Those who belong to Christ and follow him are the only ones who know the way to the Father, and there is no other way to the Father. Consequently, all those religions—including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and others that claim that by following their way we can reach heaven—are all wrong. There is only one way, and Jesus claims it solely for himself.

As a Jewish person, the first time I heard the gospel was in a Bible study organized by the Navigators at San Diego State University. After sharing some of the Old Testament prophesies, they turned to the Gospel of John, showing how Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophesies. That was the beginning of a journey where the Lord showed me that Jesus is not the prophet of the Christians, as I had thought my whole life, but he is indeed the Jewish Messiah, the lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. So, the Gospel of John has a special place in my life, but not only because of my first encounter with John the evangelist.

John begins his Gospel with the words “In the beginning,” just as Genesis 1 begins with those same words. Matthew brings us back to David and Abraham, Mark goes back to John the Baptist, Luke brings us to the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist, but John transports us all the way back to the creation. John introduces us to the agent of creation, the One who not only was from the beginning, but from whom all things came into being. Paul, later on referring to Jesus in Colossians 1:16, clearly tells us, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

Jesus the Light of the World

In the creation account, the first element that was created was light, as darkness covered the formless and void earth. In creating light, God saw that it was good, and he separated it from darkness. In his Gospel, John emphasizes darkness and light. Light alone appears thirty-seven times (twenty-four times in his Gospel and another thirteen times in his other writings). In the prologue, he writes that light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. As we read the Gospel and move from the prologue to the birth and life of Christ and his ministry, we see indeed how light conquers darkness, slowly but surely, one person at a time. For example, Nicodemus sees the light in John 3, as does the Samaritan woman in John 4 and then the Twelve, the seventy, and finally the multitudes that are dragged out of their darkness into the light. Indeed, Christ as the light of the world is the very glory of God, and that is exactly what John tells us in 1:14, “and we have seen his glory; glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

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