Last time, we said that Jesus actually provides us with a script to follow. He could have saved himself but he chose to deny himself in order to save us. That choice requires the courage of a lion and the humility of the lamb. And it’s a choice every man faces in the battle—to say no to me so I can say yes to the people around me.
So what does it look like to follow the Jesus script? It starts with following Jesus of Nazareth through the Gospels. Today, we’re starting at the place where John began his account.
John was one of Jesus’s early followers. He traveled with Jesus, ate with him, saw him heal the sick and challenge the religious leaders, watched him die, and then saw a resurrected Jesus. John also grew up a fisherman. He likely had calloused hands from hauling in fish and cleaning fish. He didn’t have much education. After the resurrection, he traveled around telling people about Jesus.
And at some point, he decided he needed to capture his experiences with Jesus, so he dictated his firsthand experience with the Savior of mankind, which we can read in the Gospel of John. As you read the beginning of his account, don’t view this as simply reading the Bible. Hear these words from a man who spent three years with Jesus, then spent his next 20 or 30 years talking about Jesus. He's now at the end of his life, and he's as convinced as ever of who Jesus is—God in a body who came to earth. When John wrote his account, he would not have had a concept of our Bible. He was just documenting his experiences with Jesus. But how would he encapsulate his experience in words? Here’s how he opens his description of Jesus—he ends up going back to the very beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
—John 1:1
John does the most fascinating thing, and when we read it in our English Bible, we miss it. And it's not anybody's fault, it's just the nature of Greek to English. Here’s the verse again with a Greek word inserted into our text.
In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God.
—John 1:1
Now, this was a showstopper. Here's why: 400 years before Jesus, Greeks ruled the world. And they had a pantheon of gods. Greek philosophers, like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, recognized there was more to creation and more to life than their fickle gods. They suspected there was something outside of their gods. The reason was, they recognized that there were such things as virtue, wisdom, and justice. And none of these were reflected in the character of their gods. In fact, their gods reflected the very worst of human nature. Why? Because they were created by humans. So the gods were lustful, malicious, power-hungry, and devious. They were unpredictable and at war with each other. The smart philosophers discerned there's something beyond all of that—the existence of virtue, wisdom, and justice. It was undeniable that these things existed. But what do you call this? It's not a god; it's an inanimate but catalytic, powerful good that stands apart from the gods, so they referred to it as logos. It's an impersonal, intangible, but undeniable reality that intersected and benefited humanity, and then they stopped. That's as far as they got.
John continues in his account…
The Word (logos) 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.
—John 1:14
Now consider this… John sits down to start the story of Jesus and opens his Gospel by declaring that logos was God. He had shown up as a man who embodied virtue, wisdom, and justice. John continued: The logos was not an ethereal thing or a spiritual experience. Logos was a person. Jesus camped out with us. We ate together. And we physically saw his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, absolutely full of grace and truth. He was not a balance of grace and truth. He was full on grace and full on truth all the time. I was there when he flipped tables in the temple. I saw him heal people and touch the untouchable. It was amazing.
John also wrote…
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
—John 1:4–5
Jesus, the logos, was life, and that way of life was the light of men. His way, the life that he modeled lit the path. It illuminated and led the way.
Ever seen a man get lost in life? Maybe it was your dad or maybe a friend. You knew where he was physically, but his life just wasn’t working out. Or maybe it was you—you felt lost in a specific season of life.
Maybe the script you were handed taught you to assume that you’ve got this, that you’re enough. And perhaps that script worked for a while, until it didn’t anymore. There was a nagging sense of not enough-ness or a lack of what’s next-ness or who’s next-ness. It’s possible that the script you were given said that men can’t talk about this kind of stuff. So you just sort of stuffed your feelings and moved on. But you kept feeling lost.
Here's what John is saying to men everywhere. Jesus showed us a way around, past, and through that confusion. In him was life, and that life, that way of life, was the light of men. He taught us a different way of living, thinking, and loving. He taught us a different way of perceiving the world around us. He lit up everything, and he lit up everyone with that light, including God the Father. He said if you want to know what God is like, watch me. Look at me.
And then John says this light, who is Jesus, shines in the darkness—in our lostness. John could attest to the fact that it was so bright at times, it exposed so much. He could share the times when he and the others felt so stupid. When they gave all the wrong answers. And yet Jesus continued to love them anyway.
And then in the end, the light of mankind marched his light into the darkness of Jerusalem knowing it wouldn't work out and knowing there were holy men plotting to kill him. But darkness did not overcome. It did not overpower Jesus—the logos and the light. And those who were the first to follow him—Peter, John, Matthew, the other disciples, the women—they would tell us that they were never more alive than when they walked in the way of Jesus.
So, what does that mean for us? What specifically does it look like to be a man who chooses the Jesus script? For the remaining days in this devotion, we’ll be looking at snapshots from the life of Jesus that will light our way.
