This is the last sermon in our three-part series on John 1:1 – 18. In the first two sermons, I laid out some of the cultural issues that were present in John’s day as he painted the picture of who Jesus is. I also tried to build a bridge of application from that culture to our culture today. In everything I have preached so far, my desire has been to stay faithful to the text, while applying it to modern day believers and unbelievers alike.

The bottom line for me is that John is describing Jesus as the light of the world; the One who came during a season that we now celebrate as Christmas. The world that Jesus came into was and is still full of darkness. But the promise of verse five is that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”. 

The darkness has not overcome Christ, and it never will. If the horror of the cross and the darkness of the grave could not overcome Jesus, then there is no darkness in this world or in your life that can overcome Him at any point in history. We can believe that if we have become children of God, then the darkness that seeks to overcome our lives will never prevail.

The main issue of darkness for John was the false teaching of Gnosticism which said that creation was filthy, broken, and sinful, therefore, Jesus could not have been fully divine and fully human if he was God. This obviously struck a chord with John because he knew that Jesus must be both fully human and fully divine to be the eternal light which could never be overcome by the darkness of this sin-infected world. 

If Jesus is to be our substitute on the cross – paying the full price for our sin – then he must be a perfect and sinless human. At the same time, Jesus must be fully God to effectively leave the grave empty. This is why John made it clear in chapter twenty and verse thirty-one that he wrote this account of Jesus’ life so that we “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John does not want anyone to have the faith of demons, because even they believe in Jesus, but their belief is like many modern-day believers who do not have a saving belief; they believe in a fairy tale Jesus. Oftentimes, the Jesus of many within the modern church, has no power to overcome the darkness, because he has been recreated into a soft, passive, friendly, Savior who never speaks a harsh word, cares little about your sin, and gives you a pat on the back when you treat the church like a gumball machine. 

Again, John does not want anyone to have this kind of belief in a false Jesus; this is why he uses the word “believe” over 100 times in his gospel – he wants us to have a “saving-belief” in the real Jesus.2 The reality, according to John, is that Jesus was and is the eternal God who created all living, breathing things, and that he literally came to this earth in the flesh to make war against the darkness (whom we often refer to as Satan, Sin, and Death) and in his warfare he said and did things that most within the modern church today would reject as too offensive and too harsh (think about Jesus calling Peter “Satan”, or flipping tables in the temple, or calling religious folks “a tangled up mess of snakes”, or claiming to be God, etc.).

Once again, the bottom line here is this: Jesus came to be the light in the darkness, he is fully human and fully divine, we must be careful not to refashion Jesus into our own image, believing in him does result in you and I becoming children of God, and if we walk in the light as Jesus is the light, then we can believe that the darkness will never overcome us. The final verses of our text (verses 14 – 18) are a wonderful reminder that the darkness will never prevail against us if we have become children of God. Look at the text with me…

14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15(John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

#1: AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH (V. 14)

The first wonderful truth about Jesus that reassures us that the darkness will never prevail against us is the truth that Jesus is the Word who became flesh. Verse 14 says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Just when it seems like the darkness will prevail, like there is no hope for the future, like everything in your life is destroyed beyond repair, this truth that Jesus is “the Word” who “became flesh” comes barging into the darkened room of our thoughts and desires. God literally came down in the flesh, to live among us, so that we could see – with our very own eyes – the weighty glory of the God who loves us enough to give himself as the solution for our sin-induced death sentence. 

#2: FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH (VV. 14, 16, 17)

No darkness can ever undo the saving work of Jesus over the lives of those who have believed in his name and have become children of God. Furthermore, Jesus is the perfect combination of both grace and truth; these are the two sides of the coin of God’s unconditional love – without both grace and truth, the darkness would prevail.

In verses 14, 16, and 17, we read that when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, he was “full of grace and truth” and from Jesus “we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; [but] grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”When you and I are facing the darkness of Satan, Sin, and Death, the last thing we need is an impotent, powerless, uninterested, Jesus who cannot speak truth with authority nor deal with our bondage to darkness graciously.

