Commentaries:
What poured out of Jesus Christ while He was here? Words—God's words, which are spirit and life (John 6:63). What are God's words, in total? The truth! The truth makes us free (John 8:32). Where does the truth lead? To eternal life! Put all of those concepts together, and we come to what John says so succinctly: "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." How do we get to the Kingdom of God? By following God's words—the Light (see Psalm 119:105).
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Preventing Deception
This first chapter of John introduces Jesus Christ to mankind, but especially to those who are being called. Jesus, God's only begotten Son, was dispatched directly from heaven to be His personal witness before humanity to reveal both the Father and the Son and Their purpose. The Father sent His Son, His Heir, to be a living example of Their love toward all people. His elect need to know Him and cultivate a close relationship with Him as He is the most important element in our lives.
John immediately introduces Jesus as the literal Creator of the universe and therefore mankind's (and all other life-forms') Creator and Life-giver. All by itself, this stunning revelation must have amazed the apostles, considering they had walked with Him for three-and-a-half years.
We, too, need to reflect deeply on its profound meaning to us. The apostles enjoyed a package of elements we lack. They could literally hear His voice as He taught, see Him with their own eyes, and reach out their hands and touch Him. He directly taught the apostles, and they saw His behaviors as He carried out His responsibilities. In the beginning, they did not know His divinity as an absolute certainty but learned as they continued to follow Him. By the time of His crucifixion, that knowledge had burned into their minds as a conviction.
The apostle John focused on Jesus' oneness with the Father more frequently than the other apostles. His gospel thus provides a fuller and more exact description of Jesus' identity. In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and My Father are one.” John 8:56-58 adds:
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. Then the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”
During His ministry, Jesus plainly stated who He was several times, but for most, it was too much to accept. Especially in John 8, there is more to what Jesus said than what English-speakers may think. Judging by the Jews' reactions, some apparently grasped the meaning of His statement to a much fuller extent than most Americans do, despite its predominantly Christian culture. They picked up stones to throw at Him, thinking Him blasphemous (John 8:59)!
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Eight): Hebrews 1
Most readers quickly grasp who the Word is. Since the Word, the pre-incarnate Jesus, was at the beginning with the One identified as God, whom we know as the Father, the passage implies that there was never a time that Jesus and the Father existed apart from each other. Therefore, Jesus, called the Word and later the Son, is unoriginated.
It may be easiest for a human to understand this concept by realizing that Father and Son are each the same age. Neither is “older” than the other. They are both eternal Beings without beginning or origin or any kind of birth.
John adds another sign of their relationship in verse 3. They both existed before anything else was created, granted life, and given purpose for which to live. This also suggests that the Son is unoriginated: There was nothing before Him to be His source. Verse 3 is especially a glorification of the Word's powers, which should alert us that the New Covenant in which we are involved is exceedingly more important to God's purpose than the one He proposed through Moses.
We can summarize John's first paragraph in this way: “In the beginning” (verse 1) links with Genesis 1:1 and refers to the beginning of creation, not the beginning of God-life. The verse confirms that the Son is a distinct personality from the Father. Citing Their companionship, verse 2 unequivocally assigns full and equal Deity to the Son as the other God-Being possessed.
Verse 3 emphasizes the Word as Creator. It is helpful to grasp that “all things were made through Him” means everything: all heavenly bodies, animals, vegetables, minerals, laws, forces, and energies that operate within the creation to support life. Not the slightest thing was made without His involvement. It also confirms that these two Beings work together in perfect harmony, and neither is inferior as God to the other. In this creation and its functions, the Word had the lead. The passage gives no hint of competition between Them.
Verses 4-5 are an expansion on Christ's creative efforts. John is ensuring that we understand it was Christ's responsibility to be the source, fountain, origin, and cause of life. From Him all life flows. When we add Hebrews 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of His power”—to this, we can confidently say that He keeps all alive and in order to this day.
What a powerful Savior the Father has blessed us with!
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Eight): Hebrews 1
"The Word" in this passage is translated from the Greek logos, which means "spokesman," "word," or "revelatory thought." It is a name there used for an individual Personage. But who or what is this Logos? Notice the explanation in verse 14:
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
When he was born as Jesus Christ, he was flesh and blood, materialistic, and could be seen, touched, and felt. But what was he? As God—as the Logos? That is answered in John 4:24, "God is a Spirit," and spirit is invisible. We know what was his form and shape as the human Jesus. But of what form and shape was He as the Word?
