4) In the beginning was the Word

Wednesday 1 December

John 1:1-13

The beginning of John’s Gospel is like a creation story. And actually, it is. The coming redemption is a return to the beginning of creation. You could say that God is on His way to the first page of the Bible, right across the history of the world.

John emphasizes the Word of God. It was there from the beginning, before creation. God inhabits an inaccessible light, He is so great and powerful that even heaven cannot contain Him (1 Kings 8:27). And when God manifests Himself, He does so through His Word. All things came into being through the Word of God, we read.  When we speak of the Word of God, we must not think merely of sounds and words. God Himself is present in His Word.

After the beginning, God continued to speak. He has made Himself known to the world. His Word has shone like a light in the darkness. Most people did not understand this, but Israel did, the people God chose to go with Him on the road to the restoration of all things.

However, there is something else: in other places in the Bible we see that the Word is also called the Son of God. Paul tells us that through His Son, God created everything (Col. 1:17). The letter to the Hebrews says that the Son is the expression of God’s being and the reflection of His glory and that God created the world through Him.

My thinking is, that this is why the Book of John opens like this. The coming redemption of which his Gospel speaks will be a new creation. And Jesus of whom he speaks is more than a special man. He is nothing less than God’s Word, God’s Son.

Prayer:
Father in Heaven, many of the things we read in the Bible are too high and too deep for us. We do not understand everything. But we give thanks that You are faithful to what You once started. Your beautiful creation is not only history, it is also the future.