John 1:1–3

The opening words of this verse carry us back as far as our minds can reach. They take us to the moment when the first thing that ever had a beginning began. Before that moment there was only God. In that moment of "beginning" the Word "was," that is, existed. He did not begin then; He existed then.

You cannot pick out any moment in eternity, before the work of creation began, when He was not there. He was already there "in the beginning." … "In the beginning God created," and so on, begins time; "In the beginning the Word was," leaves the door open for the eternal.

As the Word, He represents the whole mind and thoughts and ways of God. He does this in His own Person, and by what He says and does. Whenever God's thoughts and plans and will have to be revealed, He is the One who reveals them.

As the Word He is, and He is the expression of the whole mind of God; but as the Son, the eternal Son, He is, in incarnation, the revealer of the Father.

In the beginning, then, before there was any creature, was the Word, and the Word was with God. So there was distinct personality in the Godhead, and the Word was a distinct Person Himself. He was not, as men imagined, something that flowed out from God in time, even though He is eternal and divine in nature. … The personality was as eternal as the existence.

We learn … that the Word Who became flesh was not an abstract quality or attribute in the beginning. He was not a special outflow of the Deity either. He was a Person existing with God. More than that, this Word was God Himself. … We do not read God was the Word, but the Word was God.

Some have tried to weaken the force of this great statement. They translate it "the Word was Divine," or "the Word was a god," because the text leaves out the definite article — it does not say, "the Word was the God." But those who know Greek tell us that Greek has no indefinite article at all. The word translated "God" is a strong one, and it means proper and absolute Deity. If the text had said the Word was the God, it would have shut Deity up to the Word alone and shut out the other Persons of the Godhead.

After He took a servant's form, the Lord used certain language about Himself, and certain terms fit Him once He had become a Man. But it would be quite wrong to think that He held a lower place in Deity before He came. This last clause in our verse destroys any idea of a lower place in the Godhead. "The Word was God"; and God cannot be inferior to God.

To guard the divine glory of the Son, the Spirit of God adds, "The Word was God." The Son has become Man, and God has made sure His word protects that glory. No one can use His coming down so low as an excuse to deny it.

This is no mere repetition of the fact already stated that He was a distinct Person with God. Here we learn the additional truth that He was eternally a distinct Person. So carefully the Spirit of God guards the glory of His Person. He guards it against those who admit that He is a distinct Person, yet claim there was a time when He began to have a distinct Personal existence.

The distinct Personality that marks the Word is not something He took on at a later point in time. Eternal Personality was His. In the beginning He was "with God" in this way, because this distinction of Personality lies in the very essence of the Godhead. So four things have now been said about the Word. His eternal Being; His distinct Personality; His essential Deity; His eternal Personality. Whatever else we may have to learn about the Word, here are four things that should bow us in humble worship.

It does not matter how far you try to go back in thought into the depths of eternity. Imagine millions of years! Even that is not the beginning — though of course we cannot really talk about "years" before there were any measures of time. But go back in imagination into these unmeasured depths, and there He existed. He Who is eternal had no beginning, and in His own personality He was "with God."

"The same was in the beginning with God" (verse 2); not at a subsequent date, but "in the beginning," when no creature had commenced its existence. For this truth we are entirely indebted to God. Who could speak of such things but God? It is He Who uses John to write, and all He says is worthy of implicit faith. The Word "was in the beginning with God." His personality was eternal, no less than His nature or being.

If the evangelist had written "the Word was in God," our foolish minds might have thought this. Levi was still in his ancestor Abraham's body when Melchizedek met him (Heb. 7), and only came into actual being later. In the same way, our Lord, the Son, the Word, might have received separate being only at a date in eternity. But the Holy Spirit is too jealous for His glory and too exact in His words to allow this mistaken idea… There never was a time, however far back, when the Word was not with God. He was always distinct from the Father as the Father, and from the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit. Yet there is no suggestion of a second Godhead, for though distinct in personality, He was with God.

There seems to be more meaning in pros ton Theon ("with God") than simply being near, which para Theo would express… There is an element included in this word pros, and communicative association. It stood there in the presence of, and associated (vitally) with God. Also "in the beginning" means He existed before time. We find Him in essential, eternal existence. Everything else had a beginning, a cause commencing it, but He "was in the beginning."

Notice also that it says "the Word was with God" — not the Father. The name God includes not only the Father but also the Holy Spirit and the Son. The names Word and God speak of the nature of divine Persons. The names Father and Son tell of the relationships between divine Persons. The great aim of these verses is to establish the glory of Christ as in nature a divine Person.

I can only see John 1:2 as a striking and complete setting aside of the distinction drawn in Alexandria and by the early church fathers between logos endiathetos and logos prophorikos. Some of the earlier Greek fathers had been infected with the ideas of Plato. They held that the logos was conceived in God's mind from eternity, and only spoken out, as it were, in time. This gave a foothold to the Arians, who, like other unbelievers, grab at human traditions. The apostle here asserts, in the Holy Ghost, the eternal personality of the Word with God.

The language is exact. He was in the beginning with God. John does not use egeneto ("became"), which would mean coming into being or being caused to be. He uses ēn: He "was", in His own absolute being. All things egeneto, "came into being" through Him. He was the Creator so completely that John adds, "and without Him not one thing came into being which has come into being." By contrast, verse 14 states the incarnation like this: the Word was made flesh — not ēn but egeneto.

Nothing can go wider than the words "All things." In Colossians 1, creation is credited to the Son of the Father's love: it first says that all things were created by Him, then it names particular things, the things in heaven and the things on earth (verse 16). But in John nothing is left out. The eternal Word made all things that have been made. And as if to close the door on the heartless quibbling of human reason, the Spirit of God adds, "and without Him was not any thing made that was made."

This shows that there was absolutely no exception as to creation. If Christ had been created, He would have been a notable exception. Surely the One who creates is the Creator, and the Creator is God.

The title "the Word" means that He — and He is a Person — expresses the Divine Being, just as our words or acts express our minds. For He is not only "the Word" because of what He has said, He is also "the Word" because of what He has done. By His acts in creating He expressed the power and mind of the invisible God. The Divine Being willed how created things should be — their form, their arrangement, their number, and their growth too, where there is life, whether animal or plant. All of it came from Him who is "the Word."

The things that are made can show His eternal power and divine nature. But other unseen things about Him — His counsels and grace, and glory in the Son — nothing that was made can teach us. They come by revelation.

Everything that was made came about according to the Father's sovereign will. But the Son, the Word of God, was the person who put forth the power. And never without the energy of the Holy Spirit, I may add, as the Bible teaches us. This matters greatly for what the Holy Spirit has in view in the Gospel of John. His object is to bear witness to the nature and light of God in the person of Christ.

He was the originator, the designer and the maker of the vast universe and every creature within it… How wonderfully these simple yet great statements clear the air for us. We need not waste our time and weary our brains hunting in vain for some missing link. That search only props up a groundless theory, put forward by people who want to banish the Creator from His creation. We begin with the truth that the Word has made all things, that He upholds all things, and will one day make all things serve His glory.