In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God.
3All things were made though Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4In Him was life and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Before there was a beginning of anything, there was God who had no beginning. When God chose to create, a beginning began for the first time. When that beginning began, Christ was already there. This is an expression of Christ’s eternality. Only God is eternal and yet John is expressing that when that which can be measured by time was started, Jesus was already there…meaning He cannot be measured by time…meaning He is eternal…meaning He is God.
Jesus was there in the beginning with God. A person can have to possibilities here: One, Jesus was with God as a created being when God created the world. Or two, Jesus was with God as part of God’s being. The problem with the former is that this passage is going to go on to say in verse 3 that “All things were made through Him [the Word, which is Jesus] and without [outside of Him] nothing was made that was made.” Also the very next words after this are, “and the Word was God.” The second explanation is correct. Jesus was with God [the Father] in an eternal co-existence. This begs the question. If there is only one God, how can Jesus be God with the Father? Would that not make two Gods? Add to that, there is a third Person in this equation, the Holy Spirit…does that make three Gods?
No, and no. If this were a contradiction, we should reject it. The amazing thing about God is His existence, His Being. He is utterly other than us. So there are things about Him we can understand but may not fully comprehend. He is not the author of confusion, so He definitely is not asking us in His word to believe a contradiction. So, how are we to understand this? Philosophically speaking, to say that God is three persons in one Person is a contradiction. It is irrational. That is not what we say. To say God is three beings in one being is a contradiction, and that too is not what we say. However, it is not a philosophical contradiction to say that God is three Persons in one Being. There is a definitive difference philosophically between being and person. When I go to a funeral and see a the body of a deceased person, the body has being but the person is gone. The person inhabited that body at one time, but now all personality is gone. But the body still exists, still has being. So the being of God is one thing that is shared by three Persons. That is the teaching of the Bible.
This passage teaches us that Christ existed with God in eternity past. It shows distinction in the Trinity. This is important because not only is there a heresy that says Christ is not God, but there is also a heresy that declares that there is no distinction in the Godhead…this is called Sabellianism, or Modalism. It is the teaching that God simply acts in modes. Sometimes He acts as a Father, sometimes a Son, sometimes the Spirit. Proponents of this view compare it to modes we have. For example, I am a dad, a son, and a husband. But I am one person. I just have different modes. This is true. But what is not true is that I speak to myself in those different modes…Clay the Dad does not have a relationship with Clay the son in which we communicate with each other. I do not have conversations between my two modes…that would be crazy. Neither does God, because God the Father speaks to God the Son because God the Son is a separate Person from God the Father.
If it is not enough that Jesus co-exists with God, then John makes it very clear in his next statement… “and the Word was God.” Even John’s grammatical construction here is brilliant. He used a construction that exclaimed Christ’s deity while at the same time guarded against Modalism. That is for a deeper study but worth looking into.
Jesus was in the beginning with God. This Word was a “He”, a Person. The second Person of the Trinity. He was God, equal with God, and yet John is going to share an amazing truth…He came to earth in the flesh. The eternal Son of God, clothed Himself in humanity in order to do for sinners what sinners could not do for themselves, satisfy the wrath of God. He subordinated Himself to the Father, His equal, in His redemptive role. He would go back to the Father and says that the Father is greater than Himself, which is to say, in that existence, is greater than His existence when on earth. He was going back to His glory. But for a short time, He dwelt here. He came to save His own. And those who believe in Him and evidence it by a joyful submission to His Lordship, receive Him and have their penalty for sin satisfied. What a great gospel.
