Video Teaching

This particular sermon happened at a Church picnic, so apologies for the lack of picture and subpar sound quality.

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Introduction

These four stories all show different disciples being called into ministry by Christ:
1. Andrew and Peter join Jesus through intellectual inquiry
2. Peter follows Jesus because of a personal invitation from someone he trusts
3. Philip joins Philip abruptly because of his experience meeting Jesus
4. Nathanael overcomes his skepticism after seeing a miracle
The close proximity of the stories help illustrate the diverse ways that people come to faith in Christ

35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.

In the ancient world, discipleship was immersive—students followed a teacher to observe how they lived and embodied their teachings. This approach emphasizes that profound truths should transform one’s whole life, not remain abstract. The speaker contrasts this with modern education’s focus on fact acquisition and suggests discipleship offers a valuable lesson in witnessing wisdom lived out.

36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

John refrains from retaining disciples for personal benefit (labor, prestige). Instead, he directly points them to Jesus, modeling ministry that prioritizes others’ growth over personal gain.
This contrasts with common tendencies of leaders to hoard followers; John advocates sending people to the best source for their development.

37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

“It was about four in the afternoon” (verse forty) is a pretty specific detail. This, along with the fact that John never names himself in his gospel and this particular disciple is unnamed, suggests this unnamed disciple was John.

40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).

In his book The Inviting Church, church growth expert Roy Oswald asked a number of congregants why they worshipped at the church they did if they weren’t raised there.
1. 86% started attending because a friend or family member invited them;
2. 6% came because of a program;
3. 6% were invited by a pastor,
4. 2% due to advertising.
Peter’s journey is statistically common! So many people relate to Peter, but the Church needs more Andrews to invite others.
Peter (originally Simon) comes to Jesus through his brother Andrew’s invitation: “We have found the Messiah!” Andrew is only mentioned twelve times in the Bible, and four of those are just in lists! Of the remaining eight narrative mentions of Andrew, he’s bringing people to Jesus in three of them. He has a gift for connection and evangelism. The Church needs its Peters and Pauls, but we also need our Andres!

42 And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).

Jesus renames Simon to Cephas (Aramaic for “stone”; translated into Greek and then English as “Peter”), signaling a break from old to new identity and commissioning him as a “rock” on which Jesus will build his ministry. This affirms Peter’s gifts and shows that Jesus is giving him meaningful work.
1. Everyone wants to make a difference in the world! We are not just called to sit in pews for Jesus, but change the world for Him.

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip’s calling is incredibly abrupt! Jesus says, “Follow me,” and Philip does just that. The abruptness suggests an immediate, vivid experience with Jesus that was enough to get Nathaniel to worship Jesus without a prior relationship. For some, a direct encounter is decisive.

44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

Nathanael resists at first, ignoring the ties that Philip makes to the prophets and Moses. fixating on the detail that he’s from Nazareth, and that’s not a particularly reputable town. Philip wisely avoids debating issues that don’t really matter and instead invites him to “come and see.” His goal is not to win a debate, but to win Nathanael over to Christ by introducing them.

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus greets Nathanael as “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” showing that he knows his character, and says that he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him. Given Nathanael’s reaction, obviously this wasn’t a mere overhearing of someone else’s conversation; it was miraculous!

50 Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 51 He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

In verse 51, Jesus is referencing Genesis 28 (Jacob’s ladder) to declare himself the bridge between Heaven and Earth. If knowing a name is so impressive to Nathanael, he should be ready to see the full nature of the Son of Man, which is infinitely more miraculous.

Full Transcript

In this little passage this morning, we have various stories about apostles coming to faith in Christ and following Him. I love that we have all of them one right after the next, getting to see all the diversity in those stories packed together. I think it’s good to remember because we’re all passionate about following Jesus. We want to share our faith with others. It can be easy, when you want to evangelize, to remember the exact circumstances under which you started following Jesus and to try to recreate those in the lives of others. That doesn’t always work because they have different circumstances! They’re at a different place in life! You have no idea what they’re going through. There are so many different things that happen in different people’s lives that lead them to start following Jesus. Let’s jump in.

We’re going to see the first of the four stories. We see Andrew make his decision to start following Jesus. It’s not just Andrew. It tells us that there are two people involved in this story. One is Andrew; he’s identified in verse forty, but there is also a second disciple who is never named. The majority belief is that this was probably the apostle John. There are a few reasons for that.

First, John never refers to himself directly in the Gospel that he wrote. He always refers indirectly, and there are different guesses as to why he did this. Some say it was because he was so humble that he did not want to put his name forward as though he were some great guy. He just wanted to share it without highlighting himself. Others say maybe it was a creative choice that he made so that people would have the opportunity to put themselves in his shoes as they read and feel like they were right there. Who knows? Regardless, he never refers to himself directly, and this disciple is strangely never directly mentioned. That’s a point in John’s favor.

Another thing that leads a lot of people to believe that this was probably John is that, in verse forty, there’s a level of detail that’s just uncommon. It says it was about four in the afternoon. That’s very specific, almost so specific that you wonder, were you there? Was that you? Do you know this personally? I think it was probably John, but we don’t need to double down on that. That’s not really the point. We know for certain that Andrew was one of these two.

We find that these are two people who come to start following Jesus because they are curious. They want to know more. Intellectual inquiry leads them to start following Jesus. I know we have some kids with us this morning. Kids, how are you doing? I know there is no children’s church this morning, so you’re going to have to help me out. How many of you are curious? Do you ask your parents a lot of questions? If you are a question asker, give me a hand. There we go. I see one. Maybe that’s a future Andrew right there.

So we’ve got these two, Andrew and probably John. They are question askers. They ask questions: Why am I here? Who is God? What am I doing? How do I live life well? They’re asking a lot of questions, and asking those questions leads them to seek a good teacher. They end up as disciples of John the Baptist.

It’s a good reminder that Jesus wasn’t the only one with disciples in the ancient world. In the ancient Mediterranean region, great teachers (if they were really good) ended up with disciples. The logic was that you can learn a lot by listening to a great teacher. Maybe you just go to their lectures and listen a little bit. But if you’re really serious about learning, you don’t just attend the lectures–you become a disciple. You follow them around. You see the way they live. You see the way they act.

If the truth they have is really that big a deal, it should change their whole lives. It shouldn’t just be this floating idea that you can hear and tuck away in your mind. It should be something that your whole life speaks to. So if you really want to learn what they are teaching, you become a disciple. You start following them. You watch how they live and how they embody the truth they’re talking about, and you learn to live according to that truth. It was very common for great thinkers in this era to have disciples, and here we see that John the Baptist has a couple of disciples in these two soon-to-be followers of Jesus. That’s where our story starts.

As an aside, isn’t it interesting how they thought about learning in that discipleship model? So much of our model for education is built on just learning facts. That’s good. I’m not anti-fact. But how much more important is it for people to see a wise life well led? I think that’s a model of education we could all learn from.

In any case, our story begins with these two disciples.

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

That is so unselfish of John the Baptist. How rare is it to see someone actively point people toward opportunities that are good for them? It is so common to see people in positions of authority trying to keep everyone under them so they can get the most work and harvest their labor. John had every reason, personally and selfishly, to keep these men as his disciples. Disciples would help you do things. These are two people who are hands for the road; that’s helpful. They certainly bring him some prestige. It would have been tempting to say, “We’re going to point people to Jesus, but you personally don’t have to go. You’re going to help me get other people there.”

John is not like that. He is selfless when it comes to the cause of ministry. He’s thinking about the people with him and saying, “You could learn better over there. Your growth and development are with that man. Go to Him. Don’t waste time with me.” Incredibly unselfish.

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

That is a piercing question, one that I think all of us are asked as we come to Jesus today. What do you want? What brought you to worship this morning? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be healed? Do you want money? What do you want? Some answers to that question are better than others. I think the apostles give one of the best answers there is. What do they want? Just time with Jesus. That’s all they want. They respond,

“Rabbi,” which means Teacher, “where are You staying?”

He replied, “Come, and you will see.” So they went and saw where He was staying, and they spent that day with Him. It was about four in the afternoon.

Right there we see these first two people start being followers of Christ. Whatever they saw in that conversation, whatever it was they were seeking to learn, they realized by just spending time with Jesus that this was the best teacher they could possibly have. This man knew things that were worth their time. They didn’t go back to John. They didn’t even think about it. This was the new path they had been set on. That’s one story.

Now we move on to another. We get to see the moment when Peter the apostle decided to start following Jesus. Peter is one of the most popular Bible characters there is, and it’s easy to see why. He has a lot of stories because he gets a lot of things wrong. Peter is always trying his best, and he’s always messing up, and Jesus has to bail him out. That’s relatable. We all make mistakes. We all need Jesus to bail us out sometimes. His name is not Peter to begin with; it’s Simon. Jesus is going to rename him in just a moment. Peter comes to faith not through intellectual inquiry, but because of a personal invitation. He’s invited by someone he trusts to start following Jesus. In this case, Andrew. Andrew gives him an invitation: “You have to come see Jesus. This is incredible.” That makes a difference to him.

Personal invitation makes such a difference. I saw a study the other day talking about why people attended the churches they did. If people were at a church they did not grow up in, this study asked them, “What made you start attending this church?” Eighty-six percent said it was because a friend or family member asked them to start attending. Eighty-six percent! Six percent said they started attending because of a program they thought was really good. Six percent said they started because a pastor invited them. Two percent said they started because of advertising. Eighty-six percent! Personal invitation makes a difference. That is one of the most common ways people start actively following Jesus in their lives, and here that’s the way Peter comes to faith.

Simon Peter’s brother, Andrew, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.

The first thing Andrew did was find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah!” And he brought him to Christ.

The man from our first story immediately goes and finds Peter and brings him to Jesus.

Andrew is not in the Bible a lot. He is named twelve times, and four of those twelve mentions are just in lists of the disciples. So he is only actually named in a story eight times. Of those eight, three are because he is bringing people to Jesus. That is something he seems to be good at. He is good at connecting people to Jesus. That is something he seems to be gifted to do, and this is one of those times. He brings Peter to Jesus. He may not be in the Bible a lot, but he probably deserves a little more recognition. A lot of people want to be like Peter. A lot of people want to be like Paul. Maybe we need more Andrews in the world.

In any case, the first thing Andrew did was find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah.”

He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas,” which, when translated, is Peter.

That is the moment when Peter starts following Jesus. It’s a little bit of an odd moment for a lot of us because we wonder, why is He renaming him? What is this about? Usually in Scripture that happens to show a break between the old self and the new self. You are so radically different that you need a new name because you’re that new. Here He chooses the name Cephas, which is Aramaic for “stone.” That is the name Simon will go by from now on: Peter. Cephas, stone. In other words, this is a rock. “You are a rock on which I am going to build My ministry.” In that, He is really doing two things. Jesus has both built up Peter and put him to work.

He encounters Peter and does not treat him like any random man. He does not say, “Good to see you. Hope I see you around.” He knows him personally and sees the value in him. He is not just another name, not just another person in a crowd. He is uniquely gifted to do something important, and Jesus treats him that way.

At the same time, He puts him to work. He says, “You are the rock. You are solid. You are someone I am going to build My ministry on.” It may be a compliment, but it is not a compliment you get to live into by doing nothing. He is going to have to do some work to live up to the fullness of that compliment, and that is exciting for him.

Sometimes we forget how much people want to change the world. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: one of the biggest reasons I find people leave the churches they are at is because they feel like they are just being asked to sit in a pew. No one wants to just sit in a pew. That’s boring! They want to change the world. That does not mean they necessarily need to do it through church programs. It means that wherever they are in their lives, whatever they are doing, they need to be equipped to make a difference. Jesus is offering Peter the opportunity to make a difference in the world, and Peter is all in. Peter starts following Jesus.

Now we have two down and two to go, two more apostles, two different stories. We have seen intellectual inquiry. We have seen personal invitation. Now we get to Philip’s story, which is so short that we will just look at it and then talk about it after.

The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, He said to him, “Follow Me.”

That is it. That is the whole thing. Incredibly short. That is all we get. Jesus finds him and says, “Follow Me,” and he does.

When you look at different commentators thinking through this passage, one of the things people are curious about is whether Jesus knew him before this moment. Had they ever met? Sometimes Jesus knew people before offering them this formal invitation to discipleship. Is this one of those instances? Did Jesus already know Philip? Did He already have a relationship with him? Or was it totally out of the blue? Who can say? But the way the Bible tells the story, it seems intended to be abrupt. It does not say, “Jesus saw Philip, whom He had known for a long time and felt pretty good about.” It deliberately tells it in a way that emphasizes how jarringly fast this is. Out of nowhere, Philip is in.

That is how it goes for some people. There are people who have vivid personal experiences that are hard to put into words. Something about that moment, something about that experience, tells them, “I need to start following Jesus. This is it.” That appears to be the case with Philip. Whatever it was like, whatever the details were, he meets Jesus. Jesus says, “Follow Me,” and he is in. That experience with Jesus alone was enough for him to start following.

Now we come to the last person. This one has the longest story. We go from the shortest to the longest. This is Nathanael. Nathanael ends up being an apostle despite having no interest in it initially. He is the only one of the four who is actively resistant to the idea of buying into this whole Jesus thing at all.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

Think about all the things Philip said. “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” There is a lot there that is exciting. The Nazareth detail is not really the point. It is just the town He is from. It is not the important part, and yet that is what Nathanael gets caught up on. He is not curious about the prophecy. He is not asking about the main things. He is caught up in details. You could imagine a world in which Philip started debating those same details with him! Maybe they get caught up in a debate about whether anything good can come out of Nazareth. What a waste of time that would have been. This is not actually about Nazareth. Who cares about Nazareth?

