The Word Made Flesh (John 1:-18) - 01/04/2026
Sermon Manuscript
We are starting our journey through the gospel of John today. I’ve been excited about this series. John’s gospel is a very unique vantage point of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And the way John begins his gospel has so much to say to our culture today.
In Rome, Italy, there are these stairs called the Scala Sancta. They are 28 marble steps that according to Roman Catholic tradition, was the staircase from Pontius Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem that Jesus would have ascended during His trial before his crucifixion. Tradition says they were brought to Rome in the fourth century by St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine.
I’ve been to these stairs a few times and you see pilgrims from all over the world climbing the stairs on their knees in hopes of earning indulgences. To be fair, the Roman Catholic Church does not teach that these stairs gain you forgiveness of sin, but they do teach that this climbing secures you remission of temporal punishment for sin. Think about it like this. You break into a neighbor’s window. You apologize and they forgive you, but the window still needs to be fixed. So forgiveness has happened, but a penalty still needs to be paid and climbing these stairs helps to do this.
Now, your average American might not think too much about these stairs, but we tend to have the exact same mentality. The mentality of earning. We live in a world of ladders. You get better grades, you go to a better school. You go to a better school, you get a better job. You get a better job, you have a better life. We develop resumes that argue why we should be accepted. In the secular self-help world you do the work, you become the best version of yourself, you manifest your own future.
Now, I’m not saying any of those things are incorrect or sinful. But, I am saying that we can’t help but then apply those ladders to our relationship with God. We can’t help but apply some system of earning into the reality of our sin. The Scala Sancta might seem absurd to us, but the internal flaw there is something that all of us share. Something that all of us battle. You see it in every world view. Earning God’s favor through the five pillars of Islam, keeping the Ten Commandments, doing more good than bad, having a good heart. Whatever the worldview, there is something deep inside us that makes us think we can earn our way to God. And we live in the most merit based society that has ever existed, so why would we think we are the one exception to this struggle?
Every culture has a ladder. Some look more religious and some don’t. We climb our ladders hoping that at the top we will finally feel secure, worthy, or at peace. But John begins his gospel by saying something quite shocking: The problem is that we can’t climb high enough and that God has come down to the bottom of the ladder for us. John’s account of the incarnation takes a more theological direction than the other gospels. He doesn’t just show us what happened at Christmas, he shows us the meaning of Christmas.
Christianity is not about humans reaching up to God, but about God coming down to us in Jesus Christ. John starts his gospel by telling us 1) who Jesus is, 2) what Jesus came to do, and 3) how we should respond.
- Who Jesus is vs 1-5
John doesn’t start his Christmas story at Bethlehem, he begins before time itself. “In the beginning was the Word…” Jesus isn’t merely like God or a messenger from God…Jesus is God Himself. The word “logos” that we translate as ‘Word’ had deep meaning in the world John was writing to. For Jewish readers, it immediately evoked God’s ability to create all things through His word, to reveal eternal truths through His word, and to judge, heal, and save by His word. For Jews, God’s word wasn’t just a good thing, it was God actively engaging all of creation. And the same Word that created the world and spoke to Israel has now appeared in human history.
But, it also had meaning for Greek readers. It has deep philosophical meaning. It referred to the rational principles behind the universe. Logos is where we get our word ‘logic.’ The logic, order, and coherence that makes reality understandable. So, to the Greeks, John is saying that the reason the universe makes sense is not an idea, it’s a person, and that person has come. What does that mean? God hasn’t just given us an argument about Himself, He has given us Himself.
In the beginning was the Word. The Word is eternal. Jesus didn’t come into existence as God’s plan B, He has always been. The Word was with God. This is introducing our theology of the Trinity. The Word (Jesus) and the Father have always been in eternal communion with each other. One God, three persons. And we know this because John says, “The Word was God.” Fully divine. Not an angel or lesser God, but the raw material of the Trinity. John is saying that Jesus is God’s perfect self-expression. Hebrews 1 says, He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.
One of the things I enjoyed most about my sabbatical was going on a 3-5 mile walk every morning with my dog. I got to spend a lot of time thinking and praying and training my dog to heal without a leash. But, I also got to see a lot of people in my neighborhood. Retired people in their yards and women in weighted vests. And, yes, I eventually bought a weighted vest myself. I learned a lot about these people, but I don’t think I met more than one person. I knew a fair amount about these people by observation, but you can’t really know someone until they talk to you. That’s the clearest expression of who they are: Their words. If you’ve never talked to someone, you’ve really never met them. You reveal yourself through your words.
