Gospel of John 09.vp

Session 2 The Word Made Flesh, Glory and Signs, and the New Birth (John 1-3)

Beasts talk and flowers come alive and lobsters quadrille in the world of the fairy tale, and nothing is apt to be what it seems. And if this is true of the creatures that the hero meets on his quest, it is true also of the hero himself who at any moment may be changed into a beast or a stone or a king or have his heart turned to ice. Maybe above all they are tales about transformation where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are – the ugly duckling becomes a great white swan, the frog is revealed to be a prince, and the beautiful but wicked queen is unmasked at last in her ugliness. They are tales of transformation where the ones who live happily ever after, as by no means everybody does in fairy tales, are transformed into what they have it in them at their best to be.

~ Frederick Buechner. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale . San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1977. pp. 79-80.

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I. The Word Made Flesh, John 1.1-18

[After the Prologue, John 1.1-18] the first main section of the Gospel of John comprises the Period of Consideration [or, 1.19-4.54], so named because it narrates certain events by means of which Jesus was presented to the public for their consideration and acceptance. These events or appearances of Jesus were selected as representative, in order that His method of appeal to various classes might be plainly seen and that the reader might be influenced by at least one of them.

~ Merrill C. Tenney. John: The Gospel of Belief . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1948, p. 77.

A. The deity of Jesus Christ

1. The eternal logos : used four times in the Prologue (first word)

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