Many Christians become practically giddy when they hear celebrities or politicians talk about God. We will fight to maintain our motto “in God we trust” and our allegiance to being “one nation under God.” At the founding of our country, God was understood to be the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Freedom of religion meant that you were free to practice the Christian faith no matter what your Christian denomination. The original colonies had established Christian churches. A requirement for many governments was to be a professing Christian. “God” had a name.
As history progressed, “freedom of religion” came to mean that all religions were equally valid and that the Christian religion would not exclusively define our culture. “God” became a fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-higher-power being. We are told that we all worship the same God with different names. It doesn’t matter that stories about these different gods contradict one another. That only means we all need to be humble, realizing we are all confused, and no one has the whole truth about “God.”
The Apostle John demurs. The opening of John’s Gospel (his Prologue, 1:1-18) makes it clear that God has a name, and that we are not in the dark about the truth of who God is.
John is clear in his purpose in 20:30-31 that his Gospel is written so that the readers and listeners may know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name. Telling us who Jesus is the aim of John’s Gospel. This biography begins in the opening sentence of his Gospel.
The echoes of Genesis 1:1 are unmistakable. John is writing a commentary on Genesis in light of God’s latest revelation. We understand the story of creation now that we look at it through the lens of the Person of Jesus.
“In the beginning” is not only a reference to a starting point on the calendar. “The beginning” is a Person; more precisely, in this context, the Three Persons of the Trinity. In Colossians 1:18, Paul says of Christ Jesus, “He is the beginning,” using the same word John uses here. The beginning is a source as well as a starting point on a calendar. What Paul says of Jesus can be said about the totality of the Godhead. The Word was in the beginning, a member of the Creator God. He is distinguished from God the Father for he is with God, but he is God. He is God, but he is not all that God is. He is the Word of the Father, but he is not the Father. The Word is God, but the Father and the Spirit are also God. (The Spirit is hidden in this construction in the little preposition “with” or “toward.” He is like the wind that blows where he wills, and you hear and see the results of his presence, but you cannot tell where he comes from or where he goes. Cf. Jn 3:8.)
The Word, then, is the God revealed in Genesis 1. Ten times in Genesis 1 the phrase “and God said” is repeated. Psalm 33:6 proclaims that Yahweh created the heavens by the word of his mouth, and by his Spirit, all their host. God’s Word is a Person, from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things (Rom 11:36). John is not introducing a new deity and trying to prove his status among the gods. John says the one true and living God has revealed himself in the Man, Christ Jesus. He is the source of all life (Jn 1:4).
Everything John writes in his Gospel hangs on the truth of his introduction. Everything Jesus says and does throughout the Gospel must be interpreted in light of this truth about Jesus as the Word. If Jesus is not who John says he is here, then the rest of his Gospel is worthless. This would mean that Jesus is just another ordinary man doing some strange things and making wild claims, but who has no authority to tell you who God is, what he demands, and the consequences for rejecting him.
However, if Jesus is this eternal Word, the Creator of all things, then to know who God is, who you are, your purpose in the world, and what life is all about, you must conform your way of thinking and living to everything he says. As the only true and living God, he is the final authority and highest court. There is no other appeal. You are not free to fill in the blank for the definition of “God” with whatever deity you choose. If Jesus is the Word, then all other claims to be God are false. If Jesus is wrong, then none of it matters. Eternity hangs in the balance of this truth.