When John says that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, he’s saying you can’t know God except through Jesus. It doesn’t mean you can’t know something about God, except through Jesus. But, the way God has chosen to meet us is through the Word of His Son Jesus, the supreme revelation of God Himself.
So, why does this matter? Most religions say, “Find the right words to say to God,” but John is saying that God has spoken the final Word to us and that Word is a person. We don’t climb toward meaning, meaning came down to us. God is not someone we look at from across the street, He is someone who has come into our lives. Jesus isn’t just a teacher, He isn’t just a good example. John could not be more clear that Jesus is God Himself. So, what did Jesus come to do?
- What Jesus came to do 9-13
Jesus came to bring light into a dark world. When John says darkness, he isn’t just talking about ignorance, he’s talking about humanity’s moral and spiritual resistance to God. And John shows this by saying that Jesus came to His own, but His own did not receive Him. This means that Jesus came to the people of Israel, the Jewish people. They were called ‘His own’ because they were the people God had chosen in the Old Testament. They had the Scriptures and prophecies that pointed to the Messiah. Jesus was born among them, lived among them, spoke their language, and followed their laws. This was His home, His culture, and His people.
There is a thing that psychologists now call the bystander effect. It’s the idea that the more people who witness a crisis, the less likely any one person is to step in because the responsibility feels shared or unclear. This concept came from one famous case. The case of Kitty Genovese in New York City in 1964. She was 28 years old and she was attacked outside her apartment building in Queens. A lot of the details are still debated, but what we do know is that as she was attacked, the lights in other apartments turned on and at least one person yelled, “Leave her alone.” Some people said they didn’t know what was happening. Some said they assumed others had already called the police. Some just said they were afraid to get involved. The people who could have helped her did not and she died.
What we are reading today is the exact opposite of that. Jesus, God Himself, heard our cries, He took on flesh, and He came down, and this cost Him his very life. This is why John says, “But they did not receive Him.” They rejected His teaching, those in power felt threatened by Him, and they did not accept Him as the Messiah. The light came into the world, but the people preferred darkness. God reached out personally, but humanity rejected Him.
Bringing light into dark spaces isn’t always welcome. If I come in at 6am and turn the light on in my 11 year old’s room, he generally jumps up and welcomes the light. If I go into any of my teenagers rooms and turn that light on anytime before noon, that light is not welcomed at all. And it’s easy to read this and think, “Man, I’m glad I didn’t reject Jesus.” But, we all have. This is our natural posture. We are at best the people in the apartments watching and at worst the attacker himself.
Think about bad things going on in a dark back room. Then someone comes in and turns the lights on exposing the bad deeds. That light is never welcome and that is how all of us respond in our natural state. We are born in active resistance to God. We don’t want God to dictate our decisions or shed light on our thoughts and actions.
And even when we do see that we have rejected God, we have this idea that we need to earn our way to Him. We want to clean things up before the light turns on. This is our problem. We want to save ourselves. We want to earn our way into God’s good graces. But earning and grace are opposed to each other. The problem is that when the light comes, we do not know how to respond. We are blind to it at best and resistant to it at worst.
- How we respond 14-18
We respond by receiving, not achieving. It can feel like John is foreshadowing Jesus losing in the story, but he’s actually foreshadowing His victory. 12 But to all who did receive him, swho believed in his name, the gave the right uto become vchildren of God, 13 who wwere born, xnot of blood ynor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
The people of God are no longer marked by a nation or an ethnicity, but a willing heart. Those who receive Jesus are given the right to become children of God. Now, if you are listening well and thinking well, we have a problem. I just said that no one can see the light and receive Jesus on their own. John says that it isn’t about our will. We can’t will ourselves to receive. But, God can. Not by the will of man, but of God.
Paul brings this together beautifully in 2 Corinthians 4. And even dif our gospel is veiled, eit is veiled to fthose who are perishing. 4 In their case gthe god of this world (Satan) dhas blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing hthe light of ithe gospel of the glory of Christ, jwho is the image of God... 6 For God, who said, m“Let light shine out of darkness,” nhas shone in our hearts to give othe light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Cor 4:3b,4,6
Can you see it? The God who said, “Let there be light” and there was light in the universe. The God whose word created all in the universe. That same God, through His Holy Spirit, says, “let there be light” and we can see. Our hearts desire and we receive. We don’t become a Christian by imitation, but by reception. We don’t earn our way to God, He earned it for us. Jesus didn’t just forgive our sins on the cross and then make us walk steps on our knees to avoid punishment. Jesus took on our punishment for us and gave us His righteousness so we can be innocent children of God. This is why Paul said to the Romans, “There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” - Rom 8:1
If you define religion as a way of earning God’s favor and being accepted, then what John is writing is the end of religion worldwide. We don’t get a new system of ladders, we get a person. The most amazing part of this passage to me is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so we could see His glory. It’s hard to see in English, but the word John used for dwelt is literally tabernacled. There are a number of other words he could have used. He could have said lived, reside, or literally dwelt, but he didn’t. The word is ‘tabernacled.’ The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. John then connects this to Moses in the wilderness.
