The Light Shines in the DarknessSample

Where it all started

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

The apostle John wrote a gospel, a book about Jesus Christ. Near the end of his book, he mentions his goal in writing: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Unlike his colleagues Matthew, Mark and Luke, the apostle John does not start with Jesus’ birth story, or his genealogy, or his public ministry. No, he goes back to the very beginning. The book of Genesis starts with the famous words, “In the beginning, God created…”. But the book of John goes back even further, to the infinite eternal past where only God existed. He writes about God and about the Word that was with Him.

The Greek word used here is “Logos”. This was a philosophical term. According to the Greeks, everything originated in the Logos, a kind of divine reason. The Logos was there before anything came into being. John agrees. But, he says, the Logos is not just some abstract thought, speech or principle. It is a Person. It is God, the ultimate Thinker.

What does it mean to you that God was there in the beginning before anything else existed?