Can you remember what yesterday was like? Can you remember something you did last week? Do you recall anything that happened before last Christmas? How about 2 years ago? What about before 2020 and COVID-19? Try to think back even further before we had cell phones or the first man walked on the moon. Think back to a time before the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, then George Washington and the American Revolution. Go back before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and before there were knights in shining armor. Think back before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and before Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den. Think back before David killed Goliath with a sling and a stone, and before Noah built the ark. Keep going back to the day that God made Adam and Eve and just a few days earlier when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. That was the first day of Creation before anything was made. Imagine going back just a little bit earlier than that; what can you see? Nothing, because nothing had yet been made. It’s hard to imagine what that was like, but John 1:1-2 tells a little about it: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”
Before Anything Was, the Word Was
If we could see the day before God said, “Let there be light,” we would find the Word already there. Back when there was no earth, no sky, no plants, no animals, no man, there was the Word. We cannot ever find a moment of time where the Word did not exist, and the Word never began to be. Of course, right away that tells us that the Word is unique. You probably can’t remember it, but there was a time when you were not. And we like to celebrate the day when we came into the world, our birthday, and recognize that we had a beginning, but John starts right off by telling us that the Word never began to be.
Why does John talk about “the Word”? What’s so special about the word of God? Psalm 33:6 teaches that God’s word was instrumental in creating the world: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” And Psalm 107:19-20 teaches that God’s word acts as his instrument of salvation and healing: “Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. He sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” Many other Scriptures could be consulted to show that the word of God is a personal expression of the nature of God himself, the embodiment of his power and authority. When John speaks of the Word of God in his Gospel, then, he is speaking of a divine person who is eternal in the same way that God the Father is eternal.
The Word is a Person Separate from God
John says, “and the Word was with God,” meaning that back when nothing had yet been made, the Word was with God, in a face-to-face relationship. No matter how far back we go, we can never find a time when the Son wasn’t with the Father, grew closer to the Father, or was ever not in a relationship with him. God the Father and God the Son have always been in complete fellowship with each other. Jesus mentions this relationship in John 17:5 when he says, “And now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.” Since Jesus has known the Father from eternity, he can make him known to us, as he said in Matthew 11:27, “…no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” But even though John makes it very clear that before anything else existed, Jesus was with the Father as a separate person, we should not make the mistake of thinking that he is anything other than God, himself.
The Word is a Person One with God
John concludes his first verse by saying, “…and the Word was God.” This is a statement about the very nature of Jesus Christ, that even though he is not the same person as God the Father, he is of the very same nature – he is of the same stuff:
- The Word has always been.
- The Word has always been with God.
- The Word has always been one with God.
Jesus is equal with God the Father, and he has always been equal with God the Father. This means that we ought to worship Jesus just the same way that we ought to worship God the Father. In fact, it means that when we worship Jesus, we are worshiping God the Father.
Sometimes we try to illustrate how this works – how John could say that the Word was with God and the Word was God at the same time? We don’t normally talk this way, and when we try to explain it we usually end up just making it more confusing. Either we make it seem like Jesus and the Father are two separate gods or the same person who is sometimes called Jesus and sometimes called God. This is why John says it again in v.2: this one, the Word who is God, already was with God before anything began. The Word is a distinct person, yet he is very God by nature. Our challenge is not to understand completely but to believe it.
Who then is Jesus, really? We learn from John 1:1-2 that he is the eternally-existing, divine-yet-distinct, Word of God. John 20:31 tells us his purpose in writing these things is so that we would believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that in believing on him we would receive life through his name. The truth, so simply expressed, has stumped many philosophers and great thinkers yet is able to be grasped by a child. We complicate things by demanding a full explanation before we will accept this truth, even though we do not do this with virtually any other area of modern life. By insisting that we must be able to fully understand the Supreme, all-wise Creator who rules over the whole universe, we set ourselves and our powers of reason and logic up as the final arbiter of truth.
I do not suggest that we must set aside our minds in order to be Christians, yet I am willing to acknowledge there are things about God which are beyond the reach of our ability to comprehensively explain. In order for God to be God this must be so. If you want to understand who Jesus is and what he has done, you need to start by believing the most basic truth about him: he has always been the Word of God, who has always been with God, and who has always been one with God.
