These four Gospels are different from each other.  The colouring of Luke’s warm personality, and of his physician habit of thought is in his Gospel very plainly.  And so it is with each one of these Gospels.  And, even so, there will be the colouring of your personality, your habit of thought, the distinct tinge of the experience you have been through, in the gospel you write with the pen of your life, and bind up in the shoe-leather of your daily round.

But through all of this there will be the simple, subtle, but very real, atmosphere of the Holy Spirit, helping you make the story plain and full, and helping people to understand that story as it is lived, as they never can simply by hearing it told with tongues or read through eyes.

Are you writing your gospel?  Is your daily life spelling out the life and love of Jesus, that life that was poured out till none was left, that love that was burned out till even the ashes were burned up, too?  This is the Master’s plan.  And practically it is the crowd’s only chance.

God in Human Garb.

Now I want to have you turn with me to the opening lines of John’s Gospel.  There are not many of these opening lines.  The whole story is a short one.  These lines at the beginning are like an etching, there are the fewest touches of pen on paper, of black ink on white surface.  But the few lines are put in so simply and skilfully that they make an exquisite picture.  It’s the picture of God coming in human garb as a wooing Lover.

I think it might be best perhaps if I might simply give you a sort of free reading of these opening lines, with a word of comment or illustration to try to make the meaning simpler.  It will be a putting of John’s words into the simple every-day colloquial speech that we English-speaking people use.  John used very simple language in his own telling of the story in his mother-tongue.  And it may help if we try to do the same.

You will quickly see how very simple this free translation will be.  Yet, let me say, that though homely and simple it will be strictly accurate to what John is thinking and saying in his own native speech.  I mean of course, so far as I can find out just what he is thinking and saying.

Let us turn then to John’s Gospel, at its beginning.  And it will help very much if we keep our Bibles open as we talk and read together.

Listen:  in the beginning there was a wondrous One.  He was the mind of God thinking out to man.  He was the heart of God throbbing love out to man’s heart.  He was the face of God looking into man’s face.  He was the voice of God, soft and low, clear and distinct, speaking into man’s ears.  He was the hand of God, strong and tender, reaching down to take man by the hand and lead him back to the old trysting-place under the tree of life, down by the river of water of life.

He was the person of God wearing a human coat and human shoes, hand-pegged, walking in freely amongst us that we might get our tangled up ideas about God and ourselves and about life untangled, straightened out.  He was God Himself wrapped up in human form coming close that we might get acquainted with Him all over again.