Author: Jurica Šinko

Ever felt truly, deeply lost? I’m not talking about just missing a highway exit. I mean that hollow, sinking feeling of being adrift. Lost in the “wilderness” of your own life. You’re not sure what’s next, and you’re just praying for a sign, any sign. A clear voice to cut through all that internal static. I’ve been there. More times than I’d like to admit. It’s in those moments, isn’t it? A simple verse from the Bible stops being just words on a page. It becomes a kind of lifeline. For me, John 1:23 is one of those. Picture the…

We’ve all been there. You’re working on something you believe in, pouring your heart into it, and then they show up. The official people. The ones with the clipboards. That tap on the shoulder. “Excuse me. Who gave you permission to do this?” It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? It’s designed to make you freeze. This exact scene plays out in the Judean desert. It’s the entire conflict of John 1:25. The religious gatekeepers show up to challenge John the Baptist. And their question is the same: “Who do you think you are?” His answer—and where his authority really came…

There are moments that define you, not by what you claim to be, but by what you publicly declare you are not. It’s a rare and powerful display of integrity. I was put in a similar, albeit much smaller, situation years ago. I was part of a major project at work, and things were going exceedingly well. A senior executive, thrilled with our progress, started directing all his praise and questions to me during a big team meeting, assuming I was the project lead. For a split second, I’ll admit, the ego boost felt incredible. But it wasn’t my success…

The question just hangs there. “Who are you?” It’s the most basic question we ever face. We get it in job interviews, on awkward first dates, and from that one aunt we only see at holidays. We even ask it of ourselves in the dead of night when sleep won’t come. It’s a question about who we are, what we’re doing here. And in the sun-scorched wilderness of Judea, a group of powerful men traveled all the way from Jerusalem to ask this very thing of a wild man who ate locusts for lunch. That confrontation, captured in the Gospel…

We’ve all been there. Staring up at a vast, star-filled sky, feeling small, wondering about the big questions. Who is God? What is He really like? Can a person even know Him? We chase answers in philosophy, in nature, in religion, but a complete picture always seems just out of reach. The book of John, however, opens with a jaw-dropping claim: the infinite, invisible God has actually been seen. He’s been perfectly revealed. This incredible reality is wrapped up in a single sentence. This article is a deep dive into John 1:18 explained, showing how this one verse completely changes…

Some verses just hit you differently. John 1:17 is one of those. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” For the longest time, I’d just read that and think, “Yep, got it. Moses, Law. Jesus, grace.” Simple enough. But when you really stop and sit with it, the John 1:17 meaning isn’t just a simple fact. It’s a continental shift in the story of God and people. It announces a whole new world. This isn’t about God scrapping the old plan for a new one. Not at all. It’s about a promise made…

Have you ever felt like you were running on empty? I’m not just talking about being tired after a long week. I mean that deep-down, soul-level exhaustion. That feeling where you’re convinced you’ve used up your last chance, your last bit of strength, your last drop of patience. I’ve been there. Staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, wondering how I’d find the strength to face the morning. That’s when a simple Bible verse can feel less like a lifeline and more like a riddle. John 1:16 is exactly that kind of verse. It holds out a promise so big,…

It’s not something you see every day. True, genuine humility. I’m talking about the kind of profound self-awareness that allows a person in the spotlight to willingly turn that light onto someone else, even if it means they end up in the shadows. It’s a rare and powerful quality. Out by the Jordan River, amidst the dust and the crowds, a man in camel’s hair was doing exactly that. John the Baptist was a superstar prophet, the man everyone flocked to see. But his entire mission, his whole identity, was wrapped up in pointing the way for another. This brings…

Some ideas are simply too big for our minds. They feel like smoke, floating around as abstract words we know but can’t quite grab. We talk about “infinite love” or “divine justice,” but what do they really look like? What do they feel like? For centuries, humanity wrestled with this very thing—the idea of a God who was powerful and transcendent, yet felt so distant. Unknowable. Then, in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire, a fisherman-turned-apostle named John picked up a pen and changed everything. He wrote the most earth-shattering sentence in history: “And the Word became flesh and…

Have you ever read a line in the Bible that just stops you in your tracks? A phrase so packed with meaning that you know there’s a universe of truth hiding within its few words? For me, John 1:13 is one of those lines. It sits right after the beautiful promise in verse 12 about receiving the right to become children of God, and it defines that experience in a way that shatters our everyday understanding of identity and belonging. This verse forced me to ask some big questions about faith, family, and what it truly means to be spiritually…

You know how some verses just become… background noise? You’ve heard them a thousand times. You could probably quote them in your sleep. For the longest time, John 1:12 was that verse for me. I knew the words, but I didn’t feel their weight. Then one day, it clicked. It stopped being just a line in the Bible and became a staggering reality. The verse says, “But to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” We’re about to unpack the John 1:12 meaning, and I promise…

