In [the] beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John's opening line does not start with a birth or a family line — it starts before creation, with a Person called "the Word." John makes three short statements about Him: that He was, that He was with God, and that He was God.
The first clause fixes a moment, then tells us Someone was already there.
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.
The same opening phrase can do two different jobs.
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.
A word carries a mind out into the open. That is the force of the name John chooses.
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.
Writers set this title beside another one — the Son.
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.
Two Persons are already in view in the second clause, and both are eternal.
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.
Another writer lists what the Word was not, before stating what He was.
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 translations soften the third clause. One writer answers them by looking at the grammar behind the change.
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.
The same clause answers another question. Does His lowliness as a Man mean He ranks below God?
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.
The order of John's clauses protects something. Before John shows us the Son as a Man, he tells us who the Son is.
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.
- Was, not became. At the point where everything that began began, He already existed; He did not start then, He was there then.
- Was with. "With God" means He is a distinct Person. He is not an attribute, and not something flowing out of God. He is a Person alongside God, as eternal as God's own existence.
- Was God. A missing article does not mean "a god." The wording claims absolute Deity for Him, and still leaves room for the other Persons of the Godhead.
- Was the Word. He is God's whole mind put into expression — every revelation God gives comes through Him.
- Was guarded. John puts this clause first, so no one can turn His lowliness as Man into an argument against His glory.
*He* was in the beginning with God.
John's opening lines reach back before time itself. Verse 2 seems to repeat what verse 1 already said. So why say it twice? The answer guards something precious about who Jesus is.
The verse sounds like an echo of verse 1. Commentators say it adds something verse 1 had not yet settled.
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 opening lines build one on another, and this verse completes the set.
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.
The phrase does not mark a date. Push your mind as far back as it will go, and He is already there.
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."
Only God could report on such a scene, and the record is placed before creation, not inside it.
"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.
The small word "with" is doing heavy work. Had John written "in God" instead, a wrong conclusion would have been open to us.
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.
The Greek word for "with" says more than being near. It points to living association.
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."
The wording is deliberate. Two pairs of titles are in view, and each pair does its own work.
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.
One old explanation of Christ says the Word was only an idea in God's mind until He spoke it out. This verse shuts that door.
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.
- Beginning — being. "In the beginning" is not a date. It means existence before time. Everything else had a cause that started it; He simply was.
- Beginning — with. "With God" means a distinct Person in living association — not an idea inside God waiting to be spoken.
- Beginning — repeated. The second mention is not an echo: it adds that His distinct Personhood is as eternal as His being.
- Beginning — guarded. Four glories open this Gospel: eternal Being, distinct Personality, essential Deity, eternal Personality.
- Beginning — worship. The right response to these lines is not debate but adoration of the One who was always there.
All things received being through him, and without him not one [thing] received being which has received being.
John's Gospel opens by placing the Word at the origin of everything that exists. Verse 3 draws the line: the Word is the Maker, and everything else is made.
The verse turns on a change of verb. Up to this point John has said the Word was; now he speaks of things that began. One writer sets the two Greek words side by side, and follows the contrast through to the incarnation:
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.
The second half of the verse says the first half again, in reverse. It shuts the door on any search for something that slipped into existence on its own.
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."
One writer applies this to the claim that Christ Himself was created:
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.
Why does the title "the Word" stand right before a statement about creation? Because what a person makes expresses his mind, just as his words do.
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."
Yet created things only tell us so much:
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.
Creation is not the work of one Person acting alone:
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.
This verse gives us a starting point, not a puzzle:
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.
- He was. Verse 1 uses a verb of pure existence; verse 3 uses a verb of beginning. The Word never began.
- All came. Everything that ever came into being came through Him. No words go wider than "All things."
- None excepted. The second clause closes every loophole. Christ is no exception, and the One who creates is the Creator.
- God expressed. In creating, He expressed God. His power and mind show in what He made. Grace and counsels come only by revelation.
- So begin here. Start with the Maker. Then the universe is not a riddle to solve but His glory to trace.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
John has just said that the Word was with God and made all things. Now he tells us what the Word holds in Himself: life — and that life reaches men as light. Two questions follow. What life is this? And why does John move from life straight to light?
John does not say that someone gave the Word life. He says life was in Him.
"In Him was life" — life that no one gave Him, life that is His own by nature, life with no beginning. "He is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20). He is the Fountain of life. He is the Source of life.
Because "in the beginning was the Word," there is no point at which this life started.
Life was always in Him, the Word. There was never a time when He did not exist — "in the beginning was the Word." So there was never a time when life was not in Him. Who could imagine the Word — the One who expresses God — without life?
Verse 3 has already covered creation. Verse 4 says something new, and commentators press the difference.
He made all creation, but creation does not exist in Him. In Him was life, and in this He stood in relation to one special part of creation — the part God had in His thoughts and purposes. This life was the light of men. It showed itself as a witness to the divine nature, in direct connection with men, as it did with no other creatures at all.
Some read "life" here as life of every kind, plant and animal included. The second half of the verse is what rules that out.
Many take life here in the widest sense, "the Word being the Source of all life to the creature." But everyone admits that the last part of the verse can only mean spiritual life. How could such life be put in the same class as the life of a plant or an animal? Or be said to be in Him? … Life in Him, the Eternal One, is surely eternal life… Only the eternal life could be the light of men.
