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Speaker 1
Welcome to InBible Community.
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Speaker 2
This is a time where we can slow down to inquire of God's Word, probing, exploring, digging deep, and asking meaningful questions of Scripture.
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Speaker 1
This is time well spent because we believe the indwelling of God's Word and Spirit will transform our lives, enriching our prayers, worship, relationships, and joy.
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Speaker 2
We see that God desires to include every person in his family, making us a kingdom community. I'm Jessica. And I'm Chris. We're so glad you're here.
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Speaker 2
Welcome to the InBible Community Podcast. Jessica and I are here. We are into the gospel of John, the good news that John is telling us about Jesus so that we can believe in who he is and the fact that he's come from the Father, is showing us the Father, and that we have access to eternal life. So those are just a few of the themes that we're gonna see today. We kind of want to start in John chapter 1.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
Start at the beginning. And we look at the prologue.
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Speaker 2
Ah, the prologue. And then maybe move on from there.
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Speaker 2
Okay, so just before we get any farther, since you're the English teacher here, Jessica, prologue and epilogue. What do we mean? So often scholars will say that John is built around these two things.
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Speaker 2
What are they?
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Speaker 1
Yeah, well, I mean, if you're looking at the language, the prologue, the idea of the log or the logos is the word, which we're gonna see come through in the prologue. We're gonna see John talk about that. Yes. But it's the word that comes before. That's what the prologue is. And the epilogue would be the word that comes after. And we often will see authors today use a prologue and an epilogue. Sometimes it's like a preface or like a background information. And you see John use the prologue, I think, to kind of lay the foundation for the story. So when we're reading the prologue, I think it's important to notice what he's talking about, what he's establishing as the foundation, and also kind of what he isn't talking about. So he doesn't start right away with Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He doesn't start the story like that. He has this prologue that is laying the foundation. And there's some things he wants us to understand. And then he's gonna open the story.
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Speaker 2
I know when I open a modern book,
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Speaker 2
particularly an academic sort of book, it'll usually have
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Speaker 2
an introduction, a prologue and a preface. All of that. One is written by somebody else just to say, "Oh, this is gonna be a really good book. You should read it." And then sometimes there's one that'll,
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Speaker 2
the author himself or herself will come in and say, "Well, here's why I wrote the book. And here's some things you ought to be looking for as you go through it. Here's sort of the big themes that we'll touch on." And John does this here in the gospel.
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Speaker 1
Yeah. He's really...
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Speaker 1
A lot of times, I mean, I was an English teacher, students are always trying to skip all the parts they're not required to read. But even myself, I'll pick up a book and I'll look at it. I'm like, "Oh, there's a preface. Do I need to read it?" And sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But a prologue is meant to be read before you read the text. It's not the same as the blurb that someone else wrote. It's, "Don't skip the prologue." So especially in John's case,
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Speaker 1
don't skip the prologue.
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Speaker 2
Don't skip the prologue. It's really important.
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Speaker 1
If we're talking about literature, just to throw it out there, the prologue is written in poetic form, which is a little different than some other parts of the book.
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Speaker 1
So he does write it like a poem. It is a chiasm. We talked about that last time and we'll talk about that as we go through it. But yeah, don't skip it.
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Speaker 2
It's... Okay. Well, let's just read it here. So I'll take part and then maybe you can take part of it. So we're just starting here at the beginning of the gospel, the good news, according to John.
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Speaker 2
"In the beginning..." Now you want to say, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." At least that's where my mind goes. And I think that's what John wants us to think of, but he's going to twist it. So he says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word," or the locos, "was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. The light shines in darkness, but the darkness does not understand it or grasp it." Now there was a man sent from God whose name was John,
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Speaker 2
just to make this interesting. This is not the same John as the author of just...
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Speaker 2
So here we're talking about who was clearly is going to be shown as John the Baptist later, but it's not the same as the author. So just to make things interesting, there's more than one John that we're dealing with here. So this man was sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness of martyrian, to bear witness of the light that all through him, and here we've got a little through him, meaning through John or through the light might believe.
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Speaker 2
Now he, that is John, was not the light, but he was sent to bear witness of the light, the true light, which gives light to every person coming into the world.
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Speaker 2
He was in the world and the world was made through him, but the world did not know or grasp him.
