John 1:1-34

What’s Happening?

The Gospel of John opens with the words, “In the beginning.” These words echo back to Genesis, when God created the world with his words. John tells us that God’s Word is so powerful, so concrete, that it’s more than a sound; it’s a person.

This Word is given a mouth. He has eyes. God becomes human. This Word is with God and is God. Just as God spoke light into darkness, so God sends the Word of Light into a dark world again. And though we expect God’s Word to be obvious when Jesus appears, most people neither see nor hear God’s voice.

So, God sends a man named John to prepare his people to see Jesus as the Light and to hear the Word become flesh. John was humble, never drawing attention to himself but instead defining his ministry with the words of Isaiah: “I’m the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3). Just as God promised comfort for his exiled people, so now John comes to proclaim that Israel’s time of exile was finally coming to an end.

John was known for his baptism of repentance, calling Israel to turn from sin so God might cleanse them and remember their sins no more (Isaiah 43:25; Jeremiah 31:34). Yet John understood his baptism was only a pointer toward a greater cleansing that would be brought by Jesus. John’s baptism prepared people through repentance, but Jesus came to bring a final cleansing—one that would not only forgive sins but break sin’s power forever.

That’s why John sees Jesus and declares him to be “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This image draws from Israel’s story. At the Exodus, the lamb’s blood rescued God’s people from death and brought them into covenant relationship with him. And in the temple, the lamb offered as a sin offering cleansed God’s people of their darkness and made them light like God. John is saying Jesus fulfills both pictures. He is the true Passover lamb who rescues from death and the true sin offering who removes sin and makes God’s people holy. While the world was blind to what was happening in front of them, John saw and testified that Jesus was the Son of God (John 1:34).

Where is the Gospel?

One of the most shocking claims of Christianity is that God becomes human. While some gods in ancient mythologies take the form of a human, the man Jesus is still God himself. Some see this as blasphemous while others find it confusing—how can someone be fully human and fully God?

But John the Baptist recognized what no one else saw. It’s only when Word becomes flesh that sin can be defeated and cleansed once and for all. Light cannot be sacrificed. Words alone cannot free us from darkness. The only way sin’s power can be broken is if Word becomes like us, if Light steps into our darkness, if Life itself enters our death. God, seeing a world bound under sin, sends himself as both Passover lamb and sin offering—to rescue his people from death and to cleanse them so they can share his life.

John’s baptism of repentance pointed forward to this moment. In Jesus, repentance leads not only to forgiveness but to cleansing. His blood washes away sin and breaks its power forever. When we turn to him, we are not only forgiven—we are freed.

As John’s Gospel unfolds, we are invited to witness what John the Baptist witnessed, to glimpse what so many people missed, and to hear the words Jesus first spoke to his disciples: “Come and see.”

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see the God who creates all things by his powerful Word. And may you see Jesus as the Word made flesh—the true Lamb who rescues from death, cleanses from sin, and gives us life with God.