Merry Christmas
It’s Christmas and time to unpack gifts. As you do, don't forget what a gift the Bible is to us! God has revealed his will, his plans, and Himself through the Scriptures and he has given us its 66 books to unbundle and open up.
One passage that makes an excellent Christmas gift is John 1:1-2, the famous ‘In the Beginning was the Word…’ passage. Many call it "John's Prologue." This passage is appropriate for Christmas because it demonstrates what happened before the Word became flesh.
The Prologue is followed up by the amazing statement that touches on the meaning of Christmas. It was fulfilled on the very first Christmas day. It says:
... the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14; NASB, KJV).
Let’s unpack John's Prologue together. It says this:
In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with [the One] God, and the Word was God. This one was with [the One] God in the Beginning (John 1:1-2).
The Word
Lets' start with this: Before our Lord Jesus was ever called Jesus his name was the Word. Now, he is still the Word, but since the time Gabriel revealed his name as Jesus, we don’t use Jesus' old name for him very often. The name the Word used four times in John, and once in the Book of Revelation for a total of 5 times in the New Testament.
He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God (Revelation 19:13).
The Scriptures tell us that the Word was with the One God and that, when he was with God, the Word had the very same nature as God—a divine nature. Paul explains that the Father gave Jesus equality with him (Philippians 2:6). That equality is the reason why we can say that Jesus was God. The One God shared his divine glory with Jesus, so Jesus was God--a divine being.
This all happened in the Beginning. The Beginning is the Creation event, the six days in which God created the Universe. We know that the expression "the Beginning" means the six-day Creation event because the Scriptures start by saying:
In the Beginning God created the heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1).
So, what was the time called the Beginning? It was the time when God created--it was the Creation. The Creation took 6 days. At that time, the Word (Jesus) was with the One God, the Father. And Jesus was Divine! He had equality with God. He had the divine nature because God had given it to him.
No Confusion
Jesus was the Word. The Word was with the One God, and the Word was God. Does that sound confusing? It’s not supposed to be confusing. The Scriptures were never written to confuse people. But if it does sound confusing, then asking questions should help to clear it up.
Here's a great question: “What was the essential difference between the Father and Jesus at Creation?” More specifically (since we're interpreting John 1), what does John 1 say about the difference between Jesus and the Father at Creation?
The answer is not: One was God and the other was not God. That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses say!
The answer is not: One had a divine nature and the other didn’t.
The answer is: One had a permanent divine nature (God) while the other had a temporary divine nature (the Word).
Put differently: Jesus’ divine nature was conditional upon God's will. It was not permanent. You have to believe that Jesus’ divine nature was temporary if you’re going to really know him.
It will challenge you, but you have to deal with the whole Bible head on. If you don’t, you’ll be confused and easily misled by the many false teachers out there (both at your doorstep and in in churches). So ask yourself hard questions now and resolve them before someone catches you off guard and resolves them for you!
Three Straightforward Questions
Unfortunately, since most people won’t be easily persuaded by the right interpretation of John 1:1-2, we need to get them to reflect on it. You might do that by asking them direct questions. Here are three:
Is John 1:1-2 speaking about the past, the present, or the future?
Answer: It says 'the Word was God' so the passage is patently speaking of the past.
To which time marker in the past does the passage refer? Is the passage speaking about what the Word was before the Beginning, at the Beginning, or at conception?
Answer: The passage is clearly a parallel to Genesis 1, the Creation story. It starts with the same words as Genesis 1 'in the Beginning' and verse 3 goes on to describe how the Word created all things--it says 'Through him [the Word] all things were made.' Therefore, John's Prologue is speaking of the six-day historical event we know as the Creation of the World.
Is the context of John 1 about how the Word kept his divine nature (how he continued to be “God with the One God”), or is it about how he gave up the divine nature (how he stopped being “God with the One God”)?
Answer: The context is clearly how the Word gave up his divine nature because it says in verse 14 'and the Word became flesh.' Flesh means the human nature of sin—which is the polar opposite of the divine nature he is described as having in John 1:1-2.
