How much God could Jesus hold?
When I was in high school, I would visit with a man named Paul who lived in a local nursing home. During one of our conversations, I noticed the Bible on his bedside table and asked about it. That led to a discussion about how we read the Bible. Paul made the point — and I think this was the first time I’d considered it — that the Bible wasn’t meant to be read sequentially. With some exceptions, the books aren’t arranged chronologically. As an example, he cited today’s scripture passage. It’s from the book of John, which is located in the New Testament. But it begins the same way as the book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, which was written centuries before: “In the beginning . . .”
Why did the author of John see fit to go back to the beginning when so much had transpired since? Why is the start of his gospel, often referred to as the “prologue,” so different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Mark begins by talking about John the Baptist, and then the start of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew and Luke begin with the birth of Jesus and some related events that preceded it. Those three gospels were circulating before John’s, and I suspect the author might have even had access to them. If so, it seems he felt there was still more to tell about the life and teachings of Jesus that his predecessors hadn’t covered.
John begins with the statement that Jesus was around from the beginning of all things. He’s referred to as λογοσ, a Greek word which often means “word” and sometimes “message.” Jesus was not just a word, though; he was the Word. Not only that, but he was with God and indeed was God. Everything with life came into being through the Word, “the light of all people.”
Even decades after his death and resurrection, perhaps even after exposure to the letters of Paul or gospel writings, the followers of Jesus were still trying to figure out exactly who he was and where he came from. Thus John is making a bold theological pronouncement about the divinity of Jesus. He wasn’t just a prophet, he wasn’t just inspired by God — he was God in human form.
The structure and poetic nature of these lines suggest they were recited or sung by the early church. (Holmes, 74) Scholars are not sure whether they were originally written by the author of John, or whether they were adapted for the gospel. Regardless, those who were familiar with Hebrew scripture would have recognized their similarity to a passage in Proverbs:
“The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth . . .when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker.”
As Bible scholar Laura Sweat Holmes writes, “Wisdom was present with God in the beginning — Wisdom was the first of God’s creative works — and . . . God created the world through Wisdom.” (Holmes, 77) John’s author is not suggesting that the passage in Proverbs was written about Jesus specifically, but is making a connection about the similarity of their eternal nature. And this link extends to suggest that Jesus “is continuing God’s creative work,” as he has since the beginning. (Miller, 231)
Once in a while someone asks me, “Do you really believe Jesus was God?” This question has come from two different friends in recent months, one a former pastor and one a current pastor. I don’t think they themselves believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I understand where they’re coming from. For instance, it’s hard to imagine that a human body can contain the being responsible for the creation of life, that a human brain can hold the knowledge of everything that has occurred since the founding of history. Those are only two challenges that occur to me — you can probably think of many others.
Back when I was visiting Paul in the nursing home, I felt I had no problem grasping what it said in the prologue to John’s gospel. Christianity and the Bible’s authority were centralized in my life, so all other belief systems were measured against those standards. I grew up going to church in a place where most other people also went to church, or at least operated from an American Christian worldview. I very rarely encountered people raised in a different faith tradition, and possessed a lot of certainty about how things worked, including matters related to God and sin and eternity and religion. The life experience that I centered — being White, Christian, and conservative — was also centered by the majority of people around me, and it wasn’t often challenged.
As I grew older, I met more people who were different from me, and became exposed to more diversity and experiences. I gradually became aware that the social location I centered — my own — was not the universal standard. Many of the characteristics that make me who I am, including my faith, skin color, nationality, and level of affluence, are not the norm. God’s creation is incredibly diverse, and that extends to there being many variations of people, none of whom represents an ideal.
With time, I’ve realized that Jesus doesn’t require my certainty. In fact, when you’re being certain it’s hard to exercise the humility he taught and lived. Thus I now enjoy hearing people talk about their spiritual journeys, and I enter that space without an agenda in mind. Such interaction has proven rewarding and enhanced my own spiritual life.
I place less stock in faith statements than I used to, preferring the nuance of conversation to well-defined definitions, but sometimes people ask my thoughts on theological questions. When they ask about Jesus being God, I like to cite an illustration often shared by one of my former pastors, Don Ciampa. He kept a large jar in his office, and had once taken that jar to the edge of the ocean and dipped it in, collecting sand, water, and other components until it was full. Later, he compared that jar to Jesus and the ocean to the entirety of God. He would say that everything in that jar was ocean, but the jar did not contain the whole ocean; it just held as much ocean as a jar could.
How much God could fit into the human body of Jesus? How much of God’s knowledge could Jesus hold in his human brain? People have argued about the answers to those questions for centuries. For me the answer is: enough. There was enough God in Jesus for the incarnation — the arrival of God in human form — to serve its purpose.
John’s author makes the case that, as Bible scholar Susan Miller writes, “Jesus has become aligned with the natural world. . . . Human beings may experience God’s grace and truth in the earthly sphere of life. The incarnation crosses the boundary between the spiritual and the material realms.” (Miller, 231) And this light is one for “all people” and would enlighten everyone, not just those from one tradition or in one location. All “…human beings and the natural world are part of Jesus’ ‘own,’ and Jesus has come to the whole universe.” (Miller, 230)
That said, not everyone would recognize him. By the time John’s gospel was written, this would have been very clear to many Jesus-followers. For decades following the resurrection, those Jews who had chosen to follow Jesus co-existed with those who did not recognize him as divine. Perhaps many of them from both camps even worshiped in the same temple, at least prior to its destruction by the Romans.
