Let John Introduce Us to Jesus

By Pastor Justin Cooper  |  Gospel Light Baptist Church  

There is a protocol for introducing the President of the United States. It begins with the ruffles — the drum rolls. Then come the flourishes — the blast of the trumpet. Then the song everybody knows, "Hail to the Chief." And finally a voice announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States." Before the man ever speaks a word, the whole room already knows: someone important has arrived.

An introduction does something. It tells you what the introducer thinks of the one being introduced. It hints at their accolades, their position, their power. So imagine the responsibility of being handed a microphone and asked to introduce Jesus to a room full of people who have never met Him. What would you say? What titles would you reach for? How well do you actually know Him?

That is exactly the task the Apostle John takes up in the first chapter of his gospel. And if anyone was qualified for it, it was John. He walked with Jesus. He heard His voice. He laid his head on His chest and heard His heartbeat. He prayed beside Him in the garden and stood at Calvary and watched Him bleed and die. Now John opens his gospel to introduce the world to the Lord Jesus Christ — and the way he does it is worth slowing down for, because what a person believes about Jesus is not a small thing.

"What you think about Jesus determines how you'll spend eternity."

A million years from this moment, none of the things we spend our days chasing will matter. Your financial statement will not matter. Your home address will not matter. Your career will not matter. But what you truly believe about the Lord Jesus Christ will matter for all eternity. You can afford to be wrong about a lot of things — vanilla over chocolate, a Chevrolet over a Ford. But you cannot afford to be wrong about this.

Christ Is Eternal

Watch where John begins. He does not take us to Bethlehem. He does not take us to a cradle or to angels singing over shepherds. He bypasses all of it and reaches back before the beginning itself.

Jesus did not begin. He already was. God did not make Him. He is God. Before Abraham was, He said, I am. There was never a moment when the Son of God was not.

Christ Is Incomparable

This is where so many people stumble. They will grant that Jesus was a good man, a wise teacher, a religious leader. But John will not let us settle there.

"He is God wrapped in flesh like a man."

He walked on water because He is God. He raised the dead because He is God. He opened blinded eyes and made deaf ears hear because He is God. He answered prayer, forgave sin, and laid down His own life because He is God. He is not Jesus of Bethlehem or Jesus of Nazareth as though a place could contain Him — every place came from Him. There is no statue, no block of wood, no man who ever propped himself on a pedestal who can share that title. Jesus is God, and Jesus alone.

Christ Is the Initiator

John keeps building. In verse three he tells us that all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Everything you can see, and everything you cannot, came through the Word.

He did not need spare parts. He did not need leftovers or raw material. He simply spoke, and out of nothing came the cosmos and every creature in it. That is the size of the God we serve — and it is a comfort, not just a fact. If you have walked into this week with a broken heart or a heavy load, hold onto this:

"If he's big enough to make it, he's big enough to mend it."

Christ Is the Illuminator

Verse four says, "In him was life; and the life was the light of men." There is a light every person is born with — an awareness of God written into creation itself, leaving each of us without excuse. It is why people try to fill the empty places of their lives with affairs, with drugs and alcohol, with money and houses. They are packing dirt into a hole that only God can fill.

That restlessness is not your enemy. It is a shaft of light in a dark room, and it is saying: I am what you are looking for. Life is not found in dead things. You do not find it in a bottle, in a bag, or in a 401k. Life is found in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will fill the vacuum today if you will come to Him.

Christ Was Ignored

Here the introduction takes a sorrowful turn. Verse ten: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not." The world wanted a king who would overthrow Caesar and put them in first place. Jesus came meek and lowly, and they rejected Him.

And people still do. This is the warning John will not let us skip past:

"You'll come to church but not come to Christ."

You can check the box, eat your Sunday meal, and go to bed no more ready to meet God than before. The need of the hour is not to be religious. It is to stop rejecting Christ and to receive Him.

Christ Imparts

But John does not end on rejection, and neither will we. Verse twelve is the hinge of the whole introduction: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." This is a birth, not a membership card — born not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.

You might protest that God does not know the degree of your sin. But you do not know the depths of His love. It does not matter what is on your record or your breath — the call is the same. Being Baptist will not get you to heaven. Carrying a Bible on Sunday will not get you to heaven. You must be born again. And that is precisely why He came.

The Word Became Flesh

And so John lands his introduction on the most staggering sentence a person could ever read. Verse fourteen: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory."

"Infinity wrapped in the finite. Eternity held in time. Deity robed in flesh."

God, who holds the universe, was housed in a body — born to die upon Calvary. He knew you could never climb up to where He is, so He came down to where you are. You could never live like Him, so He lived like you. You could never win, so He won the victory for you. That is how much God loves you.