Month: March 2009

We’re going through the New Testament looking at the doctrine of the Trinity and wanting to come to a deeper understanding of it. Right now, we are in the incredibly rich prologue of John and we are looking at every verse so that in the end, we can have a beautiful mosaic of what it is that John has been trying to tell us. Tonight, we are going to be looking at John 1:9.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

Jesus is described as the true light. Note that this does not mean that there are no other lights. Jesus is unique in his nature as light. We could say that he is the source of all light. A friend of mine has a t-shirt that tells us to be like the moon and reflect the sun. The play on words is obvious and so is the implication. We Christians do not have light on our own, but are simply reflectors and we are to live our lives so that the world sees Christ reflected.

This light lights every man. What does this mean? Christian philosopher Ron Nash relates this to epistemology saying that it is by Christ that all knowledge is possible. In a sense, I would say that is true, but I do not think John had epistemology in mind when he wrote the text. I believe he was speaking more along the lines of a push for salvation.

Does this mean universalism? No. I believe the light is shining in darkness for all to see. The trouble is that we do not respond to the light. We do not want to come into the light lest our evil deeds be exposed and we all know what this is like. There are many sins I believe we all have that will be more fully known when we get to eternity. They are of course, forgiven, but there are those sins still.

Yes. Christ is lighting every man and his light is there for all to respond to, but man is not willing to respond often. If he responds, Christ is there and is willing to offer salvation and forgiveness. We Christians need to remember when we share this with an unbelieving world that that forgiveness is there often as we too often don’t realize the wonder of God’s forgiveness in our lives.

He is also coming into the world. This is spoken of from the perspective of the Baptist. The Baptist was there doing his ministry, but stand back. The true light is about to show up. You thought the Baptist was something? He’s only a prequel. Wait until you see what God has coming next.

That is in fact what happened. Christ came and he came willingly into the world. As we go further into this text, we will see what happened when he came into the word, including when we get to my favorite verse in this passage, which I will let you know about definitely.

For now, the light has come. Respond accordingly.

Sorry I’m late for all who are staying up on this Friday night wondering where the blog is. I had a friend over as we had to watch last night’s Smallville together that we missed last night. For those who haven’t seen it, an awesome episode. For now, let’s get to the blog for tonight. Readers know that we’re going through the Bible looking for clues to the Trinity. We’re in the prologue of John and tonight, we look at verse 8.

He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

This verse has tie-ins with the one before and the one after but as I said last night, we are going through these simply so we can grasp the prologue as a whole. John the Baptist is a character that we would call a foil in literature. His purpose in the plot is to tell us about the main character who is the Word and the Light. 

This is something for those of us who do any sort of evangelism need to keep in mind. It is easy to think the story is all about you, when it really isn’t. I do believe God shares many gifts with those who play a good part in the story, but the main role is to be played by him. He gets all the glory in the end. The actors on stage do not serve to point to themselves but to honor the author whose work they are performing.

This is a danger we can put many in. We can see many of our favorite authors as practically infallable. Our pastors are usually seen as beyond question. This is a great error we need to get past. I don’t care how good an apologist your favorite author might be or how spiritual your favorite preacher might be. He is not infallable. This is going to be the case even for this blog. I state things because I believe those things to be true and I wouldn’t put them up unless I thought I was, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily right. I can make mistakes. If I make one, then it is up to my critics and friends to point it out.

There is a saying that I believe comes from tToism that says that a finger is great for pointing to the moon, but woe to him who mistakes the finger for the moon. There are many things that can reveal God to us, but woe to him who mistakes the things for the end. This can even happen with Scripture. I have seen people who speak of the Word in John 1:1 and think that’s talking about the Bible.

The Bible is the most important book we have, it is something we should treasure and cherish, I do believe it is infallable and inerrant, but it is certainly not God. We are not to worship the Bible. We study the Bible not for the sake of it but for the sake of knowing its author. 

Keep your eye on the light. Let us make sure we are not distracted by anything that keeps us from the first thing, knowing Christ.

We shall look at the next verse tomorrow.

Hi friends! It’s been a really good night here as I’ve had a good class and I’m ready to come and write the blog. As I start, I realize I could be interrupted in the middle also as it’s Thursday night and good blog readers know that means it’s a Smallville night. Of course, you all won’t see any interruptions. Let’s continue our look for now at the opening prologue of John. Tonight, we look at verse 7

He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.

