THE MINISTRY OF JOHN AS CONNECTED WITH "BEGINNINGS"

^[p. 4] THE MINISTRY OF JOHN AS CONNECTED WITH “BEGINNINGS”

John 1:1 - 3; 1 John 1:1 - 4; 1 John 2:24,25

It is with the thought of having before us something of the precious ministry of the apostle John that I have suggested reading these portions of Scripture. I am sure we have all noticed how much John had before him the thought of “the beginning”; his whole ministry stands connected with certain beginnings. He commences his gospel by speaking of a beginning which is previous to time, previous to creation, and which goes back to the uncreated and eternally divine. Before anything was made God was; and “in the beginning” of John 1:1 takes us back to what was antecedent to all creative acts of God.

In speaking of the Lord as “the Word” John was using a well-known designation; he was not introducing it for the first time; it was a designation which Luke had applied to Christ probably at least thirty years before John wrote (see Luke 1:2). Every reader of Luke’s gospel — and by the time that John wrote his gospel this probably included saints in every assembly — was familiar with the title “the Word”. It is perhaps the most comprehensive title of the Lord that can be used apart from saying that He is God. For it conveys the wondrous thought that God is in expression so as to be known by intelligent creatures. There is thus a range and depth of meaning in this title which has a fulness beyond what is conveyed by any other. Indeed this is directly affirmed by the scripture which says, “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name”, Psalm 138:2. “Word”, as used in that verse, does not answer exactly to the Greek word ‘logos’, but as it fixes the mind ^[p. 5] more especially on what is expressed (see note on the same word as used in Psalm 119:11 in the Darby Translation); it does bring out the exceeding greatness of what expresses God. So that we can understand how great is the thought conveyed when Luke speaks of some as having been “eyewitnesses of and attendants on the Word”, Luke 1:2. It was a glorious designation, and was used because it was so. The marvel of all marvels was that a divine Person should be here as Man, and should be known to men as the Word.

God has been expressed here in the fullest possible way in His nature and character, and in His thoughts of love towards men. Jesus as the Word was the intelligible expression of all that was in the mind and heart of God to make known of Himself to men. Creation shows God’s skill and wisdom, His eternal power and divinity, but it does not express Him morally, any more than a beautiful watch expresses the character and nature of the watchmaker. But a divine Person has become Man in order to express God to men. John was full of this, as well he might be. He was writing of a Person known to him and many others as One in whom had been expressed all that in which God could be known by men. And it seemed good to John, and to the Holy Spirit, to use this known title of the Lord (attaching to Him as here on earth, according to Luke 1:2) when he referred to Him as in the past eternity. “The Word” was identified with His Person in the mind of John; it was of that known Person he was writing. He would have us to know the infinite divine greatness and majesty of the One concerning whom he was going to write. It had been reserved to him to bring out what that Person was as the Word much more fully than it had been brought out before. If we want to appreciate that wondrous title in its greatness and glory we must study John’s gospel. We must see how Jesus expressed ^[p. 6] God in His nature and in all His thoughts manward, and we need to read the whole gospel in the light of the opening verses.

The Word is, and was eternally, a divine Person. John 1:1 - 3 is intended to make us take our shoes off, and prostrate our souls in worship, as we see His eternal place in Deity. Seeing this we should read the whole gospel in the spirit of adoration, connecting every word and act of our Lord with His eternal Person. It is essential that we should do so. The names and titles by which we know Him in Manhood — the Word, Jesus Christ, the Son, and many others — do not cover all that is true of His eternal Person. But the intelligent affections of the saints, as taught by the Spirit, never disconnect His present names or titles from His eternal Person. Every Name which He bears attaches to One who is eternally divine, and now that they are known we can identify them with Him even when referring to Him before He actually bore them. It is the manner of Scripture to do so.

For example, John tells us that “every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God; and this is that power of the anti-christ, of which ye have heard that it comes, and now it is already in the world”, 1 John 4:2,3. The whole point of this lies in the fact that a divine Person has come in flesh. He did not actually bear the name “Jesus Christ” until He was here in manhood. But after He had “come in flesh” the name which He bore as incarnate was used by John to designate Him as having “come”; that is, as One who had pre-existed as a divine Person. This shows in a very distinct way that His eternal Person is identified with His present names and titles.

Paul uses the name “Christ Jesus” in exactly the same ^[p. 7] way. He speaks of Christ Jesus as “subsisting in the form of God” before He took His place in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:5 - 7). This was a present known name of our Lord; it did not actually apply to Him as in Deity in the past eternity, though, of course, it was in divine purpose that He should take it up. But Paul used it when speaking of Him before incarnation; the One who is now known by that name is an eternal divine Person. It would be true to say, ‘Jesus existed from eternity’, but in so saying we should identify the name with the Person who bears it, though we well know that Jesus was His name as born into this world.