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Speaker 2
You want to take there from verse 11 and following?
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Speaker 1
Yeah. "He came to his own people and even they rejected him, but to all who believed in him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. So the word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.
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Speaker 1
John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, this is the one I was talking about when I said, someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me." So we're like 15 verses in and he's talked about the word and the light that gives life.
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Speaker 1
He's really building it up, but unless we've already read the book, unless we already know the story.
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Speaker 2
No, we don't actually know who he's talking about yet.
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Speaker 1
We don't know who he's talking about. He's building tension. He's building suspense.
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Speaker 2
He's not going to give us that until we get to the end of the prologue.
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Speaker 1
Yeah. "From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another, for the law was given through Moses, but God's unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.
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Speaker 1
No one has ever seen God, but the unique one who is himself God is near to the Father's heart.
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Speaker 1
He has revealed God to us." We get it at the very end.
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Speaker 2
The very end. I'm telling you all this, I'm talking about Jesus. This good news is about Jesus the Messiah. He doesn't introduce him as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus of the Son of David. This is Jesus, the promised Messiah, the anointed one who came from God, who came from the Father. So the way he introduces him, I think, is very important here.
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Speaker 1
And he introduces it just like the whole prologue, the whole beginning. It reads like the beginning of an epic poem, which is how Genesis 1 reads as well. But it's this huge buildup. He's using these really stark images of the Word before life existed. In the beginning, there was the Word, and then he goes to light and darkness. And he just is using all these images. It reads like an epic poem, which he is writing.
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Speaker 2
He wants to tell us a really important big story by the time we get done. Okay, so let's go back in a couple of minutes and we can sort of look at some of the ideas and themes that John is using. But before we do that, why don't we think about the chiasm for just a minute? Because we talked about that in the last episode, our podcast. So we want to go back and think about the chiasm for a minute. So we talked just to recap for maybe somebody's listening to this and didn't catch it. So a chiasm is like an X.
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Speaker 2
And if you look at an X, it's got, remember in math where you had the greater than and less than signs? I learned about the hungry mouth of the crocodile. That's the greater than sign. So this is like a lesser than sign pointing to a greater than sign coming together in the middle. I'm trying to picture that. So the main point is in the middle. And then you've got parallels on each side.
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Speaker 1
That kind of funnel you right to that. Yes.
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Speaker 2
So the parallels at the ends, if we were to think about the outside edges, so that would be the first part and the last part of the prologue, we've got the word who is and was God.
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Speaker 2
And then at the last part of it, we've got the son, your version put it differently than mine. I said, the only begotten son from the bosom of the father. Yours said a little bit differently, but it's the same idea.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, it's the same idea. I mean, in verse 18, mine says, "No one has ever seen God, but the unique one who is himself God, near to the father's heart." So at the beginning, you have the word that is with God, that is God. And at the end, you have the unique one who is God and is with God. So those are parallel ideas. He's using different words, but they're identical ideas.
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Speaker 2
It's the same idea.
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Speaker 1
And John will continue to do this with verse 3 and 16, 16, 17, and then you can kind of march it all the way in to the center.
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Speaker 2
He talks about creation, for example, and then he parallels that with the Torah of Moses, which of course begins with the story of creation.
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Speaker 2
He's got light coming out, and then he talks about that later on the glory in verse 14, so God's light in Genesis and then God's glory later on. And it just sort of... Oh, and then he parallels John the Baptist testifying of Jesus. And this sort of brings us into the center, which is that point of the X in the middle that is kind of what John...
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Speaker 2
It's not that the rest of it's unimportant, it's all important, but this is a part he really wants us to catch as the middle. So what would you say is that middle part of the chiasm or the X here?
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Speaker 1
So most scholars should say it's in verse 12, but specifically the second half of verse 12. If you're really getting into the chiasm and where he's putting things, it's 12b. But the whole verse says, "But to all who believe in him and accept him," which is one of the big themes in John, since we're here, let's just point that out.
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Speaker 1
John is all about belief. We talked about that last episode that... I almost said last class period.
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Speaker 1
So I'm back in teaching mode.
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Speaker 2
Well, you can tell where we came from.
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Speaker 1
No, not last class period. Last episode, we talked about how at the end, he says his purpose, his purpose is that we might believe, that the reader might believe.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, that's the whole point of the book for us to believe in his name.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, he's setting up that theme. You will see every person in the book of John that Jesus interacts with, he's pushing towards belief.
