September 29, 2025; John 1:1-18

Daily Dose of Hope

September 29, 2025

 

Scripture - John 1:1-18

 

Prayer:  Holy God, We come before you in this new week with humility and gratefulness.  We praise your powerful name.  Thank you, so much, Lord, that you came to earth to dwell among us and show us a different way of being.  Help us to pay attention to your example.  Help us to be more loving and more merciful in all we do.  Help us to be even but a small reflection of you.  You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Thank you, Jesus.  Amen.

 

Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, a deep dive into the Gospels and Acts.  This is the devotional and podcast that complements the New Hope Church daily Bible reading plan.  Today, we are starting our final Gospel, John.  And John is different from the other three Gospels, we will see that as we work our way through it.  It’s also a beautiful Gospel.  It goes deep.  Be prepared for life change as we engage with the book of John. 

 

This first chapter is John’s Christmas story.  It’s quite different from the other Gospels.  In fact, the Gospel of John doesn’t have any of the Christmas characters we know and love so well–no Joseph or Mary, no shepherds or angels, no manger and animals, no wise men traveling from the east. John didn’t need to rehash those details of the incarnation. Afterall, the other Gospels had already been written and did a great job telling the story of baby Jesus. John chose to go about it differently, focusing less on how Jesus came and more on why Jesus came, and how the whole idea of the incarnation was so incredible, so mind-blowing, so amazingly significant for all people for all time. For in Jesus, God announced to the world that “I’m with you!” and that has made all the difference.

 

We find John’s Christmas story in two verses in this chapter:

John 1:1,In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

What does this mean? Both the Jewish and Greek listeners would have been familiar with the term “Word,” which was Logos in Greek.

-Jews were in the habit of substituting the Word of God for God himself in their concept of wisdom/reason---wisdom/reason is one of the meanings for LOGOS.

-Greeks thought of Logos as the ruling principle of life and the universe.

-Gnostics–believed the Spirit was imprisoned in the physical body and the secret to get it out was gnosis, knowledge, logos. (They didn’t believe Jesus possessed a true, physical body.)

 

So when John writes that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, he means that the Word, LOGOS, is Jesus Christ. Please know that this was a mind-blowing claim. Jesus wasn’t just a little baby who was born under unusual circumstances when Caesar Augustus was governor of Syria. He wasn’t just a wise man who told amazing stories and fed a lot of people. No, Jesus (the Word) was present at the very beginning of time, Jesus (the Word) was with God, and Jesus (the Word) was God himself. To the Jews, John says the Word of God (GOD) is Jesus. To the Greeks, John says the ruling principle of life/universe is Jesus. To the Gnostics, John says the secret knowledge that leads to freedom is Jesus who had a true, physical body and dwelt among us. Jesus was not some mental concept, some intangible thought life; No, Jesus, God himself, became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

 

Let’s unpack this a bit more because it’s pretty amazing.  Let’s start with the Word dwelt among us. A mo