Adam had life. But the Bible never says that life was in him.
Angels were not its sphere, and it was not limited to one chosen nation: "the life was the light of men." Life was not in man, even before he fell. At best, the first man, Adam, became a living soul when God breathed into him. And it is never said, even of a believer, that life is or was in him, though he does have life. He has it only in the Son.
Believers have life, but they do not hold it in themselves. Only One with life in Himself can give it to others.
Life was in Him as part of His very being. The words "In Him was life" (John 1:4) belong with His eternal existence… We have it only as something passed on to us. Only life that is held in one's own right, as part of one's own being, can be given to others.
Light here is not general information about God available everywhere. It is the life in the Word making the unseen God known.
This life was the light of men. The Lord can say, "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). The life in the Word was the perfect revelation to man of the invisible God. The light of nature will not reveal the heart of God. The light of reason cannot find out God by searching. It is only the light of the life in the Word become flesh that can declare God.
That leaves no room for any claim to an inner light of our own.
"The life was the light of men." The statement works both ways: nothing else was the light of men. This was the true light. The "light within" is not that, but the power of darkness in the human soul.
Without this life, a person has no light at all.
For man there is no spiritual light apart from this life. Without it he is in darkness, and walks in darkness (1 John 2:11).
Where the light does land, life and light come together.
The very beginning of all God's ways of grace with us has been the giving of divine life, along with the nature that cannot be separated from it. Precious truth! We see these two things, life and light, bound up together. Wherever there is life in a soul, there is light.
- Source. Life is in the Word Himself, with no beginning and no giver — He is the Fountain, not a channel.
- Stream. What we have is given to us; only life held in one's own right can be handed on to others.
- Sphere. This life is aimed at men — not angels, not one nation — and it reaches them as light.
- Standard. Nature, reason and any supposed "light within" cannot show God's heart; the life in the Word alone declares Him.
- Sign. Wherever that life is given, light comes with it — the two are never found apart in a soul.
And the light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not.
John's opening moves from the Word who is life to the Word who is light, and verse 5 is where that light meets the world. In nature light always beats darkness, so why did this light meet a darkness that neither took it in nor gave way?
John uses the present tense, and commentators press that point. The verse is not a report of one past moment. It describes what light always does against darkness:
Here I come to the judgment of the world, and of "His own." "The light shines in darkness." In nature that is impossible. If light shone into darkness there, no darkness would be left for it to shine in. The judgment of the world follows, for "the darkness did not take it in." Notice also that "the light shines in darkness" is a general statement. He does not say "shone."
In the Bible's first chapter, light breaks on darkness and the darkness goes. Here that pattern breaks. One writer sets the two scenes side by side:
When the Word appeared, the light shone. But the scene He came into was one of darkness. In Genesis 1 we read how by the divine word the light of creation burst upon the darkness; and the darkness vanished. Here we have light of a far higher order. It shines in the middle of moral and spiritual darkness. Only grasping the light could clear that darkness away, and men did not grasp it. Yet though the darkness remained, there was no other light for men than "the life."
Older translations end the verse with "comprehended." Writers explain the word as "apprehended": the darkness did not take the light in. One writer then sets this darkness beside the gloom over the unformed earth:
But men were in fact in a fallen condition, far from God. So the verse hints at a darkness worse than the gloom that covered the deep before the six days of creation began.
That darkness is not a rival god or a first principle of the universe. It is a condition, and only one thing meets it:
Some ancient religions called darkness the mother of all things, or an evil god locked in endless war with the good Lord of light. It is neither. It is the moral condition of fallen man. It is the absence of light, and quite different from physical darkness, because light itself has no effect on it. Grace alone can deal with the difficulty.
One writer puts the failure down to what man is, not to what he did. Man had nothing in him to answer the light:
Man was not light. He was darkness, without any glimmer of the nature of God. More than that, he had no power to receive this light. His whole nature stood against it. They saw no beauty in Him to desire Him. Here was the display of the divine nature itself, and nothing could go further than that. In the natural world, where there is light there is no more darkness. In the moral world it is not so. The light is there, pure in itself and showing up everything. Yet no one sees who is there.
Commentators differ over where the weight falls. Some put it on what man cannot do, others on what he will not do. The second view makes the darkness a choice, not an accident:
Anyone with eyes to see and a heart to understand can tell that the world is in darkness, that is, in ignorance of God. And the world has only itself to blame, for the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not take it in (John 1:5). This is not because men cannot see the light that shines. It is because they will not, for "people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil" (John 3:19). They stay in the darkness by choice, and so they lie under condemnation.
The verse records a refusal, not a defeat. The shining continues, and it has an end in view:
Light finally triumphs and darkness passes away. The process that will reach that happy end is going on now. "The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining" (1 John 2:8).
- Shines — the tense is present, not past. This is what light always does, whether or not anyone receives it.
- Shines in darkness — in nature that is impossible, since light would leave no darkness behind. Here the darkness stayed.
- Darkness defined — not a rival power, but the moral condition of fallen man. Light itself does not touch it, and it is worse than the gloom over the deep at creation.
- Darkness refuses — man has no power to receive the light, and his nature stands against it. As writers show from John 3:19, the blindness is also chosen. That is why it carries condemnation.
- Darkness passing — grace alone deals with the difficulty, and the process is already running: the true light is already shining.