THE WORD IN THE BEGINNING, AT CREATION, AND GIVING LIFE AND LIGHT (John 1:1-5)
THE WORD IN THE BEGINNING
In John 1:1-18 the Apostle John introduces “The Word Made Flesh.” He first reveals Him “in the beginning,” then at creation, and then giving life and light. Notice that John does not state, “In the beginning the Word began,” but “In the beginning was the Word.” Then we read, “and the Word was with God.”
Don’t miss that “with God.” John doesn’t declare that the Word and God are the same personalities as the deniers of the “Godhead” or the Trinity teach. Rather, he reveals that God the Father and God the Son were both “in the beginning” and this is obvious because of the preposition “with.” If someone is with then there is another someone. The preposition “with” demands two distinct personalities, but in this case two Who are one in essence and unity.
“And the Word was God.” So, God is God in John 1:1 and the Word is God also. God the Father and God the Son are co-eternal and equally glorious (See John 17:5). “The same was in the beginning with God.” John is not giving an exhaustive lecture concerning the Godhead, or answering every question to help his readers grasp every detail of the relationship and function of the Trinity. His stated purpose for writing his Gospel is found in 20:31. He is presenting the Lord Jesus Christ to convince the readers to believe on Jesus. He is simply stating the facts and really keeping it simple for us. He is getting to his main point of the first passage in John: the truth that “The Word was made flesh.” The Word is Jesus!
THE WORD AT CREATION
“All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” So, you can look back at Genesis 1 and journey all through Scripture and then sail the oceans and dive into the waters and cross the deserts and climb the mountains and descend into the caves and launch rockets and examine and study and research and listen and realize everything you or anyone else has ever seen, heard, smelled, felt, or tasted, and everything else that no one but God knows about, WAS ALL MADE BY THE WORD WHO BECAME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US (verse 14).
This the Word, Who at His entrance into the world through the womb of Mary received the name “Jesus.” That one and only THE WORD created all things. He was the ONE of the Godhead by whom the activity of creation took place. In Genesis 1 you can read discussion among the Three-In-One, but here JOhn allows us to know this detail that the particular member of the Trinity Who said, “let there be light” and “laid the foundations of the earth,” the One Who created the morning stars who sang together and” the sons of God shouted for joy,” Who “divided the light from the darkness,” and “called the light day, and the darkness he called night,” and Who, after creating all the grass and herb and fruit trees and the sun, moon, and stars and the birds and sea-life “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” the One Who was the agent of the Godhead in creation, is none other than the Word Who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us”: JESUS.
This is Bible doctrine. This is the doctrine of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of His Father Who sent Him. The book of Hebrews begins with, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
Notice how emphatic John is: “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” I believe that John is redundant here for the sake of the security of the truth. You need to believe and receive this Word Who was in the beginning with God and Who made all things. You need to receive the true Lord Jesus Christ. Reject the false ideas of the (so-called) Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, the Oneness Pentecostals, and others who pervert the Gospel, and receive the true Lord Jesus Christ Who is declared perfectly in the Bible.
(Part 2 will be up soon)