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Speaker 1
So all who believe in him, accept him, he gave the right to become children of God. That is the key climax, that's the center of the chiasm, that we have the right to become children of God.
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Speaker 2
Which is an amazing promise.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. It's significant.
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Speaker 1
God has finally come, the one who is God, has come to live as a human so that we can be his children. So we can have life, we can have salvation.
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Speaker 2
And it should put us in mind, since we're in all of this creation language in the beginning and everything was made through him and we've got God's light, God let there be light.
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Speaker 2
It should put us in mind that when God creates Adam and Eve, he is making them as images of himself. So this is what John is going back to. And you could even read it to say, so I'm interpreting a little bit here obviously, but he's giving us the right to become children of God. That is, God created us at the beginning in creation. We were his images, of course that's been lost, right? Through sin and through everything that's happened in this world. And so somebody has to come and make us images of God again, make us children of God again. And that's what Jesus is doing. It's through Jesus that true humanity, what humanity was meant to be in the Garden of Eden is restored. It's through Jesus that we can become God images, God reflectors again. It's through Jesus that we become new new atoms, new Eves, because Jesus himself is also the new humanity and the new person that brings all of this together. It's because of him that we have the right to even join in it.
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Speaker 1
It's
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Speaker 2
pretty exciting.
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Speaker 1
That's good stuff. I know you briefly touched on this when you were talking about the chiasm in verses 6, 7 and 8. And then again later in verses 15, we're talking about John the Baptist. Right.
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Speaker 1
The thing that I wanted to pull out, yes, those parallel each other, but in both instances, the author's using John the Baptist. John the writer is using John the Baptist. She doesn't really identify as the Baptist.
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Speaker 1
In this part of the gospel, John is being identified as testifying about who Jesus is.
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Speaker 2
Yes. We don't actually get the baptizing part until wow, verse 26. Does he even talk about baptizing before that? I think that's the first time that we actually get this identification. Verse 24, "Why are you baptizing?" He says, "Well, I baptize with water."
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Speaker 1
Yeah. So I'm calling him John the Baptist just so that everyone understands which John I'm talking about, but the text isn't identifying him as a baptizer. Yeah, it's a little more ambiguous here. As someone testifying of who Jesus is.
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Speaker 1
And that is also a key theme. We'll see it all throughout John, but interacting, having that encounter with God, and then testifying about who Jesus is to other people. And so you see those parallel ideas in verse 6, 7, and 8, that God sent John the Baptist to testify about the light. And then in verse 15, John testified of him when he shouted to the crowds. And then he says, he affirms who Jesus is. So you have that build up too. He's kind of... John the author is putting that in the prologue, but it's one of the themes that will go throughout the book.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. And I think there's a couple of points we can make about that that are helpful as we go through the book of John, that word to bear testimony or to be a witness, the root of all those different phrases in the Greek is martir, or we would say a martyr.
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Speaker 2
So someone who... This would be someone who comes into court and is supposed to testify about what they've seen, but the trick is, right, if they don't tell the truth, then they're subject to the death penalty.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
So a martyr is someone who's supposed to tell the truth on pain of death. And of course, later, as you look through the Christian story, then we start talking about martyrs who gave up their lives for truth. So we've changed it a little bit from the meaning a little bit, but it still is that idea that John, who is the witness, believes this so firmly that he's willing to give his life for it. And in fact, John the Baptist does give his life for his work and for testifying to the truth. And ultimately, John the Author also is a witness.
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Speaker 2
In history, he's,
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Speaker 2
at least in church tradition, they try to put him to death in a boiling pot of oil, which doesn't work. So they send him out to the Isle of Patmos. But he puts his life on the line for this. And in his first epistle, he wants to talk about this a lot. He says, "These are things that we've seen, that we've touched, that we've handled." So yeah, I invite people to go and take a look at 1 John, which is the first epistle of John, just kind of read his little prologue there, because he likes to do these little prologues. And it's all about how you can believe.
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Speaker 2
And so again, it's the same theme, what they're saying, because they saw themselves, they're eyewitnesses. And they just want us to know, we have every reason to believe that what Jesus said and did and his purposes were all true.