The text when speaking of “he”, for those who do not remember last night, is talking about John the Baptist. We looked at the concern that John the Baptist could have been a figure that was blown beyond what he was. This is not to deny John the Baptist had an important role. He did. However, we must remember where his role ended and not make it greater than it was. He himself would not want that.

John is described as a witness. The word for witness is where we get our word martyr, someone who dies for the cause they believe in, from. This is because the Christian community was killed so often in the sharing of their faith that the word eventually took on their added meaning. Indeed, John the Baptist was killed because he testified of righteousness.

John came to testify. That was his whole mission. He did not life his life to draw attention to himself. He lived his life to point to the light. In so doing, he did draw attention to himself, but that was not his goal. Those who do live a life for Christ will be noticed in the marketplace and they will receive some honor and glory for that. The question is what will they do with that honor and glory? Will they keep it for themselves or pass it on. As one who frequently receives compliments and praise from others, and I do appreciate it as it is needed, it is something I find I have to constantly remind myself of. I am not the end. He is.

Why does a light need testimony? If you were blind, would you know that a light had been turned on? That is how blind mankind is in the state that they are in. They do not even realize that they do not see. Jesus makes this clear in John 9 at the end when he talks to the man born blind that he healed. 

John comes also so that men might believe. Believe what? Believe in the light. Of course, we will see more on this as we go through the gospel as belief is a constant theme that plays out in the gospel of John. For now, we need to focus on the light and see what it is we are to see.

Some of you might be wondering why in this prologue I’m touching on verses that don’t directly affect the deity of Christ. The reason is that I believe that these verses give us the surrounding context and when we put them all together, we will get a beautiful picture. 

We shall continue the look through the prologue of John tomorrow.

We’re continuing our look at the New Testament’s witness to the doctrine of the Trinity. For a little over a week, we have been in the prologue of the book of John spending at least one day on each verse. (We’re not even to my favorite part of it yet.) Today, we’re going to be looking at John 1:6.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.

The gospel of John is the gospel where John the Baptist is not identified as the Baptist. He is simply called John, which is interesting as that is the name of the author of the book. Our writer tends to refer to himself as “The disciple whom Jesus loved.” It could be John is wanting to distinguish himself more from the other John, a well-known one.

Indeed, John the Baptist was well-known and we find this situation rising up in the New Testament.  Consider Acts 18 first.

²⁴Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. ²⁵He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. ²⁶He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

And then Acts 19:

 ¹While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples ²and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” 
      They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” ³So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” 
      “John’s baptism,” they replied.

 ⁴Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” ⁵On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.⁶When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. ⁷There were about twelve men in all.

Already, there was a danger that people would follow John the Baptist and maybe even think of him as the Messiah. The apostle John could very well be countering that. That would explain why he has “man” in John 1:6 without the article. John is not “the man.” He is a man. He is a man who is sent from God and being sent from God, he has a purpose from God.

In saying this, we cannot deny the importance of John the Baptist. He had an important role to play in the life of Christ. However, this would be like praising the scribe who wrote a book rather than the author of the book. It would be like complimenting the waiter for doing an excellent job with your meal instead of acknowledging the cook.

The Baptist comes from God. The one we see truly coming though is different in that not only does he come from the Father, but he has the same nature as the Father. John the Baptist always sought in Scripture to humble himself before Christ realizing his superior. Let’s make sure we do the same.

We’re going through the New Testament now and seeking a Trinitarian understanding of Scripture. Just recently I had a skeptic tell me that he sees the Trinity as a rather meaningless doctrine. As a strong Trinitarian, I am just utterly stunned by that. Sadly, I think the church has given reason to think that. We need to have an understanding of the Trinity in more than something to argue over Jehovah’s Witnesses with, but a living reality in our lives that affects us every day.

We’ve been going through the gospel of John and today, we’re at the fifth verse of the first chapter.

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Light. It’s one of the favorite words John uses. Lest we think it’s just a favorite word, he can pack much meaning into it. Consider this usage from 1 John 1:5.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

This doesn’t mean that every usage of the word “light” means that we automatically put in the word “God.” However, we should pay attention when John decides to mention light. When Jesus says he is the light in John 8, it could mean much more than a physical light shining in darkness.