Moses was on the mountain and told God that he wanted to know Him. He wanted connection with Him. He wanted to behold His glory. He wanted to see His face. But God said, “I can’t. It would kill you. But this is what I will do. I’ll give you a place where we can meet together. A huge tent that will be My dwelling place. In there you can make your sacrifices to me.” God’s glory would be there in the center behind a veil so that it wouldn’t destroy Moses. Now, in John’s gospel, we have the exact opposite. Jesus is the new meeting place between God and man and in Him we see and behold all the glory of God that Moses could not. And He would make the final, once and for all sacrifice for us on the cross.
This is the only way that a holy God and sinful man could come together and sinful man not be destroyed. Jesus fixes our sin problem and the Holy Spirit opens our eyes and hearts giving us a desire to receive Him. Jesus heard our cries, took on flesh, and came to the earth to live the life we never could and to be sacrificed in our place so we can be redeemed and restored. God didn’t shout instructions from heaven. He entered into our weakness and suffering. God’s glory is no longer behind a veil, but completely approachable. Jesus is the end of religion as a way of earning our way to God’s acceptance. God makes us acceptable and all we have to do is receive it.
Every other theistic worldview says if you do certain things, make certain sacrifices, you’ll be accepted by God. Christianity says that we are accepted because of Jesus’ sacrifice. And this absolutely changes how we live. I said earlier that grace is opposed to earning, but it’s not opposed to effort. Once we receive Jesus, we do work hard to resist our sin, to honor God in every area of our lives, not because we need to to be accepted and loved, but because we are already accepted and loved.
There are sort of two ditches that we can fall off here. To make it really simple, let me talk in terms of parenting. On one side of the road we have rules without relationship. That leads either to self-righteousness or rebellion. On the other side of the road, we have relationship without rules which leads to insecurity or confusion. If your parents are your best friends, but have no rules for the good of their children, they are not going to thrive. Instead of feeling free, the children will feel anxious.
Every other worldview in some way says it’s about the rules, not the relationship which leads to self-righteous religion or rebellion. But, the pendulum can go too far the other way and in Western Christianity we can say it’s all about the relationship and it doesn’t really matter what you do. It’s kind of love without lordship. If we reduce faith to ‘God loves me, so nothing matters’ then grace means no boundaries at all which leads to blurred morality, faith that is shaped by feelings instead of truth, and a God made in our image rather than the other way around. And instead of freedom, it produces spiritual insecurity, immaturity, and confusion.
Relationship with rules, though, brings transformation. In John 14, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep My commandments.” - John 14:15 Obedience is not a way to earn God’s love, it is the way love takes shape in real life. To receive Jesus, in John’s words, means receiving the grace and the truth. Verse 14: 14 And zthe Word abecame flesh and bdwelt among us, cand we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son4 from the Father, full of dgrace and etruth. - John 1:14
John begins his gospel by dismantling every ladder we’ve ever tried to climb.
Not by mocking our effort, but by showing us something better. The Word didn’t stand at the top and tell us to climb harder. The Word became flesh and came all the way down.
Some of you are exhausted because you’ve been living your entire life on a ladder trying to prove, earn, justify, and clean yourself up. And today, John is telling you that you can stop climbing. God is not waiting at the top of your performance. He has already come to you in Jesus Christ.
Others of you have stepped off the ladder, but you’ve also stepped away from obedience. You’ve settled for a relationship that never changes you. And John reminds us that the Word who came in grace also came in truth. Real love transforms. Real light exposes…and then heals.
The question John puts in front of us is not, “How high can you climb?” It’s simply this: Will you receive Him?
Not achieve. Not improve. Not perform…..Receive.
Receive the light that overcomes darkness.
Receive the forgiveness you cannot earn.
Receive the right to be called a child of God.
The Word has spoken.
The light has come.
The ladder is gone.
And today, by the grace of God, you can respond…not with effort, but with open hands.
