John 1:1-5:

In the Beginning Was the Word

By Dr. Hal Harless

Foundation Fellowship of Greenville, TX

May 31, 2009

 

I.  Introduction

A.  Please turn to John 1:1.  Today, we will begin our study of the Gospel of John.

B.  Why four gospels?

Dr. Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933), Presbyterian minister and professor of English literature at Princeton, said:

If four witnesses should appear before a judge to give an account of a certain event, and each should tell exactly the same story in the same words, the judge would probably conclude, not that their testimony was exceptionally valuable, but that the only event which was certain beyond a doubt was that they had agreed to tell the same story.  But if each man had told what he had seen, as he had seen it, then the evidence would be credible.  And when we read the four Gospels, is not that exactly what we find?  The four men tell the same story each in his own way.[1]

 

II.  Exposition

A.  Background

1.  Authorship

a.  The problem is that John does not refer to himself by name in the gospel.  Therefore, some have questioned his authorship.

b.  Internal evidence

1)  The author is Jewish.

a)  The author's Gk. betrays a Heb. style. 

b)  He shows a familiarity with and provides translations for Aram. terms. 

c)  He shows familiarity with Jewish customs, ideas, and institutions.

d)  The author's use of the phrase "the Jews" does not invalidate this since he is writing for a foreign Gentile audience. 

2)  The author is a native Israeli.

a)  The author shows intimate knowledge of the geography of Israel; he knows places and distances in detail. 

b)  He is familiar with the details of the Temple. 

c)  Jews in the Diaspora used the LXX.  The author appears to be translating for himself from the Heb.

3)  The author is an eyewitness.

a)  The author himself claims to be an eyewitness.

i)  "We saw His glory" (John 1:14).

ii)  "And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe" (John 19:35).

iii)  "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). 

b)  The author gives us a wealth of small detail concerning times, names, and numbers.  Such detail is natural for an eyewitness.

4)  The author is the Apostle John.

a)  The author is identified as the one "who also had leaned on His [Jesus'] breast at the supper, and said, 'Lord, who is the one who betrays You?'" (John 21:20). 

b)  Matthew informs us that at the Last Supper "Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples" (Matt 26:20; see also Mark 14:17-21; Luke 22:14).  Therefore, the beloved disciple has to be one of the twelve. 

c)  Reclining on someone's chest at supper was a position of honor.  John is one of the inner circle of Peter, James, and John (Matt 4:21; 17:1; Mark 1:19; 5:37; 9:2; 13:3; 14:33). 

d)  Luke records that Jesus sent Peter and John to prepare for the meal (Luke 22:8). 

e)  Along with Peter and James, John witnessed the Transfiguration (Mark 9:1-8).  The comment that "we saw His glory" (John 1:14) is a likely reference to that event. 

f)  The author was at the empty tomb with Peter (John 20:2-10). 

g)  The author is also identified as living to an advanced old age, "Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only, 'If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?'" (John 21:23). 

h)  The Apostle John fits all of these criteria best.

c.  External evidence

1)  Early church fathers acknowledge the gospel as a work of the Apostle John.

2)  The gospel is widely quoted from in the early church fathers.

d.  John's bio

1)  The Apostle John was the son of Zebedee, a successful fisherman (Matt 4:21). 

2)  Initially, John may have been a follower of John the Baptist (John 1:35-40). 

3)  He, along with James and Peter, was especially close to Jesus (Mark 1:20; 5:37; 13:3). 

4)  He was a passionate individual; Jesus referred to him and his brother James as sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). 

5)  Jesus entrusted the care of his mother Mary to John (John 19:26). 

6)  He is only mentioned in the early part of Acts (Acts 3:1; 4:13; 8:14). 

7)  Tradition indicates that he moved with Mary to Ephesus. 

8)  John endured exile on the island of Patmos (Rev 1:9). 

9)  John lived to an advanced old age and wrote Revelation and three letters in addition to the Gospel of John.

2.  Date

a.  The scholarly consensus lies around AD 85 for the composition. 

b.  The Rylands Fragment of John dating from AD 135 rules out the liberal view that the Gospel is a second century document that was not written by John.

3.  Circumstances

a.  The gospel was written from Ephesus.

b.  The reigning emperor was either Titus or Domitian.

4.  The purpose and theme

a.  Salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is the theme of John's gospel.  John wrote, "These [signs] have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31). 

b.  The Gk. words for believe, faith, etc. are used 98 times in John's Gospel. 

c.  The Gospel of John is the only explicitly evangelical gospel.

5.  Structure

a.  Prologue (John 1:1-18)

b.  Early testimonies to Jesus (John 1:19-51)

c.  Public ministry of God, the Son (John 2:1-12:50)

d.  Private Ministry of God, the Son (John 13:1-17:26)

e.  The sacrifice of the Lamb of God (John 18:1-19:42)

f.  The resurrection of God, the Son (John 20:1-31)

g.  Epilogue (John 21:1-25)

B.  Exposition: Prologue (John 1:1-18)

1.  The Word was God (John 1:1-5).

a.  The Word is eternal and divine (John 1:1-2).

^1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  ² He was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2).

 

1)  The term "Word" (logos) points to Jesus' deity. 

a)  The Gk. philosophers used logos ("word") to refer to the principle that maintains order in the cosmos.

b)  The Targums (Aram. paraphrases of the OT) used "word of the Lord" in place of God.

c)  The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo used "word" (logos) to refer to God in expression or the expression of God.  

d)  John, led by the Spirit to reach the Greeks in Ephesus, used this term to bridge cultures when he referred to the second Person of the Trinity.