Some Bible scholars refer to this span of time as the Johannine [jo-hah-neen] period. Evidence suggests there was a tension between those who followed Jesus and the Jews who did not, and in John the author often seems to be addressing the latter. When he writes that “the Word became flesh and lived among us,” the Greek “means ‘tabernacled,’ an allusion to the wilderness Tabernacle, the precursor of the Jerusalem Temple.” (Levine, 218) When the Israelites were wandering in the desert after escaping captivity in Egypt, they took with them the tabernacle, a large but portable tent-like structure. This served as the dwelling place for God, who accompanied them throughout their journey. It wasn’t until they settled later that God’s people built the temple in Jerusalem.
Miller writes that “John claims that the enfleshed Word now functions as did the tabernacle. In the incarnate Word, God’s holy presence is in the midst of his people.” (Holmes, 84) John’s gospel was written after the destruction of the temple, but the author is suggesting the temple is no longer needed to experience God’s presence.
Another connection between John’s prologue and the Hebrew Bible is the mention of Jesus and John the Baptist as prophets sent by God. (Holmes, 79) This was intended to carry weight with Jewish readers, as would the mention of Moses. In both instances, John is making the case that Jesus is like these predecessors but also more. Moses was perhaps the best-regarded person from the Hebrew Bible, but John reminds readers that Moses never saw God, stating “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (Some might argue that Moses did in fact see God according to scripture, but others would counter that it was only God’s backside according to Exodus 33.)
Nonetheless, despite the author’s best efforts, many Jews remained unconvinced of the divinity of Jesus, just as many people do now. Reflecting on today’s passage, Miller writes that “The prologue introduces the paradox that lies at the heart of the gospel. The world came into being through Jesus, but the world did not recognize him.” (Miller, 230)
Just as God can be recognized through Jesus, Jesus should be recognized through his followers. You have probably noticed that I favor the term “Jesus-follower” over the term “Christian.” That’s because, over the years, I’ve come to know a lot of people who don’t recognize Jesus as the Son of God or are undecided and yet are awfully good at living in the manner he taught. They are humble. They are generous. They put the needs of others ahead of their own. They stand up for the marginalized and promote justice. They might not refer to themselves as Christians (or they might come from a different faith tradition entirely), but they are continuing some of the work that Jesus began.
As I mentioned earlier, I understand how one can doubt the divinity of Jesus. It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea of God existing in the body of a human. For some, that’s a sufficient barrier to their becoming part of a faith community. What frustrates me is when the barrier comes from the church itself. Sadly, we who claim to believe what it says in the prologue to John don’t always act Jesus-y. In fact, sometimes we even do harm in the name of Jesus. We’ve seen this manifest itself in large and horrible ways, such as through war and colonization. We’ve seen it play a role in racism, homophobia, and transphobia. We’ve even seen church leaders engage in abuse of individuals. For many people, when they think about what Christianity represents, these are the things that come to their minds. Thus it’s understandable that they have little interest in entering a church building or becoming involved with a faith community.
Once in a while I’ll see a bumper sticker that says something like “Not perfect, just forgiven.” Certainly none of us is perfect; if you’re like me you can quickly come up with a list of shortcomings in yourself. And I believe that Jesus does offer forgiveness to all. So I guess I don’t entirely disagree with what those bumper stickers say. But as is often the case when theology is boiled down to bumper sticker-length phrases, it can oversimplify to a fault. Phrases like his one leads to a concept some refer to as “cheap grace.”
To illustrate in what I confess is a judgmental manner, let me tell you about a hypothetical man named Biff. Biff used to live in a house that was much larger than he needed, and his garage was inhabited by a variety of expensive vehicles. He worked as a lobbyist for a fracking company, even though he knew fracking harms people’s health and contributes to climate change. He would sometimes round up in the checkout line, but otherwise didn’t contribute to charity. He occasionally cheated on his spouse. He wasn’t involved in any community organizations or non-profit groups. He was always friendly to those he considered peers, but was patronizing toward restaurant servers and sales clerks and others he deemed beneath him.
One day Biff realized that his boss and a couple co-workers he liked attended a local church. His wife had been talking about wanting to get involved in such a place, so they checked it out. They liked the people there, and the messages and music were upbeat, so they decided to become members. Biff went before the congregation and accepted Jesus as his savior.
One year later, Biff still attends that church, and even contributes money some weeks. He often tags his social media posts with #JesusIsLord. But he still works as a fossil fuel lobbyist. He still sometimes cheats on his spouse. He still remains uninvolved in community work, and his treatment of servers and sales clerks has not improved. He lives in the same house and owns the same cars, although one has a “Not perfect, just forgiven” bumper sticker.
If one truly believes in the incarnation, in some part of God coming to earth to live and eventually die among us, shouldn’t that be life-changing? What is more important: That one believes what it says in John’s prologue, or that one lives in accordance with what Jesus taught?
Those questions came to my mind last week when Sojourner Nancy sent me a quote from Pastor Frank Terhune. Part of it read “The early Christians . . . shared the good news of the risen Christ with their lives, living transformed lives. They understood the call of Christ meant to live differently. Their lifestyle got attention. Their mission of serving, got noticed. The Gospel was preached through the way they lived.”
I offer the question to you: “Do you really believe Jesus was God?” Regardless of how you respond, I think Jesus offers a better way of living for all of us. And regardless of how you respond, I hope you’re able to experience the benefits of that living in the coming year.
May God bless you in 2025.
Amen.
Works Referenced
Culpepper, R. Alan. The Gospel and Letters of John (Interpreting Biblical Texts). Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Holmes, Laura Sweat and George Lyons. John 1–12: A Commentary in the Western Tradition (New Beacon Bible Commentary). Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill Press, 2020, Kindle edition.
Levine, Amy-Jill and Mark Zvi Brettler, editors. The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Kindle Edition.
Miller, Susan. “John’s Gospel.” In The Oxford Handbook of The Bible and Ecology, edited by Hilary Marlow and Mark Harris. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2022.
