The Word was God.
This year, I spent Christmas Eve with my son and his family. His wife’s friend, an unbeliever, joined us for dinner after church, although she didn’t attend service with us. She led the conversation by asking kindly about the service. Then she wanted to know the difference between different protestant churches. From there her questions deepened. How can we know (and believe) the Bible is true? This question is inextricably tied to another question: What do we think about God? To fully grasp what the Bible says about God, we must trust the Bible is true. Possibly before we can trust the Bible is true, we have to believe that God exists and that he is who he says he is, since the Bible is about his work on earth and with people.
Read John 1:1-2
Based on John’s bold opening statement, what we believe about God informs our opinion about the Bible, and the reverse is true as well. To ask and answer questions about God and his Son, Jesus, first we must accept the Bible as having true answers. How we answer these two foundational questions forms our first faith step.
This first chapter in John is relevant this week between Christmas and New Year’s. We just celebrated Christmas, when Jesus, the Light of the world, came into the darkness. God says it much better than I can. 
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2).
“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5).
When I read John chapter 1, I always feel I have to read carefully to follow John’s line of thought and theological argument. Really, he lays simple foundational truth one stone, or statement, at a time.
- In the beginning was the Word.
- The Word was with God.
- The Word was God.
- Who is this Word?
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son, [who came] from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, NASB2020).
- Jesus is the Word.
- He was with God in the beginning.
- Jesus was present at creation.
- Our first faith step is to believe God exists. God is pleased with even our first baby step.
“… without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
What is the significance that Jesus was with God at creation?
What does it mean to you to read Jesus is the Word and God?
Read John 1:3-5
- An almost equal faith step is to believe God created the heavens and the earth.
- Jesus, the Word, spoke all creation into existence.
- Nothing was made that was not made by him.
“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
- Jesus created everything with God the Father.
- He is King of the universe.
- He gave us life and that life was the light of men.
- How would we know we live in darkness if light had not come into the world?
- We need light to save us from darkness.
How does Jesus’ role at the beginning expand our understanding of creation?
How has Jesus’ light come into your darkness?
Read John 1:6-9.
- There came a man whose name was John.
- Luke recorded John’s miraculous birth as the son of the elderly priest Zechariah, whose wife Elizabeth was barren.
- John was not the light but he testified concerning the Light. He told people what he heard and saw and understood about Jesus.
- John’s message was that the true light had come into the world, and in later verses the apostle John recorded an opening scene from John’s ministry, the one who baptized people as a sign of repentance.
- John was “the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord’” (John 1:23).
- John identified Jesus as the true Light.
What is John’s unique role in God’s redemption story?
Who has played a similar role in your spiritual life?
Read John 1:10-14.
- Jesus’ own creation did not recognize him.
- The people God set aside for himself did not receive his Son.
- In love and mercy, God adopts as his people any who believe Jesus is God’s Son and that he came to seek and save all who are lost in the darkness.
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
How has God enabled you to recognize his Son?
Read John 1:15-18.
- John recognized Jesus was with God from the beginning.
- Even though Jesus’ earthly ministry began after John’s, John pointed to Jesus as greater.
“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
- Paul probably didn’t have access to John’s written gospel. But when speaking to people in Athens, Paul said,
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. … he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. … God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:24-28).
These gifts are only the beginning of God’s blessings and grace to us.
Which gifts from this passage are especially meaningful to you and why?
I wish I’d had John 1:17 in my memory bank Christmas Eve, when my son’s friend asked why such a difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament concerning God’s and man’s responses to wrong doing. We didn’t have time to stumble into Paul’s more complete explanation in Romans, that the law makes our need for grace known, but John compares Moses as the one who received the law from God for the people with Jesus, who brought grace and truth into the world.
“… We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” … and “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:14, 17)
Jesus’ coming into the world truly is the best gift we could ever receive.
Up to that time, no one had ever seen God, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18).
- In the beginning was the Word.
- The Word was with God.
- The Word was God.
To grasp how God has shined his Light into our darkness is almost beyond our comprehension.
How have you experienced Jesus’ grace and truth in your daily life?
How might you incorporate truth from this passage into a conversation with a nonbeliever? Or, to help strengthen someone in their faith?