The Core Message of Christmas
Nobody has two natures at the same time, so the passage was written to show the difference between what Jesus was at Creation and what he became at the incarnation. It draws a contrast between two instances in the personal history of Jesus. In one instance (when he was with God), he was divine. In the other, when he was conceived, he was human.
Our salvation depends upon this message: Jesus had a divine nature with the One God at Creation, but he humbled himself to do the will of God. You must get that. You have to believe it to be saved.
Jesus gave up the divine nature and assumed the human nature (it’s called the flesh of sin in Romans 8:3). Instead of relishing in the presence of the One God, and benefitting from God's glorious light, Jesus descended into the darkness and dwelt with us. The Word became flesh and abided among us.
This is the core message of Christmas!
Getting Technical
Okay, we're going to begin to unpack John's Prologue now. Our "unpacking" will be technical, so if you don’t enjoy grammar and syntax (and I don't blame you if you don't, few of us do), you are welcome to ditch this lesson now.
Only those who are fans of English grammar should continue. (I warned you!)
A Big JW Error
The way to teach John 1:1-2 is not to say “When John says that ‘the Word was god’ he meant to say 'a god' since Jesus was a god prior to his incarnation. That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) say. They teach that because there is no direct article (the) in the original Greek [and they're right that there isn't], we should say that Jesus was "a god"—with a lower-case g.
But don’t follow the hermeneutics of the JWs. It's weak and deceptive. There's no 'a' in the Greek before it says 'God' in John 1:1 where it says '... and the Word was God.' There's nothing there. So it should say '... and the Word was God' as it does in your Bible. Only the Jehovah's Witnesses have changed it in their Bible to say '... and the Word was a god.' Of all the translations available, only the JWs have made that modification.
The right hermeneutic is not to highlight the lack of the direct article (the) when Jesus is described, but to highlight the presence of the direct article (the) when it’s used for the Father. Do you get that? Let me try to rephrase it.
What the the does is make it clear when John is talking about the One God, and the absence of the the makes it clear when he's talking about Jesus. He talks about both, but only uses the the for the Father. In other words, John uses the the twice in the passage, and both times it's when he is speaking of the One God.
Put differently, in the original Greek text, John refers to God as the God the two times he mentions him. The reason is because John is letting us know who the One God is. The One God is not the Word. The One God is the One with whom the Word was.
Capital G
Let’s let the passage speak for itself: It says that Jesus was God (and, unlike the JWs, we should certainly use a capital G when we write God for Jesus). Here are three reasons why Jesus gets a capital G when we call him God: 1) because Jesus had all authority when he was God, 2) because God honors Jesus so Jesus deserves respect and honor from us, and 3) because he had equality with the Father.
Jesus deserves all the honor, glory, and praise that you can give him. Don't fall into the trap of treating him like less than what God has made Jesus to be. God has given Jesus all authority in Heaven and on Earth. The only Being greater than Jesus in the Universe is the One God. He sits at his right hand.
Jesus Had Godhood
Cherish the truth that Jesus was God because the fact that Jesus was God proves how great the Father’s love for Jesus is. God loved Jesus so much that he gave him godhood. He granted him the divine nature! Get excited about that because God wants to give you the divine nature too!
And don't forget that saying 'the Word was God' is the past tense of the verb to be. Was is the verb to be in the past, and the past is the tense used in John's Prologue. This is significant because it highlights that Jesus had the divine nature for a specific period of time in the past. As we said before, it was temporary.
Jesus was Divine, but then he became flesh. So his "being God" stopped. If you want to call "being God" godhood, then let's call it that. Godhead and godhood are old words you can find in the KJV. They're good words just like manhood, childhood, and womanhood.
Jesus' godhood was not one of his permanent features when he was with God at Creation. He depended on God to get godhood--and he got it. He knew that what God gave, God could also take away, and Jesus didn't consider his godhood as something to be grasped. He didn't cling to it.
