In the Beginning: the Word Was with God

God’s Self-Existence in the Gospels

3 min

Not only is God the Father the “self-existent” God from eternity, but the Son of God is also self-existent, without beginning and without cause.

It is interesting how the four Gospels begin. Matthew and Luke both opened their accounts with the birth of Christ, showing the importance of Christ’s incarnation and humanity. Mark’s record began with the baptism of Christ, showing the importance of Christ’s public ministry as our Servant.

John, however, began his Gospel record with a statement of Christ’s self-existence in eternity past, emphasizing Christ’s deity. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

There was no human witness to this truth. This presuppositional statement of fact cannot be verified or denied by human wisdom or human experience. The reader of these lines of divine revelation can either believe these words and eternally live, or he can deny these words and eternally die.

However, Christ is revealed to be the self-existent Word of God, eternally begotten of the Father. Let’s consider these important words of John’s introduction (verses 1–4) statement by statement so that we may fully appreciate the self-existence of our Lord Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word

The λόγος (logos) was a familiar concept in the Greco-Roman world of scholarship. Logos was the ideal body of truth, the sum of wisdom. The Apostle John took the word from the pagan scholars and asserted that Jesus is the eternal logos, and that He existed in the beginning.

And the Word was with God

This statement makes careful distinction between God the Son and God the Father. Jesus was with God, in the presence of God, begotten of God, but the Son was a distinct Person in relation to the Father.

And the Word was God

Yet, Jesus was God, very God. Jesus was distinct in person but the same in essence. John the Apostle, an “unlearned and ignorant” fisherman from Galilee (Acts 4:13), dismantled in this one statement the errors of Gnosticism, Unitarianism, Socinianism, and a dozen other –isms that denied or diminished the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The same was in the beginning with God

Like a careful teacher, John laid down again this foundational truth, using repetition to emphasize the eternal self-existent nature of the Son.

All things were made by him

Far from having a cause, Jesus Christ is the ultimate cause of everything in the universe. He is the Creator, the Originator, the Source from Whom all things spring.

And without him was not any thing made that was made

Not only did John assert that Jesus is the self-existent Maker of all things, he asserted in Hebraic contrasting form (the literary device of saying the same thing the opposite way) that nothing can exist without Him! No other reality exists in all the universe that can have any being apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, the first Cause.

In him was life

Life itself springs from Jesus. Notice that John the Apostle used very basic vocabulary that everyone in the Roman Empire could understand. Still today, beginning students of Koine Greek study these opening lines of John’s Gospel as elementary text. The text exudes simplicity, clarity, and power of precision.

And the life was the light of men

Jesus Christ is the source of light and life. He is the Desire of Nations, the Hope of Humanity, and the Light of the World. He reveals our deepest needs, and then He satisfies them with and from Himself.

What an amazing Christ we serve! When we speak with our friends and family who do not yet believe, let us be careful not to try to overexplain the Christ of the Bible. It is all too easy to attempt the impossible—to prove God’s existence to blinded hearts. Instead, pray that God will open the blind eyes, soften the stony hearts, and quicken the understanding so that our faulty lips may rightly testify of the living reality of Jesus Christ.

John the Apostle was not a philosopher; he was a fisherman! The man was considered to be “unlearned and ignorant” by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. But when the Jewish doctors heard the witness of Peter and John in Acts 4:13, “they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” So may the same be said of us.

This article is from our Matters of Life & Death teaching series.

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