What is this darkness anyway? It’d have to be us. We are said to live in darkness and not only that, we love it. It could be that if we were honest with ourselves, we’re more like bugs that when the bright light is shone, have to scurry and crawl away in order to get to a place that is dark. We all know it’s often easier to do that which we ought not to do than that which we ought to do.

Jesus is the light. He’s the light that reveals our sin. He is sinless. We are the sinful ones. The problem for us is not that we do not see the light. The problem is that we do not want the light. As John later says:

“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, andmen loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

A lot of times, we find ourselves surprised when we are tempted with sinful thoughts. Why? We should find ourselves surprised that we’re not tempted with more sinful thoughts. Do we think ourselves too good that we cannot be capable of such evil that we sometimes think of?

The second part of this verse tells us who will win the struggle though. The light shines in darkness and the darkness does not understand it. It literally means the darkness could not overcome it. It’s the same way. You do not throw darkness into a room and get rid of light. Light comes into places and gets rid of darkness.

This is what Christ alone can do. Because he is fully God, he is able to face the darkness. When Christ touched the leper, he was not made unclean. His cleanliness rather made the leper clean. Christ’s light is the light that shines in the darkness. The darkness cannot overtake it. Every time the death of Christianity has been proclaimed, the body keeps leaping out of the casket. Voltaire said the Bible would be a forgotten book within 100 years. Within 50 years the Geneva Bible Society bought his house and used it to print Bibles. God has a sense of humor.

We shall look at the next verse tomorrow.

We’ve been going through the New Testament looking for understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity and right now, we’re in the prologue of John. I plan to spend at least one day on every verse in this prologue as the whole gives us a brilliant look at who Jesus is. For an excellent look at this passage, I also recommend Spiros Zodhiates’s book, “Was Christ God?”

Today, we’re looking at John 1:4.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

The word for life here is not bios but rather what is transliterated as zooee. Bios refers to physical life mainly, but John is wanting us to see something deeper. He is wanting us to see the kind of life that is in the Word.

Note something. Life is in the Word. It is not given to the Word. It is not something external to the Word that the Word happens to possess. It is not something that is with the Word. It is in the Word. It is inherent to the nature of the Word.

How do we explain the existence of life? The Christian has a simple answer. God. God possesses life in himself and we partake of that life by grace. However, I also believe he means much more than physical life. He is speaking of spiritual life too as we are dead in transgressions and sins apart from him.

That’s why the second time he emphasizes the nature of this life by having it be THE life with the article. Apart from Christ, there is no life. There is no salvation apart from him. It is certainly not a politically correct statement to make, but it is definitely a biblically correct one.

The life is light also. It’s the light of men. It is by Christ that all can see. It is interesting that the creation account has light being mentioned very early in the accounts. Again, John is giving us a parallel of this and while the Genesis account describes the physical creation, John wants us to see beyond the physical creation to the spiritual realities that the physical is a pointer to.

G.K. Chesterton once said that God is like the sun. You cannot look at it, but without it, you cannot look at anything else. For Chesterton, God made sense of everything else and while one cannot see God, it is by God that one can see everything else.

This would also apply to those who are trapped in darkness. John points to the light while at the same time realizing that the reason that light needs to be emphasized is that man is in darkness. The reason the life of Christ needs to be emphasized is that man is dead in transgressions and sins.

And of course, both of these being in the Word point to the unique deity of the Word. The Word does not possess life so much as he is life. The pslamist could say that the Lord is his light, but John comes and says the Word is his light.

We shall look at verse 5 tomorrow.

We’re going through the New Testament looking for understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ve been looking at the prologue of John and right now, we’re on the third verse. This prologue is crucial for us to study in that John writes in a poetic detail as it were on the awesomeness of who Christ and ties it back to the creation. As I said earlier, we are looking at the third verse which is as follows:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Yesterday, I made the statement that John will often repeat things in either a synonymous form with different words, or he will repeat the same point in a negative format. Last night, we saw one of the cases where he gives a synonymous case with different words and for tonight’s blog, we have the opposite.

Greg Koukl has an argument based on this verse that he calls “The deity of Christ: Case closed.” I would love to have a link up to the site, but at the moment, it seems to be down so I am unable to provide a direct link. I recommend that those who are interested go to STR.org from my links here and do a search for the article.

