John 1:1 NIV
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
On 31st October 2016, a memorable, if thoroughly unexpected, event took place in the city of Glasgow. Following a sold out concert in the city, the American pop star Justin Bieber popped into a takeaway restaurant under the railway bridge at Glasgow Central Station and ordered deep fried haggis, deep fried fish and two orders of deep fried sausage, all served with copious amounts of chips (like French fries, but fatter). He stayed in the restaurant for about twenty minutes, chatted with staff, had his photo taken and left.
That was a pretty unusual event. American pop stars are usually highly health-conscious.
Glaswegian cuisine is somewhat less so.
But since that moment, the Blue Lagoon chip shop on Argyle Street has itself dined out on that moment when Justin Bieber came.
He came.
Hundreds of millions of Christians from all across the globe celebrate Christmas together. If you've ever wondered why, let me give you the answer in just two words:
He came.
No, not Justin Bieber. It has nothing to do with an American celebrity getting one stop closer to a heart attack.
No, Jesus Christ came.
That is what we celebrate.
But why is that such a big deal?
Over the next few weeks, up until Christmas Day, we will explore that and see the reasons why Christians celebrate Christmas Day quite so much.
But before I do, I need to point you to something else written by the author of these words:
1 John 1:1-4 NIV
[1] That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. [2] The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. [3] We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. [4] We write this to make our joy complete.
The man who wrote these words – John – was not writing a nice legend or fairy tale or moral story. He claimed here to be writing historical fact that he himself had witnessed.
Moreover, his belief in this fact, along with the belief of thousands of others, cost him his freedom at the hands of the viciously intolerant Jewish and Roman authorities, and eventually it cost him his life. At no time – literally not even once – was there ever an attempt by their peers to dismiss them as wild fantasists or to disprove their accounts as false.
And there us a very good reason for that:
It happened. It really happened. What he and his fellow Gospel writers recorded really happened.
Jesus Christ came.
And John’s testimony itself is evidence of that.
But even though it is true, there are many nowadays who struggle to understand the relevance of it. That is why I am posting these studies.
Let’s start by looking at John 1:1:
John 1:1 NIV
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The other Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke, are all about what Jesus did and said (as Luke explains in Acts 1:1-3). John is about who Jesus is (John 20:30-31).
So John 1:1 must be about Jesus.
John here describes Jesus as ‘The Word’.
Now, that is an interesting description. For most Christians, the Word of God is the Bible, not Jesus.
So what could this mean?
Jewish scholars understood what John meant. For some rabbis, the Word of God was equivalent to God Himself. They even translated verses from their Scriptures and interchanged ‘God’ and ‘Word of God’ when He is anthropomorphised (e.g. when He is talked of as if human – for example, Exodus 19:17).
Greeks also knew what John meant. The Greek word used here for ‘word’ is ‘logos’. ‘Logos’ means a lot more than just the spoken word. It also meant a sense of logic, reason and the power that makes sense of the chaos in the world.
So what John is saying is both that Jesus is God, and that He is also the One who makes order out of our chaos.
This Festive season, if you need order in the chaos and the madness, where are you going to go?
Or, where else can you go?
John says three things about Jesus in this very profound verse. Firstly, he says that Jesus was The First Word:
John 1:1 NIV
[1] In the beginning was the Word.
An important teaching in the Bible, which we will examine in more detail later, is that the world was created by God speaking words, and at His command:
Hebrews 11:3 NIV
[3] By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
That is what we see in Genesis 1.
So quite literally, the Word was there in the beginning, and it initiated everything.
But what was that first spoken word?
Genesis 1:1-3 NIV
[1] In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [2] Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. [3] And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
In Hebrew, the first word spoken by God was ‘or’, meaning ‘light’.
That is, right at the start of creation it was God who brought visibility, lucidity, clarity and integrity to the darkness and chaos of an uncreated world (see Genesis 1:2) by speaking a word.
John is comparing Jesus to this Word.