We have the Lord’s own authority for identifying His eternal Person with a title which clearly only applies strictly to Him as Man. He said, “If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?” John 6:62. And He spoke of the Son of man coming down out of heaven (John 3:13). This is of the highest importance as instructing us in the precious truth that none of His present titles as Man are to be detached in our minds from what He was eternally before He became Man. The names and titles now attach to His Person, but His Person is eternal. Jesus spoke of Himself in John 8:40 as “a man who has spoken the truth to you” — I believe the only time that He spoke of Himself as “a man” — but He said in the same chapter, “Before Abraham was, I am”. That man was the eternal God, but any intelligent child would understand that He was not a Man before Abraham’s time.

This leads us to recognise, too, that His names and titles as Man do not cover the whole truth of His Person. He is Himself greater than them all. The first three verses of John’s gospel assure us of this. He is “the Word”, and as “the Word” He is the intelligible expression of God to us. This is a title which corresponds with Hebrews 1:1,2:

“^[p. 8] God having spoken in many parts and in many ways formerly to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son”. It is soberly reverent to believe that whatever He has spoken to us He intends us to hear and understand. The speaking of God to us in the Son, who is also the Word, has to do with what He is pleased to express of Himself to men for their intelligent apprehension, and their infinite blessing and joy. When we perceive this we become concerned to understand what He has expressed and spoken to men.

“The Word” — signifying what is intelligible — does not cover all that attaches to the great and glorious Person who is known by that designation. Hebrews 1 tells us how God has spoken to men “in Son”, but it also says of that glorious One, “by whom also he made the worlds”. This is inscrutable, for the act of creation is beyond the compass of the creature mind, though understood by faith. The next sentence also refers to what is inscrutable: “Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the expression of his substance” (Clearly ‘substance’, ‘essential being’, not ‘person’. Note in the Darby Translation). This is beyond us, for the Being of God is beyond our finite capacity, though we can own adoringly that the Son is the expression of it. But what He is as “the Word” does come within our apprehension. Indeed the great object of John in writing is to show that it has done so. “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth; ... for of his fulness we all have received, and grace upon grace”, John 1:14 - 16. The fulness of grace and truth in “the Word” is there to be received by men; the declaration of God by the only-begotten Son is not inscrutable; it makes God known to us most fully in grace and truth; the speaking of God in Son is not to be refused, but heard and understood. The Lord’s precious title, “the Word”, relates to ^[p. 9] what is expressed in Him so as to be received and understood by us. There had been previous communications from God in prophets, but in the Son as Man here God Himself spoke to men in fulness of grace and truth.

The glory which belongs to Christ as “the Word” is infinitely great, and such as could only attach to a divine Person, but it is a glory which is apprehensible by the creature — a fulness of grace and truth of which we all have received. But, while rejoicing in this, we remember with deep reverence that there is a greatness in Him which in inscrutable. John speaks of this inscrutable greatness when he tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God”. The expressions ‘eternal Word’, ‘everlasting Word’, have been used with pious intent to assert the eternal character of the Person, but they tend to obscure the difference between what He is as “the Word”, expressing God to men in fulness of grace and truth, and what He was, and is, in the inscrutableness of eternal Deity. To distinguish between these two things takes nothing from the Lord. It is no derogation from His Person or glory. It gives full place to all that He is as “the Word”, and enhances it by connecting it in our minds and hearts with His eternal Person. It is due to Him that both aspects of His glory should be before us, and intelligently distinguished. The Incarnation was necessary for the intelligible expression of God, and this is obscured if we think that Jesus was actually “the Word” in the past eternity. God would have our minds and hearts filled with what we know of Him as having come now into full expression. This important matter is that Jesus, God’s beloved Son, should be to us “the Word”.

It has been said that God suffices for Himself in everything but His love, but because of His love — what He is ^[p. 10] in His nature — He must express Himself so that His intelligent creatures may know and love Him. So a divine Person came in Manhood, and John writes to tell us of Him, and of what He was before He became Man. He had distinct Personality, but was in the unity of the Godhead, was God, before there was any creation.

We read in Genesis 1:1,”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. It is of that beginning that John speaks when he tells us that “All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being”. The One who is the theme of John’s gospel is the Creator-God of Genesis 1, the eternal supreme Being. His Personality, as distinct from the other Persons in the Godhead, was not declared in Genesis 1, but it is now made clearly known in John 1. We bear it in mind all the time as we read the gospel of John. It gives a profound sense of the greatness of the Person in whom, as Man on earth, God has been expressed.

