In the Beginning
John 1:1-13
Main Idea: Jesus is the divine logos, life, and light who has come to make us children of God.
I. The Word (1:1-5)
John begins his gospel account with an obvious allusion to Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning… was the Word (Greek: ‘logos’). This ‘Word’ had numerous cultural reference points in the 1st century:
Greek Philosophy: The Stoics understood the logos to be the rational principle or impersonal force that originated and organizes the world as we know it.
Jewish OT Thought: The ‘word’ was God’s agent for accomplishing his divine will, including creation (cf. Gen. 1:3; Ps. 33:6) and revelation (Isa. 55:11). God’s Word is his “divine disclosure.”
John emphasizes “the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” describing the gloriously incomprehensible yet revealed doctrine of the Trinity.
“We worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”
~ Athanasian Creed (5th century AD)
The ‘Word’ was God’s agent of creation in eternity past: “all things were made through him” (1:3; cf. Col. 1:16-17; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2).
“Why would a triune God create a world? If he were a unipersonal God, you might say, ‘He created the world so he can have beings who give him worshipful love, and that would give him joy.’ But the triune God already had that—and he received love within himself in a far purer, more powerful form than we human beings can ever give him. So why would he create us? There’s only one answer. He must have created us not to get joy but to give it.”
~ Tim Keller, King’s Cross
This eternal, divine, creating ‘Word’ is the:
1. Life-Bringer: As the “Life” (cf. 5:26; 11:25; 14:6) Jesus brings both physical life and spiritual life to existence. This life is not merely about quantity but quality (cf. 10:10)
1 John 5:11–12: And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
2. Light-Bearer: As the “Light of the world” (cf. 8:12; 9:5), Jesus drives out the darkness both in creation (cf. Gen. 1:3) and in salvation (cf. 12:46).
1 John 1:5-7: This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
II. The Witness (1:6-8)
Consistent with the other Gospels, the ministry of John the Baptist is emphasized in relation to Christ. John was “sent from God” for a specific task: “to bear witness about the light, that all might believe in him” (1:7).
John 20:30–31: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
“The Word and the Life and the Light are coming into the world. But they are not going to conquer this darkness the way a bolt of lightning brightens the night. They are going to conquer it by lighting millions of cold, dead human torches with the oxygen of the gospel and the mysteriously spontaneous combustion of the new birth. And that gospel will come through human witnesses.”
~ John Piper, “John Was Not the Light, But a Witness to the Light”
John 5:39–40: You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
III. The World (1:9-13)
There are only two responses to the coming of the “True Light” into the world:
Rejection & Blindness (1:10-11): This is our natural state outside of the illuminating light of Christ (cf. 3:19-20). Jesus experienced rejection generally from all of fallen humanity (Rom. 3:23) and more specifically from his own people, the Jews (cf. Rom. 9:4-5).
Receiving & Believing (1:12-13): For those who have been ‘born again’ and regenerated by God, they receive and believe in Jesus by faith and are given the status of “children of God.”
1 John 3:1: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are
“You can sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s Holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”
~ J.I. Packer, Knowing God
