Much of Christ - Little of Ourselves

Excerpts from John Was Not the Light, But a Witness to the Light by John Piper

[John 1]

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Look at verses 6-7: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light.” In fact, fourteen times in this Gospel the word witness (martureo, martus, martureia) is connected with John.¹

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So verses 6-8 and verse 15 are pressed into the flow of this opening section in a way that almost everyone feels is jarring. So I assume John the author felt it that way too. And I assume that he knew what he was doing. And I assume he had his reasons. (You can call that the Golden Rule of Hermeneutics: Do unto authors as you would have them do unto you.)

Our job is not to improve John’s literary art by telling him he should have written more smoothly. Our job is to penetrate his literary purposes—and by doing that, to penetrate to his theological purposes and his spiritual purposes and his evangelistic purposes—and any other purposes he has by God’s inspiration, so that by hearing and understanding, we might believe on Jesus, the Son of God, and have life in his name. We are not playing literary games. Salvation and damnation hang on whether we hear what the inspired author really meant to say. “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

What I have found in thinking about verses 6-8 and 15 and the wider context is amazingly relevant for today. I have found it very sobering for my own life and ministry, and I think you will find it so for yourself. It has to do with the way pastors and evangelists and religious leaders and TV preachers and conference speakers and Christian musicians—and any other public Christians who represent Christ—speak of Christ and the way they represent themselves. And it was the second of these that sobered me—the way we public witnesses represent ourselves.

If you have ever been bothered by the seemingly self-serving, self-excusing, self-protecting, self-exalting words of public Christian figures, you should be, and you will be all the more bothered by the time we are done. I hope that one of the effects of this message is that it will have a humbling effect on me first, and then on you and any others who hear it, so that we who are called to be witnesses for Christ (namely, all of us) will see that this not only means making much of Christ, but it also means making little of ourselves.

To help you remember what I am saying, I am going to hang all I say on two pegs. One is: “Our witness is a great necessity.” And the other is: “Our witness is a great not.” I know that’s not clear. But it will be. And the awkwardness of it just may help you remember it. Our witness is a great not as well as a great necessity.

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