The World Redeemed From Within

The redemptive-historical steps from John 1:1 to 1:12 are some of the most remarkable in all the Scriptures. The eternal God (John 1:1-3) became man to enter the world that He had created (v.10)–a world that had rebellion against Him (v. 10). He came to the nation He had created for Himself (v. 11)–a nation that rejected Him (v. 11). In that rejection He redeemed out of that nation and that world a people for Himself, to make them sons of God. Note John’s transitions:

“The Word was God…without Him nothing was made that was made…He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, but the world did not know Him…He came to His own (i.e. the Jews) and His own did not receive Him…But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.”

William Still put it so well when he wrote:

The preexistence of Christ is most plainly testified to in John 1:1, 2, 18; Phil. 2:6a; Col. 1:15; 1 John 1:1a…He is begotten, not created; the only and eternally begotten of the Father, before all worlds. With His coming, the eternal broke into time and became one with creation which had gone wrong, and which He could redeem only from within.

The greatest feat, drama and triumph in the history of all worlds is how God became Man, to be Man forever, and so do God’s job as Man without ceasing to be God, and yet as a true and proper Man. The Westminster Confession says that, ‘two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition or confusion. Which person is very God and very Man, yet one Christ.’

It is only as we see the Man Christ Jesus thus that we understand what is happening in the Gospels and in the Acts, and what is being said in the Epistles and in the Revelation. If men would read the Gospels with this in view, they would find them, not full of problems, but full of answers to set them at rest about all their quibbles, engaging them in that “creative” thinking by the Holy Spirit which expands the mind and enlarges and inflames the heart until praise of Him pours forth spontaneously. 1

Still, William Notes on Galatians (Aberdeen: Didasko Press, 1972) p. 52