The Lord refers to another wondrous “beginning” when He says, “But I did not say these things unto you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go to him that has sent me”, John 16:4,5. God would have us to attach great importance to the point of time which the Lord here referred to as “the beginning”. It clearly refers to the commencement of His public ministry. Peter speaks of “all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day in which he was taken up from us”, Acts 1:21,22. The first two chapters of Matthew and of Luke give us an account of what preceded His baptism and public service, but Luke tells us that he composed his discourse “concerning all things which Jesus began both to do and to teach”. The Lord’s public ministry was his theme; he spoke of matters “as those who from the beginning ^[p. 11] were eye-witnesses of and attendants on the Word have delivered them to us”, Luke 1:2. This is important as giving us the point of time from which the Lord is regarded in Scripture as the Sent One. Indeed He Himself defined it when He read in the synagogue at Nazareth the precious words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to preach to captives deliverance”, Luke 4:18.

“Anointed” and “sent” — this is the order; and it is in keeping with the “sanctified and sent into the world” of John 10:36. So the Lord speaks of Himself as having been “sent forth” to announce the glad tidings (Luke 4:43).

His coming into the world in John is not exactly His birth, but what He was born for. He distinguishes the two things in John 18:37, “I have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth”. As coming into the world He comes after John the baptist, and He lightens every man. His full mission and ministry are in view. So that as long as He was in the world He was the light of the world, and the Object of faith. There is a moral force in it, only to be known as taking account of what His position was after the Spirit descended and abode upon Him. “For judgment am I come into this world” clearly refers to His coming publicly as Light; it would hardly apply to the thirty years before He was manifested to Israel. “Because ye are with me from the beginning” (John 15:27) makes evident that the great subject of witness begins with the descent of the Spirit upon Him. In the light of this we can see that His coming out from God and from the Father (John 16:27,28) was when He was manifested as coming after John. It refers to His coming as the manifested Light of men rather than to His birth into this world. “I came forth from God and am come from him; for neither am I ^[p. 12] come of myself, but he has sent me” (John 8:42) indicates His moral origin, so that if God had been their Father they would have loved Him. It is, as J.N.D. said, ‘a mission from the divine Person, not from a place at all’. As “in the world” He manifested the Father’s name to the men given Him; He gave them the words which the Father gave Him, and they received them and knew truly that He came out from the Father; they believed that the Father had sent Him. “As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17:18) shows what a distinct mission is, in each case, in view; the statement does not refer only to the presence on earth of the Son of God or of His disciples, but to the fact that from a certain definite moment He was sent by the Father into the world, and, in like manner, from a definite point they were sent by Him. I believe the apprehension of this is essential to the spiritual understanding of how the Son of God is presented in the gospel of John.

In John’s epistle he speaks of another “beginning”. “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life; (and the life has been manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us:)”, 1 John 1:1,2. This “beginning” clearly refers to what was manifested to the apostles in Jesus Christ the Son of the Father. Not exactly His Person, but what was manifested in Him — “the word of life”, “the life”, “the eternal life”. For the first time in the history of the world there was a true and full expression of “life”, and it was expressed in One who could be heard, seen and handled. This is another wonderful result of God’s Son being here; “life” has come into view, or, as we read here, has been manifested. John ^[p. 13] had spoken in the gospel of the declaration of God by the only-begotten Son; but now he speaks of the manifestation of “life” in Him; that is, life in man relative to God, and God known as the Father. “Life” has been manifested in the same Person who has so blessedly declared God; it has come into the view of men and it has been reported to us. It came into expression in what the Son said and did as found in the condition of flesh in which He was heard and seen here.

Death and darkness were in the world but “in him was life”, and it was there in the way of illumination for men — “the light of life”, as He said in John 8:12. It is wondrous to consider that “life” in the true and full sense has shone as light for men in Christ the Son. The darkness did not apprehend it, but it was shining for every man and it was manifested to those whose eyes were divinely opened to see it. “Life” in which sin was not and in which there was nothing for the ruler of the world, nothing that gave death any claim upon Him, nothing that the fallen man could take pleasure in, but everything that answered in full perfection to the will and pleasure of God. The “life” was in broad and full contrast with the death that was here. Men would not have known what “life” really was if God had not been pleased that it should be manifested in His Son. We are accustomed to a death scene, and we are naturally part of it, but “life” has been manifested here in Him who was “the Son of the Father”. We have not personally seen it, but the apostles did, and they have reported it to us that we might have fellowship with them.