Koukl contends that this is the verse to go to in this prologue because if we go to John 1:1, we will simply wind up debating John 1:1 and whether it should be “God” or “a god” and most of us don’t know Greek well enough and so we will simply be arguing based on what we have heard. Now if you’re a Greek scholar and you can argue such, do so. More power to you.

I happen to agree with Koukl, however, and in fact have used this argument against Mormons as well in arguing for the identity of Christ. The verse states that all things were made by the Word. It then states the negative that without the Word, nothing was made that has been made. Simply put, if something was made, it was brought into being through the Word.

So what I did with the Mormons in using this argument was to take a sheet of paper and draw a line down it and put on one side “made” and the other “not made.” I thien asked that they tell me things that go into the made category.

I was told all manner of things from creation and that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to go. Whether your inquirer names the universe itself or a number of things in the universe, put it down. My caution would be to avoid absolutes that are of the nature of God such as beauty, truth, logic, morality, etc.

We then have left the category of things not made and in that the Mormons put God. (Although I would say that in Mormonism god is a created being.) For the Christian theist, this would also include all attributes that belong to his absolute nature. 

Now for the question of Christ. Which category do you put him in? He’s one or the other.

Let’s suppose he belongs in the category of things made. Let’s put that idea into the verse. “Through Jesus, Jesus was made. Without Jesus, Jesus was not made.” Koukl would ask if that makes any sense. If you think it doesn’t, you’re not alone. It’s nonsensical. If it doesn’t make sense to say Jesus was made, we have only one category left.

Conclusion: Jesus was not made and is therefore seen to be somehow in the absolute nature of God. Jesus is an eternal being who has never come into existence at any point in time. We will get more on how this relates to the incarnation in John 1:14 as we do agree that that began at a point in time.

We shall look at the fourth verse tomorrow.

We’re going through the New Testament and we’re looking for clues to understanding the Trinity. It’s my contention that if the church is going to be the force it was meant to be, it will have to be a force that has more than just nice experiences and good morals. We need hard truth. We need answers to the big questions people are asking. Our starting place will be the doctrine of God and when considering the doctrine of God, we need the doctrine that sets Christianity apart, the Trinity. We’ve been going through John 1 and spent the past three days on the first verse alone. Right now, we’re moving on down to John 1:2. That’s right. We’re going to tackle a whole verse today!

He was with God in the beginning.

There were three aspects I pointed out that we find about the Word in John 1:1. The first was the relation of the Word to the space-time creation. The Word was there in the beginning which means that there is no basis for the doctrine of Arius that states “There was a time when the Son was not.” (Of course, John hasn’t said the Word was the Son yet, but we will get there.) As long as there has been anything, there has been the Son.

The second was the relationship of the Word to God. If the Word is eternal, there has to be some relationship that the Word has to God who is definitely eternal in Jewish thought. We learned that since the Word has always been, the Word has always been with God. Thus, there was a distinction between the Word and God.

The third was the relationship of the Word to itself. We found that the Word has the nature of God. Some of you might be wondering how the Word can be distinct from God and still be God. The answer is that we have to understand our terms. The term “God” normally would make the Jewish person think of the Father. The Word cannot be identical to the Father and still be personally distinct from the Father. However, the Word can have the full nature of God and still be distinct from the Father. This is the doctrine of the Trinity in fact when we bring in the Holy Spirit. 

So what about this verse?

I believe that what is going on in this verse is that John is wanting us to see all of these important characteristics again. John has a tendency to say the same thing twice but say it in different ways. Sometimes he’ll say it by repeating a synonymous version in a different way. Sometimes he’ll do it by giving the negative counterpart to what he has just said.

I believe that is what is going on in this verse. John wants us to know how important it is that we grasp the doctrine of the Word. Let’s look at each part. The Greek reads “The same was in (the) beginning with the  God. ”

The same: Ontology. I find it interesting that he doesn’t use the word “he” specifically. It’s like John doesn’t want to reveal too much too soon.

was in the beginning: The relation of the Word to the space-time continuum.

with God: The relationship of the Word to God.

Each of these is mentioned again in this verse which leads to the question. If John thought the doctrine was so important to understand and God saw it so important that it was stated twice this way, why aren’t we taking it more seriously?

