John is writing this book to clarify who Jesus is. In the years soon after Jesus’ ministry, some people doubted that Jesus was actually God. They argued that he was merely a prophet, or a teacher, or perhaps even a person who was out of his mind.

So here John spells out some important things. Jesus, the one and only Son of God, is fully God, and he came to live among us and with us.

In the church we call this the incarnation: God came to live among us in human flesh. The God of the universe came to be born as a helpless human baby, and he was raised by relatively unknown, ordinary people in a small town in first-century Galilee (Luke 2). This child, Jesus, came to suffer, die, and rise to life again for our sake.

If the Christian story is a new story to you, you might wonder why the almighty, all-­powerful God would do this. Why leave heaven and go to so much trouble for us? We might have expected God just to create the world and then step back, leaving people to figure things out for themselves.

Instead, God became one of us because he loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.

Because he is God, Jesus could take our sins upon himself. And because he became human, Jesus could redeem every aspect of our humanity. By his sacrifice for us, Jesus cleansed us and made a relationship with God possible for us again.