But there was also a specific character of life which had been spoken of in Scripture as “the blessing, life for evermore”, Psalm 133:3. The Old Testament had spoken of it as being in God’s mind for men, and the Jews clearly had it before them as something to be greatly desired; it was ^[p. 14] to them the life of blessing which could be inherited by God’s favour in the world to come. The Lord spoke much of “life eternal” in the gospel of John as the blessing into which men would enter by believing on Him. It is a blessing “which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages of time”, Titus 1:2. Now John reports “the eternal life” to us as being “with the Father”, and as having been manifested to the apostles. The promised blessing for men has taken form in the Son of God, and it has been known in Him as being “with the Father”. Eternal life is thus seen to stand in relation to God known as the Father; that is, God as fully made known in grace by the Son. And “the eternal life” has been manifested to men, and became their delight and the subject of their witness.

There was that in the Son of God of which men, chosen of Him for that high favour, could take knowledge as being “with the Father”. The Father had with Him, in the Person of His beloved Son as Man upon earth, what He had before Him, and promised as blessing for man, before the ages of time. And it was manifested to the apostles, not to the world. It was not exactly the public life of the Lord such as natural men could take account of, but that which was “with the Father”, and which to His chosen ones was in manifestation in His words and ways. All that He said and did was the expression to those who had ears to hear and eyes to see of an inward life which was “with the Father”. Not here His relationship as Son with the Father — though He was at the same time the Son of the Father — but the blessed fact that “the eternal life” was “with the Father” in Him. This was a profound delight to John; he and other apostles perceived in Jesus a life which was “with the Father”, but in which men could participate by believing on Him. It filled John with joy and he would have us to share that joy.

^[p. 15] In being able to apprehend the eternal life as manifested in the Son of God the apostles had fellowship with the Father and the Son. The Father had with Him, in the Person of the Son, as Man, all that was covered by the words, “the eternal life”. And the Son had the joy of being “with the Father” as setting forth in Himself this great blessing for men. Eternal life was one of the great thoughts of God in regard to men. But it has now been brought into actual being and into manifestation in the Person of the Son of God so as to be the subject of witness, and it has been reported to us. In apprehending it the apostles had fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, and they have reported what they saw and heard that we may have fellowship with them and have our joy full.

The Father’s Son in Manhood manifested “the eternal life” to His loved disciples. The eternal life period began in Him, but it came in that men might participate in it by believing on Him. It was there in Him, as a living Source and Fountain of life for men. What a wondrous “beginning”! The eternal life period has begun, and John writes that we may know it and have the joy of it as those who have life in the Son of God. The Son of God as a glorified Man is “the true God and eternal life”, 1 John 5:20.

In conclusion we may consider briefly that John refers in various places to another “beginning”, (see 1 John 2:7, 24; 1 John 3:11; 2 John 6). These scriptures show that there has been a “beginning” on our side. That is, we, as christians and believers, have had a wonderful beginning. We have all begun, according to God, by hearing the divine testimony which has been brought to us by the apostles. No other beginning than this would be of any account in God’s reckoning. This was the “beginning” of the knowledge of divine Persons on the part of men, consequent upon the ^[p. 16] glorification of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the reception of the apostles’ testimony. The “beginning” of christianity was the coming to man of the blessed truth concerning the Son and the Father. It is clear from John’s writing that the “little children” in the family of God began with the knowledge of the Son and the Father, and had the Unction from the Holy One. These are most wonderful divine realities. Now we are to let these things abide in us. They are what we began with, and we are not to be led astray from them. If that which we heard from the beginning abides in us, we shall abide in the Son and in the Father, and we shall find that this is life eternal. Life eternal is bound up with what we heard from the beginning, so that it is of the utmost importance for us to know what we did hear from the beginning. That is, what have we really heard from the apostles, or learned from their inspired writings? God would have us to regard this as what we heard from the beginning, and not what men have said since, even with the most pious intentions. If we are preserved through grace from that which leads astray we shall know the blessedness of life eternal. If our joy is not full it is because we have not allowed what we heard from the beginning to abide in us.

Paul presents eternal life as an end to be reached by moving on certain lines, but John’s ministry gives us to know that this is the eternal life period, and that eternal life is bound up with the abiding in us of what we heard from the beginning. The “promise” becomes a present reality to those who, by the teaching of the Unction, abide in the Son and in the Father. Before eternal life is brought in publicly believers on the Son of God have it in Him; the Unction which we have received teaches us to abide in Him.