And The Word Became Flesh: An Exposition Of John 1:1-18

And the Word Became Flesh

John 1:1-18

Luke and Matthew begin their gospels with the incidents leading up to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Mark begins with the sudden burst of the adult John the Baptist and then Jesus coming on the scene. These events are grounded in the space-time history we are accustomed. They fit well together to present human and historical Jesus. Although the true divinity of Jesus is not absent in the gospels, it is the humanity of Jesus which comes out.

This leads us to the Gospel of John which begins with the full statement of Jesus’ divinity. The story of Jesus precedes and transcends both space and time. John presents Jesus as being omniscient, even while on earth. For example, he knew what was in people’s hearts. In the same way as the other gospels present the human portrait of Jesus without denying His divinity, John presents Jesus as Divine without denying His human nature. It is hard to put together the two natures of Christ, the Divine and the human. Early Christian theologians struggles with this mightily, and the Creed of Chalcedon gives as good an answer as we can give. Truly it is a great mystery how an infinite God could become a finite man, the Creator becoming a creature of His own creation. So we are blessed to have John’s portrait of Jesus to hang alongside the portrait mage by the other gospels, affirming each to be equally true. Only God can understand Jesus in a single portrait. For the rest of us, the two portraits side by side present a single Christ.

The Gospel of John begins with a group of simple sentences. Yet these simple short statements together create a very complex picture. It begins with the words “In the Beginning.” Anyone who has read Genesis recognizes that the same words appear there as well. This is not a coincidence. John immediately sets our mind to the Creation itself. He continues with “was the Word.” Just six simple words, yet some of the most sublime words ever recorded. There have been arguments over the meaning of the simple word “is.” The verb of being is the most basic of words. Here the past tense “was” is used. In Greek it is in a tense called the “imperfect” as there is no simple past tense of the “I am” verb. When the Creation occurred, the Word already “was.” John has not yet revealed the identity of the “Word,” but He existed before Creation. This idea will be further refined by the words that follow. The Word is not part of the created order.

“And the Word was with God.” John begins the sentence with the words that ended the previous on. This is another short sentence. The Greek preposition “pros” is used in Septuagint Greek to mean “in the immediate presence of” or “with.” It also indicates a sort of intimate relationship between God and the Word. There is oneness between God and the Word. They are one, yet there is distinction made as well. There are overtones of the Doctrine of the Trinity here.

“And God was the Word.” Again, John takes the last word of the previous sentence as the first word in the new sentence. But it is very important to state that it is NOT the subject of the sentence but a predicate adjective which describes the subject which is “the Word.” The article “the” makes “Word” the subject. There are things called reversible propositions in which both nouns are equally subject. When this happens, the sentence can be read equally forward or backwards. But there is no article with God. If there were, it would read “The God was the Word.” The trouble that would occur is that we would end up with a “Jesus-Only” or Modalist view of God. This would dent the Trinity. What has to be read that Jesus is “fully and equally Divine” and not to say that Jesus is all that God is. There is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A group called the “Arians” caused much difficulty by making Jesus a lesser ‘god” who was the first creature of God. The Jehovah’s witnesses today hold to such a view. They translate the verse “And the Word was a God.” The indefinite article “a” does not exist in Greek, but it is at least grammatically possible to translate it this way. But we must observe that the context of the Greek sentence does not permit this translation. “God” is thrust forward into the sentence, which places extra emphasis on it. Secondly, in a monotheistic worldview, there is room for only one God. If John had wanted to subordinate the Word, he would have written this verse differently. So we are left with the sublime doctrine that Jesus is fully God in Himself without saying that He was all there was to God. The doctrine of one God in three persons is affirmed.