in this way? Clearly, the Word is personal. He was in the beginning.

It was not an it, it was a he who is. And clearly, the Word refers to Jesus. The Word became flesh, verse 14. But why use that word word? Is it because John had been exposed to Greek philosophy, the logos?

Is it because he’s been reading the Genesis account that we just had read? In the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the face of the water. In the beginning, God spoke. Is it because he wants to distinguish or make clear that the eternally existent Word became the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth?

Actually, I think it is a brilliant tactic. It’s very subversive if you think about it. Were this text to land on a Jew’s table in the first century saying, in the beginning was Jesus, he was with God, he was God, why, the editor would immediately rip it up. We’re not publishing that. It kind of enables things to get under our skin before we come to the Word became flesh.

So, the Imam reading this, you know, won’t immediately say, well, this counters everything I’ve been taught about God, that he is one. In the beginning was the Word.

Whatever. We’re not here by accident. We’re not mere chance. It wasn’t simply the cosmic lottery. We’re not just a lucky number.

The Word, he was with God in the beginning. We can know him, we can draw near to him, we can relate to him. There is a personal existence outside and beyond this universe who brought it all into being. In the beginning was the Word. Changes everything, doesn’t it, for us?

His divine eternal existence, his divine creative creation power. Now in verse 3, we find our first negative of the Gospel. And John deploys the negative regularly in his Gospel in order to bring clarity. It’s extremely helpful. The antithesis, the antithesis is the best way to ensure that we’ve been heard and understood correctly.

I mean this, I don’t, by the way, mean that. I said this, I did not say that. It just clarifies things, doesn’t it? And John deploys the negative probably more than anybody else in the New Testament. No one has ever seen God.

God, the one and only, he has made him known. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. But here we have the first one in verse 3, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

So that’s the first negative. It’s also the first absolute, all things. And those 2 things, the absolute all things and the negative, without him was not anything made, they reinforce each other. I don’t know where you went on your summer holidays, if you were lucky enough to have one. Some stargazing space journey with Elon?

Some Alpine trekking adventure with Timeless Travels or And Beyond. Benidorm, Mallorca, Ibiza. There was a guy at the 10 o’clock congregation, he’d been to Slough for his summer holiday. Wherever we’ve been for our summer holiday, there is nothing that we have seen that was not created by the Creator.

By him, speaking of Jesus Christ, Paul writes, 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 and in him all things hold together. So, who was it that sought a kind of primary explanation of everything? Was it Pythagoras? You know, actually, he could have come to John 1. Aristotle, the unmoved mover, and John 1.

The biochemist in her laboratory as she peers into the microscope, all things were created. The astrophysicist in his observatory as he zooms in the telescope, all things were created. I once spoke somewhere and they are giving their testimony as a young believer was an astrophysicist and she worked at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales. You know, The Dish, if you’re Australian, you’ve seen The Dish, great film. And she actually, she actually worked there and she talked about gazing into the universe, all things.

There’s no quark, no continent, no cosmos without him.

Actually, the small child sees this very clearly, doesn’t he or she? Mum, where do I come from? They realise there has to be a primary cause. It’s Romans that tells us that our desperate desire to avoid God and accountability to God in our sinful attempt to live in his world without him causes us to suppress the truth that is obvious to a 5-year-old. It turns out that a 5-year-old is better equipped and slightly wiser than Stephen Hawking in this regard.

We have a guy who runs the digital here, comes to the 4 o’clock congregation, you may know him, Alex Merson. His PhD is in astrophysics.

And I sat next to him at lunch on Wednesday, the middle of this week. I’ve been preparing, you know, all week in this passage, and I said, Alex, tell me about your PhD. He spoke to me, I understood absolutely nothing, but he did say a couple of things. I said, how many stars are there? I mean, I really am ignorant of these things in our galaxy.

And anyway, how many galaxies are there? He sent me the most wonderful informative email. It went like this: between 100 billion and 2 trillion galaxies. In the observable universe, that is, in the bit of the universe we can see because the light from these galaxies has had sufficient time to reach us. The majority of cosmological data compiled to date suggests that the universe is substantially larger than this.

Much of the data supporting this comes from an analysis of something called the cosmic microwave background, which is not what you’re thinking about in your kitchen. It’s something much different to that. But I’m in 100 billion, 2 trillion, just the observable bits, without him. Mistaken identity. Jesus made it all.

I sometimes ask people to compile a CV, a resume, of the character introduced in verses 1 through 4. Date of birth, previous work experience. I mean, imagine if that landed on your table and he was the next person in you were interviewing, you would be pretty scared, wouldn’t you?

But it poses the question, well, why has he come? And I think verses 4 and 5 contain a statement that I don’t think any human would write in the 21st century unless they had been taught it.

In fact, I’ve heard verses 4 and 5 taught on a number of occasions here at St Helen’s, taught not in the way it’s written. In fact, I have done that myself. So I’m going to read verse 4 to us. I’m going to read it wrong and you see if you can see the difference between what’s written and what I read. Okay, you ready?

In him was light and the light was the life of men. That’s not what it says.

We think light is the source of life. That is true, of course, when it comes to secondary causes. There is light in him. His light is the source of all physical life. But verse 4 says precisely the opposite.

What does that mean? I mean, we were talking about this in our— we plan these meetings. You may think that’s a surprise, but we do plan these meetings. We had our planning meeting midweek and I said, this is what I’m going to say. And honestly, after about 10 minutes of trying to explain it, they all appeared as confused as they were when they began.

But what does it mean that in him was life and that life was the light of humanity. I think what John is saying is that the Word is life itself.

