The Speech That Shattered the Silence

A fresh look at John 1:1-3

[I’m super pleased to have a guest author deliver some doctrinally rich, devotional content this Christmas season. Noah Toney is a pastor and a fantastic writer whose blog enables readers to read, interpret, and apply the text of Scripture. I pray your heart is stirred to look to Christ the eternal Word! Subscribe to his blog for more soul-stirring content.]

Read

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”-John 1:1-3

Explain

The lines above are the greatest lines in all of Western literature. First words are important words, and there are no more important words than the opening of John’s gospel. The other gospels opened during the reign of Tiberius. John opens to the beginning of time. Matthew and Luke open with Christ at the breast of Mary. John opens with Christ in eternal fellowship with God at the bosom of the Father. The synoptic gospels open with Jesus’s humanity, but John opens with Jesus’s divinity. These words are unsearchable.

The goal of today’s post is not to exhaust these words but to twist them like a diamond to reveal different aspects of the person of Christ.

Christ is the Word

“In the beginning was the word.”

John brilliantly starts his gospel by alluding to the creation account in Genesis 1. The other gospels refer to the “beginning,” but they start with the person of Jesus in his humanity. John starts by referencing the beginning to speak about Jesus’ divinity. “Word” is the Greek word “Logos.” It is a crucial word in the New Testament. The etymology of logos is complex and nuanced, but I will spare you. In short, John is taking a common word used in Greek Philosophy that describes divine reason, thought, and speech, and he is applying that term to the divinity of Jesus.

Jesus, in his divinity as the Son of the Father, is the Word of God. He is the speech that reveals the will, character, and nature of God the Father. John Calvin infamously opens his commentary on John’s gospel with the heading, “In the beginning was speech.” Speech reveals the nature and character of a person. By way of analogy, think of a friend. You do not know them unless they speak to you. Their words reveal their character, personality, nature, will, and motives. In the same way, Jesus, as the word of God, reveals and clarifies the nature and character of the Father. John clarifies this in John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

This is bottomless. God has spoken. He is not a divine clockmaker who winds the clock and walks away. He has made Himself known through His Word; he has communicated with us through Christ. Come let us listen to the Logos.

Christ is Eternal

My wife is expecting our first child. To prepare for fatherhood, I have been reading the Jesus Storybook Bible. Sally Lloyd-Jones opens the creation account with these beautiful lines, “In the beginning, there was nothing. Nothing to hear. Nothing to feel. Nothing to see. Only emptiness. And darkness. And nothing… but nothing. But God was there.”

These lines are beautiful and profound. John claims that in the beginning, before creation, Christ was there. This shows the eternality of Christ. The Logos, the Son of God, the second member of the trinity, is eternal. There was never a time when he had a beginning. He was not created. He precedes all things. He is eternal. It is hard to wrap our minds around this, but this is central to who Christ is. He was before the creation. He was before the beginning of the book of Genesis. He was before angels. He was before the heights of the heavens; before the first angel was created to sing his praise, Christ was there.

Christ has Communion with God

Christ was there in the beginning...and he was not alone. John draws a distinction and a comparison between the Word and God. First the distinction, “the word was with God.” The Logos has an eternal fellowship with God the Father. They have always been together in perfect communion and fellowship. Christ demonstrates this in the high priestly prayer, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed (John 17:4-5). “

The person of Christ is in perfect communion with the Father, which is good news for us. As we grow to know Christ, we are growing to know God. As Jesus goes to the cross on our behalf, he is our mediator, and we can draw near to the throne of God with confidence because Christ has gone to the Father in our place.

Christ is God

We have seen the distinction; now, let’s look at the comparison. “And the Word was God.” The Logos is different from the Father, but at the same time, the Logos is God. This is foundational for us as Christians. When we worship Christ, we worship Him as God. We do not worship him as less than God or something God created. We can proudly and confidently worship the Son as a member of the Godhead. This is the right worship of God.

This is good news for us. We need a savior. We are incapable of saving ourselves, and we need God to act. We need God to do something. When this baby is born in Bethlehem, we should be shocked. This baby is no ordinary baby. This is the God-Man. He is fully God and, at the same time, fully man. It is worth meditating upon Hebrews 2:17-18, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Come behold the God-man.

Christ is Self Sustaining

Christ is self-sustaining. “He was in the beginning with God.” Before creation, there was God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in perfect communion from eternity past. This is not explicit, but Christians have long deduced from this passage that God precedes creation and is, therefore, self-sufficient.

Christ says it this way, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself (John 5:26)” This self-sufficient life that belongs to the Son is called divine asiety.

The very first words of the bible open up with God. He is before all things. He is independent of all things. The Creator is independent of his creation. Some people think God is waiting around for people to worship him. They act as if God is dependent upon the creation. This is not so. God has been eternally satisfied with his fellowship. He is not dependent like us.

God does not sleep. He does not change. He does not grow tired. He does not grow weary. He does not need the creation. He is independent. He is perfectly self-sustaining and happy with the fellowship of himself. God does not need anything from the creation. The paradigm shift is that God does not need anything, but he desires that he would be glorified in his creation. He created the world and the cosmos, not from a need to be filled, but from the desire to fill the abyss and to create something that screams, “I am God and I am glorious.”

Though God has always been independent and self-sufficient from the beginning, the gospel shows God, who does not need anything, comes down and takes on flesh in the person of Christ. He who has never had need becomes thirsty. He who created wheat needs bread. He who created the first breast must suckle from his mother to be fed and sustained. Christ who has sustained the cosmos with the power of his will, now is subjected to the creation. He who has loved and sustained his people for centuries is subjected to them, and he is handed over and crucified.

Glory in divine aseity.

Christ is Creator

‌Only if Christ is self-sufficient can he be the Creator. Look at the text. All things were made through him. This Word of God, the Logos, is the Word that was spoken by God in creation. How did God create? Did he pull strings of stars and decorate the sky like a Christmas tree? Or did he hammer and nail together the foundations? No, better still, He spoke.

Genesis 1:3, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Christ, as the word of God, is the acting agent in creation.

God created through the Word. It was Christ who swaddled the night sky with a blanket of stars, and it was Christ who was swaddled by Mary. It was Christ who the Sun imitates in its radiance and Christ who walked under the light of day as a man. It was Christ who spoke the fish into being with a blessing to multiply, and Christ chose a bunch of fishermen to be his disciples. It was Christ who told the trees to break forth and sprout and rise out of the ground. And it was Christ who was nailed to a tree in our place. The Creator and sustainer of all creation was subjected to the creation to save us. See what a great cost our Savior paid.

Apply

Some of my points might seem theological and lofty, like they are far away and don’t matter. Let it not be so. John shows us that Christ who has every reason to cut his losses and leave us in despair and darkness, has drawn near.

This is the hope of Advent. God did not remain silent but has broken through the eternal darkness with his Word. He has spoken through Christ. Christ, who has perfect communion and fellowship with God, has come to us, that we might have communion and fellowship with God as sons and daughters. Christ, who is self-sufficient and has no need of anything, has come to give us everything if we only turn to him. Christ the Creator, the one who upholds all things by the word of his power, was born in the likeness of human flesh to save. The Creator became subject to the creation so that he might create a new work in us. If you are looking for meaning in this Advent, come behold the person of Christ. He is glorious.