In his introduction to John’s Gospel in the Message Bible, Eugene Peterson writes:

“In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God is presented as speaking the creation into existence. God speaks the word and it happens: heaven and earth, ocean and stream, trees and grass, birds and fish, animals and humans. Everything, seen and unseen, called into being by God’s spoken word.

In deliberate parallel to the opening words of Genesis, John presents God as speaking salvation into existence. This time God’s word takes on human form and enters history in the person of Jesus. Jesus speaks the word and it happens: forgiveness and judgment, healing and illumination, mercy and grace, joy and love, freedom and resurrection. Everything broken and fallen, sinful and diseased, called into salvation by God’s spoken word.

For, somewhere along the line things went wrong (Genesis tells that story, too) and are in desperate need of fixing. The fixing is all accomplished by speaking—God speaking salvation into being in the person of Jesus. Jesus, in this account, not only speaks the word of God; he is the Word of God.

Keeping company with these words, we begin to realize that our words are more important than we ever supposed. Saying “I believe,” for instance, marks the difference between life and death. Our words accrue dignity and gravity in conversations with Jesus. For Jesus doesn’t impose salvation as a solution; he narrates salvation into being through leisurely conversation, intimate personal relationships, compassionate responses, passionate prayer, and—putting it all together—a sacrificial death. We don’t casually walk away from words like that.”

One of the key themes in John is the idea of God’s Word. For John, the Word is not abstract or conceptual. It is concrete, it is living it is actual and personal. For John we do not simple hear God’s Word we meet and encounter God’s Word. We do not simply know God’s Word by rote we know God’s Word through personal and profound experience. We to not recite God’s Word as scholars, we recall and recount our experiences with the Word as witnesses. God’s Word is not simply lessons to be learned but truth to be lived out in real life relationships and experiences. The Word must become flesh.

“God’s speaking is never idle chatter, it is speaking with a purpose and it has power to effect that purpose. God’s word has the power and the authority to make what it says happen... God’s word is never just a set of truths or ideas it is always an event, which on the one hand it brings us into personal contact with the one who speaks and on the other hand works its will on the persons and situations to which it is addressed. By it God creates and re-creates, judges and forgives... [God’s word] is a life changing and history making event that provokes a crisis, a decision, a parting of ways where ever it is spoken...”

It is interesting to note that when God comes to fix humanity he comes to us in the form of the Word; and it is this Word that must be believed, trusted, obeyed, lived out and enfleshed in our day to day experiences and encounters. The Word is the very stuff of life: from turning water into wine, to giving living water at wells; from being the bread from heave to serving five thousand bread from lunch box. Everything we need we encounter and experience through the Word. The challenge is for us to believe the Word, abide in the Word and ultimately live the Word, so that in us and through our actions the Word of God is made flesh again and again. In doing this we live out the meaning of Jesus’ Words to his first disciples: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”

Discussion Points

1. How can we make our faith less conceptual and more concrete; less religious and more relational, less about knowledge and more about experience?

2. John writes: ¹⁴The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.  We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.  How do we ‘enflesh’ the Word and allow God through us to move into our neighbourhoods?

3. Within the context of John teaching about the Word being God in person, what does it mean to believe the Word? What does this look like in real life?

4. Thinking about your life, your relationships, where you work and where you live, what would the ‘Word made flesh’ look like in your world?

5. In John we see the transforming power of the Word in way concrete ways is God’s Word changing your life.