Eternal life is found in the Word.

The life of God, the Creator of everything, is within him, this figure.

This is eternal life, that we may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Because He is the very essence.

But this eternal life that resides in God, the primary cause, this is what gives light to all humanity. This is what lights us up. The eternal life who stands outside our universe, in him is life itself. And this life, this lights us up and enlightens us. Actually, without this life, and the light that he gives, we remain profoundly endarkened.

We’re not enlightened at all. We can have all the qualifications in the PPE department or the Faculty of Law or the Natural Sciences Park, and we’ll find the most intelligent men and women on the planet there, but actually without life, the divine eternal life who gives light, they remain profoundly ignorant. They are endarkened, not enlightened. You cannot be enlightened without the light that comes from the eternal life, the divine first cause. Listen to the end of Alex’s email to me.

It was quite the piece. I’ll send it to you if you’re interested, but In the hope of answering these big questions which he’s cited, cosmologists around the world are investing many millions of dollars to build bigger and better telescopes so they can make even more sensitive measurements of the distant universe. That is assuming that the answer to those questions can be found by looking at phenomena inside the universe. We can’t know what is outside the universe unless we have some information that originates from outside the universe. Unless someone outside the universe speaks into our universe.

All we have is— and he’s been speaking in the context of the Big Bang— all we have is, without that external revelation, all we have is the big speculation. Now there’s a scientist, speaking of scientists.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and people have tried to extinguish it down through the centuries. The dictators, Kim Jong-un, the Bible outlawed and banished in the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain, William Tyndale put to death, Luther incarcerated in the Wartburg, Wycliffe and his Lollards and the Hussites. People have tried to stamp out this light. We hate the light.

We want to live in God’s world our own way. Light has shone in darkness, but men hated the light because our deeds are evil. We seek to suppress the light.

But you can’t suppress the light. He is external to the universe and eternal. In him is life. Try all you might, you will never succeed.

His divine innate life. His divinely appointed historical witness. Now, verses 6 through 8 introduce us to the human figure, the man of history, John the Baptist. John, mentioned here is not the John who wrote the Gospel. This is John the Baptist.

Now it’s really important we get clear on this, people get confused. There was a man, verse 6, sent from God whose name was John. This is not the guy who wrote John’s Gospel. This is John the Baptist. And John the Baptist is divinely appointed.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. John the Baptist had a specific commission. He came as a witness, to bear witness. That’s a legal courtroom term. He came as a witness, to bear witness to the light.

And John the Baptist was given a particular task, that all people might believe. So suddenly the lens has just expanded right out to all people.

John the Baptist was a figure of international renown. John the Baptist was a figure of history. Read your ancient history. Josephus writes of him. These historical accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and in the early epistles, they all speak of him.

People came from all across the Middle East to listen to John the Baptist. And John the Baptist had a goal, and God had a goal through John the Baptist, that all people might believe through his testimony. John links, if you like, the books of the Old Testament to the New, and he calls on the people of God and all people everywhere to look at Jesus. The camera lens has widened. But it is what you would expect, isn’t it?

I mean, I saw this morning Kemi Badenoch, she’s going to make some big announcement on Tuesday. She tells us what it is already. She wants everybody to know. I mean, Nigel, he made some announcement earlier this week, Nige, you know, and he wanted everybody to know. It was trailed.

A new product hits the market, we announce it. A new release comes out on Netflix, you get a notification about it. Apple do that. Virgin do that. Everybody does it.

And God does it because he wants everybody to believe. And he sends John the Baptist, the figure of history, so that all people might believe with the Old Testament witness now linked to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the man. This is the one. The Word made flesh.

Well, we must draw to a close. I mean, it’s just such a compelling beginning. Doesn’t it make you want to read on? Doesn’t it make sense of the life of Jesus. He turned water into wine.

Of course he did. He could. He made everything. You know, he healed the official’s son who was on the point of death. Of course he did.

He made everything. Of course he did. He enabled the guy who was paralysed, had been for 38 years, to get up off his pallet. Yes, yeah, of course. He is the eternal Word, the Creator of all.

He gave sight to the man born blind. He raised Lazarus from the dead. He himself could not remain contained within the tomb. He rose glorious and victorious.

Eternity and divinity, origin and creation, life and enlightenment, evidence and witness.

So, I popped in to see my predecessor, Dick Lucas, just earlier this week, or at the end of last week, I think it was. He’d been reading Karl Barth. Can you believe it? An early 20th century theologian. Now, we talked about, you know, the ways in which we disagree with Karl Barth, but also how great Karl Barth is.

And I said, well, what actually have you been reading about Karl Barth? And he— I opened the page where he was, and I mean, Dick is just 2 weeks short of his 100th birthday, bear that in mind. And he’s been reading this essay by Karl Barth, The Strange New World, that we find within the Bible. In Christ, He caused His Word to be made flesh. He has caused eternity to dawn in place of time, or rather upon time.

And this is the bit that had a little X against it. Dick’s got a great habit of marking the bits you need to read. He purposes naught but the establishment of a new world.

Mistaken identity?

Let’s pray together.

Almighty and everlasting, eternal Lord and Creator of all things, we bow before you in humble adoration.

We confess our failure, sometimes our refusal, to recognise you for who you are.

And we praise you that you, the eternal and everlasting Creator, have entered into our squalid human existence, that your life has broken into this world to light up the hearts and souls of men and women.

We ask that as we consider the Word made flesh, you would expand our vision of Jesus, increase our commitment to Jesus, cause us to wonder and delight and worship him.

And we ask it in his name. Amen.

The Word Became Flesh

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