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Speaker 1
And I think it just speaks to the power of a testimony.
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Speaker 1
And there's a lot of times, I think, as we're talking about Bible stories that we'll get into, like you just did with this
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Speaker 1
word martyr and what it means, because language evolves and changes. And we have the dictionary definition, but every word carries another meaning. It carries a whole slew of emotional meanings that we attach to words. I'm remembering something from English class, connotation.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, connotation. The denotation, if I remember this correctly, what it actually means, and the connotation, all the feelings and emotions and sort of context that goes along with it.
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Speaker 1
So if I said to a described a 14-year-old boy, and I was like, "Well, he is very trim and very slim." You would picture it a certain way. But if I said he was skinny and scrawny, that is a negative connotation. So even though in the dictionary, if I'm looking at those words, they all mean essentially the same thing, but the connotating meaning is quite different.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, so sometimes we'll get into those words, like martyr, that we associate now with, definitely with death. I mean, when I think about a martyr, it's, "Well, Stephen was the first martyr." He died. He died. And so to be a martyr, you have to die. But when the Bible talks about it, it's like you said, speaking the truth about what you have seen and heard and the power of that. I mean, that's what John the author is doing in this book. This is his testimony. He's testifying of who Jesus is in this gospel and has transformed countless lives. Yeah.
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Speaker 2
And sometimes Christians will use that term testimony today. Every Christian should have a testimony.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
Right. And sometimes we use that in different ways. Some Christian groups that I've been a part of, it's kind of this, "Oh, let's have this set story that you can tell every time about how you came to know Jesus and that sort of thing," which I think is not a bad thing.
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Speaker 1
No.
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Speaker 2
But I think it's helpful for us to remember, testimony is nothing more than, "Here's what we've seen. Here's what we've experienced for ourselves." We're just telling what we've experienced.
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Speaker 1
You'll hear people say, to your point, that in certain circles, a lot of times when we put someone up front and we're like, "Tell your testimony.
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Speaker 1
We want some crazy story. We want Paul on the road to demand." We want a crazy story. But every...
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Speaker 2
Well, usually what we wanna hear is all the bad stuff and then the last minute, "Oh, Jesus turned it around."
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Speaker 1
And then, now I'm different.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1
But which leads a lot of people to thinking they don't have a testimony. And like you're saying,
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Speaker 1
one of the things that John, I think, is trying to teach us in this book is that testifying of who God is and what He has done is powerful and it's transformative for the world around you. That's right. So if you have encountered God, then you have a testimony because it's about who God has been in your life. And we'll see that over and over in the book.
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Speaker 2
And it may be as simple as, "I grew up knowing the Bible and reading about it, and over time, I just slowly settled into, "Okay, I love Jesus and here's what I've learned over the years." Or it might be, "Wow, I grew up and never knew anything about God." And two years ago, I had this experience where I was introduced to Jesus and, "Man, everything's been amazing," or "Things have changed in some way since then." Or it may be as simple as, "I was having a rough day and somebody spoke words of kindness to me the other day, and I felt like God was encouraging me in that." Those are all testimonies and they're all valid. It's what we've experienced and how God might be at work in our lives in different ways.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, there's a big emphasis in the prologue as well as the whole book on testimony and testifying about who God is and the things that he's done.
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Speaker 2
And later on, we'll see that Jesus himself is the ultimate testimony because he's the one who is the Word, the Logos. He's the one who was with God and is the only one who knows the Father.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
So he's the one who has to bring the testimony of the Father because humans don't understand. So he's come to testify or to make known what he's seen and what he's experienced. Here's what my Father is really like so that we can know that too. That's an important thrust of the book. And John sets that up beautifully here in the prologue.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, I was just gonna say he puts him...
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Speaker 1
He starts... I mean, just the first five verses, well even just the first verse, when he starts the text, you noted it as you were reading it, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." And it takes you... I mean, if you've read the Bible or even heard about the Bible, most people are going to think immediately of Genesis 1. Yeah. So he's taking you all the way back.
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Speaker 2
To the very beginning.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, to the foundation of the world.
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Speaker 2
In the beginning.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, so he starts by identifying the Word and then he gets even more blatant in verse 3 because he says, "God created everything through him and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was made and his life brought light to everyone." So he's marching us down a series of images where you have the Word that creates. So if you didn't get it from in the beginning, he's getting you... not wanting you to miss that he's linking this back to Genesis.
