Why is it that, as you turn the page from St. Luke to St. John you seem to pass into another climate nay, I might almost say, into another atmosphere? The answer is at least twofold. It is, first, that there was so much to tell, facts and teachings of so much deeper meaning than those which the first three Evangelists had had to bring before you. It is, secondly, that, in the growth of thought respecting the Christ-life and the Christ-nature, there had now grown up the full demand for the full answers to the numberless questions which St. John and St. John alone sets at rest.
I. It is curious to notice how, in each of the three Gospels, Matthew, Luke, and John, it is the genealogy which strikes the keynote; and how the keynote dominates their contents. In St. Matthew, the genealogy carries you up to Abraham, and the whole Gospel exhibits the Jewish Messiah. In St. Luke, the genealogy goes up to Adam, and you have throughout the Gospel the Saviour of mankind the compassionate Brother of the race. In St. John, the genealogy is carried back to all eternity: it tells you of a Divine eternal existence with God not a separated existence, but with God; and of work done and functions fulfilled in that eternal existence creation, life, light; and of a certain mysterious contradiction on the part of darkness to the Light. St. John's prologue is no mere collection of theological dogmas stuck on to the beginning of his Gospel; it is rather this that St. John exhibits the earthly Christ-life, as the prolongation into mundane existence of what had been going on in the unseen from everlasting. This is clearly St. John's idea, and you see it reflected throughout his selection of facts and discourses. The special aspects on which St. John dwells in his picture of the Christ-life, are those which exhibit Him as being still with God as well as with men.
II. Thus it is St. John, who is so careful to tell us why Christ was made flesh and dwelt among us. It is St. John, who is so careful to exhibit the death of the Lord as a voluntary surrender pleasing to the Father freely rendered on His own part, and pleasing because thus freely rendered. Accept St. John's view, accept his picture of the visible Christ-life as the visible half of a duplex whole, and the puzzle vanishes; the Gospel which deals with the deepest mysteries becomes in truth the Gospel of explanation.
A. R. Ashwell, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,Feb. 10th, 1876.
Christ the Eternal Word.
I. "In the beginning was the Word." "In the beginning viz., of all things; farther back than the mind can conceive. For, form in your mind any image you will, however far back beyond the present state of things, of a definite point and a condition existing, and the beginning is beyond that. The expression is a simple one, but it baffles thought. We have here asserted, not that at some very remote period the world began to be, but that beyond the very remotest period which the mind can conceive, the Word was,was existing, not then brought into being, but then having His being and consequently, for such is the expression in which we take refuge when baffled by these things which stretch beyond the range of our ideas, "being from everlasting."
II. This Word, then, thus being in the beginning, is said also by the Evangelist to have been "with God." That is not with, in the sense of together with, or besides; but with in the sense of abiding with, as when we say, "I have it with me," or "He is abiding with us with God, so as to be in that place where God especially was present, so as to be at home with Him and inseparable from Him. It is thus that the Word was with God as His beloved in whom He was well-pleased.
III. The next and concluding clause of our text now follows by an easy sequence. That which was in the beginning that which was in the beginning with God and inseparable from Him what was it?Could it be a created being? If so, a certain definite moment must have witnessed its calling into being; and before that moment it was not, and thus could not be in the beginning. With creation necessarily began the incidents and limitations of time. Created being is the channel, so to speak, in which the stream of time flows on. But the Word "was" in the beginning, and is therefore uncreated. Again, the Word was "with God." Could a created being accompany the Almighty in the inhabitation of eternity? Could it be said of the Jealous One, who giveth not His glory to another, that even the loftiest of His angelic ministers was, or could be, "with Him" His assessor, His companion, the sharer of His glory, the impress of His substance? We are thus, you see, led on to the next declaration of our text, "the Word was God:" was no created being, no angelic intelligence, but partook of the nature and essence of God, equal with the Father, as indeed the very term itself implies. So that the Father in the beginning was not more, nor the Son less, Divine; but both were co-equal, and co-eternal. The Lord Jesus, in His humiliation, was the same Divine Person as before the worlds began; clothed in the garb of flesh, but not a different person. And if at that time we find Him performing acts of distinct personality, addressing the Father, speaking of the Father, so must it have been setting aside merely the difference made by His humiliation, in the beginning, when He was with God and was God. The fulness of the Father's glory was upon, shone forth from, was expressed by, Him. "All that the Father hath," He says, "is Mine." You cannot exalt, cannot reverence, you cannot adore, the Son of God too much. There is no such thing as exaggerating His Divine majesty and glory. The worship which we owe to the Father, the same precisely we owe to Him. He Himself describes the purpose of His course to be, "that all men may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father."
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. vi., p. 1.
References: John 1:1. F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of St. John,p. 1; C. Kingsley, Village Sermons,p. 176; Ibid., Discipline and Other Sermonsp. 212; John 1:1-14. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p.3 43; vol. v., p. 31; J. H. Hutchins, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 71. Joh 1:1-15. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 472. Joh 1:1-18. Expositor,1st series, vol. ii., pp. 49, 10 3 John 1:2. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 294.