Philip does not get caught up in the details. He does not waste time debating Nazareth. Instead, he invites Nathanael to see Jesus for himself. He is essentially saying, “Do not tell me who you think Jesus is, what you think He is going to be like, or how you imagine this is true or not true. Just come and see for yourself.” That is what he says:

“Come and see.”

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

In other words, this is an honest man. He is a straight shooter.

Nathanael is thrown off and says,

“How do You know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Occasionally you will hear someone try to read this passage in a way that removes the miraculous element. They suggest that maybe Jesus simply saw him under the fig tree from a distance. That does not make sense. If you read this without a miraculous element, you are reading against the grain.

Imagine you were standing under a tree behind us, and I saw you and later said, “I saw you over there.” Would you fall to your knees and say, “The Son of God has arrived”? Of course not. It is not impressive if the tree is right there. There is something impressive about this. You do not fall to your knees and declare someone to be the Son of God because they noticed you standing nearby. Clearly, wherever this fig tree was, it was somewhere you could not see from where Jesus was standing. This is a man who has shown that He knows Nathanael’s character and knows things about him that He should not be able to know.

This man who was caught up in the details meets Jesus and sees that He is more than expected. He decides to start following Him. Nathanael declares,

“Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Jesus responds, “You believe because I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” Then He adds, “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

That is a reference to Genesis twenty-eight, to Jacob’s ladder. Jacob dreams of a ladder with angels ascending and descending, a bridge between heaven and earth. Here Jesus references that and says, in effect, “I am the bridge. I am the bridge between heaven and earth. You think it is impressive that I know details about your life? That is not even the most exciting thing. Stick around.”

Four different stories. Four different ways we see people start following Jesus. I have seen in you a passion for evangelism. You are excited to share your faith, and that is good. It is helpful to see the diverse ways people come to faith because there is no one particular methodology that works. No one person is so clever, so witty, so good at talking, or so friendly that they can make someone come to faith. No one comes to faith because of a method or a personality. The only essential person involved is Jesus. That is the common thread in all these stories. In each one, someone takes another person to Jesus so they can meet Him for themselves. Whether they have reservations, enthusiasm, or no prior interest at all, that personal encounter makes the difference. That is what matters.

As we think about evangelism and harness that passion, remember this: in this city alone there are about eight thousand people. Statistically, a little over half would identify as Christian, and about twenty-five percent would be active church attenders. That means roughly six thousand people are not involved in a church family, and about four thousand may not be Christian at all, statistically speaking.

If we want to share our faith, the key is not you. You are not the key. You are not the thing that is going to change the world. You have been invited by Jesus to change the world with Him. The Savior is already here. You do not have to carry that burden. You do not have to feel clever enough, smart enough, or charismatic enough to convince anyone of anything. All we have to do is invite people to come and get to know Jesus for themselves, regardless of what they think He is or where they are in life. Jesus will not disappoint. If we want to be effective evangelists, the key is simply inviting people to come and see. Amen.

John 1:19-34: Jesus’s Baptism

April 26, 2026May 28, 2026 ~ Vincent ~ 3 Comments

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

Back: John 1:1-18

Overview: John 1

Next: John 1:35-51

Video Teaching

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

The narrative shifts back chronologically from the opening eighteen verses (which served as an overview of the Book of John) to the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.
What is happening to John in this verse is a public interrogation, not a respectful inquiry. Their goal was to discredit John. If he denied having authority, people might stop following him. If he claimed authority, they could report him to the Romans as a troublemaker.

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

The authoritative figures that are being addressed here are all in Scripture. The second coming of Elijah is in Malachi 4:5, the coming of the prophet is in Deuteronomy 18:15, and prophecies about the coming messiah are found throughout the Old Testament (especially Isaiah).

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

The Pharisees’ may be villains in these passages, but they were also people with real, legitimate concerns.
1. The Roman-Jewish historian Josephus recorded four individuals in the first century who claimed to be the Messiah, raised armies, and fought the Romans, all of whom understood the Messiah as a military figure.
2. A later false messiah, Simon Ben Kosiba, led a rebellion in the early second century that resulted in the Romans destroying Israel, renaming it Syria Palestine, and scattering the Jewish people. Israel did not reappear on maps until after World War II.
3. The Pharisees were justifiably worried that a false messiah would bring destruction, but while trying to prevent this, they tragically overlooked the true Messiah.

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

John seems surprisingly comfortable given the circumstances! He knew he wasn’t “the one.” He was just there to point to the person who was.
1. How often do we carry the burden of having to be “the one” rather than pointing to the person who genuinely is?
He identifies himself using Isaiah’s words: “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” (Isa. 40:3)
1. Untying sandals was considered such a lowly task that even rabbis were forbidden from asking their disciples to do it (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 96a) John’s statement signifies his profound sense of unworthiness compared to the greatness of Jesus.

24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

The practice of baptism existed before John, rooted in Old Testament purification rituals, such as priests washing in a basin before approaching the altar in the tabernacle and later bathing in the temple.
John brought this practice to the people, applying the principle of purification to prepare for God’s approach in the form of Jesus.
John’s baptism was a symbolic act. He explicitly states, “I baptize with water,” indicating it was just water and held no special divine power. It was a good thing to do, encouraging people to recognize their sinfulness and need for God’s purification.

28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

The title “Lamb of God” connects Jesus to a rich scriptural history of lambs being sacrificed so that others might live: the ram that died in Isaac’s place, the Passover lamb whose blood protected the Israelites, and the lambs sacrificed for forgiveness in the temple.
John identifies Jesus as “the” ultimate Lamb who will provide the final sacrifice.
The use of the singular “sin” (not “sins”) is significant. Sins are the symptoms (wrong actions), but “sin” is the underlying disease or “rot in our soul” that began with Adam and Eve. Jesus came to eliminate the root cause, not just the symptoms.

30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

Why would the sinless Jesus need to be baptized? Common reasons for baptism (joining the church, receiving the Holy Spirit, washing away sin) do not apply to Him. Surely Jesus could have revealed himself to John the Baptist in other ways. Why was this way fitting?
1. John’s baptism was purely symbolic, which means a lot of the answers (the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, joining the Body of Christ, etc.) don’t apply here. It really is a matter of symbols: why would a sinless person symbolically ask for purification?
2. The 18th-century monk Nikodemos of Athos speaks to this in his prayers: “Jesus, being God, had no need for purification, but he suffered purification for me,” (Prayers to Our Lord Jesus Christ).
3. Jesus gained nothing from baptism; it was an act of humility. His glory is repeatedly revealed through such humble acts: the infinite God being born in a small human body, in a manger; and ultimately dying a humiliating death on a cross.

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’

What was once a purely symbolic, natural act became more than natural, now carrying the power of the Holy Spirit to bestow grace, unite a person with the body of Christ, and wash away sin.
Note that there is no reason to expect two baptisms. Some traditions insist that you need one “water baptism” and one “baptism of the Spirit” (generally identified by strong feelings in the believer), but Ephesians 4 is explicit that there is only one baptism. Jesus has transformed baptism, not added a second baptism.

34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.

Matthew 11:11”Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
1. John was the greatest of “those born of women,” or those born by purely natural means.
2. Through baptism, believers are made part of the “Kingdom of Heaven” and are greater than John the Baptist
Just as Jesus transformed water and a human body into something more than natural, He transforms believers into more than natural people by giving them the Holy Spirit.

Full Transcript

So, for those of you who thought last week was a little too abstract, good news: John gets concrete pretty quickly. Here in verse 19 onwards, we are going to see a comparison between two men, John, the Baptist and Jesus, and the different types of baptism that each of them offers : John’s baptism of repentance and Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, often when you see comparisons between two things, one is good and one is bad. Right? There’s the good, the and the evil. The big and the small. The smart and the stupid. One is generally implied to be superior and one is implied to be inferior. This is not strictly the case, it’s a little different. Here you see something that’s good and something that’s better. It’s got John the Baptist, the best this world has to offer, and Jesus, who is better. And, there’s a verse from Scripture that I think really helps explain the entirety of what we’re looking at today. Matthew 11:11: “Truly I tell you, Among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven. Is greater than he.” So just keep that in the back of your mind. Think on that as we move forward and let’s dig in.

So beginning at verse 19,

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

Let’s just start with that. That’s a good chunk. So first off, You can see at the beginning of verse nineteen. Now this was John’s testimony when. We’re seeing that this is just a little indication that this doesn’t happen chronologically after what we had last week. Those first eighteen verses are essentially a summary of everything that happens in the book of John and a little before and a little afterwards. So we saw before Jesus was incarnate, and then we saw John the Baptist, and he was proclaiming the coming of Jesus. And then we saw Jesus come and he was not received; he was rejected. And yet, he created a pathway to salvation. We saw all of this right there in the first eighteen verses. But now that we’re on to verse nineteen, we’re going back. We’re going back, and we’re getting a little more in detail in what was presented in the first eighteen verses as an overview.

So, this is what happened when John, the Baptist was confronted by priests and Levites from Jerusalem, and, If you didn’t know any better, you’d think these priests thought pretty highly of him. Look at all the things they ask him : “Are you the Messiah? Are you the second coming of Elijah? Are you the prophet?” All three figures from Scripture: the Messiah since Genesis itself, this prophecy about a coming prophet from Deuteronomy, even the second coming of Elijah foretold in Malachi, all three big deals. And they’re asking John, are you this big deal? Are you that big deal? And each time, no.

If you didn’t know any better, you might think they’re a little impressed with John. They are not. This is a public interrogation. They have cornered John the Baptist while he is doing his baptizing in front of a group of people. And what they’re trying to do is ask him if he is any of these great figures from Scripture. These would give him authority, and in their minds, this is a win-win. On one hand, he says he’s not and he has no authority. That’s great ; maybe people won’t follow him anymore and now he can’t cause any trouble. Big win! But on the other hand, maybe he says he is those figures. That’s a win too; then they can go right back. To the people in charge and the Romans, and tell them, “Hey, the guy we were wondering is he a troublemaker? Yup, troublemaker. He needs to be taken care of. ”

I think it’s really easy to see these priests, Levites, and Pharisees as purely villainous figures. We see them harassing John the Baptist. We see them harassing Jesus. It’s easy to just say, “Uh oh.” To be fair, in this story they are villains, but I think it can be helpful to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because they’re not one-dimensional, you know. They had reasons for doing what they’re doing. The historian Josephus, a Roman historian specifically about Jewish people, tells us that in the first century alone, there were four different people who all claimed to be the Messiah and raised up an army in Israel and tried to fight the Romans. Four different people, all of them understood the Messiah to be a military figure—someone who would raise an army and kick out the Romans and restore Israel to its earthly glory as a phenomenal kingdom. Four times! That’s one every twenty five years. There were a lot of people claiming to be the messiah. And Josephus only tells us that there were four who managed to put together an army to challenge the Romans. He doesn’t tell us how many people might have tried and never quite made it far enough to be historically noteworthy.

Ultimately, it was a false messiah that would cause problems for Israel in the end. It’s a man named Simon Ben Kosiba, who was another person who claimed to be the messiah in the early second century. And again, he put together an army and again he fought the Romans. And it didn’t, well, it went better than for a lot of others, but the Romans eventually put down this rebellion. And when they did, they were done. No more. No more of this. “How many times have we had to put down an insurrection in Israel? We’re done with it. I want that place ruined! I want it wiped off the face of the map! No more Israel. That is now Syria Palestine. No more kings of Israel. I want those people scattered to the four corners of the earth.” It was a false messiah who ultimately removed Israel from the map for over a thousand years. You don’t see Israel again on maps until after World War II, so there’s fair reason for people to be worried. They’re worried that a false messiah will cause problems, and they’re not wrong. Rather than seeing them as villainous, I guess I tend to see them as more tragic figures. All, this time trying to protect people from a false messiah, and in the end, they end up overlooking the real one in the process. But in any case, that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s why they’re interrogating John the Baptist: Is this guy going to cause trouble? Are people going to get hurt because of what he’s saying?

You see the three different questions they asked, and John doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the questions. It says that he freely confessed that he was not the Messiah. So John’s not sweating bullets; he’s okay, he’s comfortable. Why? Because he knows he’s not the big deal that they’re worried about. He doesn’t even claim to be a big deal; he knows he’s just the guy who’s pointing people to the guy that matters, and there is a certain freedom that comes along with that.

I wish all of us were as comfortable doing that sort of thing as John the Baptist; as free and easy pointing people to Jesus, rather than trying to point people to ourselves. That becomes very easy. All too often we try to prove to people that we are big shots, that we are the ones who can answer the questions, that we are the ones who get things done, that we are the people that they should be looking towards. When you get too used to that there’s a certain kind of anxiety that accompanies that because at the end of the day, we will never be the answer to every problem that people have. We are so limited; we just can’t do it all. Naturally, there will be anxiety. What if they know that I am not the big deal that I claim to be? But if you point people to Jesus—if like John the Baptist, You point them to the one who is—the one who can take care of all of their problems—the anxiety is gone. You can freely confess, “I am not a big deal, but I know the one who is.” And John answers them with that exact answer in the end. They ask, “Are you this scriptural figure? Are you this scriptural figure?” He says, “I know the one that is,” he quotes from Scripture, the book of Isaiah. He says, “I am the voice calling in the wilderness: make straight the way for the Lord.” That’s the passage he chooses to identify himself.

Now at this point, The Pharisees are annoyed. He seems to be claiming some sort of authority, and yet he will not admit it. And so they throw a curve ball at him. They say, “

“Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

“Why are you out here baptizing if you’re not a big shot?”