We’ve been going through the New Testament trying to get a deeper understanding of the Trinity. We’ve just recently started the gospel of John and the past two nights, we’ve been covering John 1:1. We’re not even done with this verse as there is so much to mine in it and we are just getting the tip of the iceberg. Nevertheless, we shall continue tonight with a look at the third part of John 1:1.

and the Word was God

This is where the controversy lies. John 1:1a tells us about the relationship of the Word to the creation. John 1:1b tells us about the relationship of the Word to God. John 1:1c tells us about the relationship of the Word to itself. That is, what is the nature of the Word. (And in saying itself, I do not mean to deny the personality of the Word but that comes up more later.)

Most noted in this passage is the Jehovah’s Witness translation that the Word was a god. Bruce Metzger has rightly said that if the Jehovah’s Witnesses took this seriously and believe that the Word is ontologically a god, then they are polytheists. 

Julius Mantey, another Greek scholar wrote to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in complaint about how they were using his Greek grammar to justify their translation. (For those who don’t know, their Bible is called the New World Translation. ) He was not pleased with their response which simply implied that their position was just as valid as his. Mantey has also stated that 99.9% of scholars in the world who study Greek disagree with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

What is going on in John 1:1c is that the passage is meant to tell us about the nature of the Word. Greek is an inflected language. You can say “dog bites man” or “man bites dog” and the sentence means the same thing. It’s not determined by word order but by the endings that go on the nouns.

The subject of a Greek sentence is the nominative and there is normally only one, but there are rare times that we have what is called a predicate nominative where there are two words that are nominative in one sentence. In that case, one is meant to tell us what the subject of the sentence is and the other is to tell us something about that subject in regards to its nature. Normally, one tells the difference by which one has the article and which one doesn’t. In this case, the word “Word” has the article. (Keep in mind what we said also about how John 1:1a says “in the beginning” instead of “in a beginning” in the New World Translation even though the word “arche” for beginning doesn’t have an article.)

The other word that’s nominative in this case is “God.” What this means is that the Word has the nature of the God he is with. Had they both had the article, it would have been modalism. John’s language is precise. He wants the reader to understand who the Word is and this would have been shocking. This one who is with God partakes of the divine identity. The Word is as much God as God is.

As we go through, we’ll see more of the difference this makes.

We’re going through the New Testament looking for a deeper understanding of the Trinity. Right now, we’re in one of my favorite parts, the prologue of John. It has been said that the words to this prologue deserved to be written in gold and we are mining them now for any nuggets. Tonight, we continue by looking at the second part of John 1:1.

and the Word was with God

Last night, we discussed how the whole of the prologue of John is meant to tell us about the Word. This alone is fascinating as John 1:1a indicates a creation story is starting and yet the subject of that creation story is not God but is rather the Word. We brought out how the Jew would have understood this as the memra of God. let us continue down that path and see what the next section can tell us about the Word.

In this one, we find that the Word was with God. Note the use of that word “was” again. John is still sticking with the temporal distinction that we saw in John 1:1a. John 1:1a tells us the relationship of the Word to time and ultimately to the creation. John 1:1b tells us the relationship of the Word to God.

The use of  “was” should clue us in to the fact that the relationship of the Word to time and thus to the creation has been going on as long as his relationship to God has been going on. (To be fair, we could say its relationship to God as a personal pronoun has not been used of the Word yet.)

Note that John also speaks of the Word. He has something specific in mind. This is not a word from God. It is the Word. If God has spoken other words before, then it could be that John is wanting us to realize that this is the Word par excellence. If there is any Word that should be heeded, it is this one. 

The Word is also with God. The word for with used indicates a face to face relationship which is showing a personal nature to the Word. The Jewish mind at this point could very well be thinking about Wisdom and indeed, I would hope we are all thinking about Wisdom in Proverbs 8. It is that passage beginning in verse 22 that we see Wisdom being, as it were, an eternal companion to God in the act of creating. 

I believe John is pointing to that at this point and letting the readers know that the Memra of the Lord and the Wisdom of the Lord are one and the same. They are both seen in this one who is referred to as the Word. 

The Word is incredibly intimate with God in being with him. Before anything else has happened on the scene, the Word was with God. As we continue tomorrow, we will reach one of the most debated points in the gospel of John and see what it tells us about the Word.