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Speaker 2
He is the Creator.
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Speaker 1
So you have the Word who creates and gives life and that life brought light.
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Speaker 2
And what's the first thing in Genesis? God spoke, let there be light.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
And of course, if he speaks, there's clearly a word. So we'll get into this a little more in the membership section when we have some more time to deal with this. But John is setting up all these images of creation.
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Speaker 2
And also he's using a Greek thought as well, Greek and Roman thought, which is this idea that the gods... Not the Jewish God here, not the God of the Bible, but just the gods and their understanding.
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Speaker 2
Somehow in creation, there's some kind of force, there's some kind of intermediary they might talk about. There's different ways to look at this. But they would think that a logos is some kind of go-between between creation and humanity. And we have to have that to even understand what God is. So John is really doing some smart things here in terms of for a Jewish audience, taking them right back to the beginning of Torah, to the beginning of the story to creation. But then he's doing the same thing in a very different way for his Greek and Roman audiences and saying, "This applies here too." You think there's some kind of creation, you think there's some kind of creative force out there that has to mediate between the ultimate gods and between humankind. Well, that's true in a way. Let me introduce you. His name would be Jesus.
[00:25:26:00 - 00:25:39:06]
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. I like the way he is appealing to both cultures there. And he's like, "You have this little grain of truth. You kind of understand that heaven and earth need an intermediary,
[00:25:40:11 - 00:25:47:21]
Speaker 1
but you've gotten it wrong. But let me show you the piece that you have right. I'm going to plug in to the God of the universe."
[00:25:47:21 - 00:25:55:15]
Speaker 2
He finds as much common ground as he can and then says, "Okay, well, let me explain a few things." I think it's brilliant.
[00:25:55:15 - 00:26:03:00]
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so I would encourage people, as you're reading through the book of John, if you see things about the word or the light...
[00:26:04:12 - 00:26:05:02]
Speaker 2
Or life.
[00:26:05:02 - 00:26:09:23]
Speaker 1
Or life. Life is going to be a huge thing. Word, life, light, and darkness.
[00:26:09:23 - 00:26:14:09]
Speaker 2
Think about eternal life in the book of John. Yeah, that's going to be a huge one.
[00:26:14:09 - 00:26:18:21]
Speaker 1
He's going to run these images throughout the... He's setting them up in the prologue, but he's going to run them throughout the whole text for sure.
[00:26:18:21 - 00:26:32:09]
Speaker 2
If you really wanted to have some fun with this, you could... If you're that type of person, you could pick a different colored pencil for each of these and just kind of run through the book and just mark each time you see this. And some of these will be a lot,
[00:26:33:15 - 00:26:36:00]
Speaker 2
particularly some of this light, life,
[00:26:37:07 - 00:26:44:16]
Speaker 2
yeah, so much your witness, believe. Yeah, we'll see a lot of these. There's other themes, but these are a few that are coming up here.
[00:26:44:16 - 00:26:55:00]
Speaker 1
So he starts us referencing Genesis, but if we're looking at the end of the prologue, it feels like he's referencing us somewhere else in the Old Testament.
[00:26:55:00 - 00:27:42:07]
Speaker 2
Yeah, right. So he's going to talk about Moses, for example. I think that's where you're headed, right? The law was given through Moses in verse 17. So law in Greek, it's nomos, but the Hebrew here would have been Torah, right? So he's using Greek, but he's referencing what Moses wrote, which is the beginning of the Bible, starting with Genesis. And he's saying, so Moses gives us instruction. Torah means instruction. I'm giving you instruction. This is where the world came from. I'm instructing you about that. This is things you need to do to live a happy life. And I'm thinking about several passages in Deuteronomy where Moses says, if you keep the fear of God, that is the love of God and the commands that I'm giving you today for your good, this is the way to live a happy life. So this is instruction through Moses.
[00:27:43:09 - 00:27:52:02]
Speaker 2
And John says, yeah, that's great. We need that. But grace and truth are coming through Jesus Christ.
[00:27:53:13 - 00:27:59:05]
Speaker 2
So everything that Moses has given us is wonderful, but it points us to something.
