The Bible begins with the God who already is. The God who creates all things obviously had to exist before the things he created. Before the universe, the multiverse (stay woke), or even the Marvel Universe, there is God.
John gives us incredible clarity about who this God is. He is giving us a doctrine (way to
understand) God.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1
If we are going to tell the story of Jesus. We need to go back to the beginning. When we get there, we find that he is already there. Jesus did not come into being when he was born. He already existed. One church father, Hilary of Poitiers, said it plainly: “I will not endure to hear that Christ was born of Mary unless I also hear, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God’.”
What does John mean that Jesus is the Word? What of the word, Word, anyway?
That term “Logos” that John uses is a term that Greeks would hear expressing some level of divinity – this impersonal force that works and moves and acts. I also think John is borrowing from a rich Old Testament usage of the idea.
Let’s think simply here when things seem complex: There is a connection between words and actions. The point of a sermon is to help us know, love, and worship God and to accomplish that each week I stand in the pulpit and use words.
In the Old Testament, there is a connection between the Word of God and the acts of God. DA Carson points out that “the word” is connected with God’s powerful activity in creation (Gn. 1:3, Ps. 33), revelation [making himself known] (Je. 1:4, Ezk. 33:7, Am. 3), and deliverance (Ps. 107:20, Isa. 55:11). It was the word of the Lord that came to and through the prophets. It was by the Word of deliverance and judgment.
Carson says, “In short God’s ‘Word’ in the Old Testament is his powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and salvation, and the personification of that ‘Word’ makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son.”
Tune in here: In the beginning, there was Another with God. Yet still, this was God himself.
Does this blow your mind? Good.
Jesus was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and for him. Jesus is true God from true God; true Light from true Light.
“And the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as only the Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14
He who is truly God is also truly man. Jesus, Son of God, took on flesh, becoming man so that the sons of man may become sons of God.
Jesus, true God and true Man, is light, life, and truth.