“Once upon a time” begins many a fairy tale, yet John begins his Gospel truth saying in effect, “Once beyond the start of time…. Jesus”. Before there was a created beginning, we find the Jesus, with the Father, creating everything. The Living Bible states it like this:
Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God. He created everything there is—nothing exists that he didn’t make (John 1:1-3).
John calls Jesus the Word, who was with God and is God. The Word has always existed and He spoke everything into existence.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (John 1:-3).
Unlike a fairy tale, embellished to create a sense of drama, John wrote the whole truth and nothing but the truth about his time with Jesus. For three years, John had the honor of living side by side with Christ and saw Him in every authentic situation one might find in life. Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” John saw Jesus live life, in a dark and broken world, and do it in perfection. He observed Jesus’ relationship with God the Father and His love for His disciples. “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name-the name you gave me-so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11). He observed Jesus’ compassion toward humanity through His miracles of healing and feeding the multitudes, and in His teachings and discipleship. Ultimately, John watched His best friend die the brutal death of a criminal on a Roman cross, and promised Jesus that he would take care of His mother, as He hung dying. John ran to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty and in awe saw Him later that day, appear in the room where they were gathered. He watched Jesus go back into heaven and wrote in his Gospel, “There are many more things that Jesus did. If all of them were written down, I suppose not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written.…”(John 21:25).
John did not need to embellish the life of Christ, as the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. As C.S. Lewis attests,
Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so.
Jesus did indeed live as the Gospels have laid out. John’s book shares with us intimate conversations that were not recorded in the other Gospels, like the nighttime discussion with Nicodemus about salvation. This is Jesus, the One who lived before the beginning of time, who spoke the world into existence and who entered His creation to become sin for us, that we might live with Him forever. This is John’s best friend, “…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), and we have the privilege to read His story and believe.