[00:28:00:08 - 00:28:22:00]
Speaker 2
So as we get into what the people ask John here, we're not really into that part, but what the people ask John is, are you the prophet? So Moses prophesies in Deuteronomy, well, one day God's going to send you a prophet like me. He's going to be a lawgiver. He's going to give you instruction. He's going to lead you out of some kind of slavery,
[00:28:23:04 - 00:28:54:12]
Speaker 2
into freedom of some kind. So look forward to that problem. And when he comes, listen to it. And John is setting this up for us to realize, oh, Jesus is the fulfillment of that prophecy of Moses. And Jesus is going to take everything Moses did and expand on it and give us the promised land, which is not just a piece of real estate, but is actually eternal life in John's gospel.
[00:28:55:15 - 00:29:01:05]
Speaker 2
Yeah. The ultimate bringing us back to recreation, restoration of what God made in the beginning.
[00:29:01:05 - 00:29:26:11]
Speaker 1
Yeah. I like the part where you were talking about Jesus kind of finishing Moses, like what Moses kind of started. Like Moses led the people out. Jesus is leading us somewhere. And he's definitely all throughout chapter one, you will see, and we'll talk about this, I'm sure in the future, but Moses and Elijah, you'll see them come up.
[00:29:27:14 - 00:29:36:14]
Speaker 1
And you see that even in the prologue with Moses, even before that in verse 14, when he first talks about the Word became human and made His home with us.
[00:29:36:14 - 00:29:37:19]
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah.
[00:29:37:19 - 00:29:38:07]
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
[00:29:38:07 - 00:29:42:12]
Speaker 2
This is a good thing to hit because we want to do this before we wrap it up. This is a really important point.
[00:29:42:12 - 00:29:51:21]
Speaker 1
He says, so we're in verse 14. So the Word became human and made His home among us, which I think we've talked about is like to tabernacle with us to like pitch His tent.
[00:29:52:22 - 00:30:11:11]
Speaker 2
Comes from the Greek, which there's variations, but it literally means to pitch your tent. So it puts us in mind of the ancient tabernacle when God wants to literally camp, literally put a tent but in the midst of His people who are all living in tents. He wants to be with Him.
[00:30:11:11 - 00:30:21:02]
Speaker 1
Which is kind of the whole system that God is trying to set up with Moses. Let's create this tabernacle so that I can be with you. I want to dwell with my people.
[00:30:22:17 - 00:30:28:10]
Speaker 1
So verse 14 goes on to say, "He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness." Well, pretty sure your verse uses different words which are better.
[00:30:30:01 - 00:30:31:12]
Speaker 2
I'm sorry, you were in for 14?
[00:30:31:12 - 00:30:35:08]
Speaker 1
14. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. Is that what you're saying?
[00:30:35:08 - 00:30:36:11]
Speaker 2
Mine says grace and truth there.
[00:30:36:11 - 00:30:39:14]
Speaker 1
Yeah, grace and truth. I think that links better maybe to Exodus.
[00:30:39:14 - 00:30:41:15]
Speaker 2
But anyway. Anyway, that's...
[00:30:41:15 - 00:30:48:10]
Speaker 1
I don't know if we'll get there, but I just want to say that. And then it goes on to say, "And we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son."
[00:30:48:10 - 00:30:48:15]
Speaker 2
Right.
[00:30:48:15 - 00:31:09:20]
Speaker 1
Which is also linking you to Exodus where Moses asks to see God. And if you know the story, God is like, "Well, I'll show you my back. You can't see the glory of my face. It would consume you." It's this whole ordeal that Moses has with God wanting to see God. And then John is saying,
[00:31:11:03 - 00:31:14:06]
Speaker 1
when he says in verse 18, "No one has ever seen God."
[00:31:15:10 - 00:31:22:13]
Speaker 1
He's including Moses in that. No one's ever seen the face of God, but we're seeing Him in Jesus Christ.
[00:31:22:13 - 00:31:33:23]
Speaker 2
Because Jesus is God. He's the Creator. He's one with Him. He can fully reveal the Father. Where even Moses could not quite fully reveal what he had not fully seen. He did the best he could.
