Ruminations on the Gospel of John

Elemental to the Christian faith is the belief that we enter into fellowship with God through the Son. The Son is God. The Son is the Word of God. He is the divine Self-Expression. We know God only because He first expresses Himself to us. That is, He reveals Himself. He makes Himself known. How? He speaks and He acts. It's often said, actions speak louder than words. Speech is a kind of action. God speaks to us in both actions and words. God speaks to us through speech-acts. Just as we encounter and know one another through our own speech-acts, so through the divine speech-acts in creation and redemption we encounter the “I AM who I AM.”

What do we learn from the Son about the mysterious 'I AM'? We learn first (John 1:1-14) that God’s Self-Expression is no accident - no slip of the tongue. Nor is it contingent. It is not an ad hoc communiqué conceived and expressed under the exigency of a creation gone wild. God is essentially, necessarily, eternally, a God of Self-Expression. He is a God whose nature it is to express His inexpressible nature. He is NOT the God of everlasting silence and repose. He is NOT the Hidden One. He is the Expressive One. He is the Active One. He is the One Who Speaks. And if to us He is the Hidden God (Isa.45:15) – Deus Absconditus – it is due to our finitude darkened by rebellion, which under wrath, renders us not only rebels but exiles. Now natives of the dark (cf. Jn.8:44), we flee from the light (3:19-20).

Yet the Light has shone in our darkness. “In the fullness of time,” this Word, the co-eternal Self-Expression of God, took on flesh and blood, and "moved into the neighborhood," (to use Eugene Peterson's paraphrase). The Word “who was with God from the beginning” goes public in an historical, social, communicative event: the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Of course, God’s revelation is given to us in real space and in real time. Moses on Sinai gave us the Law (and the Prophets of Israel unfolded it further). In Jesus of Nazareth, the full disclosure of grace and truth has now come. We get the whole story. No one has seen God at any time. But the Word made flesh embodies the fullness of God. He has explained the Incomprehensible to us in comprehensible ways. He predicates the I AM. How? Through Himself, expressed in His word to us – that is, His speech-acts.

I AM the good Shepherd. I AM the Door. I AM the Bread of Life. I AM the Light of the World. I AM the One who testifies concerning Myself.

Jesus makes the Father known in what He says and what He does. To receive His word (whether his speech or his actions, Jn.10:25, 38; 14:11) is to receive Jesus as the Son, and so, to receive the Father (5:23; 12:44). It is to receive the Father and the Son on their own terms. It is to take God at His Word. Through the word, we engage in a personal and social encounter with the Deity. Rather, He engages us through His word. To receive, believe and keep this word, is to enter into, trust and love the One Who Speaks. It is to enter dialogue with and - as Lord - to ultimately obey Him. Through the speech-acts of the Son, we enter into communion with the Godhead. By way of Jesus’ particular words and particular acts, we are brought into the eternal dialectic between the Self-Revealing God and God-Revealed. We share in the fellowship of the Father and the Son (14:23; 17:26; 1Jn.1:3).

As the One Who Speaks, God speaks most exhaustively, most transparently, in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus now speaks to us. Through His disciples, He speaks to the whole world (17:20; 1Jn.1:1-2).

To receive the word of Jesus is essential (see 2:22; 4:41; 5:24, 38; 6:60; 8:31, 37, 43, 51, 55; 14:23, 24; 15:3, 20; 17:6, 14, 17, [20]; 18:9). This word of Jesus to us, however, is scandalous (6:22-71). It trips us up. And central to the scandal is Jesus’ self-emptying work on the cross, which is all of a piece of His ‘humiliation’ as the Son sent into the world for the sake of “His own” (Jn.10; 17; cf. Phil.2:6-11). “When I am lifted up, you will know that I AM,” (Jn.8:28; cf. 3:14-15).

It is scandalous that the Son would be so humbled. That, in the words of Isaiah, He would be “crushed” for His people (cf. 10:14-18). It is scandalous that such a brutal death would be required for our life. That in such violent injustice comes the justice of God. The innocent for the wicked! The Son of God abandoned for the sake of the enemies! It is a profligate love. By it our shame is exposed, and our pride radically threatened. To reject this word - the speech-act of His outrageous service (13:1-17) - is to hide in our shame and cling to our pride (13:7-8). To receive it is to humble ourselves, embrace the humiliation of the cross, and be embraced by the Father. To receive it is to hear and believe the message of the cross and the empty tomb (for what could an entombed Jesus be but a shrine of the God-damned? The Word silenced once and for all by God Himself).

But through the same scandal over which many stumble, many are drawn: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself," (12:32).

We enter into fellowship with God only through the gospel-word of the crucified and risen Son. Through the word of the gospel we’ve received, we not only commune with God Himself, but we express the divine speech-act in the world. Through our gospel speech-acts (the spoken word and the lived word), we display the unveiled "mystery of Christ" for all to hear and see. We echo the divine speech further into the corners and clefts of the world, making known the unknown God, and opening the door of fellowship with "I AM who I AM".