I read in a book recently that true love is unconditional but that does not mean that we are called to give unconditional access to those whom we truly love when they are living in darkness. Oftentimes, unconditional love means we must enforce conditional access. This is grace and truth in action. God in his grace offers us what we do not deserve – even as he speaks with great moral clarity about our sinfulness – and he still offers us the opportunity to be his children and to gain complete access to a life of blessing as we walk in the light of Christ. 

But we must never forget that that full access to God’s presence is only given to us if we have a saving belief in the real Jesus. The law that was given by Moses was full of grace and truth. The law began with these words: “I am the God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt” and then proceeded to lay out how God’s people should live in light of the salvation that God had given to them (Exod. 20:1 – 17). 

Before that law was even given, Jesus himself, being God, was full of grace and truth – a principle that can be clearly seen in the connection between God’s gracious salvation of Israel and his truth-filled expectations for how they should live in holiness as redeemed children of God.

#3: HE… RANKS BEFORE ME (V. 15)

Grace and truth have always been the two sides of the coin of God’s unconditional love. This revelation of God’s love being embodied in the person of Jesus Christ who is full of grace and truth, should produce an authentic humility in a true believer. 

This is why John reminds us of John the Baptist in verse 15 where he says that “John bore witness about him, and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”  The prophet and forerunner of Jesus whom we know as John the Baptist, had come face-to-face with the embodiment of God’s unconditional love in the person of Jesus Christ and the result was complete, authentic humility. 

John the Baptist, the one who preached a sermon from the womb when he jumped in his mother’s womb at the coming of Jesus, he never used God’s grace as a license to sin, or to overlook the destructive nature of the darkness, or to downplay the seriousness of Satan, Sin, and Death. And he obviously never used God’s grace as a license for pride-filled rebellion against the God who had loved him since before the foundations of the earth were created. John the Baptist had seen the glory of God in Christ Jesus, and he was eternally humbled by what he saw, which leads us to the final verse of our text.

#4: THE ONLY GOD… AT THE FATHER’S SIDE (V. 18)

John the Baptist as well as the author of the gospel of John – known as one of the Sons of Thunder and the disciple whom Jesus loved – both men testify to seeing something that radically shaped their outlook on life, primarily in regards to their relationship with the darkness. 

Both Johns were filled with wonder and awe and humility because, in Christ, they saw the greatness of the Father, the greatness of the Father’s love, and the greatness of the father’s grace.3 This is why John says in verse 18 that, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Jesus is the one who made God the Father visible to a world that was filled with darkness.

Jesus is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven; he is the one who made the Father known to the world through his miraculous birth, his sinless life, his sacrificial death, his victorious resurrection, and his promise of heaven for all who believe in him.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, it is Christmas Eve, the night we all celebrate the coming of the Messiah who will be born in the morning to be the light of the world whom the darkness will never overcome. Jesus became flesh to deal with the darkness once and for all. His unconditional love is wrapped up – like the greatest Christmas gift you will ever receive – and it is all wrapped up in the perfect embodiment of grace and truth in the person of Christ. We ought to be quietly humbled by the gift of Jesus and we ought to behold the weight of the glory of God in Christ Jesus.

In that place – the place of humility – as we behold the goodness, and the graciousness, and the greatness of God in Christ Jesus, we should be encouraged and strengthened to walk in the light as Christ who is our eternal light leads the way. Whatever darkness you walked in here with, (brokenness in relationships, struggles with addiction, physical illness, loss of a loved one, aloneness amidst the holidays, etc.) whatever darkness you are faced with, rest assured, if you are a child of God, if you have believed in the name of Jesus, that darkness has been defeated by the work of Jesus at the bloody cross, and the empty tomb. 

And the final promise we have from Jesus is that this life is like a breath of air, a momentary flutter in the wind, a speck of dust on the canopy of eternity, and all who have believed in Christ will experience the full defeat of all that is wicked and perverse in this darkened world when Christ returns in glory to silence our enemies once and for all. 

This is the real meaning of the real Jesus at Christmas. The Light of the world has come into the world, and the darkness has not – and will not – ever overcome him! If you have believed in him, then the darkness will never overcome you! – Amen!!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Walter A. Elwell, and Robert W. Yarbrough, Encountering the New Testament: A Historical and Theological Survey (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005), 113.

3 R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe – Preaching the Word Commentary (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1999), 22.