By the way, saying that Jesus depended on God doesn't offend Jesus. Maybe you think it's demeaning, but it's not. Jesus was never afraid to affirm that God was his source of power, so neither should you be. Jesus said:
Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing (John 5:19).
The God
We stated this before: The point a fair Bible teacher should clarify is that the two times that the Father is mentioned in the passage, the direct article (the) appears before his name. Got it. But how shall we translate the original Greek words “the God” then?
That’s an important question. And there's a good answer. We suggest that the best way is to translate it like this: the [One] God. That's why we first presented the Prologue of John in this format:
In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with [the One] God, and the Word was God. This one was with [the One] God in the Beginning (John 1:1-2).
Do this: Leave the word "One" in brackets like this [One] so that anyone whose reading your text will know that the word "One" is not in the original Greek. Let them know you've supplied it. But you're not adding to the Scriptures. Don't worry. When you include "One" in the expression "the One God" you bring out the meaning behind the direct article the, which otherwise would have been hidden. So, you're not adding to Scriptures--a serious sin.
Why the Translators Have Failed
Another good question is: Why must we translate the word “the” if there are no Bible translations that do so? Do the professional translators know something we don’t? No, that's not it. Actually, they know very well that there is a the before God in John 1:1-2. What they don't know is that the the before God in John 1:1-2 refers to the One God and Father.
You see, we don't draw our conclusions just on the basis of Greek, we also draw our conclusion on the basis of the rest of Scriptures and sound doctrine. Bible translators have acted negligently in not helping Bible readers to see the the in John 1:1-2, but they themselves don't know that there is One God, the Father.
Is there some sort of a conspiracy among Bible translators plotting to hide the truth from us? No, we don't suspect that. Most of them are simply blinded by Trinitarian theology. If they don't affirm that the One God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (a mystery), they'll lose their jobs, they will lose their salaries, and (they fear that they) will not be able to feed their families.
According to worldly wisdom they follow, it will have been a waste of the money they invested in their three years of seminary studies.
Let's Move On
Forget about those professional theologians. You must say what you know is true. Nobody needs a seminary degree to comprehend the meaning of John 1:1-2. And if you don't feel confident talking about it, don't stress. John's Prologue is only one passage of Scripture.
The meaning of John 1:1-2 agrees with the rest of Scripture anyways. We don’t need to bend the passage or twist it like other religious groups do to fit their theology. We understand it in the context of the entire Gospel of John, and the rest of the Scriptures.
If you forget all else, just remember to recognize the hidden word the, which is invisible in English. 'The Word was with the God' is what the original Greek text says.
No Conspiracy Afoot
But don't become a conspiracy theorist. There is no plot among the Bible publishing houses. The English Bible translations don’t give us the wording “the God” mostly because it’s simply not smooth English to say "the God." Nobody says “The Word was with the God” in English. They did in Greek, but that's a different language with different grammatical structures.
It doesn’t sound fluent when you produce a literal translation from Greek to English. So all the English translations omit it. And that's okay. Just know that "ton" [the Greek word for the] is not translated. It's there, but you can see how it doesn't make it into the English in the interlinear version of John 1:1-2 below.
Going the Extra Mile
Do you understand the grammatical backdrop now? If you do, they try to work around any weaknesses in people's understanding of the Bible by going the extra mile and explaining what the God means--it means the One God.
Since the God is the way John 1:1-2 was written in the original Greek, we do well to find a way to get the meaning of the God across in English. Hopefully you will agree that this is a noble task. We should get the original meaning across it if we want to be faithful to the original text—the Scriptures as they were written in the original Greek language. To them we have our highest devotion, higher than our devotion to any translation into English, Spanish, or Hausa.
So, the best way to ‘rightly divide the Word of Truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15) is to explain that the passage means “the One God” when it speaks of the God. Put differently, John's Prologue gives us the unique opportunity to affirm the doctrine of monotheism—the Christian Truth that there is only One God.
Trinitarian Teachers Guilty
The apostles believed that the Father is the One God. They were all Jewish, so it was a no-brainer for them. You'd suppose that this is something which shouldn’t be difficult for Christians to believe today, but Trinitarianism has muddled up Christian thinking immensely.
