📊 John 1:14 | Six Bold Words

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Happy Tuesday, {{first_name| everyone}}!

I’m excited to dig deeper into the surrounding passage of our memory verse today!

In today’s email…

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And the ____ _______ ______ and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory,

glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of _____ ___ _____.

John 1:14

This Christmas, a child with a parent behind bars will wonder if they're forgotten. You can remind them they are seen, known, and deeply loved by their mom or dad — and by God. 

When you give to Prison Fellowship Angel Tree, you provide a boy or girl with a Christmas gift, including a personal message from their incarcerated parent. You also reach a child with the Gospel by sharing the life-changing love of Jesus! You are delivering hope, joy, and restoration.

The opening of John’s Gospel doesn’t begin with a manger or a genealogy. It begins before time itself. Let’s take a closer look together.

We tend to gloss over it, but John 1:1 opens with six words that would have stopped its first hearers and readers in their tracks:

“In the beginning was the Word.”

Yesterday, we mentioned that John wrote for both Jews and Greeks — and we start to be clued into this in the opening six words:

So within the first six words, John equates Jesus with the God of creation at the beginning of time and describes him as the source of all meaning in the universe (logos).

John wastes no time telling us who we are dealing with here.

Next, John’s focus moves from heaven to earth.

John the Baptist enters the scene. His role is to prepare the way and direct attention toward someone greater.

That someone is Jesus.

And then, in verse 14 (our memory verse), everything changes:

With that line, philosophy gives way to history. Poetry becomes personal. The eternal Word — God’s wisdom, God’s speech, the logic of the cosmos — takes on humanity and steps into our world.

This is the claim John builds his entire Gospel upon: Jesus is fully divine and fully human. He reveals God’s glory in a body people could see, hear, and touch. He’s not an idea or an image…He’s a person.

The prologue of John (verses 1–18) sets the tone for everything that follows. It tells us who Jesus is before we ever watch him perform a sign or speak a word.

And John the Baptist becomes the first to publicly name what this all means and where this story is headed.

At last! God is doing something new. He has come near. The Infinite God has taken on finite flesh. And the world has never been the same!

The call of John 1 is to slow down and truly sit with Jesus.

The eternal God didn't remain distant. He took on flesh. He became someone you could see, hear, and touch.

This is too weighty to rush past.

📖 Reflect: Read John 1 again slowly. Ask yourself: Do I still see Jesus as someone I can truly encounter — or have I reduced him to an idea I'm familiar with? Where might he be showing up in your life right now that you've been too distracted to notice?

🤝 Act: Share one small thing with a friend this week. Maybe it's a verse from John 1 that caught your attention. Maybe it's something you've learned about who Jesus is that you wish you'd understood sooner.

Or maybe it's asking a simple question: Hey, I was reflecting on how Jesus was a real person who actually walked this earth (even atheist historians agree on this). If you had a chance to meet him, what’s a question you would ask him?

🙏 Pray

Jesus, help me to recognize you. Not just in words on a page, but in the real spaces of my life. Teach me to reflect your presence in how I listen, care, and live. Give me clarity to see who you are and courage to speak honestly about it. Amen.

Click one of the options below to choose your answer. Let’s see how you do…

And 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.

John 1:14