What Makes John's Gospel Different ?

[HKHaugan]

Why does John begin His Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God?” It certainly is different than the way the other three Gospels start. Again I would beg your patience as I attempt an explanation.

I have a friend who when we go out for lunch or dinner has a way of moving the conversation to center around the person of Jesus. It is not that he doesn’t engage in casual talk. It’s that he has a fascination with how Jesus works in his life and sees it in the lives of others. He draws you into that fascination. Recently we were out to dinner with him and actually spent an unexpected but wonderful three and a half hours being animated with him about our mutual understanding of the Lord. When you can have a transcending experience in a BBQ restaurant you know it was great.

Conversations come in words. What’s in a word? That’s the question we need to be asking. Words are not just sounds. They carry meaning. When we meet, when we engage in conversation, when we want to know something words begin everything. It’s especially true for us as disciples of Jesus. We rely so much on words to communicate. Words are the means to convey what can’t be seen in the midst of what can be seen like who and what we are, what we believe, how we live and why.

Words reflect two dimensions, the visible and invisible, the physical and spiritual, behavior and its motivation, existence and what runs it, structure and what maintains it. Every word we speak is a physical copy of a mental concept, a picture of something spiritual. Words are chosen by minds and hearts that want to open, hide, hurt, please, build, destroy, work, accomplish, sell, buy, love, and search. Words are driven by the spirit within, the spirit that defines the heart’s intention. The importance of words is that they carry the desire of our hearts, our identity, belief, attitude and emotion.

But it’s not just about the one speaking the words. It’s also about the one hearing them. We have to remember that we depend on words to carry our meaning to the one to whom we are speaking. Our words are perceived based on the attitude of the hearer. With this in mind we need to be reminded that the hearer is as much a part of words as the speaker. If the hearer has a meaning in his mind then we have to find out what it is. We can say the same words but mean something quite different by them. It’s only when we have a common meaning that communication begins. If we have a common word meaning out of which we both speak it is no longer about what I think but about what the common basis of our meaning thinks. It is where ego takes a back seat so that we find a common meaning to open up communication.

Therefore to me, the reason for John’s dramatically different start was his concern that the purest form of communication, Jesus the Word, becomes the source of all our spoken words, all attempts at communication, the primary Word necessary to understand before we can begin to communicate as we were intended in Creation. I believe John wanted us to grasp this, that Jesus is the One who is alive right now. It is His mind, heart and Spirit that are to guide any attempt at communication because anything less misses the Perfect Word and wastes our substance as the Word’s images. (No wonder we are not to take God’s name in vain, or bear false witness or to gossip or to curse or to swear falsely or spend too much time in small talk.)

What John does is to write everything in his Gospel with the living Jesus as the foundational word who is the Word. He is the constantly present Word who guides the use of all words. He is the Word of words, the Savior of words, the Lord of words, the Redeemer of words, the Forgiver of words and the Perfecter of words. He is the Word that brings unity to our words when we let Him be the Lord of our words.

Because Jesus is The Word John wants us to think spiritually, to reason spiritually, to be spiritually creative with our words and to see ourselves as ‘little words’ in all we do. As believers we are living expressions verbalizing the Word, Jesus, wherever we are. To John, because Jesus is the Word, all thoughts put into words need to be spiritually considered in the consciousness of Jesus before they are uttered and His entire Gospel directs us to do just that. It’s not that the other three gospels don’t, it’s that their intention is more biographical, grounding Jesus in physical reality. My sense is that John already assumes the truth of the other Gospels and propels us into the realm of the Spirit in His unique way.

My friend in the restaurant understood all this.

So what are we conveying by our words if we are created in the image of the Word?