The Light Shines in the Darkness

The opening of John’s gospel is unlike anything else in the New Testament. There’s no genealogy, no shepherds, no manger. John starts before all of that — before time, before the world, before light itself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This is what the church remembers in Advent: not just the birth of a baby in Bethlehem, but the descent of the eternal Word into human flesh. The God who spoke the universe into being chose to become a child who couldn’t yet speak. The light that no darkness can overcome stepped into the darkness himself.

What John means by “the Word”

The Greek word logos — translated “Word” — was loaded with meaning for both Jews and Greeks. For Jews, it called to mind the way God created in Genesis 1: by speaking. “And God said, let there be light, and there was light.” For Greeks, logos meant the rational principle that ordered the universe. John takes both threads and weaves them into one claim: the Word that created all things, the logos that orders all things, became a man we could touch.

The shock of the incarnation

Verse 14 is where the shock lands: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek for “dwelt” is eskēnōsen — literally, “pitched his tent.” The infinite God put on a body and moved into the neighborhood. He got hungry. He got tired. He cried at his friend’s funeral. He bled. The doctrine of the incarnation is not a metaphor for God-feels-our-pain. It’s the historical fact that he actually felt it.

What this means for Advent

The light shines in the darkness — that’s the present tense, not just the past. The darkness John names — moral darkness, the darkness of grief, the darkness of a world that has not yet been put right — is real. But it has not overcome the light. It will not. The same Word who entered the world the first time will return to finish what he started.

That’s what we wait for in Advent. Not just to remember a baby’s birth. To rehearse the longing of a people who know the king has come and is coming back.