It’s a line that lands like a punch to the gut. After ten verses of soaring, cosmic poetry about the Word who was with God and was God, the Gospel of John slams on the brakes and brings us crashing back to earth. It’s one of the most tragic sentences in the entire Bible. “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” Just let that sink in for a second. The creator visits his creation. The king comes to his kingdom. A father returns to his family, only to find the door bolted from the…

Have you ever felt completely invisible? I don’t mean in some sci-fi, “cloak of invisibility” kind of way. I’m talking about standing in a room full of people, a place you belong, maybe a place you even helped create, and feeling totally, utterly overlooked. People talk around you and use things you made, but they don’t actually see you. It’s a lonely, isolating feeling. Now, imagine that feeling amplified to a cosmic level. That’s the gut-punch at the heart of John 1:10: “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know…

Have you ever been in truly, profoundly dark place? I’m talking about the kind of blackness that swallows everything, where you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. I have. It was during a power outage on a camping trip, deep in the woods. Instantly, everything familiar became strange. Every rustle of leaves morphed into a potential threat. I felt a raw, primal disorientation. In that moment, the smallest flicker of light would have been a miracle. That feeling—that desperate need for light when you’re overwhelmed by darkness—is the perfect entry point for understanding the John…

What is your purpose? It’s a question that follows us around in the quiet moments. We pour so much of our lives into defining ourselves. Into carving out an identity that feels significant. We want to be the star of our own story. But what if our greatest calling isn’t to be the star at all, but to be the one who points to the star? This is the profound truth we slam into when we meet John the Baptist, a man whose entire life was a signpost. The Gospel of John makes a crystal-clear, almost jarring statement about him…

Imagine the pressure. Not the pressure on a king or a general, but on a rugged man, a loner from the desert. This man, John the Baptist, carried the weight of centuries of prophecy on his shoulders. His one job, given by God himself, was to get the world ready for its Savior. The Gospel of John, in its stunning opening, cuts straight to this mission. After introducing the eternal Word—the Light of all humanity—the camera immediately pans to this critical figure. John 1:7 says, “He came as a witness, to testify to the light, so that all might believe…

Do you ever find yourself staring at an old photograph, trying to imagine the world spinning on before that shutter clicked? I have this picture of my grandfather as a young man. He’s leaning against a car that looks ancient now, and he has this confident look on his face. When I look at that photo, I’m not just seeing a relative. I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that he had an entire life—a whole story—before I ever existed. It’s a strange feeling. The Bible does something like that, but on a scale that stretches into eternity.…

Few lines in all of literature hit with the force of the opening of John’s Gospel. It’s a statement that rings out across time, setting the stage for everything that comes next. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” For two thousand years, thinkers, pastors, and ordinary people have chewed on these words. They’re simple enough to teach a child, yet so deep you could spend a lifetime exploring them. This article, John 1:1 Explained, is my journey into this foundational verse. We’ll unpack the Greek, the history, and the…

Have you ever looked up at a star-dusted night sky and felt overwhelmingly small? I have. I remember one summer night, camping with my dad deep in the mountains. Away from all the city lights, the Milky Way was a brilliant, messy splash across the velvet black. Lying on my back, I felt a profound sense of wonder mixed with a touch of cosmic loneliness. Who put all that there? Why? That feeling, that deep-seated human question, is precisely what the apostle John addresses in one of the most powerful verses in the entire Bible. The John 1:3 meaning is…

There are moments that sear themselves into your memory, not because of what happened, but because of what you saw. For me, one of those moments was standing on a remote mountainside in Colorado, hours before sunrise. The darkness was absolute. It was a thick, inky blackness that felt like a physical weight. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Then, the first hint of dawn appeared. It wasn’t a floodlight; it was a fragile, gray line on the horizon. But that tiny sliver of light changed everything. It didn’t just push back the darkness; it gave…

Have you ever been somewhere truly dark? I don’t mean a room with the lights off. I’m talking about a deep, consuming darkness, the kind you find in a cave or on a country road with no moon. It’s a blackness so total you can feel it pressing in. In that kind of oppressive void, what happens when you strike a single match? That tiny flame doesn’t just meekly appear. It explodes. It dominates the space, pushing the darkness back in an instant. This is the exact, powerful image the Apostle John paints in one of the Bible’s most potent…

The Gospel of John opens with a breathtaking, poetic flight. It pulls us into eternity, to a time before time, revealing a divine Word who was both with God and truly was God. We hear of life and light shining in a darkness too deep to understand it. The language is grand, cosmic, almost dizzying. And then, bam. Verse six hits like a ton of bricks, dropping us right onto the dusty soil of human history. The shift is abrupt, but it’s pure genius. This short verse is the very hinge on which the eternal story swings into our world…