Later on, he will further develop the idea that Jesus is the light that brings an end to the darkness, but right now it is enough for us to realise who Jesus is and what He can do.
Right off the bat, John is saying that Jesus is the means of making sense of life.
He is the first Word.
He is also The Distinct Word:
John 1:1 NIV
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God
Now, it is here that we treat the deep waters of the Trinity. I don’t profess to be an expert on it. In fact, no-one should. The Bible says this:
Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV
[8] “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. [9] “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Romans 11:33-36 NIV
[33] Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! [34] “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” [35] “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” [36] For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
There has to be something about God that we don’t understand. There has to be something that we can’t grasp or comprehend. There has to be something about God that is just beyond us.
If there wasn’t, He would not be God.
And so it should not be any surprise to us that we come across something as profoundly challenging and difficult as the Trinity.
Let me say this plainly: the Godhead is not something we should even try to understand in its minutiae. I believe it belongs to the category of mysteries mentioned in this Psalm:
Psalms 131:1-2 NIV
[1] My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. [2] But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.
This absolutely too wonderful for us.
It should suffice us to know that in these words, Jesus is declared to be distinct from God the Father, but no less God. He is God, but He is also different.
When you have two people, they can sometimes disagree.
However, this passage states that Jesus was ‘with’ God: both in proximity (nearby) and in purpose. He is not just physically with God, but also united in purpose.
This is Who it is that came to earth to save us: One who is completely God, completely united with His purposes and yet also completely human.
It should be no surprise to us if our brains find this difficult to grasp.
Having talked about Jesus as the first and distinct word, John now talks about Him as The Divine Word:
John 1:1 NIV
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
If there was any doubt, any doubt at all, as to whom the Gospel writers believed Jesus to be, John dispels it right there.
Back when I was a missionary, fax machines were still in use. They were pretty useless at faking anything. If a document was ever sent by fax, you could tell it from the original right away. The quality was just not good.
Nowadays, with the help of AI, even videos are being faked, and sometimes pretty convincingly. Soon it will get even harder to tell the truth from the lie.
Jesus is not a facsimile of God. He is not a copy of God. We bear the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Jesus, however, is God. He is the real thing.
But isn’t Jesus the Son of God? Even John himself says so:
John 1:49 NIV
[49] Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”
1 John 4:15 NIV
[15] If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.
1 John 5:12 NIV
[12] Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
How can He be both the Son of God and God?
This is where we can very easily get things very badly messed up. The Bible does not teach that God had a biological son in the way that human beings do.
It does teach that Jesus was born into this world through immaculate conception (Luke 1:26-38), and that this immaculate conception was brought about by the Holy Spirit.
But it does not teach that God had a wife and that together they had a son. That very idea is absurd.
The Trinity is something we should not even hope to understand. Anyone who claims to is a liar and a scoundrel. There has to be some mystery about the Godhead. There has to be something we don’t understand.
Otherwise He wouldn’t be God.
John taught that the whole point of his Gospel was that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah (John 20:31). From this verse, we can see that he also wants us to believe that Jesus is God.
Paul recorded what some believe to be an ancient hymn that might explain it better for us:
Philippians 2:5-11 NIV
[5] In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: [6] Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; [7] rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. [8] And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! [9] Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, [10] that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
John’s Gospel begins like Genesis, and in doing so states that Jesus was there right before time began. He is utmost expression of God’s nature, His mind, His purpose and His heart.
Because Jesus is God.
He is the First Word, the Distinct Word and the Divine Word.
And at Christmas, to mis-quote blues singer BB King, we celebrate ‘When God came to town.’
Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You for being beyond my comprehension. Thank you for blowing my mind. Thank You for coming to save me at Christmas. Amen.
Questions
1. Should we be able to understand everything about God? Why / why not?
2. Why do you think John describes Jesus as the Word of God? What does this teach us about Him?
3. Why is it so important that Jesus is both the Son of God and God?
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