C. S. Lewis wrote these words in his classic book Mere Christianity: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about [Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool; you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to” (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1960, pp. 40–41).^[1]

It is foundational to the Christian faith and crucial to your personal faith that you understand and embrace the truth that Jesus Christ is fully God.

“A Savior not quite God is a bridge broken at the farther end.”

John Mitchell put it (An Everlasting Love [Multnomah Press], pp. 13, 14), “If Jesus is not God, then we are sinners without a Savior…. If Jesus were only a man, then He died for His own sins. And we are still in our sins. We have no hope.”

“In him was life, and that life was the light of men. {5} The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not under-stood it.”

In a great piece of music the composer often begins by stating the themes which he is going to elaborate in the course of the work.  That is what John does here.  Life and light are two of the great basic words on which the Fourth Gospel is built up.

They are two of the main themes which it is the aim of the gospel to develop and to expound.

1:4  In him was life. Light and darkness are recurring themes in John’s Gospel. God is light (1 John 1:5) while Satan is “the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). People love either the light or the darkness, and this love controls their actions (John 3:16–19).

Life is used 36 times. What are the essentials for human life? There are at least four: light (if the sun went out, everything would die), air, water, and food.

Jesus is all of these! He is the Light of life and the Light of the world (John 8:12). He is the “Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2).

By His Holy Spirit, He gives us the “breath of life” (John 3:8; 20:22), as well as the Water of life (John 4:10, 13–14; 7:37–39).

Finally, Jesus is the Living Bread of Life that came down from heaven (John 6:35ff). He not only has life and gives life, but He is life (John 14:6).

Those who believe on Christ are the “sons of light” (John 12:35–36).

You would think that blind sinners would welcome the light, but such is not always the case. The coming of the true light brought conflict as the powers of darkness opposed it.

A literal translation of John 1:5 reads, “And the light keeps on shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it or understood it.”

The Greek verb can mean “to overcome” or “to grasp, to understand.” Throughout the Gospel of John, you will see both attitudes revealed: people will not understand what the Lord is saying and doing and, as a result, they will oppose Him. John 7–12 records the growth of that opposition, which ultimately led to the crucifixion of Christ.

Whenever Jesus taught a spiritual truth, His listeners interpreted it in a material or physical way. The light was unable to penetrate the darkness in their minds.

This was true when He spoke about the temple of His body (John 2:19–21), the new birth (John 3:4), the living water (John 4:11), eating His flesh (John 6:51ff), spiritual freedom (John 8:30–36), death as sleep (John 11:11–13), and many other spiritual truths.

Satan strives to keep people in the darkness, because darkness means death and hell, while light means life and heaven.

This fact helps explain the ministry of John the Baptist (John 1:6–8…more on him at another time). John was sent as a witness to Jesus Christ, to tell people that the Light had come into the world.

The nation of Israel, in spite of all its spiritual advantages, was blind to their own Messiah! The word witness is a key word in this book; John uses the noun 14 times and the verb 33 times.

John the Baptist was one of many people who bore witness to Jesus, “This is the Son of God!” Alas, John the Baptist was martyred and the Jewish leaders did nothing to prevent it.

Why did the nation reject Jesus Christ? Because they “knew Him not.” They were spiritually ignorant.

Jesus is the “true Light”—the original of which every other light is a copy—but the Jews were content with the copies.

They had Moses and the Law, the temple and the sacrifices; but they did not comprehend that these “lights” pointed to the true Light who was the fulfillment, the completion, of the Old Testament religion.

As you study John’s Gospel, you will find Jesus teaching the people that He is the fulfillment of all that was typified in the Law:

• It was not enough to be born a Jew; they had to be born again, born from above (John 3).
• He deliberately performed two miracles on the Sabbath to teach them that He had a new rest to give them (John 5; 9).
• He was the satisfying manna (John 6) and the life-giving Water (John 7:37–39).
• He is the Shepherd of a new flock (John 10:16), and He is a new Vine (John 15).

But the people were so shackled by religious tradition that they could not understand spiritual truth. Jesus came to His own world that He had created, but His own people, Israel, could not understand Him and would not receive Him.

They saw His works and heard His words. They observed His perfect life. He gave them every opportunity to grasp the truth, believe, and be saved.

Jesus is the way, but they would not walk with Him (John 6:66–71). He is the truth, but they would not believe Him (John 12:37ff). He is the life, and they crucified Him!

The Light is still shining! Have you personally received the Light and become a child of God?^[2]

Creation needs to receive life from the Word—for he is the source of life. Christ gives physical life to all. But he also gives eternal life to all those who believe in him. The Greek term used for “life” is zoe; it is always used to describe the divine, eternal life in the Gospel of John.

Jesus used this specific term during the Last Supper when he told his disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6 ).

In this gospel the word life (zoe) occurs more than 35 times and the verb to live or to have life (zen) more than 15 times.

