In the Beginning, There Was the Word (John 1:1-18)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

How does the creation narrative point me to Jesus?

It might seem like a leap to jump from Genesis 1 to the Gospel of John, but there is a strong connection. Before moving on to Genesis 2, it’s helpful to pause and recognize Christ’s connection to the creation narrative.

Yesterday, we referenced Colossians 1:16, which says, “For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.”

John 1:1-3 backs this up when John says, “¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.”

The Word, or Logos in Greek, is where we get the word logic today. This was significant to both John’s Jewish audience and his Greek audience. It was a word his Jewish readers would be familiar with from the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint).

One commentator notes, “In the OT, the ‘Word’ of God is often personified as an instrument of God’s will. So, for his Jewish readers, by introducing Jesus as the ‘Word,’ John is in a sense pointing them back to the Old Testament where the Logos or ‘Word’ of God is associated with the personification of God’s revelation.”[1]

Logos was also a word non-Christian Greeks would relate to, given its natural connection to philosophy. As the same commentator notes,

In Greek philosophy, the term Logos was used to describe the intermediate agency by which God created material things and communicated with them. In the Greek worldview, the Logos was thought of as a bridge between the transcendent God and the material universe. Therefore, for his Greek readers the use of the term Logos would have likely brought forth the idea of a mediating principle between God and the world.[2]

The word “became” (Ginomai) has the imagery of being born or created and literally means to become something it was not. In this case, the Word, Jesus, becomes something he was not — flesh. Flesh, in this sense, means taking on the characteristics and embodiment of a human being. In a moment of time, a sinless and perfect God became the very form he had created. By doing so, Jesus did not merely appear to be human. He became human. This reality shocked the Greeks of that day because they strongly emphasized the separation between the spirit world and the fleshly world.

As Irish mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian philosopher John Lennox says, “we live in a word-based universe.”[3] According to Lennox, “this universe is not simply a product of natural unguided forces. It is a product of a rational creator, an intelligent creator, and I believe even more than that a personal creator.”[4] For him, “the anchor point is that the logos became human, and we beheld his glory.”^[5]