阅读经文 

约翰写这卷书是为了阐明耶稣究竟是谁。在耶稣开始传道后不久，有些人开始怀疑耶稣是神这一事实。他们争辩说，祂不过是个先知，或者一位教师，或者甚至是一个疯子。

所以在这里，约翰阐明了一些重要的事实。即耶稣，神的独生子，是完全的神，祂来住在我们中间，与我们同在。

在教会里，我们称之为道成肉身：神来了，以肉身居住在我们中间。宇宙的神降生为一个需要帮助的人类婴孩，在公元一世纪加利利（参路 2）的一个小镇上，由不为人知的普通人抚养长大。这个孩子，耶稣，为了我们的缘故，来受苦，受死，又复活了。

如果你不熟悉基督教的故事，你可能会困惑，为什么至高全能的神要这样做？为什么祂要为了我们离开天堂，经历这么多磨难？我们可能希望神只是创造世界，就抽身离去，留下人们自己去解决问题。

然而，神成了我们中的一员，因为祂爱我们，想要和我们建立关系。因为耶稣是神，所以祂能承担我们的罪。又因为祂成了人，所以耶稣能救赎我们人性的每个层面。因着耶稣为我们的牺牲，祂洁净了我们，使我们有可能与神恢复关系。

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.