The John’s gospel begins and ends with life.  At the very beginning we read that in Jesus was life; and at the very end we read that John’s aim in writing the gospel was that men might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).  The word is continually on the lips of Jesus.

• It is his wistful regret that men will not come to him that they might have life (5:40).
• It is his claim that he came that men might have life and that they might have it abundantly (10:10).
• He claims that he gives men life and that they will never perish because no one will snatch them out of his hand (10:28).
• He claims that he is the way, the truth and the life (14:6).

What then does John mean by life?

Quite simply he means that life is the opposite of destruction, condemnation and death.  God sent his Son that the man who believes should not perish but have eternal life (3:16).  The man who hears and believes has eternal life and will not come into judgment (5:24).

The man who lives a Christless life exists, but he does not know what life is.  Jesus is the one person who can make life worth living, and in whose company death is only the prelude to fuller life.

He gives life to as many as God has given him (17:2).  At the back of it all there is God.  It is as if God was saying:  “I created men that they should have real life; through their sin they have ceased to live and only exist; I have sent them my Son to enable them to know what real life is.”

We must ask what this life is.  Again and again the Fourth Gospel uses the phrase eternal life.  Clearly whatever else eternal life is, it is not simply life which lasts for ever.  A life which lasted for ever could be a terrible curse; often the thing for which men long is release from life.

In eternal life there must be more than duration of life; there must be a certain quality of life.

Life is not desirable unless it is a certain kind of life.  Here we have the clue.  In the true sense of the word only God is eternal; therefore eternal life is that life which God lives.

What Jesus offers us from God is God’s own life.  Eternal life is life which knows something of the serenity and power of the life of God himself.  When Jesus came offering men eternal life, He was inviting them to enter into the very life of God.

The second of the great Johannine key-words which we meet here is the word light.  This word occurs in the Fourth Gospel no fewer than 21 times.

1:5  The light shines in the darkness.  John used the past tense in the previous sentence, saying that Jesus was the light of all people by virtue of being their Creator; but John shifted to the present tense: the light shines in the darkness.

The timeless light has invaded our time, and we can see it in our darkness. Christ’s life and message are still effective.

John could see it around him in his day as he witnessed the strength of the Christian church—planted, thriving, growing. And it is still present tense today—for Christ’s light still shines in our dark world.

As the light shines, it drives away the darkness for the unsaved world is blinded by the prince of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 5:8).^[3]

We need to realize that God never leaves Himself without a witness to the world. Jesus is the light to every man. John 1:9: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” 

Jesus’ coming dissipated shadows of doubt about what God was like. We see what God is like in Christ! His coming also showed man that death was only the way to a larger life.

Light means understanding and moral insight, spiritual vision. But more than just shining or reflecting, the light of Jesus penetrates and enlightens hearts and minds. Everyone who comes into contact with Christ can be enlightened.

Christ is the one universal light. There is no other. As Creator, Jesus not only provides light but he also makes people light sensitive. The blindness Jesus later attributes to the Pharisees (9:35–41) includes an intentional turning away from the light, pretending to “see” something else.

Let us see if we can understand something of this idea of the light which Jesus brings into the world.  Three things stand out.

• The light Jesus brings is the light which puts chaos to flight. In the creation story God moved upon the dark, formless chaos which was before the world began and said:  “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3).

The new-created light of God routed the empty chaos into which it came.  He is the one person who can save life from becoming a chaos.  Left to ourselves we are at the mercy of our passions and our fears.

• The light which Jesus brings is a revealing light. It is the condemnation of men that they loved the darkness rather than the light; and they did so because their deeds were evil; and they hated the light lest their deeds should be exposed (3:19, 20).

The light which Jesus brings is something which shows things as they are.  It strips away the disguises and the concealments; it shows things in all their nakedness; it shows them in their true character and their true values.

We never see ourselves until we see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus.  We never see what our lives are like until we see them in the light of Jesus.  Jesus often drives us to God by revealing us to ourselves.

• The light which Jesus brings is a guiding light. If a man does not possess that light he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going (12:36).

When a man receives that light and believes in it, he walks no more in darkness (12:46).

One of the features of the gospel stories which no one can miss is the number of people who came running to Jesus asking:  “What am I to do?”

When Jesus comes into life the time of guessing and of groping is ended, the time of doubt and uncertainty and vacillation is gone.

The path that was dark becomes light; the decision that was wrapped in a night of uncertainty is illumined.  Without Jesus we are like men groping on an unknown road in a black-out.  With him the way is clear.

What is seen by the light of Jesus? When Christ’s light shines, we see our sin and his glory.

^[1] John MacArthur, John: Jesus—The Word, the Messiah, the Son of God, MacArthur Bible Studies (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 2000), 9.

^[2] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 285–286.

^[3] Bruce B. Barton, John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1993), 5–6.