Day 7: ‘…who testified to the word of God (…) even to all that he saw.’

John bore witness to the Word of God. He says right at the beginning of his Gospel that the Word was with God and that the Word was God.1 Paul speaks of the Lord Jesus existing in the form of God,2 ’…being in very nature God…’ (NIV), when He was with the Father from all eternity, the exact representation of His being.3 John says that all things came into being through the Word. God created space, time and matter through the Word – and Life. For in Him was life, He says.4 Paul says that all things, visible and invisible, were created by Him, and that He is before all things, and that in Him all things hold together. Thus, He was there before the angels and other Heavenly beings were created. They owe their existence to Him as well.5

The early church confessed the Son’s role as mediator in the work of creation, together with His role as mediator in His substitutionary suffering and death for atonement for sin.6 This true unity of the Son with the Father caused the early church to state that the Son was not created but brought forth, generated, begotten.7 He is the only begotten Son of the Father.8 The great miracle is that this everlasting Word of God, this only begotten One, became flesh,9 became man. When one of His disciples says later: ‘Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us’, He then says: ‘Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father,’10 and in another place He says: ‘I and the Father are one.’11 John was permitted to see this tremendous mystery and he bore witness to it in all his writings.

To belong to Jesus is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anyone. Hebrews 2:11 says: ‘Both Jesus who sanctifies and those who are sanctified [that is, spiritually transformed, made holy, and set apart for God’s purpose] are all from one Father; for this reason, He is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters…’ (Amplified Bible, AMP)

• The word for to witness and to testify in Greek is ‘martureo’, from which our word martyr – blood-witness – is For believers to be witnesses for Jesus means they have testified to their faith with their very lives. Being a witness for Jesus is no light matter. It has cost many Christians their lives. The blood of the martyrs apparently became the seed of the church, however. Martyrdom has indeed brought many to the faith.
• We must look to Jesus to really understand who God is in a deep way. He is not a philosophical notion relating to ‘the understanding of God’; the ‘Most High’ is a living The Son has made the Father known to us.12

Bible References

1.John1:1 2.Philippians 2:6 3.Hebrews 1:3 4.John 1:4 5.Colossians 1:15–17 6.1 Timothy 2:5 7. Psalm 2:7; Hebrews 1:5 8.John 1:18,3:16 and 18; 1 John 4:9 9.John 1:14 10.John 14:8–9, see also 16:28. 11.John 10:30 12. Matthew 11:27