The Word became human and, as the Message Bible puts it, 'moved into the neighbourhood'. He lived an average, normal life for thirty years, waiting for the Holy Spirit's anointing to begin His ministry. Most people ignored Him or rejected Him, but those who recognised something about Him, He brought into the family of God, whether Jew or Gentile.
So, who is this Word? Or is it some kind of personalised concept, similar to 'Wisdom' in the book of Proverbs and elsewhere? John initially keeps his readers guessing, but in verse seventeen John makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the Word, so that all that he has told us in the opening verses we can attribute to Jesus Christ. In a sense, even greater than that, He is the One who reveals God to us! Who is God? What is His character? Look to Jesus! Read about His life, His works, His words in the following chapters and make up your mind about Him! No one, apart from lunatics and frauds, has called themselves the Son of God, equal with the Father, apart from Jesus. As C S Lewis stated: ''Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” John is intent on bringing witnesses to support His declaration of the supreme Godhead of Jesus Christ. The first man to declare Jesus to be the Messiah was John the Baptist, an ascetic guru-type figure, and we will read more of his testimony tomorrow. John makes it clear that Jesus' message is for all people. He brings this challenge in right from the beginning: if the reader comes to recognise Jesus as God from studying this book, then he or she has to decide to worship Him and commit their lives to Him. This is not intended to be biography or for the intellect alone. There are vital decisions to be made.