2)  John clearly presents the Word as eternal. 

a)  "The beginning" refers back to Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1).

b)  Physicists used to hold to a theory that the universe was eternal, but now they have acknowledged that the universe had a beginning at the so-called "Big Bang."  Believers always knew this, and we know Who made it go bang!

c)  The verb "was" is in the Gk. imperfect tense.  This means continuous action in the past.  When all things began, at the beginning of time itself, the Word was already existing. 

i)  "In the beginning the Word was existing" (NTET).

ii)  "In the beginning the Word already existed" (GWN, NLT).

iii)  Paul wrote that Jesus Christ "is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Col 1:17). 

iv)  Only God is eternal.

3)  John now presents the relationship that the Word had with the Father. 

a)  The verb "was" is in the Gk. imperfect tense, past continuous action. 

b)  The Gk. preposition translated "with" has the meaning "to show close relationship to a person." 

c)  God has the article in Gk., and refers to God, the Father. 

i)  Wuest translates this, "And the Word was in fellowship with God the Father" (NTET). 

ii)  Another translation is, "and the Word was in relation with God" (BBE). 

iii)  Contrary to modalistic groups such as United Pentecostals, this shows exactly the distinction between the Persons that we would expect due to the Trinity. 

d)  Before time began, the Word was fellowshipping with the Father.

4)  It is at this point that John rivets our attention by declaring the Word to be God.  

a)  The literal Gk. is "and God was the Word." 

b)  There has been some controversy because there is no article before God. 

i)  In Gk., leaving off the article can indicate either that the word is indefinite, i.e., "a god" (Imagine both how bad that would sound to Jewish ears and how misleading that would be to the Greeks to whom John was writing!), or that it is qualitative, i.e., "divine." 

ii)  The Jehovah's Witnesses translate this as "a god" (NWT). 

(a)  They hope by this to connect with the OT usage of "god" that the LXX translated "angels" (e.g., Ps 8:5).  The author of Hebrews cites this LXX translation in Heb 2:7, 9.  Thus, they equate Jesus with an angel, Michael. 

(b)  The NWT is inconsistent in its own translation. 

(i)  John 1:1-18 has the Gk. word for God eight times only two of which have articles. 

(ii)  The NWT translates them six times as "God," one time as "the God," and only once as "a god." 

(iii)  This inconsistency of translation betrays their theological bias against the Trinity.

c)  There are four good reasons for not translating, "and the word was a god." 

i)  It has been pointed out the God is often a proper name and proper names do not require articles especially in the predicate. 

ii)  God is a predicate nominative in this sentence and it is quite common for predicate nominatives to not have an article.  This is frequently the way to tell which word is the subject; it will have an article, while the predicate will not.

iii)  If the predicate nominative has an article, then it is interchangeable with the subject.  This would contradict what John has just written distinguishing the Father and the Son, and would support Modalism. 

iv)  Colwell's rule

(a)  Gk. scholar, Ernest Cadman Colwell (1901-1974), noted in 1933 that a predicate nominative without an article that comes before the verb can still be definite.

(b)  Other scholars have modified Colwell's rule and noted that the likely possibilities, when a predicate nominative without an article comes before the verb, are that it is either qualitative (80% of the time) or definite (20%). 

(i)  An example of this is "and the Word became flesh" (John 1:14).  The Gk. is literally "and the Word flesh became."

(ii)  This cannot be translated "and the Word became a flesh"!  It must mean that the Word took on the quality of humanity. 

(iii)  In fact, if "God" is indefinite in John 1:1, there is no other such instance in John's gospel. 

v)  For these reasons, translating John 1:1 as, "the word was a god" (NWT) is wrong-headed.

5)  John is telling us that the Word has always had the very quality of deity. 

a)  "The nature of the Word was the same as the nature of God" (Barclay).

b)  "The Word was fully God" (NET).

c)  "The Word was as to His essence absolute deity" (NTET).

d)  "What God was, the Word was" (NEB).

e)  There are three Persons in the Trinity, but only one Essence (three who's, one what). 

f)  The essential nature of the Word is nothing less than total deity.

6)  John then restates the eternal fellowship that the Father and Son enjoyed.

a)  John wants to be sure that we do not confound the persons.

b)  The verb "was" is in the Gk. imperfect tense, past continuous action.

c)  "He was already with God in the beginning" (GW).

b.  The Word is the Creator (John 1:3).

³ All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:3).

 

1)  John states both positively ("all things") and negatively ("nothing") that the Word is the Creator of everything including angels.

2)  The Word is the agent of creation; therefore, He Himself is not a created being.

3)  John has already told us that the Word was before time.

4)  Now, John tells us that the Word is not a created being, but the Creator God!

c.  The Word is the source of life and light (John 1:4-5).

⁴ In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  ⁵ The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:4-5).

 

1)  In Genesis, God said, "Let there be light!" (Gen 1:3).

2)  This life is not just physical life (bios), although that is certainly true, but higher life (zoē).

3)  Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).

4)  Grammatically, "light of men" means that the men are enlightened, not that they own the light.

5)  The Word possesses the higher life and that enlightens men.

6)  Darkness should be taken morally of our darkened world that rejects God's light.

7)  "Comprehend" is better translated "overcome" (ESV, HCSB) or "mastered" (NET).

8)  Darkness cannot put out the Light.

III.  Applications

A.  John wants us to know that the One whose story he is about to tell is:

1.  The eternal God the Son who always had all of the essential qualities of deity.

2.  The Creator of all.

3.  The Source of Life and Light.

B.  We must honor and worship the Word who is truly God.