All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
If the Word is the full expression and communication of the Godhead, then here we see how that fleshed out in actions. God the Word performed the three most important actions: The Word is God’s full agency in creation; generation and revelation. The three most important works of all – the creation of the universe, the generation of physical and spiritual life (including salvation), and then the revelation of knowledge, truth and understanding to rational beings.
First, creation.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
These are twin statements, positive and negative. Positively, everything that exists came into being through Him. Negatively, not one thing that exists came into existence without Him. If it exists, The Word, the Son, the Lord Jesus made it.
When John says, all things were made through Him, it doesn’t mean that He was only the conduit through which God the Father made the world. It means He was the sole agent of creation. In other words, God the Father said it, God the Spirit empowered it, but God the Son actually made it. If you can see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, feel it, then Christ made it. And in fact, that is a fairly narrow band of all things created. Paul tells us that He created much more than what our five senses can perceive.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. (Colossians 1:16)
John says, this is the One I’m talking about in this book. The one who talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, who walked to the Jewish feasts in Jerusalem. This same one made everything. It’s actually an Old Testament idea:
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. (Psalm 33:6)
The full expression of God, the Word, was the agent of making the whole cosmos.
The second thing here is life, generation.
In Him was life,
Again, this is an imperfect verb of being. In Him was always existing life. In John 5:26, Jesus is going to say:
“For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself”.
That is what we call, eternal generation. It doesn’t mean the Father existed before the Son. It means in the eternal Trinity, their eternal relationship is a self-giving relationship to each other. The persons of the Godhead don’t simply possess life, they are life.
Life is sourced and contained in God, from its simplest form the cell, to the highly complex form of seraphim and cherubim and archangels. What it means to be alive, and not dead, to be awake, aware, and as life progresses in complexity to be self-aware, self-conscious, able to love. God grants life to all other beings. But in Him has always been existing life.
John even unites this with the term Word in the opening of his letter.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— (1 John 1:1)
Forty-seven times in this Gospel is the word life. Jesus calls Himself the life, the bread of life, the resurrection and the life, He says that He grants eternal life, has come that we might have life and have it abundantly, by laying down His life.
If you are physically alive; it is because of Him the Word. Everyone who is alive, including those men and angels in rebellion to Christ are alive because He gave them life and sustains their life. If you are spiritually dead, but then come to life, it is through Him. If you go on to live eternally, it will be through Him. All life, physical, spiritual, eternal is in Him.
In fact, the level of life you enjoy depends how alive you want to be. You can stay on the level of barely alive, or through belief in Him come fully alive.
And here is the third work of the Word, revelation.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Closely connected to the life principle is light. Because with sentient life comes light. In Scripture, light most often refers to truth, to knowledge, to understanding. When the light is on, you can see what is around you, and find your way. Light reveals.
Jesus is the source of all knowledge. This life brings light because Jesus gives every human the divine image. Every human has the light of reason, the power of speech, and self-awareness. This is all the result of the Logos. To be a self-aware human who is alive and using words to understand the world is to have life and light from the Logos.
What we call general revelation is both creation and the ability to understand it – that’s light, and it is from Christ. When you see the world, and understand yourself as a thinking being, you have life and light, and it all says, made by and through the Word.
What we call special revelation is ultimately all contained in the Word. Whether it was God speaking directly to Adam, to Cain, to Noah, to Abraham, Jacob, Moses – that was the Word. Dreams, visions, prophecies – that was through the Word. The inspiration of written Scripture was the Word speaking through the Spirit. Then the Word takes flesh and lives among us, teaches us, dies and rises to reconcile us to God. The Word sends His Spirit to complete the Scriptures. All of this is special revelation, and it is centred in the Son, the Word.
Again, 24 times in this book is the word light. He is Light, knowledge.
But John wants us to know that light and darkness are not equal in power, like in the dualistic systems of Eastern religions. Darkness is only the absence of light. Darkness is shielding from the light, hiding from the light. Darkness is refusing truth, rejecting truth, closing your eyes to truth.
The light of Jesus has shone in darkness, and the darkness could neither understand it, nor overcome it. The word translated comprehend means both: to get your mind around it, or to swallow it up. Darkness cannot extinguish the truth of Christ, and darkness cannot understand it, as long as it remains committed to its darkness. If you won’t come to the light, you won’t see the light.
No one has to teach children to be afraid of the dark. They just are. Without any teaching, children believe something evil may lurk in the dark, something dangerous, something monstrous. Some people even learn to sleep with a night light, so that it is never completely dark.
Physically speaking, people are always thankful for light. Ships on the pitch dark ocean are thankful for a lighthouse, piercing the dark, and pointing out rocks. Cars on pitch dark country roads are thankful for their high-beams to see ahead. Even in our city, we are thankful for well-lit places, and avoid the dark ones. Light warms us, it comforts us, it attracts us. Light is a revealer of what is. It brings clarity, and so people who want to do honest things are drawn to physical light.
The only ones who prefer darkness are those who want to do something dishonest, disreputable, illegal, or dishonourable. They want the cover of darkness to hide them, their faces, their deeds.
And so it is a strange thing that when it comes to the outer world most people like the light and dislike the darkness, but when it comes to the inner world, the situation is reversed. When it comes to our thoughts, our desires, our choices, people don’t like light.
Physical light reveals what is, and so physical light is a picture, an analogy for truth. Truth is what is, what corresponds to reality. To want the truth is to want what really is, so you can see the world and reality for what it is, and act openly and truly and honestly. But amazingly, when it comes to the inner world of our hearts and minds, we are the reverse of ourselves outwardly. We are not afraid of the dark, we are afraid of the light. We don’t want the truth, the truth hurts. It burns. It exposes us, and we don’t want that. It shows us up, and we’d prefer to hide.
Of course, the Bible is full of this theme of light, and the Bible confirms this phenomenon. Human beings enjoy physical light, but not moral light. We’re afraid of the dark physically, but we prefer it morally.
That shows there is something terribly wrong with us, if we want inner darkness. It shows we are broken, fearful, and need rescuing. When the Bible describes the moral light we need, it is not simply ideas or facts. Truth is not simply information or propositions. Truth is a Person. The Person of God, revealed in His Son is the light, the Truth. He is the sum of Reality that we need.
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” (John 3:19–21)
Now consider how everything in your life is touched by Christ. Everything you will ever see or experience was created by Him. Every moment of life you have, and every living thing you encounter or know about, will have its life from him. And every thought you think, every piece of knowledge, every reasoning you have, true or false will either be light from him, or darkness caused by fleeing from His light.