[00:31:35:03 - 00:32:01:13]
Speaker 2
Yeah, there's a lot, certainly a lot there. One other thing we might want to mention there is this glory. It goes back to the idea of light, which she's already picked up on. So glory and light. Remember when the tabernacle is inaugurated, and then of course when Solomon builds the temple and he prays, God's glory, His light comes in like fire. And the people can hardly behold it. Or when Moses looks at God, he shines.
[00:32:02:14 - 00:32:13:09]
Speaker 2
So it's this light there, and God's glory fills the most holy place. And it's like this beautiful light and glory there.
[00:32:14:22 - 00:32:19:20]
Speaker 2
The other word there that we've actually mentioned a couple of times, and I'm not sure we've said specifically,
[00:32:20:23 - 00:32:26:02]
Speaker 2
is yours is put it a couple of different ways. Mine says in a couple of places, "The only begotten."
[00:32:27:15 - 00:32:31:11]
Speaker 2
Yours is the only, I think the only unique one or something.
[00:32:31:11 - 00:32:33:13]
Speaker 1
Well, at one point it says the unique one.
[00:32:34:19 - 00:32:37:11]
Speaker 1
I think sometimes my version uses the one and only.
[00:32:37:11 - 00:32:38:00]
Speaker 2
The one and only.
[00:32:38:00 - 00:32:39:19]
Speaker 1
But I don't know if it does in the prologue.
[00:32:39:19 - 00:32:42:11]
Speaker 2
So the Greek word there is monogenesis.
[00:32:43:11 - 00:32:49:20]
Speaker 2
And it's where famously we translate John 3 16. For God so love the world, he gave his
[00:32:50:22 - 00:32:57:08]
Speaker 2
monogenesis. "Only begotten son" is how most people have learned it from an older version.
[00:32:58:12 - 00:33:00:02]
Speaker 2
Mono is only.
[00:33:01:05 - 00:33:17:05]
Speaker 2
So yeah, this only one, again, you could take this different way. It's the only one that came from God or the only one that was there in the beginning with God. So John is just using this word and then sort of explaining it back in the other verses, in the earlier verses.
[00:33:18:18 - 00:33:40:06]
Speaker 2
That would put us in mind of Isaac, believe it or not, because God calls Isaac Abraham's monogenesis. That's in the Septuagint translation. That you're your only son. Well, he's not his only son. He's got Ishmael. Later he has other sons by Keturah after Sarah passes away.
[00:33:41:12 - 00:33:50:10]
Speaker 2
So it's not like he only has the one son, but he only has the one promised anointed son through whom all the families of the world will be blessed.
[00:33:51:11 - 00:33:57:16]
Speaker 1
And one son who becomes that symbol for Jesus and that when he is asked to sacrifice him.
[00:33:59:22 - 00:34:07:16]
Speaker 2
So that's a whole other discussion. I have thoughts about that. We'll do those when we actually get to that story in Genesis or some other time.
[00:34:08:21 - 00:34:14:06]
Speaker 2
So I think we've hit a number of important themes here as we wrap up this
[00:34:15:17 - 00:34:28:04]
Speaker 2
episode on the prologue. Any thoughts that come to your mind? How would you sort of summarize? I don't know if we can summarize any more succinctly than John did in these few verses.
[00:34:28:04 - 00:34:59:16]
Speaker 1
I think it's just worth noting that in the prologue, John does... And I think we've talked about this before. If all we had was the prologue, we really have all the information we need. We don't have all the details. We don't have all the signs and the discourses that John's gonna go on to give us, but we have the declaration that Jesus Christ was at the beginning. He was the word. Everything was created through him. Life comes from him. He has redeemed each one of us as children of God.
[00:34:59:16 - 00:35:01:00]
Speaker 2
Which is a restoration.
[00:35:01:00 - 00:35:16:01]
Speaker 1
Which is a restoration. He is going to finish what Moses couldn't finish. He's gonna bring that work to completion and we can be children of God. We have seen his glory. All the relevant information is in the prologue.
[00:35:16:01 - 00:35:42:17]
Speaker 2
Yeah, is there in the prologue. There you go. There's the book of John. We're done. And now we're gonna spend several months on the book of John, just going through piece by piece and really breaking down the signs, the stories, some of the theology that John gets into. What does he say about who Jesus is and who God is. It's gonna be a fun journey. I love the book of John and I think we're gonna have a great time together.
[00:35:42:17 - 00:35:45:05]
Speaker 1
All right. See you next time.
