Fully Devoted: JesusSample

Back to the Beginning As we shadow some of the people who walked most closely with Jesus, who heard His stories, saw His signs, and felt the weight of carrying the good news of the King and His Kingdom forward, we’ll zoom in on some of the key moments they chose to highlight. we’ll dig into all the whats and whys together, starting with the beginning. Literally. That’s how John opens his Gospel account. > In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. John 1:1-2 NIV Sound familiar? Well, this is where our whole story got started. John is calling our minds back to Genesis—back to the beginning. The first thing he wants us to understand about Jesus is that He is God . There’s no getting around John’s assertion here, and he made sure of that by mentioning “the Word.” He says, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Greek word for “word” is logos . And at first, everyone reading would have been nodding along, Jews and Gentiles alike. A Jew would hear that word and think of divine wisdom and speech. And of course the wisdom and voice of God were there in the beginning—that’s how He formed the world! > Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere Him. For He spoke, and it came to be ; He commanded, and it stood firm. Psalm 33:8-9 NIV Interestingly, throughout Hebrew wisdom literature, wisdom is often personified. When that happens, it’s always as a woman because the Hebrew word for wisdom has a feminine connotation. More on that later. For now, we’ll just note what wisdom says in Proverbs: > “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.” Proverbs 8:22 NRSV Basically, the Jews liked logos . But what about the Gentiles? They heard logos and thought of reason. The Greeks really valued rationality, to the point where they believed that living in harmony with the universe was only possible because of the inanimate force of reason informing it all. So everyone is on board with John 1:1, but then John throws the curveball. In the next verse, he says, “ He [the Word/Logos] was with God in the beginning.” WHOA. WAIT. “What do you mean HE ?” both the Jews and the Gentiles would ask. For a Jew, if we’re talking about the wisdom of God, it’s never personified as a “ He .” For the Greeks, their inanimate source of reason just got equated to a very tangible person. And John doesn’t stop there. He goes on to explain that the Word actually put on human flesh and moved into the neighborhood. > 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 1:14 NIV John is making the claim that the Creator God, the One who formed the universe with the breath of His mouth and holds it all together, decided to become one of us. A walking, talking, loving, living, breathing human being. And this living Logos is the Light of the World. Our one hope for understanding how to be truly human is wrapped up in this Person. Try to wrap your mind around what it would be like to process this claim for the first time. The Creator God walked in our midst. You wouldn’t want to miss a word (no pun intended) He said or a thing He did. And that’s exactly what we’re being invited into in this part of the journey: John and the other Gospel writers are challenging us, almost daring us, to lean in and see all Jesus claimed to be and what He did to back up those claims. Because if Jesus is who He said He was, it changes everything. Journaling Questions * What verse from today’s reading stands out to you the most? Write it in your journal. * In your own words, describe why John is taking us back to Genesis. * What is an assumption you have about Jesus that you can allow Him to confront on this part of the journey?