John the baptism did not invent baptism, by the way. Baptism had been around before John the Baptist. You’ll notice that the Bible never says, “and there was a guy named John who came up with this thing called baptism, and it was good.” Never says that. It just assumes that you probably know what baptism is. You can see the roots of baptism as early as Exodus. When the Israelites are in the tabernacle before they approach the altar, a priest is supposed to take a large basin of water and wash their hands and wash their feet to show, “I recognize that I am sinful. God, please forgive me and purify me as I approach you at your altar.” Then when the temple is built, the practice gets a little more elaborate. The basin of water gets even bigger, and rather than just washing your hands and your feet, you bathe in the water. A priest would bathe before they approach the altar for the same reason: I know I am about to go towards God’s altar; I recognize I am sinful ; God, please purify me as I approach Your altar. What John has done is he has taken this practice of baptism, and he’s taken it to the people. Because they might not be approaching the altar, but here’s the thing: you might not be approaching God in that sense, but God is approaching us. Jesus is coming; you will want to be purified. Get baptized, repent of your sin, ask God to be made pure so when you see Him face to face, you’ll be ready. And it’s purely symbolic, right? That’s what John is doing. It’s a good thing; John is doing something that is unambiguously good.

It can’t be particularly prideful to tell people, “Hey, recognize that you are sinful and that you need to be made pure by God.” That’s it. And, yet the Pharisees are claiming that this humble practice that he is involved in is evidence of his pride. And we see that. We see that all over the world to this day. People, who are humbly trying to follow their God and others who use their humility as evidence of their pride. For example, if someone hears, “Oh yeah, I try to be in church every Sunday.” Ooh. Someone thinks they’re a pretty good person. Oh yeah, you don’t want any more drinks? Oh, you’re too good for us. Someone’s a good person. Watch out for them. Oh I can’t make it to the bachelor party this weekend. I’m not actually comfortable with the things that you guys are going to do. Oh, okay. Okay, we got a saint over here. All too often, when people are trying to humbly do what God asked of them, others see that as evidence of pride. Totally untrue, but nonetheless a sad truth.

How does John the Baptist handle it? He handles it by again reiterating I am not a big deal. I am not special. I just know someone who is. He responds, “I baptize with water.” Again, he’s saying, “Look, this baptism thing. I don’t have any divine special power. It’s just water on the head. That’s all I’m doing. It’s not such a big deal. I don’t claim to be special.

But among you stands one who you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

Now, how many of you remember when George Bush was in the Middle East and got a shoe chucked at him? He was giving a speech, and someone in the crowd did not think very highly of him and so they threw a shoe at his head. It’s a chuckle-worthy YouTube clip. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth your time. But why did they do that? Because in the Middle East, that’s a sign that you don’t think too highly of someone. The foot is the grossest, dirtiest part of the body in popular imagination there, so to associate someone or something with a foot, you are saying that’s what I think of you. And here John is saying Jesus is so incredible. This guy I am preparing the way for, he’s so amazing. I am not even fit to touch the grossest, dirtiest part of his body. I can’t do the lowest of the low for him. Untying the sandal was considered so inglorious that he’s saying he’s not even worthy of that.

When a rabbi was teaching a disciple, it was important to give them tasks so they could show that they were listening to their rabbi and that they were devout. And yet it was literally written, “But don’t have them untie your sandals. That’s too low. You can’t have them do that. Gotta let the guys have some dignity.” John is saying he is not even worthy of doing that. It’s not that he’s so great, it’s that he’s not even great enough to do that.

So we’ve seen John the Baptist—the greatest man, according to Jesus, who ever walked this earth—the greatest man of the natural world there could possibly be. And we saw his baptism, often known as the baptism of repentance, a purely symbolic act to indicate God, “I am impure please make me pure.” Now, as we move towards this second half, we’re going to see the one who he’s being compared to. We’ve seen the best now let’s see better than the best. We’re going to look at Jesus. Verse 29:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

There’s so much in what he says right there when he sees Jesus. “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” That’s the first thing he says. And notice what he doesn’t say: “Look! A great philosopher who can teach us things about the world beyond.” He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, “Look, a great teacher that can teach us how to act well in the world.” He doesn’t say, “Look, a self help guru that can teach us how to be better people.” No. He says, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

“The Lamb of God.” What does he mean by that? Well there’s lots of lambs in Scripture. We see lambs come up time and time again. For example, as early as Genesis, we have Isaac. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac. So he takes Isaac to the altar and right before he sacrifices him, there is a lamb: a lamb that dies in Isaac’s stead. And then we have Passover. In the book of Exodus, the angel of death comes to Egypt to kill all of the firstborn. How do the Israelites make sure that their firstborns are safe? They kill a lamb and they put the blood of the lamb on their doorways so that the angel passes over their house. And at the temple, when they have done something wrong, when they wanted to be forgiven by God, what did they do? They sacrificed a lamb. Even the book of Isaiah talks about a lamb who will be sacrificed. So much lamb imagery: lambs that die so that others might live.

John says, not just “Here is a lamb.” He says here is the lamb. This is the ultimate lamb. This is the one who has come to finish, and he says, this lamb will take away the sin of the world. He doesn’t say sins. He uses the singular, not the plural. Often we think about sins, plural, instead of sin, and that’s fine. You know, sins are the wrong things we do. Those are not good. But at the same time, it’s kind of like a symptom. Sins are a symptom of sin. Sin in the singular is more than just the wrong things we do. It’s like a disease. It’s like a blight in our hearts. It’s like rot in our soul. That is sin. And that’s why in Genesis, when Adam and Eve commit sins, the problem is not just that they have done individual wrong things. The problem is that they have caught this disease. This rot has taken root in them! Sin is the problem—not just the individual sins they have committed, but the greater sin that is now nested within them. Jesus has come as the Lamb to eliminate the sin, not just the sins. He’s not just going to get rid of the symptom; he’s going to get rid of the cause itself. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

As we get towards this last section, this answers one of the questions that I had for the longest time. I always wondered. Why did Jesus get baptized? What did he get out of it? I wondered that for years. Why would Jesus need to get baptized? It doesn’t make any sense by a lot of metrics. When we talk about baptism, we think there’s a lot of ways of explaining it and they’re all true. For example, baptism is when we individually join the church which is the body of Christ. Baptism is when the Holy Spirit is bestowed on us. Baptism is the washing away of our sins. Baptism is a promise that we make to God to stay loyal. It’s all of these, and yet do any of those make sense for Jesus? Why would Jesus need to join the body of Christ when He. Himself is Christ? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Jesus, part of the Trinity which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit always in communion with one another, need to have the Holy Spirit bestowed on him when he’s already in constant communion with it? Why would Jesus, a man that has no sin, need to be purified of sin? That doesn’t make any sense. And, why would he need to make a promise to God when he himself is God? All of the ways we describe baptism make no sense for Jesus. So why did Jesus get baptized?

Well, in this passage from John, first off, we see that a lot of those questions can be eliminated right off the bat because this is John’s baptism. He says it himself: it’s just symbolic. It’s just water. There is no divine power behind it. You’ve got to wait for Jesus to that to happen. So the only thing symbolically that’s happening here is Jesus is asking His Father, through baptism, to be purified of His sins. That’s a lot of our questions eliminated right off the bat, but we still have one: why would a sinless person need to ask to be purified from their sins? It doesn’t make sense. I wondered that for ages, and it wasn’t until I ran across the writings of a devotional author called Nikodemos of Athos. Nikodemos of Athos was a monk in 18th century Greece well known for his devotional writings. Among the many treasures he has left to the world, one of them is an acrostic series of prayers. It just takes you through the whole alphabet, and it’s got a different prayer for every letter of the alphabet. As you go through the alphabet, you go through the life of Christ thanking him for each and everything he did. They’re really lovely prayers. I was reading through them one day, and I got to the part about Jesus’ baptism. He had written “Jesus, being God, had no need for purification but he suffered purification for me.” I had never heard someone say that word “suffered” before, and yet it’s helped me start to make sense of it.

What did Jesus get out of baptism? What did He stand to gain? Nothing. If anything, It’s inglorious for someone who is perfect to have to ask for purification from sins that He didn’t commit. It’s a little absurd, but He did it to be revealed to John the Baptist. He is revealed through his humility, and that’s something that happens throughout Scripture. We can jump back over to that other passage we were looking at this morning in Philippians. Philippians 2:5: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross.”

Jesus is repeatedly found through acts of humility. He is glorious, and he absolutely could have just descended from the sky with glorious beams shooting off of him, a giant crown and a scepter or something. And yet he did not. Repeatedly we see him reveal his glory in his humility. God, the infinite God is born into the smallness of a human body? Unthinkable! God, the infinite God is born—not just born, but born in a manger. These are circumstances, which for the average person would be incredibly undignified. And yet this is how God reveals Himself. The pure asks for purification. Why? Unthinkable, undignified, And ultimately, Jesus dies on a cross, not just a death, but the most humiliating and painful death you could think of. All of this Jesus goes through so His glory is known through his humility. Here we see Jesus reveals himself, not by trying to prove he’s some kind of big shot. A real big shot doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody. They are a big shot simply by nature of what they are. God is glorious not because he needs to impress anybody, but because he can help anybody do anything just by nature of who He is.

We see here it says verse 30.

The greatness of God is revealed in this humble moment in which the pure asks to be purified. And we see here that the second form of baptism, baptism by the Holy Spirit, is what Jesus will offer—something different, something better than what John has offered. What John offered was good, but Jesus offers something that is greater than good.

Now, some people get confused here. They think there’s actually two forms of baptism. They think you need to get baptized by water, and that’s like the baptism of John the Baptist, and then there’s a second bonus baptism that comes afterwards. That’s your baptism by the Holy Spirit. That is usually indicated, in their thinking, by a fierce feeling that you’re very close to God, and when you feel that that’s your second baptism, the baptism by the Holy Spirit. This appears nowhere in Scripture. Pentecostals often make this claim, but in the early church’s writings, you can find no one who thinks that there’s a second baptism that is indicated by strong feelings. Not only that, but in Scripture it says that there aren’t two baptisms. In Ephesians 4 it says that there is not two, but one baptism.

Jesus did not offer this baptism by the Holy Spirit by some kind of different means. He didn’t come up with this new thing that people need after their first baptism. He took baptism in the same way that John the Baptist was doing it: water on the head, something that was purely symbolic, and he gave it divine power. No longer was it just a symbolic gesture. It had the power of the Holy Spirit behind it. That’s where we start to see all of those other meanings we were talking about earlier. Now, through the waters of baptism, the Spirit can be bestowed. Now, through the waters of baptism, a person can be united with the body of Christ. Now, there is so much more dimension because with John alone, we only have the natural—the best of the natural world—a great man who does great symbolic acts only through the power of man. With Jesus we have someone who is greater than just a human. He’s better than the best the natural world can offer, and His baptism—still water on the head—now carries infinitely more power, because the divine has transformed it from something merely natural into something more than natural, something that carries the power of the divine.

Think back to that Scripture we started with, Matthew 11:11: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” He says, “among those born of women.” What Jesus is saying is, among those who have purely been born by natural means there’s no one better than John the Baptist. He is the greatest the natural world alone can produce. And yet, in the kingdom of heaven, there is better.”

You were made a part of the Kingdom of Heaven through the waters of baptism. You are no longer just natural. Just as Jesus took the waters of baptism, just water, and transformed it into something greater than the natural world has. In the same way He took a human body and made it greater than just a human body; He gave it the divine power of the Word. In that same way, Jesus took you, and now you are more than just a natural person. You were made a part of the Kingdom of Heaven through the waters of baptism. You are no longer just natural. Just as Jesus took the waters of baptism (just water) and transformed it into something greater than the natural world has, in the same way He took a human body and made it greater than just a human body; He gave it the divine power of the Word. In that same way, Jesus took you, and you are more than just a natural person.You have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you. You have been blessed with the power of the Holy Spirit. You, according to Scripture—the words of Jesus Himself—are greater than the greatest that the natural world has to offer.

I don’t know what you faced this week. I don’t know what you’re going to face in the coming weeks. I don’t know the challenges. I don’t know the frustrations. I don’t know the hurt. I don’t know what this world has for you. But we saw this morning John handle the incredible distress of being interrogated by some of the most powerful people in his region, and he stood up to that. If the greatest the natural world had to offer was a man so great, I wonder, what can God do through you, who is greater than him, who has the power of the Holy Spirit behind you? What will God do through you? Amen.

