John 1 - the Word

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River Church in St Neots is studying a chapter of John's Gospel each day beginning today, January 10th. As John has twenty-one chapters the process will finish on the last day of January. Rob McFarlane is planning to post a blog entry every day with some thoughts on the chapter. I thought I'd like to do the same thing because it's a really great idea.

Here's Rob's post on John 1. And here's mine...

First, a general comment. John's Gospel (and indeed every book in the Bible) is rich with depths of meaning. There are superficial things that everyone will see right away, and there are also deep things that are more difficult to dig out. But we each have our own personal approach to the book too, so to some degree each reader has a unique understanding of the content. What follows is just a note on what stood out as I read today - nothing more and nothing less.

I was deeply struck by the reminder that Yahshua (Jesus) is the voice of the Almighty. He is not his own voice, he is his Father's voice. He is the Word and was there right at the start (verse 1-2). Once, in discussion with some Pharisees about the washing of cups, Yahshua said that it's not what goes into a person's mouth that makes them unclean, but what comes out. It's not whether we drink from ritually clean cups or not, it's what comes out, what we say, because the source behind the words is contained in our hearts (Mark 7:1-23).

Yahshua is the Word spoken into the world by the Almighty. And the Father's heart is clean and holy, therefore so is the Word that he speaks. And 'the Word became human and lived among us' (John 1:14).

This is so awesome that we struggle to grasp the significance of it! Imagine if the Queen came to live in your home for the rest of her life; left Buckingham Palace, rang your doorbell, and came in to share your family home. How would you feel about that?

The King of the Universe came to live amongst us! How awesome is that! One of the first things he did on arrival here was to call people to follow him. He still does that. He still wants us to follow. But first we need to understand who he really is. If you want to know more about all of that read the rest of John 1.

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