"What's the Word?"

And in our time together leading up to Christmas, we are spend our time together at the church where I serve in a sermon series entitled light. During this series, we are going to spend our time together looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of John. Now the gospel of John was written the person who had perhaps the closest relationship with Jesus while He was on earth, a man named John. John is referred to as the disciple Jesus loved. John was Jesus best friend.

And it is in the gospel of John that we see John, as he was looking back in the rearview mirror of his life, record for us something that happened in history that radically changed the course of his life, the course of human history, and that can radically change our lives today. So today, let’s look together at how John begins this letter that has been preserved of us for 2,000 years, beginning in John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word,

John opens his letter to early followers of Jesus with five simple words: “In the beginning was the Word”. To fully understand what John is communicating here, we first need to ask and answer two questions. The first question that we need to ask and answer is “in the beginning of what?”  When John refers to beginning here, he is referring to the origin of all creation. 

In other words, before there was a beginning, there was the Word. Before there was space and time, there was the Word. Before anything existed, the Word existed. You see, we think of eternity as eternity in the future. However, eternity also exists as eternity past. John’s point here is that the Word always existed. The Word is outside of space and time and is thus not constrained by space and time. The Word looks at space and time like I look at this stand.

Now this leads us to the second question that we need to ask and answer, which is “What is John referring to when he says “the Word”. Notice that John does not say “In the beginning was a Word”. Instead, John says that “in the beginning was “the Word”.  So what is the Word? Now in the language that the letter was originally written in, the phrase “the Word” is used to describe the expression of something. In this case, John is referring to the expression of God.

You see, it is in the very nature of God to reveal Himself to His creation. By using this phrase, John is revealing for us the reality that the Word is God’s ultimate way of disclosing Himself to humanity. John then uses a second phrase in verse one to help us further understand what John is referring to when he uses the phrase “the Word”:

            and the Word was with God,

What is so interesting is that in the letters that John wrote that are recorded for us in the Bible, when the word with is used next to a person, this word conveys a personal and intimate relationship between two people. So when John states that the Word was with God, he is revealing that the Word lived, as a person, in a personal and close relationship with God.

So before anything else existed, the Word existed and experienced a close and personal relationship with God. John then provides a third phrase in verse one that further unpacks what John is referring to with the phrase “the Word”:

            and the Word was God.

John tells us that not only was the Word with God, the Word was in very nature God. And it is here that we see one of the strongest evidences for what is referred to as the Trinity. You see, the Word wasn’t God taking on a new name in the New Testament, as the Word was with God in relationship with God.

God the Father and the Word, along with the Holy Spirit, who John will mention later in this letter, are three distinct persons who are Divine in their nature and essence. In addition, the members of the Trinity are inseparably related. In other words, you cannot remove either God, the Word, or the Holy Spirit, without misrepresenting who God is. John then reinforces the fact that the Word is Divine in verse 2:

 He was in the beginning with God.

John reinforces the reality that the Word was not a created being by explaining the He was in the beginning with God.  In other words, before there was a beginning, the Word was with God. The Word was not created. Instead the Word always existed. In addition, John refers to the Word as He.

So, when John refers to the word, he is referring to a male Divine Being who has always existed, for all eternity, in a close, personal relationship with God.

Friday, we will see John shift from revealing the nature of who the Word is to what the Word has done in history…