John 1:1-18: Prologue

April 26, 2026June 1, 2026 ~ Vincent ~ 2 Comments

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

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Overview: John 1

Next: John 1:19-34

Video Teaching

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Background

John is one of the four Gospels
1. Matthew emphasizes fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies;
2. Mark emphasizes Jesus as servant who suffers;
3. Luke emphasizes Jesus’s humanity;
4. John emphasizes Christ’s divinity
John is often recommended for new Bible readers alongside Philippians, but just because it’s good for beginners doesn’t mean there’s not tremendous depth for everyone.
1. “Consider, then, brethren, if perchance John is not one of those mountains concerning whom we sang a little while ago, I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence shall come my help. Therefore, my brethren, if you would understand, lift up your eyes to this mountain, that is, raise yourselves up to the evangelist, rise to his meaning.” -Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on John, Tractate 1
The depth of God reflected in John’s prologue helps address a common critique of Christianity: “It’s about a magical guy in the sky that grants wishes.”
John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” immediately displays the complexity and depth of the Christian understanding of God, which even language strains to fully express.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

“In the beginning…”
1. This opening verse parallels Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning…”). John is retelling the story of creation, but answering a question that haunted mankind from the beginning: who is “us?”
  1. Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind…”
  2. Many answers that people have proposed (God is talking to angels (not creators) or humanity (not existent) or the Earth (an object, not a being)) are deeply inadequate.
  3. John reveals “the Word” (Jesus pre-incarnate) as with God and as God—revealing the foundation of the Trinity.
“The Word” refers to Jesus before His incarnation.
1. “From this it is also clear that ‘the Word,’ properly speaking, is always understood as a divine person, since He is precisely what is expressed by the One who understands. Furthermore, this divine Word is the perfect likeness of Him from whom He proceeds. He is co-eternal with Him from whom He proceeds, because He was never a work-in-progress before being formed, but is always fully realized in act. He is equal to the Father, being completely perfect and expressing the Father’s entire being. Finally, He is co-essential and consubstantial with the Father, because He is of the very same divine substance.” -Aquinas, Commentary on John, Lecture 1, 27.
In the original Greek that John was writing in, “The Word” is “Logos.” That word carried important and distinct meanings for both Jewish and Greek audiences:
1. For a Jewish reader: “Logos” meant “the word,” resonating with the Old Testament’s emphasis on the power and righteousness of God’s word.
  1. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” -Psalm 33:6
  2. “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” -Isa. 55:11
  3. Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path -Psalm 119:105
2. For a Greek audience: “Logos” meant the “plan,” “blueprint,” or “wisdom” behind the universe—what philosophers sought to understand.
  1. “Right reason (orthos logos) is that which declares what is the right course.” -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter 2 (1103b31).
  2. “[T]his Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time … though all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it.” -Heraclitus, The Fragments, DK B1
3. By using “Logos,” John tells both groups that the thing they loved and were looking for had come to find them: Jesus.

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

By using that term, “logos,” John affirmed that Jesus was both the creative word of God (the spoken word in Genesis) and the blueprint of creation.

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

“The darkness has not overcome it” can also be translated “the darkness has not understood it.” Both are good translations.
The world’s darkness (frustration, cruelty) persists because people haven’t understood Jesus. But that darkness can’t overcome the light and hope that is Jesus.

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The John in verse 6 is John the Baptist, not the Gospel’s author. Throughout the book of John, the author doesn’t refer to himself by name. Instead, he calls himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
John the Baptist’s role was to witness to the light (Jesus), serving as a herald announcing the King’s arrival.
A herald prepares people to receive the king properly. The fact that Jesus’s herald was a crazy guy on society’s fringe shows how little the world understood God or was ready to receive Him.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Imagine a parent visiting their child, only for the child not to recognize them at all. That’s what it was like for God coming to us.

12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Some might object that we’re all “children of God” because God made us.
1. God doesn’t just want to be our father in the smallest sense! He wants to be our father in the fullest sense! He wants to be the one we count on in every situation.
2. A good father isn’t just the person who helps us to exist, but the one who nurtures us, protects us, and cares for us.
3. God invites us to be in a personal relationship with him so we can be His child in the fullest sense.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”)

In Hebrew culture, older writers received greater respect. By conceding to Jesus’s age, John the Baptist is showing that Jesus is the ultimate authority that he doesn’t can’t give any credibility to. He already has ultimate credibility.

16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

In Exodus 33:20, God says, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
1. This is because He is utterly holy and beyond comprehension. Our sinful, mortal minds couldn’t handle it.
2. Even though it’s incomprehensible, God made Himself knowable by coming down to our level as Jesus to restore our broken relationship with Him.
This prologue is highly abstract! Not everyone is comfortable with abstract thought.
1. If you’re not, here’s the core takeaway: seek a relationship with God. In spite of your smallness and his vastness, he wants to know you. Pray to him.

Full Transcript

This morning, we are embarking on a new series. We’re going to go through the book of John. And the methodology we’re going to be using: we’re just going to start at the beginning and go chapter by chapter, verse by verse for a little while. We’ll do about five chapters and see where we’re at. This is a style of preaching, by the way, that I enjoy. I think it’s helpful for us. It’s easy to jump around the Bible and miss certain parts. When we skip around, there’s a tendency to go to what’s exciting or what’s encouraging or what’s delightful. That can be good sometimes. Sometimes I preach like that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But when you go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, you end up looking at those verses that you don’t often look at otherwise. The verses that are convicting! The verses that are confusing! And that’s good! Sometimes God wants to challenge us. Sometimes he wants to convict us. When we go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, I believe we have that opportunity to see the full range of what God is saying to us in the Scriptures.

Now before we get too far into John,here are just a few notes. First off, the Gospel of John is indeed a Gospel. There are four Gospels in scripture: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They all tell about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but each of those four Gospels presents things just a little bit differently. The Gospel of Matthew focuses on how Jesus was someone that fulfilled all of the prophecies in the Old Testament. The Gospel of Mark focuses on how Jesus came to serve us and suffered on our behalf. The Gospel of Luke focuses on Jesus’s humanity, and the Gospel of John focuses on Christ’s divinity. So expect to see a lot about how Jesus was God and who exactly God is. You’ll see that in all of the Gospels to some degree, they all have a little bit of everything, but it is the most prominent theme in the Gospel of John.

I know I mentioned a few weeks ago that John is one of the books of the Bible that I recommend for people who are just starting out reading their Bibles. The two books I usually send people to are the Epistle to the Philippians and the Gospel of John, but I don’t want you thinking that we’re starting here because we’re starting with the easiest stuff and if you’ve been reading your Bible for a million years, there’s nothing you can get out of this. John did not write just a little primer on the basics for people who didn’t really understand that no one else could benefit from. No, to the contrary, the Gospel that John wrote has so much depth to it. It’s something that if you are coming to it for the first time, you will get something. And if you’re coming to it for the thousandth time, you will still get something.

I couldn’t put it any better than the great Augustine of Hippo once put it. Augustine of Hippo, you’ll hear me talk about him from time to time. He is one of the greatest Christian thinkers in all of history. He was a bishop in the fourth century, and the man was… he was a poet, he was a philosopher, he was a theologian, he was a pastor… he was a genius and his influence cannot be overstated. You hear all of those different things he did, and you might be thinking, oh man, this guy was kind of a big shot. He probably didn’t know what life was like for real everyday people. To the contrary, that’s what made him famous. Augustine of Hippo was famous because he understood people. He understood real life. He understood the struggles that we face every day, and he knew how to speak to those things in a way that anyone could benefit from. When he preached through the Gospel of John, he started out saying that one of the psalms we sing reads, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from?” That’s Psalm 124. The apostle John may just be one of those mountains that Scripture hopes we look towards. Here is a mountain of the faith that rose above every earthly peak. He rose above the sky. He rose above the highest stars and every choir of angels. Because unless he rose above everything that was created, he wouldn’t have arrived at the one who created everything. I could not put it any better. Here we have someone who was aware of spiritual realities. We can only hope someday to scratch the surface of there is so much here in John.

As we get ready to look at these first few verses, I have to admit to you, I am humbled to approach verses like these. They are so beautiful and they’re not just beautiful. They are incredibly important for people in this modern world. One of the most common objections to Christianity that I hear and see around in the world is, “Oh yeah, You guys just believe in a magical guy in the sky that grants you wishes. That’s all Christianity is. It’s just a guy in the sky that grants wishes.” Some people say that they’re making that argument specifically knowing that it’s untrue. It’s overly simplified. The argument is made out of mean-spiritedness. People are just trying to make it look silly so it’s all the easier to defeat. I don’t think that’s true. When I come across that argument, I think more often than not, it’s not born out of mean-spiritedness so much as ignorance. I think a lot of people genuinely think that the Christian vision of God is so shallow, so easy, so simplistic. That it is nothing more than a guy in the sky that grants wishes. That is objectively untrue.

Here in the Gospel of John, you can see right from the very beginning how complex our vision of God really is:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. ; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

We’ll go through it piece by piece, but recognize that this is not simple. To the contrary, this is incredibly complex. It’s almost as though John recognizes the limitation of language. He’s trying to describe something the likes of which language itself cannot fully describe, And so he’s getting close, and he’s doing his best to try to tie it down. This is incredibly complex, though. I wish more people knew the full depths of our vision of our God. This is not a simple God. This is a God the likes of which words cannot fully describe.

Let’s dive in. Verse one:

In the beginning was the Word.

And we have to stop already. That alone has so much you could unpack with it. “In the beginning was the Word.” I hope that sounded a little familiar to you. Familiar because it sounds a whole lot like the beginning of another book of Scripture! Which book is that? It’s Genesis. Genesis 1 :1 ” In, the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “In the beginning…” These two books start the exact same way, and this is not something that John was ignorant of. Any first century Jew knew the book of Genesis very well, especially the opening line. John is deliberately referencing the book of Genesis to talk about what happened there, but he’s not trying to change it. He’s not trying to fundamentally alter what’s presented in Genesis in an unfaithful way. To the contrary, He is answering one of the biggest questions that people had pondered in the book of Genesis for years.

Look at Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Who is “us”? Why is God speaking in plural? There were all kinds of answers that people came up with. Some said that God was using a plural because maybe he was talking to the angels. Maybe the angels were made on day one; these are, after all, beings of spiritual light. Maybe, they were made on day one and now God just wants to include them in his creative action. He’s saying it out of courtesy. While that’s clever enough, it doesn’t fully make sense, does it? Because nowhere in Scripture does it say ever that the angels helped God make things. To the contrary, it repeatedly and consistently talks about how God is the sole creator of everything. That doesn’t make sense.

Others thought that maybe God was speaking to humanity itself. God gave us free will. We have the ability to make decisions that create the person that we will become. Maybe God was including us by saying, “let us make humanity.” Again, exceedingly clever, but it doesn’t really work that well because God hasn’t made humans yet. Why is he talking to someone who doesn’t exist? That’s not a very helpful practice. If you want to talk to someone, you should wait until they exist first and then have a word with them.

Still, others believed maybe God was speaking to the earth. Genesis two talks a little about the specifics on how God made humanity, and it talks about how from the dust of the earth and God’s divine breath, humans were created. So we know earth is there. We know humans were made partially from the earth. Maybe God is speaking to the earth when he says, “Let us make humanity.” But, you know, that doesn’t work either. Think about a time when you made something. I remember a time that I made a birdhouse. I really had to struggle for this analogy because I am not good with my hands. I do not make things often. It was like eighth grade, but nonetheless, I remember it well. I made a birdhouse, and before I made that birdhouse, do you think I sat down with the wood and said, “All right, wood. Here we go. We’re going to make this birdhouse together.” No. I didn’t talk to the wood. Wood is an object. It can’t hear me. It is just wood. It’s not going to get up and help me either. “We” were not making the birdhouse; I was making it out of the wood. Trust me, I wish the wood would have helped! Maybe the birdhouse would have turned out better. It wasn’t great. But the wood didn’t do a thing during creation! It just sat there and I had to work with it. That’s the same with dirt. God would not have sat down with dirt and said, “All right, dirt, here we go. ” That doesn’t really work. It’s dirt! It’s raw material! It’s not part of the creative act.

You can still hear some of these interpretations in non Christian circles today. But really, John is revealing who the “us” was. He is revealing it here in John after all these years. He says, “Here it is:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Now who is the Word? You can answer. I know you know. It’s Jesus! You can tell that from context. We’re starting a book about the life of Jesus, and sure enough it begins with talking about this Word that existed before the world did and then enters into the world to save humanity. From context clues, it’s Jesus. We’ll talk about why John calls Jesus “the Word” here in a minute, but for now, it’s good enough just to say the Word is Jesus before he was incarnated as a person.

So we know that Jesus is this Word. He is this thing, and this is the one who was part of the “us” in the beginning. This is the us! In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is one of the most explicitly trinitarian verses in the entire Bible. Clearly we see thatJesus is God, and yet there is more to God than just Jesus alone. There are three persons that are all God; three that are one.

Now, the Holy Spirit is not in this particular verse. We know about his involvement from Christian doctrine and other verses, but in this particular verse it specifically talks about the second person of the Trinity, Jesus. Now, I find a lot of people think the Trinity is incredibly hard to understand. If it’s baffling to you, don’t feel too bad. We aren’t going to go into a deep dive of the Trinity today. This is just a reference that we see here but, you know, there’s not a lot of beings that we know that are three persons that are one being. That’s not a common thing. All of the beings we meet are only one person, right? The only exception to that rule is God, who is three persons that are one being. Naturally, that’s going to be confusing. We have no frame of reference for it around us. We have nothing that we can compare it to. So don’t feel too bad. That’s just part of how massive God is; how totally different from anything we can regularly see and understand. God is so different that even when language makes him explicitly apparent to us, it’s still challenging to wrap our minds around Him.

But I promised you that we’d talk about why John used the language ” the Word.” Why did he call Jesus pre-incarnation “the Word”? And obviously, John was not writing in English. He would have written in Greek. And in Greek, the word for “word” that’s used here is logos. And logos can mean different things to different audiences. For people in the first few centuries reading the Gospel of John, if you were Jewish, it would have been immediately clear what John was talking about when he started writing about this logos. What was the logos? It was the Word! And any Jewish person reading through their Old Testament can see how often they talk about God’s word. Love God’s word! Keep God’s word! Have God’s word in your heart! It is a constant theme. That’s the way you can have God with you and please Him is to know His word and hold it closely. So as they read about this logos, they would’ve thought, “Okay yeah I get it. God’s word is what he’s talking about”

But there was another audience that was also reading that in the first few centuries, and they were Greek. The Greeks thought about logos a little differently. Logos can also be translated into something like, and it’s hard to put into English, something like plan, blueprint, or wisdom. Something like that. Greek philosophers were always writing about the logos. They thought that if they could just understand the wisdom behind this world, the blueprint that was made to create it, the plan behind everything, if they could just pin it down, then they’d be able to really act in this world. You just had to know the logos, the blueprint, the plan. So if a Greek was reading this, that’s what would have popped into their head. They would have made a different association than the Hebrew readers, but one that was also connected with something beloved, something that some of their greatest men had spent years trying to fully understand.

