The Word

In the beginning

was the Word,

and the Word was with God

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:1-2

When the Apostle John put pen to paper for his telling of the story, he goes back to the beginning as well. Only he reaches back into the mists of eternity and starts at the very beginning...the same beginning Moses recorded 1500 years earlier, the same beginning spoken of in oral traditions around patriarchal campfires for 2500 years before that. He starts with the commencement and initiation of all things, at the very first.

Genesis has already established that at the very beginning, God was already there. In fact, that one simple statement is the foundational basis for everything the Scriptures have to offer us--in the beginning God. No explanation, no reasoning. Just that. In the beginning God. John shows us that the Gospel message, the good news about salvation, started before start. In the beginning was the Word.

Much has been made over the fact that Jesus was called the Word in John, or rather the logos. John will use the term over and over again in referring to Jesus Christ, the very embodiment of God, God made flesh, the fullness of the Godhead in human bodily form. Nothing that I can say about logos is a mystery or a revelation; any lexicon would tell you the same.

In Greek philosophy, logos was used "to designate the divine reason or plan which coordinates a changing universe."

Logos was a word spoken by a living voice, a word which embodies a conception or idea.

Logos was the sayings of God, the moral precepts of God, the decree and mandate of God.

Logos is prophecy, it is declaration with power, it is continuous dialogue and instruction, it is proclamation, it is testimony, it is narrative.

Logos is the subject, that which is spoken of.

Logos is the mind, reason, and will of God.

And just in case anyone missed his point, John says: The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Jesus was with God at the very beginning; when you read the Genesis account you find the reference to God creating, to the Spirit moving, and to the Word bringing things about. God said, and it was. That spoken command to be was Jesus. Though the word "trinity" never appears in the Bible, we understand from the very beginning of both the Old Testament and the New Testament that God was eternally existent in the triunity of God, Word, and Spirit, or Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Jesus was with God, Jesus was God; He always was God, and He was always with God. They are one, and yet different. They are two, and yet the same. What a wonderful, beautiful, mysterious concept!

One more thing might be said of Christ at the beginning. John says it here, In the beginning was the Word. In Revelation, John records the words of Jesus saying, I am the beginning and the end. Not only was John telling us when Jesus was in the opening line of his Gospel; he was also telling us who Jesus was--Jesus was the beginning.