In the book of John, the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” gives a first-hand account of his interactions with the man, Jesus. After watching this man’s life unfold for several years, and then witnessing Jesus’ gruesome death and subsequent resurrection, John concludes in his Gospel that Jesus was not just mere man, but that he must have come from God.

The nomenclature John used to describe Jesus, (the Word of God) was not a flippant nickname he used to recall his friend.

Rather, John was revealing to us one of the most astonishing mysteries of Jesus as he recounted the “many other things which Jesus did, which if they were recorded one by one, … even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

From these various interactions John had with Jesus, he concluded that Jesus truly embodied a message, a word, that God had been trying to get to the Jews for centuries – and that word was, “I love you.”

John reasoned that this message, or “word,” had been important enough for God to deliver it himself, which is why he wrote in John 1:17, that although,

“the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

From the beginning of his letter John was establishing that what the Jews understood about God from his giving of the Law through Moses, was not the proper conclusion one should draw about God, especially now that they had seen God in action through Jesus.

In John’s depiction of Jesus as God’s word, therefore, he was painting a specific picture not just of Jesus himself, but of God, the Father of Love; a perspective largely missed by the Israelites throughout their long history as God’s chosen people.

This new revelation the disciples had received about God through the ministry of Jesus – was intended to clear up once and for all, exactly who God was and what he was like, which is why Jesus is aptly known as, “God in the flesh.”

This revelation Jesus as God was intended to guide the thoughts of believers even to this day – that the whole nature and character of God can be understood through the lens of Jesus.

However, so many people still maintain the same heart and attitude about God that the Jews held back then – God is difficult to know. He’ll help you if you really beg him to. He demands that you serve him. His ways cannot be known. And sometimes he works in ways we don’t understand to bring himself glory.

Yet, all of these commonly held perceptions about God, would never be the conclusions we would draw about God if we saw him as Jesus.

Namely, because none of the things Jesus did could have ever led someone to believe that Jesus was judgmental, fault-finding, difficult to please, or unable to relate to or interact with sinful people.

This is why John records throughout his Gospel Jesus’ confidently affirming, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”

Understanding Jesus as the Word of God, therefore, will have a significant impact not only in your relationship with God today, but in your understanding of God’s workings throughout history. It also brings significant insight into Jesus’ parable of the farmer sowing the word in Mark 4 (also in Matthew 13 and Luke 8).

If a farmer must sow a “seed” on good soil in order to get that seed to produce a significant harvest, and if Jesus is the Word of God, or that “seed,” then it follows, if we want to see a harvest of abundance in our lives, we must sow Jesus into hearts.

Getting our understanding of God to match up with the image of Jesus, is one of the most important activities you could ever do in your life.

If we are not able to see Jesus when we read about God the Father’s interactions with mankind, then we have failed to understand the true nature and the heart of God expressed through Jesus from the beginning.