John is speaking to two different groups and telling them both with just one word, that thing that you love? The thing you have written whole books about? You have been seeking it all this time, but you don’t have to seek it anymore. It came here and is seeking you.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Hopefully you can hear the duality in how he’s speaking. It works brilliantly for the Greek readers and for the Jewish readers. “Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.” If you’re thinking about logos as some kind of blueprint, boom! That perfectly encapsulates it! Through him all things were made! Yeah, that’s the logos alright! The same one we know about! Great, this guy knows what he’s talking about! And if you were Jewish, “through him all things were made.” All things were made through the word? Well, that’s right! In the beginning of Genesis, how does God make things? Words. And so here, here we don’t just have a word. This is the Word! The creative Word is here.

“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Now, I don’t know which Bible you might be looking at this morning, but there’s a popular difference in how that one word is translated. Some translations use the word “the darkness has not overcome the light.” Other translations say that “the darkness has not understood” the light. Which is a better translation? Frankly, they’re both good, and I think they both bring something different to the table. I mean, just think about it. Think about the darkness in this world. I want you to think about the things you endured this week: the frustrations, the stressors, the cruelty—the bad stuff! Think of all that darkness. Think about how much of it would not exist if people acted like Jesus. This world has not understood Jesus. If even just one percent of this world truly understood Jesus, there would not be nearly as much darkness as there is. The world has not understood Jesus, and yet think of all that darkness again: all the frustrations, all of the cruelty. And look at where you are now. Here you are in church on Sunday morning.

Why? Because you know. You know that all of that darkness out there in the world cannot extinguish the light that is Jesus. Jesus is the hope beyond all hopes, the joy beyond all joys. All the darkness in the world cannot stand against his light. That’s what got you here this morning. You know the light that is Jesus.

Verse six:

There was a man sent from God whose name Was John.

The apostle John is not talking about himself here; he’s talking about John the Baptist. When John talks about himself in the Gospel of John, he calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” We’ll talk about that later, but for now, just know this is John the Baptist.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light.

John the Baptist, I think, is kind of an odd figure in many of our imaginations. When we come to the Gospels, we’re not really there for John the Baptist. We’re there for Jesus. And he’s there kind of at the beginning doing his thing. What’s he doing? Why is he significant? A helpful way to think about John the Baptist is to remember that Jesus was the King, the King of all creation, and any king anywhere doesn’t just walk into a place. A king does not just wander into a random town. That’s not how it works. A king has someone who lets you know that they are coming. Why? So you can act appropriately. You don’t want to be standing around slouching with your hands in your pockets, and then the king walks in! You want to be prepared to receive the King well!

So who was the one telling everyone that the King was coming? John the Baptist. And, you’d think that a king as illustrious as Jesus himself, would have a herald that is the most earthly impressive person in the world. Someone who is well-educated, landed elite, wealthy, influential. That’s the kind of herald you’d expect and yet, The Herald of Jesus is someone on the fringe. He’s this crazy guy who’s really out there! That is who Jesus’ herald is. Why? I think it just shows us how little the world understood God and how little they were ready to receive Him. The best herald available was someone who everyone thought was crazy! This way-out-there guy? That’s the best herald for Jesus. But in spite of someone telling everyone, “The King is coming,” nobody prepared for the King.

Scripture continues on in that same vein:

The true light that gives light to everyone, verse nine, was coming into the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not receive him, recognize him. He came to that, which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Think about that for a second. Think about the emotional impact of that. Many of you have children. Imagine going to your child’s house to visit them, and you knock on the door, and they answer it and they say, “What do you want?” And you say, “I’m here to visit you.” They say, “Who are you?” They genuinely don’t know! Nothing in their eyes recognizes you. After all of the years that you spent raising them and loving them, they don’t even know who you are. That’s what it was like for God. God came here, he saw us, the children that he had spent time and effort and love. He came to see us and we didn’t even recognize him.

To all who did receive him, those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, nor of a husband’s will, but born of God.

Some of you may well be thinking, well we’re all children of God aren’t we? God made everything and everyone. So in that sense we are all God’s children. Right? That’s true. Yes in the minimal sense, we are all always children of God, but God doesn’t just want to be a father in the least sense of the word. He does not just want to be the one who is responsible for our biological existence. He wants to be a father in the greatest sense of that word! He wants to be someone who has a relationship with us, who knows us, who loves us, who supports us, who teaches us. He wants to be there cheering for us when things are good, and he wants to be there listening to us when things are bad. That’s what God wants. That’s what he meant when he said now you can really be children. Not just children in the lowest sense, but children in the perfect sense. And He will be our father in the fullest sense of the word.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him. He cried out saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”

It was common that the writers and thinkers who were the oldest were treated with the most respect. That’s the social convention he’s referring to. He said, I am not even fit to give this guy credibility. He is the most credible there is. He’s the oldest there is! He was around before all of this. He should be the most revered!

Verse sixteen,

Out of His fullness, we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father and has made him known.

No one has ever seen God. “No one can look upon the face of God and live,” is how the book of Exodus chapter 33 verse 20 puts it because God is so holy. He’s so different, He’s so massive, He’s so totally beyond our comprehension, that to look at the face of God, you just can’t even handle it. You would just cease to exist because God is so far beyond us. And yet in spite of that, here, after all this time, we see that because God was so beyond us, He made Himself knowable to us. In all of His greatness, he came down to a place where we could engage with him to start the relationship again.

That gets us through the first eighteen verses of the book of John. I love these verses, I really do, but I understand they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Some of you may be out there thinking, “Okay, I don’t know. That was a little out there. It’s a little here and there. I wish we just had a nice simple parable. I like it when there are stories! Those are easy to follow. This is… I don’t know. It’s weird.” If that’s you, that’s okay. These first few verses especially require you to be a pretty abstract thinker to wrap your mind around all of them. That’s a skill that some are comfortable with and some are not. Some have a knack for it and some don’t, but it’s a skill like any other. The more you think in abstract ways the better you’ll get at it. So you will learn more as you go. But if abstract thinking isn’t your forte, these may have been challenging verses for you. If that’s the case, let’s just recap it real quick. Let’s look at the big takeaways. God, the God, that is so far beyond our understanding that we can’t even fully comprehend Him, that God loved us so much, that He came to us. He made Himself knowable to us. When we broke the relationship with that God, He sought to restore it, because a God that big wants to be in a personal relationship with us. He notices us. He cares about us. He didn’t just make us and then stop worrying about us.

So I have to ask, how’s your relationship with God? Have you been nurturing it lately? And if you don’t have a relationship with God, there is no better time to start than today. There is no better time than now to go to God in prayer and just ask Him to begin that relationship. He would be delighted. But I’m sure many of you have had a longstanding relationship with God. How’s it going? When’s the last time you talked to God? When’s the last time you spent time with Him? That’s what God wants. A relationship isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s not something you just say, “Yep, I met him once.” That’s not good enough. No, A strong relationship requires constant effort from both parties, and God is always putting in the effort. God is always there. He always wants to be the one that we run to when things are good, when things are bad and when things are in-between. How’s your relationship with God? Spend some time on it this week because the God that is beyond human comprehension, the God that is so holy that we can’t even look on His face, has made himself knowable to us, and He is waiting to talk to you. Amen.

John 1 Commentary

April 26, 2026April 29, 2026 ~ Vincent ~ 1 Comment

From the Pulpit—Video & Full Transcript

John 1:1-18: Prologue
John 1:19-24: Baptism
John 1:35-51: Reaching Out

Classic Commentary Menu

John 2

Commentary

Introduction

John is one of the four Gospels
1. Matthew emphasizes fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies;
2. Mark emphasizes Jesus as servant who suffers;
3. Luke emphasizes Jesus’s humanity;
4. John emphasizes Christ’s divinity
John is often recommended for new Bible readers alongside Philippians, but just because it’s good for beginners doesn’t mean there’s not tremendous depth for everyone.
1. “Consider, then, brethren, if perchance John is not one of those mountains concerning whom we sang a little while ago, I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence shall come my help. Therefore, my brethren, if you would understand, lift up your eyes to this mountain, that is, raise yourselves up to the evangelist, rise to his meaning.” -Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on John, Tractate 1
The depth of God reflected in John’s prologue helps address a common critique of Christianity: “It’s about a magical guy in the sky that grants wishes.”
John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” immediately displays the complexity and depth of the Christian understanding of God, which even language strains to fully express.
“John is symbolized by an eagle. The other three Evangelists, concerned with those things which Christ did in his flesh, are symbolized by animals which walk on the earth, namely, by a man, a bull calf, and a lion. But John flies like an eagle above the cloud of human weakness and looks upon the light of unchanging truth with the most lofty and firm eyes of the heart.” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Prologue, 11

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

John 1:1 parallels Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning…”). John is retelling the story, but answering a question that haunted mankind from the beginning: who is “us?”
1. Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind…”
2. Many answers that people have proposed (God is talking to angels (not creators) or humanity (not existent) or the Earth (an object, not a being)) are deeply inadequate.
3. John reveals “the Word” (Jesus pre-incarnate) as with God and as God—revealing the foundation of the Trinity.
“The Word” refers to Jesus before His incarnation.
1. In the original Greek that John was writing in, “The Word” is “Logos.” That word carried important and distinct meanings for both Jewish and Greek audiences:
2. For a Jewish reader: “Logos” meant “the word,” resonating with the Old Testament’s emphasis on knowing and keeping God’s word.
3. For a Greek audience: “Logos” meant the “plan,” “blueprint,” or “wisdom” behind the universe—what philosophers sought to understand.
4. By using “Logos,” John tells both groups that the thing they loved and were looking for had come to find them: Jesus.
“A word is always something that proceeds from an intellect existing in act; and furthermore, that a word is always a notion (ratio) and likeness of the thing understood.” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Lecture 1, 25

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

By using that term, “logos,” John affirmed that Jesus was both the creative word of God (the spoken word in Genesis) and the blueprint of creation.

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

“The darkness has not overcome it” can also be translated “the darkness has not understood it.” Both are good translations.
The world’s darkness (frustration, cruelty) persists because people haven’t understood Jesus. But that darkness can’t overcome the light and hope that is Jesus.

The John in verse 6 is John the Baptist, not the Gospel’s author. Throughout the book of John, the author doesn’t refer to himself by name. Instead, he calls himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
John the Baptist’s role was to witness to the light (Jesus), serving as a herald announcing the King’s arrival.
A herald prepares people to receive the king properly. The fact that Jesus’s herald was a crazy guy on society’s fringe shows how little the world understood God or was ready to receive Him.

Imagine a parent visiting their child, only for the child not to recognize them at all. That’s what it was like for God coming to us.

Some might object that we’re all “children of God” because God made us.
1. God doesn’t just want to be our father in the smallest sense! He wants to be our father in the fullest sense! He wants to be the one we count on in every situation
2. A good father isn’t just the person who helps us to exist, but the one who nurtures us, protects us, and cares for us.
3. God invites us to be in a personal relationship with him so we can be His child in the fullest sense.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”)

In Hebrew culture, older writers received greater respect. By conceding to Jesus’s age, John the Baptist is showing that Jesus is the ultimate authority that he doesn’t can’t give any credibility to. He already has ultimate credibility.

In Exodus 33:20, God says, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
1. This is because He is utterly holy and beyond comprehension. Our sinful, mortal minds couldn’t handle it
2. Even though it’s incomprehensible, God made Himself knowable by coming down to our level as Jesus to restore our broken relationship with Him.
3. This prologue is highly abstract! Not everyone is comfortable with abstract thought. If you’re not, here’s the core takeaway: seek a relationship with God. In spite of your smallness and his vastness, he wants to know you. Pray to him.

The narrative shifts back chronologically from the opening eighteen verses (which served as an overview of the Book of John) to the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.
What is happening to John in this verse is a public interrogation, not a respectful inquiry. Their goal was to discredit John. If he denied having authority, people might stop following him. If he claimed authority, they could report him to the Romans as a troublemaker.

21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

The authoritative figures that are being addressed here are all in Scripture. The second coming of Elijah is in Malachi 4:5, the coming of the prophet is in Deuteronomy 18:15, and prophecies about the coming messiah are found throughout the Old Testament (especially Isaiah).

22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

The Pharisees’ may be villains in these passages, but they were also people with real, legitimate concerns.
1. The Roman-Jewish historian Josephus recorded four individuals in the first century who claimed to be the Messiah, raised armies, and fought the Romans, all of whom understood the Messiah as a military figure.
2. A later false messiah, Simon Ben Kosiba, led a rebellion in the early second century that resulted in the Romans destroying Israel, renaming it Syria Palestine, and scattering the Jewish people. Israel did not reappear on maps until after World War II.
3. The Pharisees were justifiably worried that a false messiah would bring destruction, but while trying to prevent this, they tragically overlooked the true Messiah.

23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

John seems surprisingly comfortable given the circumstances! He knew he wasn’t “the one.” He was just there to point to the person who was.
1. How often do we carry the burden of having to be “the one” rather than pointing to the person who genuinely is?
He identifies himself using Isaiah’s words: “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” (Isa 40:3)
1. Untying sandals was considered such a lowly task that even rabbis were forbidden from asking their disciples to do it (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 96a) John’s statement signifies his profound sense of unworthiness compared to the greatness of Jesus.

