Jesus bringer of Life

Jn 1:4   In him was life, and that life was the light of men
   
Life is a mystery, not the whole existence of a person, but the very force or energy that keeps them going. Materialistic scientists have to say it is just the interaction of chemicals that make a body move, react, respond, and interact with everything around it. It is most clearly realized when it is absent, i.e. when death occurs. To see a dead body immediately after death is to realize that ‘something’ has gone from it and so all that is left is flesh which will decay leaving just a skeleton. Something within the flesh gave up and no longer energises the body into action. For most of us, the thought of simply chemical interaction is grossly inadequate. We sense, we feel, that we are something far more that just chemicals, for chemicals have no beauty, no meaning, no ‘purpose’ and things like love and creativity are also meaningless to a pile of heaving molecules!
   
From a materialistic point of view we know that a human body needs a pumping heart and an active brain and when either shuts down, the body shuts down and dies. We explain the brain activity as minute electrical charges flowing between cells causing stimulation that brings ‘life’, but as we’ve just said, most of us almost demand that it is more than this. Whenever men rationalise and reduce humanity to mere matter, very soon after we find abuses of man by man. History is littered with such abuses. It is only when we see man as something more than merely molecular activity does man rise up to greatness. Then we start talking about the ‘quality of life’ and in all this we are struggling to put meaning to this word, ‘life’.
  
John says “in him was life” as if that was something different from anyone else. The inference is that in everyone else life is imparted, given to them at conception, passed on by their parents, but in Jesus this ‘life’ existed independently of any other human being. The inference is that this life, this energy that we struggle to understand, exists in God alone and everything else has it because God imparts it.
    
The word ‘life’ occurs 50 times in John’s Gospel, often in the context of eternal life, a life force or energy that goes on without end. When the Bible speaks of our spirit, is that the part of us that is the mysterious holder of this life energy which, when a person becomes a Christian, is energised by the Holy Spirit? Who or what is the Holy Spirit except the life that is God – energy that is personal.
    
To catch something of the significance of this we need to see the effect of the Holy Spirit coming ‘upon’ men in the Old Testament and New. In Ex 31:3,4 He gave new creative abilities. In Num 11:25 He gave new ability to prophesy. In Judges 3:10 He gave ability to lead as in 6:34. In every case of the Holy Spirit coming upon men He gave them new abilities. It was like all their natural abilities were heightened. A parallel picture to try to explain it would be to say it was like a man with only black and white sight being given the ability to see in colours. With the arrival of God in power, there is a flow of ‘life’ that brings a transformation in man that is as dramatic as the change that takes place when the sun comes out on a cloudy day. Prior to Jesus coming, we were like human bodies that were living out a form or copy of life. Then we encountered him and real life, real God-energy, flowed into us and we were transformed. We became what we were designed to be. We started seeing differently, thinking differently, and acting differently. This ‘life’ in Jesus came into us and we were transformed!
     

Jesus the Creator

Jn 1:3   Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
  
We now move away from the narratives and go to John’s Gospel for a number of meditations to consider some of the concepts that he shares with us that shed light on just who Jesus Christ was and is. Atheistic scientists declare the world was made by a big bang and all living creatures are the result of unplanned evolution. Well they can’t say anything else, can they? If you pretend there is no God, then everything has to be pure chance and everything has got to come about from a single cell evolving into the incredible multi-cell creatures that we are today. There’s no other way to explain it if you pretend there is no God, and all you’re left with is a purposeless, meaningless world. How sad!
   
Then we come to the Bible which unashamedly declares from the first words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). God created. It wasn’t a purposeless accident, it was a pure act of God, however He did it. Now John, starting out his Gospel with a description of the expression of God which became flesh, tells is that the Word was with God and was God and, in case you still hadn’t got the message, that this Word was the agent through which God made everything. This Word was the Creator and there was absolutely nothing in existence that didn’t come into being because of him.

Now the writer to the Hebrews expressed the same thing: “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…. through whom he made the universe.” (Heb 1:2). The apostle Paul said the same thing: “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” There are silly and ignorant people who say that Jesus’ divinity wasn’t declared until three centuries later. They clearly have never read these verses! Three different writers ascribe the creation of existence to Jesus! This puts him fairly and squarely in the description of ‘divinity’!

The Old Testament also has an echo of this. Solomon in the early part of Proverbs personifies wisdom and has ‘him’ speaking, “I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” (Prov 8:27-31). What an amazing passage; a figure alongside the Father totally involved in bringing everything into being.

In John’s day there were those who believed that spirit and matter were opposed and never could come together. God was spirit, and there was matter that was not good. John’s words address these confused philosophers. God is Spirit but God brought matter into being. How can matter come from nothing? We don’t know, it is beyond our finite minds, but John knows that God has no problem with matter for He made it. More than that His Son was part of the creation process and then His Son entered the material realm and Spirit lived in flesh on a material world. Oh no, there is no distinction of good and bad over spirit and matter with God. He has made everything and, in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ, He has lived in this material world. He made it and lived in it. There can be no feeling here that God made something inferior when He created the material world. He proved His approval by sending His Son to live in it. Enjoy God’s creation!