John 1:1-3

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning. ³Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.

John gives us the Deity of Christ early and often in His Gospel. Notice the parallel to Genesis 1:1 right off the bat – “In the beginning…” Matthew and Luke begin with Jesus’ birth, but John takes us back to before the universe was created. We know from this passage that John is calling Jesus “the Word” or “logos.” Aristotle said that three things can convince men of truth: the ethos (personal character of the speaker) the pathos (persuasion from within) and the logos (the proof or evidence). The logos, to the Greek mind, was the ultimate proof or evidence. In the beginning was the proof, and this proof was with God, and the proof was God Himself. Jesus is the proof. John Calvin says, “Jesus is the eternal Wisdom and Will of God; He is the lively image of His purpose…God reveals Himself to us by His Speech.” Why the Word? Clear communication. Words are important – “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Jesus’ role as Mediator serves to clearly communicate the Father to us in His Incarnation and in a strange way, clearly communicate us to the Father through His death on the cross to pay for our sins.

An early church heresy, known as Arianism, claimed that Jesus was the first of all God’s creation, that God the Father existed apart from Jesus for some time. But John refutes that right here, saying that the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God the Father in the beginning, and the Word was God, and nothing was made apart from Him. Even before manifesting His presence through speaking to His people or through the Incarnation, The Word was and has always been. He was begotten, not made, and He has never not been. “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). C.S. Lewis gives a good analogy here: Picture two books, one on top of the other, sitting on a coffee table. While we may logically perceive that the book on the bottom had to be there first, it could be said that the two books were there simultaneously, and as such, the bottom book begets the top book. While the Father has logical priority, His priority is not chronological as well. From the beginning, the Father and the Son were One with the Spirit, and all three Persons of the Godhead were inseparably active in creation. This Arian heresy (akin to modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) will come up again in v9-10.

So Christ is above all creation, “One in being with the Father” (the Word was God – ala the Nicene Creed), yet He is also eternally distinct from the Father (the Word was with God). “With” implies an intimate personal relationship. And that’s hard to understand. Hebrews 1:3 helps: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word.” God is One Essence, yet three Substances or Persons. John Piper says, “Everything we are and believe as Christians depends upon this: That Jesus Christ is God and Jesus Christ is man.” . Consider the H20 analogy – water is solid, liquid, and gas. Notice how v2 summarizes v1. Jesus is the One, True God, yet He is eternally distinct from God the Father. And v3a gives us evidence of this doctrinal truth. Jesus is proven to be God by the fact that He made all things. Genesis 1:1 tells us that God created the universe, and everybody knows it. We learned that in Romans 1:19-21. Paul gives credit to God for all things (Romans 11:36). John tells us that this truth is evidence that Jesus is God, because, as v3b says, nothing that was made – or even, as we see both in the next couple verses and elsewhere in Scripture, sustained – was made or sustained apart from Him.