24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

The practice of baptism existed before John, rooted in Old Testament purification rituals, such as priests washing in a basin before approaching the altar in the tabernacle and later bathing in the temple.
John brought this practice to the people, applying the principle of purification to prepare for God’s approach in the form of Jesus.
John’s baptism was a symbolic act. He explicitly states, “I baptize with water,” indicating it was just water and held no special divine power. It was a good thing to do, encouraging people to recognize their sinfulness and need for God’s purification.
“John answered, I baptize with water. As if to say: You should not be disturbed, if I, who am not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet, baptize; because my baptism is not completive but imperfect. For the perfection of baptism requires the washing of the body and of the soul; and the body, by its nature, is indeed washed by water, but the soul is washed by the Spirit alone.” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Lecture 13, 244.

28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

The title “Lamb of God” connects Jesus to a rich scriptural history of lambs being sacrificed so that others might live: the ram that died in Isaac’s place, the Passover lamb whose blood protected the Israelites, and the lambs sacrificed for forgiveness in the temple.
John identifies Jesus as “the” ultimate Lamb who will provide the final sacrifice.
The use of the singular “sin” (not “sins”) is significant. Sins are the symptoms (wrong actions), but “sin” is the underlying disease or “rot in our soul” that began with Adam and Eve. Jesus came to eliminate the root cause, not just the symptoms.

Why would the sinless Jesus need to be baptized? Common reasons for baptism (joining the church, receiving the Holy Spirit, washing away sin) do not apply to Him. Surely Jesus could have revealed himself to John the Baptist in other ways. Why was this way fitting?
1. John’s baptism was purely symbolic, which means a lot of the answers (the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, joining the Body of Christ, etc.) don’t apply here. It really is a matter of symbols: why would a sinless person symbolically ask for purification?
2. The 18th-century monk Nikodemos of Athos speaks to this in his prayers: “Jesus, being God, had no need for purification, but he suffered purification for me,” (Prayers to Our Lord Jesus Christ).
3. Jesus gained nothing from baptism; it was an act of humility. His glory is repeatedly revealed through such humble acts: the infinite God being born in a small human body, in a manger; and ultimately dying a humiliating death on a cross.
4. “And why must the Lord be baptized? Because many there would be to despise baptism, that they might appear to be endowed with greater grace than they saw other believers endowed with…. [T]he Lord was willing to be baptized by a servant, as if addressing His chief sons: Why do you extol yourselves? Why lift yourselves up because you have, one prudence, another learning, another chastity, another the courage of patience? Can you possibly have as much as I who gave you these? And yet I was baptized by a servant, you disdain to be baptized by the Lord.” -Augustine of Hippo

What was once a purely symbolic, natural act became more than natural, now carrying the power of the Holy Spirit to bestow grace, unite a person with the body of Christ, and wash away sin.
Note that there is no reason to expect two baptisms. Some traditions insist that you need one “water baptism” and one “baptism of the Spirit” (generally identified by strong feelings in the believer), but Ephesians 4 is explicit that there is only one baptism. Jesus has transformed baptism, not added a second baptism.

34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.

Matthew 11:11”Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
1. John was the greatest of “those born of women,” or those born by purely natural means.
2. Through baptism, believers are made part of the “Kingdom of Heaven” and are greater than John the Baptist
Just as Jesus transformed water and a human body into something more than natural, He transforms believers into more than natural people by giving them the Holy Spirit.

Four Accounts of Calling

These next four stories all show different disciples being called into ministry by Christ:
1. Andrew and Peter join Jesus through intellectual inquiry
2. Peter follows Jesus because of a personal invitation from someone he trusts
3. Philip joins Philip abruptly because of his experience meeting Jesus
4. Nathanael overcomes his skepticism after seeing a miracle
The close proximity of the stories help illustrate the diverse ways that people come to faith in Christ

35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.

In the ancient world, discipleship was immersive—students followed a teacher to observe how they lived and embodied their teachings. This approach emphasizes that profound truths should transform one’s whole life, not remain abstract. The speaker contrasts this with modern education’s focus on fact acquisition and suggests discipleship offers a valuable lesson in witnessing wisdom lived out.

36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

John refrains from retaining disciples for personal benefit (labor, prestige). Instead, he directly points them to Jesus, modeling ministry that prioritizes others’ growth over personal gain.
This contrasts with common tendencies of leaders to hoard followers; John advocates sending people to the best source for their development.

37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

“It was about four in the afternoon” (verse forty) is a pretty specific detail. This, along with the fact that John never names himself in his gospel and this particular disciple is unnamed, suggests this unnamed disciple was John.

In his book The Inviting Church, church growth expert Roy Oswald asked a number of congregants why they worshipped at the church they did if they weren’t raised there.
1. 86% started attending because a friend or family member invited them;
2. 6% came because of a program;
3. 6% were invited by a pastor,
4. 2% due to advertising.
Peter’s journey is statistically common! So many people relate to Peter, but the Church needs more Andrews to invite others.
Peter (originally Simon) comes to Jesus through his brother Andrew’s invitation: “We have found the Messiah!” Andrew is only mentioned twelve times in the Bible, and four of those are just in lists! Of the remaining eight narrative mentions of Andrew, he’s bringing people to Jesus in three of them. He has a gift for connection and evangelism. The Church needs its Peters and Pauls, but we also need our Andres!

42 And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).

Jesus renames Simon to Cephas (Aramaic for “stone”; translated into Greek and then English as “Peter”), signaling a break from old to new identity and commissioning him as a “rock” on which Jesus will build his ministry. This affirms Peter’s gifts and shows that Jesus is giving him meaningful work.
1. Everyone wants to make a difference in the world! We are not just called to sit in pews for Jesus, but change the world for Him.

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip’s calling is incredibly abrupt! Jesus says, “Follow me,” and Philip does just that. The abruptness suggests an immediate, vivid experience with Jesus that was enough to get Nathaniel to worship Jesus without a prior relationship. For some, a direct encounter is decisive.

46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

Nathanael resists at first, ignoring the ties that Philip makes to the prophets and Moses. fixating on the detail that he’s from Nazareth, and that’s not a particularly reputable town. Philip wisely avoids debating issues that don’t really matter and instead invites him to “come and see.” His goal is not to win a debate, but to win Nathanael over to Christ by introducing them.

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus greets Nathanael as “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” showing that he knows his character, and says that he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him. Given Nathanael’s reaction, obviously this wasn’t a mere overhearing of someone else’s conversation; it was miraculous!

In verse 51, Jesus is referencing Genesis 28 (Jacob’s ladder) to declare himself the bridge between Heaven and Earth. If knowing a name is so impressive to Nathanael, he should be ready to see the full nature of the Son of Man, which is infinitely more miraculous.

Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation: The Gifts

April 7, 2026April 30, 2026 ~ Vincent

Early Christian writings on the Bible are some of the greatest untapped gifts that the Christian tradition has to offer not only the modern preacher, but any Christian that seriously wants to grow. When we dig into the depths of those bygone saints, there’s an incomparable wisdom waiting to be discovered. That said, this rose is not without its thorns. These older writings come with their fair share of challenges. The realities that Christians were fighting against in those eras can be vastly different from the things that we fight against today. At times, they’re worried about things that we see as deeply normative (theatre, sin after baptism, leaving a church on bad terms). In other places, they’re doing battle against ideas so bizarre that it seems impossible that their notes could be relevant to us (the possibility of Jesus lacking any physical body, the influence of long-dead religions, the shame of someone avoiding martyrdom). On top of that, the way they read their Bibles was often very different. Often, they appear to play “fast and loose” with the Biblical text, noting conclusions that don’t make much sense by our standards. So why bother with it at all?

What are some of the biggest gifts in early Christian exegesis? Of course, one could argue that their use of allegory and spiritual readings is strong enough to make it worth investigating on its own, but overuse of those techniques are exactly what make so many of us Protestants uncomfortable with them to begin with. Rather than claim the controversy as a benefit, there are three far less controversial gifts that any Christian, regardless of background, denomination, or preference, can expect to find if they delve into these writings.

1) They find depth in passages we take for granted.

If we are reading for the “plain sense” of Scripture (as most of us Protestants strive to do), there are a handful of passages that don’t contain an overabundance of edification. For example, Song of Songs 4:1 reads, “Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead.” In most modern settings, people use this verse as purely an element of description, often noting that cultural standards of beauty and even the nature of compliments change over time. After all, who today would long to have hair like goats going down a mountain, much less receive a compliment that their hair looks as such? The reading highlights cultural differences appropriately, but fails to bring any spiritual edification to the listener or broach the question, “Why does God want us to hear this?”

The Venerable Bede (the man who popularized the use of “BC” and “AD” in historical records) is a commentator from the Early Middle Ages that illustrates what depth older Christians found in little passages like this. He wrote,

[I]f goats and the hair or skins of goats always signified the foulness of sinners and never the humility of penitents, that animal would by no means have been reckoned among the clean [animals], nor would it have been said in praise of the bride: “Your hair is like a flock of goats.”
-Bede, On the Tabernacle, 2.3

Goats are typically described as representative of sinners in the Bible, so why should it be tied to beauty in this passage? Because the penitent sinner is beautiful to God, and we should all strive to be as such. Small passages like this can sneak by modern Christians because we don’t expect to find anything, but older writers leave no stone unturned in their efforts to find God’s word for us in every verse.

2) They connect Scripture in ways that we don’t expect.

Not only do these older texts often find big things in small places, but they connect Scriptures in ways that we might not expect. I hesitate to use the word “creative,” since a good theologian seeks to reveal what is already in the text, not innovate, but this connective instinct of patristic (the era of the Church Fathers, 100-400 AD) and early middle ages Bible readings might seem something like healthy creativity to us. These are authors that lived in primarily oral cultures. Books were expensive, and Google didn’t exist. They memorized things far more extensively than a modern person, and consequently could connect Scriptures in ways that are both unexpected and insightful to us.

Origen of Alexandria is a theologian that’s particularly apt at this. There can be little doubt that Origen ultimately deviated from the path of Orthodoxy, but his tremendous contributions to early Christian theology can’t be overstated. On Song of Songs 1:1 (“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,”), Origen writes,

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”—that is to say, may pour the words of His mouth into mine, that I may hear Him speak Himself, and see Him teaching. The kisses are Christ’s, which He bestowed on His Church when at His coming, being present in the flesh, He in His own person spoke to her the words of faith and love and peace, according to the promise of Isaias who, when sent beforehand to the Bride, had said: Not a messenger, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save us.
-Origen, Commentary on Song of Songs, 1:1

Origen ties the opening of Song of Songs, a passage about a woman longing for the kisses of her groom, to the Church’s delight at seeing the incarnation of God in Christ and longing for his loving words spoken to it. If ever there is an appropriate metaphor for the incarnation, God’s embodied presence with his people, it’s hard to imagine one more appropriate than a kiss. The people of God longed for the presence of Christ, and ultimately were met by Him in ways more intimate than so many other religions would expect! While this may still feel too far from a plain sense of text for some, if we abandon any sense of metaphor in Song of Songs, we end up with a simple story about a man and a woman in love. Origen’s instinct to integrate that story into the greater narrative in Scripture may not be expected, but it helps us understand why this book may have been canonized to begin with.

3) Their comfort with abstract thinking often exceeds our own.

Previously, I used two examples from Song of Songs, which might be considered “loading the deck” in favor of the ancients and their comfort with finding meaning in passages that tend to challenge historical-critical readings, but their contributions aren’t just limited to areas where plain text readings require caution. Augustine of Hippo, that great father of Christian Orthodoxy, wrote on the book of Genesis multiple times across his life, sometimes focusing on plain-text, literal meaning, and sometimes delving into more abstract realities that lay beneath the surface. This particular passage, covering Genesis 2, is distinctly allegorical and plumbs the depths of the human psyche in ways that would make modern psychological figures like Freud and Jung think twice. At this point in the work, he’s already stated that Adam represents higher reasoning (the soul’s deep wisdom), Eve represents lower reason (the ability to make rational decisions and manage earthly resources appropriately), and the snake represents appetite. Here is his grand conclusion:

[T]he serpent did not eat from the forbidden tree, but only incited to eat… So too in one man, the sensual motion of the soul is set against the reasoning of wisdom… bodily things are sensed, but eternal things are understood through wisdom.
-Augustine, The Trinity, Ch. 3

What he reads, in some places, as a story about one man and one woman sinning long ago he now reads as a roadmap for the human soul. It’s now a story about all of us. We are all tempted by the world around us, and our mind takes in the world around us and offers it up to our soul to make an ultimate choice as to how we respond. The psychological impact of this would make Jung or Freud do a double-take, but finding ways to show that inclination to sin in all of us like our forefathers is not only faithful, but deeply revealing about the human psyche.

Why should you wrestle with patristic and early medieval writings?

The insights offered up above are distinctly non-modern. They may feel strange, but they’re also both rational and faithful to the Scriptures. Whether for preaching or individual reflection, there’s a wonderful depth on display here that can be taken up and applied in our lives. Older texts are a challenge, and there are reasons to go in with eyes wide open, but the way they see big things in small places, the way they weave the Scriptures together cohesively, and their comfort with abstract thinking gives us tools that make the challenge more than worth the effort.

Verse-by-Verse Studies Added!

March 12, 2026April 28, 2026 ~ Vincent

I’ve been preaching regularly for a while now, and I’m a big fan of expository preaching. When someone goes through the Bible chapter-by-chapter and verse-by-verse, not only do we get the opportunity to learn everything that God laid out for us in his word, but it creates a wonderful reference for the future for anyone else studying those passages.

