Advent Day 25: John 1:1-18

Read & Journal

Read John 1:1-18 in your Bible. Use these questions to engage with what you’ve read:

• John used the word “Logos” (the Word) to refer to Jesus. With that understanding, what do these verses reveal to you about Jesus and His character?

• Take note of the references to light in this passage. Taking into account all you’ve read over the past few weeks, what do these references reveal about Jesus’ purpose?

• Why is it important to you personally that Jesus came and “made His home among us” (v. 14)? How does this truth establish peace in your life and your relationship with God?

Ponder

In John’s Gospel, the words were chosen carefully and purposefully, and the verb phrases in verse 14 are no exception. To say that God Himself had become flesh would have stunned Jews and Gentiles alike. For God to be a part of the mundane or to walk among the sinful people seemed ludicrous. But here, John outlined a key doctrine of our faith: the incarnation. Jesus was fully human while also fully divine.

John’s audience would have also understood the importance John was trying to convey in saying the Word “made his home among us.” The word used here can be translated as “dwell,” but is probably best conveyed as “tabernacled” or “tented.” The Jews would have immediately recalled the stories from their own history, of God’s chosen people wandering through the wilderness, moving when God moved and camping when He did not, with the tabernacle as the symbol of His presence among them. Jesus, then, was to be understood as the presence of God among the people. God had come near. As verse 18 says, Jesus has “revealed God to us.”

The tabernacle was the symbol of God’s presence to the people wandering in the wilderness, and Jesus, in the flesh, is the reality of His presence in the lives of those wandering in the wilderness of sin. What God had shown them in part through the earthly tabernacle was now ultimately and truly fulfilled in Christ. It is through His presence that we have peace. It is through Jesus that we can have a relationship with the Father, not at a distance like the tabernacle in the wilderness, but personally. Where sin had created separation between us and the Father, Jesus brings us back together. We can come near to the holy, righteous, just Father because Jesus has come near to us.

And to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God (v. 12). Be at peace, child.