The Trinitarians have caused major damage to Christian thinking. Their theology ('the commands of men' as Jesus called them in Matthew 15:9) has confused us so much that people can’t understand even the most basic Truths any more. One God and Father is one of those Truths. James says that even demons believe that there is One God. Will the Church not rise up to at least the intellectual level of demons?
Since Bible translation teams are not going to change their versions of the Bible anytime soon, it’s your job (as a teacher of God’s Word) to explain to others the presence of the article the before God in John's Prologue. If you do that, the true message of John 1:1-2 will become evident to others--that it affirms monotheism. Many people's comprehension of this basic Truth depends on whether you’re willing to make the extra effort or not.
The Weight of With
It’s not that there were two beings called God who were mysteriously one person in John 1:1-2. That’s the Trinitarian cop out! Rather, there were two distinct Beings, the Word and the One God. One was affected by the other. The Word, being with the One God, received the glory of God! Jesus never changed anything about God, but God transformed everything about Jesus.
With is the word that should get the most weight in a solid Christian exposition of John 1:1-3. John repeats the word with for emphasis so we should emphasize its meaning. The idea behind the two withs is that because Jesus had the privilege of being with the One God, God gave Jesus the privilege of a divine nature.
You do well (and act mercifully) when you help other people understand what an impressive thing it was for Jesus to be with the One God. It meant life! As Jesus said in John 6:57, ‘I live because of the Father.’ And beyond life, the fact that Jesus was with God means that Jesus got divine glory!
If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me (John 8:54; NASB).
The Reason Jesus Was God
Jesus is never called the God in the Bible (not here or anywhere). He is called God—yes, and the meaning behind the use of God for Jesus is ‘Divine.’ Divine is a great synonym for God. You could also call Jesus' godhood deity, or ‘equality with God’ (Philippians 2:6). That’s how you need to understand the term God when it’s used for Jesus.
To say that Jesus was God means that he had the Divine nature—and that’s huge! It’s a really bid deal to have the divine nature. Only three Beings in the Universe have it now. Stay firm in Christ and you'll get it in the Resurrection.
God is not God for any reason. He just is God. Nothing to add or take away from it. Nobody talks about God being God because it would sound redundant and pedantic. Do you get it?
But we do talk about Jesus being God, don't we? And why? It's because his divine nature is special. It's unique. It's worth noting.
Jesus' divine nature reveals to us what God does (he gives his best), what God is (he is Love), and what will happen to you and me.
Note this: If we follow Jesus to the End, the same thing that happened to him is going to happen to us. God resurrected and made him Divine, and so also, we will be gods. We'll also become divine.
Jesus ‘was God’ (John 1:1) for a reason. It was because God gave him that honor. That glory Jesus obtained from the One God wasn’t something Jesus had already. It wasn't his automatically. And it definitely was not some sort of glory Jesus gave to himself. He got that divine glory—call it ‘equality with God’—specifically because he was with God.
Jesus Knows
Jesus knows everything about getting glory. You might be just learning about it now, but Jesus has always known the things we see in John's Prologue. For example, he knew that his divine glory was a result of his being with the Father.
When Jesus prayed in the Upper Room he used the word with in the same way John did in John 1:1-2. He prayed that God would give back the glory Jesus had with God before the foundation of the World. Speaking to the Father, Jesus said that he wanted the apostles to see...
… the glory I had with you before the World began (John 17:5).
We haven't mentioned this yet, but Jesus was with God even prior to Creation. John's Prologue only goes as far back as Creation, but the Kingdom existed before this World was created. Before the galaxies with their stars and planets, was the Kingdom. Different kinds of angels (archangels, cherubim, and seraphim) were in the Kingdom with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
But that’s a subject for another lesson! For now, we hope you were able to unpack this very special Scriptural gift, John's Prologue. If you were patient enough to get to the end of this post, then kudos to you! And also... Merry Christmas! Hopefully this expression has much more meaning for you now:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father... (John 1:14)
Great