I’m always looking for excellent expository preaching videos and commentaries so that I can add to my list of resources. I figured it was about time I put my resources out there for others to use as well. This site will now have a “Verse-by-Verse Studies” section that you can visit via the menu at the top of the page to see how I taught on different sections of the Bible, beginning with the Gospel of John. Each section will include a YouTube video, a verse-by-verse outline, and a transcript of the sermon in question. Right now, only John 1 is fully available, but I plan to keep expanding over time.

If you’re only interested in the traditional classic theology content that I put out here on the blog, don’t worry. This Bible content being added won’t be included in emails or appear in the main feed of the blog. It’s purely extra for those looking for more. I pray it can help others learn as others helped me learn.

-Vincent

King of Kings: Abgar and Jesus

March 4, 2026April 30, 2026 ~ Vincent

The ancient world was shaped by kings; men whose words were law and whose birthrights were governance. Their will, for good or ill, shaped the world. Stories of such kings converting to Christianity have a special place in Christian legend, as it often resulted in an overwhelming conversion of a nation afterwards. This post details just one such legend.

I used to think that Ethiopia was the first Christian kingdom, mostly because I knew it managed to beat Rome to the punch. Imagine my surprise when I picked up Eusibius’s Church History and came across the story of a king that converted before that: King Abgar V of Edessa (aka the Abgar V of the Kingdom of Osreone or Abgar the Black).

It’s worth mentioning that just because something appears in Eusebius’s history doesn’t mean it’s above suspicion. Eusebius may be the Father of Church History, but a little fact checking is merited. So much of history is collecting stories. Some stories are compelling and have a lot of evidence supporting them, while others are a little more speculative. In the case of King Abgar V, we’re definitely in speculative territory. It’s also worth noting that even double checking Eusibius’s work is a challenge in this instance. Sources about the Kingdom of Osreone and goings on in its capital, Edessa, are rare before the third century. Osreone was a small border kingdom that was gobbled up by Rome in the third century, and pre-Roman records weren’t well preserved. A lot of primary sources aren’t available in English, and the secondary sources are often less than thorough. It was a genuine struggle finding reliable ancient sources on Abgar and Edessa, but I think I managed to find enough to help clarify what is (and isn’t) likely to be true.

In any case, Eusebius reports that King Abgar the V of Edessa holds the unique honor of being the first Christian king. Not only was he the first, but he was so interested in Jesus that he actually wrote a letter to him before he died on the cross! To verify this claim, Eusebius travelled to the royal records in Edessa and found copies of the letter that Abgar wrote to Jesus and the response that Jesus sent back. He even translated them and copied them for his readers! It’s hard to imagine that Eusebius was lying about the existence of these documents. When he shares the content of other documents in his major work Church History, it’s incredibly accurate. For example, in chapter three, he cites letters between a magistrate named Pliny the Younger to the Roman Emperor Trajan regarding what to do with Christian citizens. When compared to Pliny’s records (Epistles 10.96-97), Eusebius’s work is almost verbatim. Again, in chapter four, he accurately reproduces the full account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Even his consistent citation of imperial edicts is spot on with independent accounts. Whether or not we find ourselves compelled by the contents of the letters, it’s hard to deny that Eusebius found them and copied them accurately. Here are the letters between Abgar and Jesus, as translated and by Eusebius in the early 4th century:

From Abgar to Jesus:

Abgar, son of Archam, prince of the land, to Jesus, Saviour and Benefactor of men, who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting:—

I have heard of You, and of the cures wrought by Your hands, without remedies, without herbs: for, as it is said, You make the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be healed; You drive out unclean spirits, You cure unhappy beings afflicted with prolonged and inveterate diseases; You even raise the dead. As I have heard of all these wonders wrought by You, I have concluded from them either that You are God, come down from heaven to do such great things, or that You are the Son of God, working as You do these miracles. Therefore have I written to You, praying You to condescend to come to me and cure me of the complaints with which I am afflicted. I have heard also that the Jews murmur against You and wish to deliver You up to torments: I have a city small but pleasant, it would be sufficient for us both.

From Jesus to Abgar:

Blessed is he who believes in me without having seen me! For it is written of me: ‘Those who see me will not believe in me, and those who do not see me will believe and live.’ As to what you have written asking me to come to you, I must accomplish here all that for which I have been sent; and, when I shall have accomplished it all, I shall ascend to Him who sent me; and when I shall go away I will send one of my disciples, who will cure your diseases, and give life to you and to all those who are with you.

Anan, Abgar’s courier, brought him this letter, as well as the portrait of the Saviour, a picture which is still to be found at this day in the city of Edessa.

Let’s begin by pointing out just a few of the obvious reasons why these letters aren’t trustworthy:

Notice that Jesus referenced John 20:29 in the opening of this letter (“because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed”). He says this is what has been written about him. Unfortunately, this is something that couldn’t have been written about him at this point, given that Jesus said this to Thomas AFTER his resurrection, not before.
A document that was hand-written by Jesus would have been a MASSIVE deal to the ancient church. The New Testament Scriptures were chosen partially based on their apostolic credentials. A connection to one of the twelve apostles ensured that the document represented the best of Jesus’s teachings and was not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but fully legitimate. Something that people really thought was written by Jesus? They’d have put that in the Bible in a heartbeat.
Finally, notice how strangely orthodox Abgar is. He describes Jesus as “God, come down from heaven to do great things, or… the Son of God.” Wow! He was so close! He almost recognized Jesus’s role in the Holy Trinity at a time when even the apostles were struggling with it. Funny how uncanny his instincts were given that he had never met Jesus and wasn’t Jewish.

There are other problems that I’ll leave you to catch on your own. The bottom line is that these aren’t particularly compelling documents.

On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that this legend is incredibly cool. You can’t get much better than a story about your king personally reaching out to Jesus and acknowledging his greatness and divinity. That’s top tier. Not only that, but he offers to let Jesus live with him in Edessa so he can get away from the coming violence in Israel? If that’s your king, he’s unbelievably rad.

While the document itself is more legend than reality, it’s hard to deny that, at minimum, it’s pointing towards some very true realities about the ancient world. Even the most critical historians admit that Abgar’s great, great grandson, King Abgar IX was definitely Christian and made the Kingdom of Osreone legally Christian in the early third century. That’s earlier than Ethiopia (330) and Rome (380), making it still the oldest Christian nation, even if we completely disregard the letters as a forgery. That alone ought to suggest that there may have been significant Christian history before that time. But is there any chance that any of this particular legend is true?

Eusebius records that the disciple who witnessed to Abgar V after Jesus ascended into Heaven was one of the 72 disciples mentioned in Luke 10: a disciple named “Thaddeus,” or Addai in the local Syriac. If we can show that Addai existed and has some form of historic record aside from just witnessing to Abgar V, that goes a long way towards indicating that there’s more to this than just a legend. Luckily for us, there is indeed a document that verifies the independent history of Bishop Addai: The Doctrine of Addai (Syriac, 4-5 c.). This brief document contains the history of the first three bishops in Edessa: Addai (the first bishop who was sent to the region by the apostle Thomas), Addai’s successor Aggai, and the third bishop in the region, Palut. Sure enough, Addai does things apart from witness to Abgar V in this document! Unfortunately, the things he does aren’t at all possible. For example, he converts Protonice, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, to Christianity by showing her incredible miracles. That would be really impressive… if Claudius ever had a wife named Protonice. Not only that, but Protonice goes to take a little tour of Jerusalem with Addai and finds the true cross in a story that sounds a lot like the story of Helena (Constantine’s mom), which was a story that would have existed by the time this document was written. A massive portion of Addai’s story in this document focuses on his relationship with the king and how he built up Christianity in the region until he died and basically everyone famous in Edessa went to his funeral and cried, regardless of their religion. This document makes the letters seem feasible in comparison.

The final straw is the details provided during the explanation of Palut’s (the third bishop’s) ordination. Apparently after the grand funeral of Addai, King Abgar V passed away and Aggai took over until he was martyred by increasing persecution in the region. Then we get to Palut! Since Aggai died before he could ordain Palut as a bishop, Palut was ordained by Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, who was ordained by Zephyrinus, Bishop of Rome. Here’s the problem… Serapion was the Bishop of Antioch between 191 and 211. Zephyrinus was the Bishop of Rome from 199-217. Zephyrinus wouldn’t have been able to ordain Serapion as a bishop, given that Serapion was ordained as a bishop first! Not only that, but both men are from around the 3rd century, when the king of Edessa would have been Abgar IX, who is the first recorded Christian king that a majority of historians consider the first Christian king of Edessa.

The difficulties to justify this particular legend are much too great to overlook, and this comes from someone who looked at as many other sources as I could to try to find a way to make the legend work. Regardless of which additional documents I included, these two documents are both foundational to the Abgar/Addai mythos, and anything that comes afterwards is a clumsy effort to try to massage the obvious errors in those documents.

I sadly have to admit that it seems almost certain that the claim that Abgar V of Edessa was the first Christian king isn’t true. The letters that it’s based on have clear historical errors and the legends that the disciple that converted to him have clear historical errors. That said, I do think there’s evidence that the legend points to a reality that we can count on. There was indeed a king named Abgar (IX, not V) that converted to Christianity due to the influence of a growing Christian community in Edessa, likely led by a very real bishop named Palut. Everything before that point is shrouded enough by legend that it’s not a reliable source to use. Was there someone named Addai? Maybe, but his resume would have been so radically different from the Addai of legend that it’s not even worth comparing the two.

All signs bring us back to somewhere in the early third century, where a king named Abgar (IX) saw a growing Christian population, probably led by a bishop named Palut, and was indeed converted through the influence of someone from the community. So, to be fair, the first Christian king WAS an Abgar of Edessa! The legends seem concerned with establishing an impressive lineage for the first Christian kingdom, which is a shame, because I’d say having the first Christian king is impressive enough without the exaggeration (though the exaggeration is still highly rad).

A Monk for a New Year’s Mentor

January 11, 2026April 30, 2026 ~ Vincent

As we enter the new year, we inevitably look back on our actions in 2025 and ask ourselves, “Am I proud of that?” Some of us make resolutions to help address the areas we want to change, while others make less formal plans in the hope that some flexibility might make things a little easier to apply. This year, I’m a member of the latter group. Resolutions are hard and I have a tendency to break them within a month or two. Even so, I’m looking for ways to enter into this new year with resolve to be better than I was last year, and to that end, I’m back with an old friend, Isaiah the Solitary.

Isaiah the Solitary was a monk that lived in Gaza around 1500 years ago, and truth be told, I’m not even aware of how many works he wrote. I’m only familiar with one, and yet that one is as brief and strange as it needs to be to keep me coming back: On Guarding the Intellect: Twenty-Seven Texts. When he says “texts,” he really means paragraphs, which means this is the sort of thing you can gobble up in five or so minutes. That said, it’s not an easy read. Part of it comes from the language that he uses. He talks about developing “the intellect” and avoiding “the passions,” which vaguely sounds like he wants you to learn a lot and not get excited about it. But when we learn his vocabulary, we can see what he’s trying to get at. When Isaiah talks about “the intellect,” he’s talking about the highest part of our soul, responsible for our journey towards God. When he talks about “the passions,” he’s talking about the sins that distract us, ensnare us, and pull us away from God. So really, he’s spending twenty-seven paragraphs trying to help us learn how to pursue God and avoid sin, and that’s something that any of us could use.

Part of what makes Isaiah’s advice so compelling is that it comes from a place so vastly removed from our own. He wrote over a thousand years ago, over a thousand miles away, in a life circumstance that none of us can really relate to (again, he was a monk, and if you look at his name, you can see he wasn’t a particularly social one). There’s a real need to listen to Christians across time and space. We all enter the world with certain blind spots that we inherit from the culture we’re born in. There’s not a lot we can do on our own to see them; it would be like a fish critiquing water! We know what we know, and it’s hard to address what we don’t know. But when we read from people that wrote so long ago, they can see things that we don’t see and address realities we don’t regularly address.

For example, one of Isaiah’s key interests? Detachment. In his words, detachment is “death in relation to every person or thing,” (text 25). That sounds intense! But consider how often we are shaped by desires related to the world around us. We want certain people to admire us. We want to acquire certain goods. We want to be praised for our work and to avoid losing what we have. Why? Because too often, we think in terms of worldly success: we love to gain and hate to lose. If we’re busy carrying that burden, how can we serve God effectively? What if the things he asks of us involve loss? What if we get a swollen ego from praise and start to see ourselves as greater than Him? What if repeated failure (by the world’s standards) leads us to a level of depression that stops us from loving God well? That’s why Isaiah urges us towards detachment. The more we can remove ourselves from the love of the world’s things, the more we can keep ourselves away from the passions (sins in our heart) and grow towards God.

Isaiah never presents this as something that’s easy or normal. To the contrary, he talks about it like it’s a great battle that we’re called to. It’s all about “guarding our heart” against sin and “casting out” evils and “competing in the arena” of life. Militaristic language for faith doesn’t see broad use today, but it really does capture the seriousness of sin. Avoiding sin isn’t just a matter of politeness or decency; it’s a matter of life and death. If we want to turn towards God, it’s not an uncontested goal, and the stakes are high. While I imagine some might find that stressful, it’s a strangely comforting realization for me. Life may not be easy, but it’s also not frivolous.

