Daily Devotions
John
"In the beginning, was the Word..."
Text: John 1:1-18
“IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD…” John 1:1
How do you write about something that is truly unique? When John first became acquainted with Jesus, he was drawn to Him for many reasons. There was His Lifestyle. There was His Power. He could perform miracles like no one else could. No one else in the entire Scriptures could be compared to Jesus. Then there was His teaching. He taught like no other. His words were so powerful and gripping. His words were worth preserving for further study and meditation.
John could come to only one conclusion. Jesus was the Living Word. He was absolutely convinced about that. John was a Jew. As a Jew he had been brought up to believe that God is One. How often had he repeated those famous words known as the Shema,
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God,
the Lord is One! You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
Deuteronomy 6:4, 5
It must have been quite a shattering revelation to discover that there was another Person in the Godhead. God – He was always there. That’s what it means to be God. In the beginning there was God. But what if He was not alone in the beginning? What if the Word was always there too! Would not that make the Word God too? With all His heart, John believed that Jesus was as much God as the God of the Hebrews! Thus he wrote those famous words that began the Gospel of John,
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
John 1:1
“IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH…” Genesis 1:1
All Jews were brought up with this all-important doctrine. There was but One God. He was the Creator. He was the One who redeemed Israel from Egypt. No Jew would ever contemplate the possibility that there could be more than One Person in the Godhead.
The history of Israel was blighted with the problem of idolatry and all its attendant problems. With idolatrous practices came hideous and horrendous rituals which included child sacrifice.
Israel degenerated as a nation so badly that there was only one punishment that would fit its sinful state. The nation was conquered and devastated by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. It was during this exile that Israel swore off all idolatrous ideas and practices. Never would Israel contemplate the idea of idols. There was but One God for Israel.
John like many other Jews must have struggled with the Identity of Jesus. Just who was He? Could He be called God too? It was one thing to call Him the Word of God, but to also say that He was God as well? That would be a mouthful!
Yet, without apology, John presented Jesus not just as the Word of God, but as One who co-existed with God right at the beginning of time.
“He was in the beginning with God.”
John 1:2
That was an astonishing statement to make, for anybody, and certainly for a Jew that was NOT an easy thing to declare. But John could not present Jesus in a lesser way! He was not inferior to God. He was not subordinate to God. He was not just One sent from God as a lesser being. He was fully God too!
He was not just there in co-existence, He was also there with God when He created the heavens and the earth. If we can speak of God being Creator, John argued, we must also include another astonishing truth: that Jesus, the Word of God, was Co-Creator!
“All things were made through Him,
and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
John 1:3
How did God create the heavens and the earth? A quick glance at the Genesis account would seem to indicate that there was but One Person doing the work of creation. But what if we were to read the text carefully? What if the Genesis text also said the following things,
“Then God said,
‘Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness…”
Genesis 1:26
What if the word “we” is not just a magisterial way of describing the Person of God? What if the magisterial “we” reserved for royalty actually meant that there was more than One Person in the Godhead all along, but this truth was not well understood, until Jesus came and taught His Disciples more about what God was really like?
It would take nothing less than a special revelation from God to know this truth. John believed with all his heart what Jesus must have taught him and the other disciples. Jesus was truly God too.
JOHN WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO HELD THIS BELIEF!
John was certainly not the only one who held this high Christological belief. All the other Gospel writers held the same lofty view of the Lord Jesus Christ as well! Each Gospel writer may have chosen his own special way of presenting Jesus, but all were persuaded that He was indeed both the Son of Man (meaning “man”) and the Son of God (meaning “God”).
Meditatively and lovingly John began writing his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).