To a comfortable people living in a consumer culture, Isaiah’s advice is strange and wonderful. It’s a wake up call, it’s encouragement, and it’s a reminder to let go of what we don’t need to be holding. We all have burdens weighing us down. The battle is letting go and looking to God. If we can do that, there’s a life in Him just waiting for us.

Letters from Luther: The Struggles (and Gifts) of Wartburg

December 31, 2025April 30, 2026 ~ Vincent

The story of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms is the stuff of legend. Who could forget that grand moment in which he refused the emperor’s demands and cast his whole hope on the Gospel? You can just imagine his voice resounding as he spoke those legendary words:

Unless I am convinced by testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or someone can reasonably prove to me that I have erred (for I believe neither in the pope nor councils alone, since it has been established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures which I have cited at length, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God. I am neither able nor willing to recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

What happened after the drama died down—after the Pope declared him a heretic, the Emperor branded him an outlaw, and he was whisked away to Wartburg Castle by his protector, Frederick the Wise, for a year of hiding? What happened in the heart of someone so bold when he was brought low and forced into solitude? The letters he wrote during his time in exile give us the opportunity to see a side of him that we don’t often consider. Of course, in some letters, we see the Luther we know. We see the hero! He gives orders to his supporters in the Protestant movement, he encourages them to push forward and risk martyrdom if necessary, and he continually redirects them towards the love of Christ. It’s inspiring! But alongside all of that wild courage, we see the man beneath the cape, so to speak. We see Luther wrestling with frustration and depression. We see him rethinking his identity as a monk, a son, and a Christian. Best of all, we get to see him announce what he produced during his time in isolation, despite being burdened with all of that. It’s that vulnerable side of Luther that I want to explore, because I think that’s something we can all relate to. I don’t know that most of us have ever been the symbol of a Christian movement and responsible for rallying the troops, but we have had periods of loneliness, frustration, isolation and introspection. How did Luther handle a moment like that? And how can we be inspired to do the same?

The depths of Luther’s depression are especially clear in his communications with his friend and fellow Protestant leader, Philip Melancthon. Even as he encourages Philip onward with complete assurance of the righteousness of their cause in the eyes of God, he shares just how difficult it is for him to be sidelined and forced into inaction. He writes:

Instead of being ardent in spirit I am the prey of sinful appetites – laziness and love of sleep. For eight days I have neither prayed nor studied, through fleshly temptations. If I do not improve, I shall go to Erfurt and consult the physicians, for I can endure my malady no longer. (Letter to Philip Melancthon, May 12, 1521)

For a man that previously lived as a monk and spent hours every day praying the Liturgy of the Hours, that’s a vast departure from his norms. Here is a famous professor, renowned for his writings and his hours spent in prayer, and he can’t get out of bed. He refers to his pain elsewhere as “unbearable” and describes a prevailing numbness. He should be weeping! He should be worried about people that need the Gospel and are being opposed by the powers that be! But instead, he finds himself quoting Psalm 89:47: “For what futility you have created all humanity!” I can’t help but appreciate Luther’s use of the psalms here. In some spaces in the modern Christian world, there’s this relentless push to smile and be happy that makes those darker psalms almost incomprehensible, but Luther draws on those words to faithfully express the very real pain that he’s experiencing at Wartburg.

That pain does prove helpful in giving him a fuller picture of himself. It’s common to place the end of Luther’s time as a monk in 1524 or 1525 when he formally took off his monastic habit and married Katharina von Bora, but his writings very clearly show that what officially ended later was something that he had already come to terms with in a letter to his father during his stay at Wartburg. Historically, his dad wasn’t a big fan of his decision to become a monk, but he came to terms with it because he loved his son. He never apologized for his decision to become a monk, but the way he frames it isn’t the same anymore. In his earlier writings, it’s his way of giving his life over to God. And that’s still true… partially. God did call him into monasticism earlier, but he did it so that Luther could see “the slavery it brings” firsthand and help others flee its clutches:

Dear father, do you ask me to renounce monkish orders? But – God has been before you, and has brought me out Himself… and has placed me, as thou seest, not in the miserable, blasphemous service of monachism, but in the true divine worship, for no one can doubt that I serve God’s Word… Therefore I send you this book, from which you will see how miraculously Christ has redeemed me from my monkish vows, and endowed me with such freedom, that although I am the servant of all men, I am subject to Him alone. For He is my sole Bishop, Abbot, Prior, Lord, Father, Master! I know no other. I trust He has deprived you of your son, so that, through me, He may help the sons of many others and prevent you rejoicing alone. (Letter to Hans Luther, November 21, 1521.)

He included a copy of On Monastic Vows with the letter, which explicitly talks about the dangers of monasticism, the ways in which it directly opposes God’s word, and encourages monks and nuns to leave the orders. Until this point, Luther’s logic clearly points in this direction. It’s not a wild deviation from his course of thought, but his time in Wartburg was more than just a bleak experience of pain. It was an opportunity for him to ask, “How do I respond to this? Who am I, and who do I need to be?” He synthesized some of what he had only hinted at previously into a full, cohesive idea that he’d later live out.

But the greatest gem is yet to come. If you’re living out your own Wartburg moment, note that there were even greater treasures Luther forged in this season. It was during his time at Wartburg that Luther gave the world one of his greatest contributions to the Reformation. As he was emerging back into the public world in March of 1522, Luther wrote this to fellow reformer Georg Spalatin:

I have not only translated the Gospel of St. John in my Patmos, but the whole of the New Testament, and Philip and I are now busy correcting it, and, with God’s help, it will be a splendid work. Meantime we need your help, to find out proper words, therefore be ready to supply us with the common terms for some things we require, but not those used at Court, for this book is to be written in the simplest language that all may understand it[.] (Letter to Georg Spalatin, March 30, 1522)

In the middle of the depression, the frustration, and the self-examination, Luther had produced a full translation of the New Testament into German. Until this point, most Bibles were in Latin, making them accessible only to scholars and nobles. The Luther Bible in common German was one of the first accessible copies of the Bible to make its way into the everyman’s hands.

In the silence of isolation, the agony of self-examination, and the frustration of every circumstance, good things can happen. Trust God in all circumstances, and in Luther’s words to Melancthon, “I am praying for you. Pray for me, and let’s share this burden,” (Letter to Melancthon, May 12, 1521).

What Do We Mean By ”Apocrypha?”

September 25, 2025April 30, 2026 ~ Vincent

It’s so important to know what a word means before you start disagreeing with someone about it. I remember a whole debate that I had with an old roommate about the ethics of punching someone that was “imminently” about to attack one of your friends or you. I insisted that you should always try to de-escalate things first while he insisted that it was unethical to let someone get punched because you weren’t willing to step in. We went back and forth and back and forth for about an hour, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend. It wasn’t until we started roleplaying different scenarios (yes, it went that far) that we realized that the way that we were defining “imminent” was very different. I assumed that the hostile party had just started to become erratic and hostile, showing their fast escalation towards an attack, while he assumed that they were already deeply hostile and were literally about to throw a punch. When we recognized the difference, we realized we didn’t disagree at all on any point, much to the continued annoyance of his girlfriend, who took the opportunity to say, “You two are so stupid. I’ve been saying this all along.” We weren’t arguing about ethics; we were arguing about a definition. Unclear terms are the real culprit behind a lot of disagreements.

One theological term that is infamously unclear is “apocrypha.” The word is varyingly defined as…

•Those extra books the Catholics have (Tobit, Judith, Maccabees 1 and 2, etc.)

•Any ancient Christian-y book that didn’t make it into the Bible (Book of Jasher, Book of Adam and Eve, Book of Enoch, etc.)

•Helpful ancient books that wise Christians know about (The Epistles of Clement, Shepherd of Hermas, etc.)

•Harmful ancient books that are mostly heretical (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas, Acts of Paul and Thecla, etc.)

That boils down to two key factors that our word is trying to get at: canonicity and doctrine. First, it might be an attempt to discuss the canonical status of a book. Maybe someone is trying to say it’s only canonical for Roman Catholics (or “deuterocanonical” to Protestants). That’s one option. But it might also be saying that a book is flat out non-canonical. Or maybe the key concern isn’t about canonicity, but about the doctrine presented in a particular book. That doctrine could be sound without being a piece of Scripture, or it might be horrendously heretical. Again, the term can mean either of these things. It’s saying something about canonicity and/or doctrine… but what exactly? The vagueness in the term isn’t a modern invention; it’s baked into the term from the earliest days of the Church.

Factor One: Deuterocanonical vs. Purely Non-Canonical

A fair understanding of the first factor (canonicity) can be uncovered by just looking at the meaning of the word “apocrypha”. It comes from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα (apokryphos), which means “hidden” or “secret.” The word was originally used by ancient Christians (or heretics) to refer to books that were wise, but had somehow been obscured because they represented a threat to authority. It should be obvious how often this term was used by heretics to introduce “sacred” literature that violated church doctrine. It’s not hard to find early Church Fathers railing against apocryphal books, meaning those things that were obviously non-canonical and harmful. A good example can be found in that famous hunter of heresy , Irenaeus, when he’s against the Gnostics:

“[T]hey adduce an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish men, and of such as are ignorant of the Scriptures of truth.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, (1, 20, 1)

Cleary, he uses the word to warn Christians about harmful, non-Canonical books. Another good example comes from that rhetorician of Carthage, Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul. He notes that some philosophers arrived at partial truths about the world by using non-Christian sources such as Greek myths, but it doesn’t concern him because they don’t actually seem to hold those myths in particularly high esteem:

“[T]hese philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age; because we do not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge”
Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, 2

Again, apocryphal here means any book that’s not a canonical part of Christian scripture. Clearly that is indeed a valid, historic, Christian use of the term.

At the same time, we can find Church Fathers that use the term to refer to just the opposite on this particular axis! Some use it to refer to consent that would go on to be accepted in the Catholic canon and not the Jewish or Protestant canon. For those that might be unfamiliar with this kind of so-called “apocryphal” content, the Catholic Bible contains a number of additions in the Old Testament that don’t appear in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles. Why? Early Christians often spoke Greek and consequently read Scripture from a Greek copy of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. The Septuagint contained seven extra books (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch) and a few additional chapters in the books of Daniel and Esther. Even though a broad segment of Greek speaking Jews that used the Septuagint for Scripture readings also considered this content legitimate, ultimately the authorities in Israel neither used it nor considered it canonical. As time went on, Jews used the content less and less, returning to the Hebrew Scriptures, and Christians used it more and more. Eventually, there was debate in the Church about it. Why were Christians using versions of the Jewish Scriptures that the Jews didn’t actually think was canonical? Why use the septuagint at all instead of something that would have circulated in the region that Jesus actually lived? Should the church remove that extra content that had been used for generations? Or did it still count as sacred Scripture? In his Letter to Africanus, the ever-abstract and theological genius, Origen, argued for the legitimacy of the story of Susanna (a story from the additional chapters in Daniel):

But probably to this you will say, Why then is the History not in their Daniel, if, as you say, their wise men hand down by tradition such stories? The answer is, that they hid from the knowledge of the people as many of the passages which contained any scandal against the elders, rulers, and judges, as they could, some of which have been preserved in uncanonical writings (Apocrypha).
Origen, Letter to Africanus, 9

A word that was elsewhere used to condemn non-canonical writing is now used to point at the additional Septuagint literature as actually purer, uncorrupted, Scripture, hidden away from the tyranny of Israelite authorities. You can see that from the earliest days of the faith and in the highest circles of authority, the word is used in multiple senses to talk about the canonicity of sacred writings.

Factor Two: Safe or Dangerous Doctrine

We’ve seen how the term historically was used in different circumstances to refer to different aspects of a document’s canonicity, but that’s not all it could do! Apocryphal could also be a way to discuss expectations for the reliability of a document’s doctrine. Obviously, Irenaeus and Tertullian used the term to refer to books that were actively heretical and not worth reading, and Origen used it to refer to books that should be considered canonical and are doctrinally pure, but we can also find people that use the term to refer to things that aren’t dangerous, per se, but don’t have any claim towards anything resembling canon.

The compiler of the Vulgate, Jerome, is a perfect illustration of this still further way of using the word “apocryphal.” In the fourth century, Jerome was debating the details of the emerging Christian canon, and he objected to the inclusion of both deuterocanonical content and certain other books that had arisen popularly in key Christian communities. He listed the Old Testament books he thought ought to be canonical (identical to the modern Protestant and historic Jewish canon), and then makes this note:

Whatever falls outside these must be set apart among the Apocrypha. Therefore, wisdom, which is commonly entitled Solomon’s, with the book of Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith, Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon.
Jerome, Preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings

At first glance, this appears to be little more than a further exploration of canon. Jerome is condemning the Catholic epistles to a non-canon status, just like Irenaeus and Tertullian did with dangerous books. But Jerome doesn’t have that same attitude of suspicion and frustration when regarding these books. To the contrary, he seems to like them. He occasionally quotes them in his other writings. Jerome has the utmost respect for some of these documents that he’s calling apocryphal; he just doesn’t think they’re canonical. That’s a far cry from Tertullian and Irenaeus’s use of the term, which was essentially “horrible heresy carriers.” He uses the term “apocryphal” to refer to books that have positive, doctrinally-sound additions to the Christian life.

To recap, we’ve established that even from the beginning of the church, the word “apocryphal” could refer to a writing that is either canonical or deuterocanonical/Catholic, or it could be a reference to the reliability of the doctrine within a non-canonical book. It’s a broad, flexible term! And it get’s thrown around pretty readily among church people that are exploring non-canonical writings enough that it causes issues from time to time. When you’re talking with fellow Christians about apocrypha, just remember how much history this particular term has and be careful to define what you mean when you use it. It might just save you an argument.