The Word, then, is a Personage who was made flesh—begotten by God, who through this later begettal became his Father. Yet at that prehistoric time of the first verse of John 1, the Word was not (yet) the Son of God. He divested himself of his glory as a Spirit divinity to be begotten as a human person. He was made God's Son, through being begotten or sired by God and born of the virgin Mary.
So here we find revealed originally two Personages. One is God. And with God in that prehistoric time was another Personage who also was God—one who later was begotten and born as Jesus Christ. But these two Personages were spirit, which is invisible to human eyes unless supernaturally manifested. Yet, at the time described in verse one, Jesus was not the Son of God, and God was not His Father.
Herbert W. Armstrong
Fully Man and Fully God? (2001)
As this passage patently declares, the Word is Jesus Christ. He is God and is the Creator God of Genesis. “All things were made through Him.”
“Word” here is translated from the Greek logos. Strong's Concordance begins its definition as “something said.” In his Key Word Study Bible, Spiros Zodhiates begins his entry with “to speak.” Recall the method the Creator God used to create: He used words; He spoke. The Logos, the One who speaks, spoke this world and everything in it into existence (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, and 26).
Paul also testifies in Colossians 1:16 that Christ was the Creator:
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Paul repeats John's idea in John 1:1 of the world being created “through Him,” indicating that Another authorized the works carried out by the Word. In the same verse, John affirms that another God Being was present: “the Word was with God.” Genesis 1:26 begins, “Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image.'” The “Us” is the Word and the other God, the One we now know as the Father (John 17:5).
In His last message to His disciples, Jesus confirms that He continued to follow the creation pattern. He spoke the words given to Him by the other God, God the Father: “For I have given to them the words which You have given Me . . .” (John 17:8).
In Genesis 1, the Creator God is called “God,” translated from the Hebrew word elohim. While this Hebrew word is plural in form, it often appears in combination with singular verbs and adjectives, indicating a body, group, class, or family that contains more than one member. John's description agrees. Both were God, both with the surname Elohim, of the Family called God, which is currently composed of the Father and the Son, as revealed in the New Testament.
Pat Higgins
The God of the Old Testament
By virtue of being divine and humankind's Creator, Jesus of Nazareth has His own individual claim on us. From beginning to end, we owe Him our lives, a fact that the Bible makes abundantly clear, so much that commentator Albert Barnes wondered why people even question it. That God sent Jesus Christ to speak to us of Him and of His purpose is a tremendous honor for mankind. Because One of such authority has spoken, what He said stakes a claim on our attention.
The things the Bible records Him doing in the presence sometimes of thousands are a telling witness. Yet, many treat those miraculous events like fairy tales. Such miracles are impossible for a mere man. Can any common man quiet the roaring winds or calm the waves of a raging sea or heal a dying child from the distance of at least twenty miles just by saying a few words? Yet, if His miracles define the distinction humans make between a created man and Creator God, then men have little or no concept of what constitutes a divine being. What really separates God from man? The separation appears in God's awe-inspiring powers combined with the purity of His use of those powers.
We must conclude that Jesus was indeed divine, God in the flesh. Every action He takes is for our well-being. Humanity, though, still has little or no respect for His words or deeds.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Ten): Christianity's Claims
No other book written by men opens like the book of John. If we can compare it to something in music, it is like a tremendously loud, crashing chord.
John introduces the main Character that he will be writing about, laying down pertinent details right away so that we know—at least a little bit—of the length and breadth and depth of this Being. He was God. He is God. He was in the beginning with God. Therefore He was pre-existent. Before there was time, there was God.
Before there was time, there was the Logos. The Logos is the main Character of this story that will unfold. He was God; He was with God; He is the Creator of everything that is. He is the One who gave life to Adam and Eve. He is the Power behind every law, force, and energy that exists. He is the One who was there from the beginning.
John then lays the groundwork so that we understand where he is coming from. He introduces words that will play a great part in understanding this Personage: that He is light, that He is truth, that He is reality in contrast to those things that we call "real"—at least physically real—but they are not eternal. They are not age-lasting as He is.
John W. Ritenbaugh
John (Part Three)
Jesus Christ witnessed to the world of the Father and of God's purpose. When we combine John 1 with Hebrews 1, we see that the evidence of Jesus' witness discloses the record of His divine glory, providing a manifestation that renders men without a valid excuse. These three witnesses—John 1, Hebrews 1, and the witness of Jesus Himself—reveal the glory of God.
An illustration from nature may help: By shining, the sun is revealed. Likewise, the Son of God displayed brilliance in His demeanor like the sun in all its glory, and it was recorded by far more witnesses than for any other ancient personality. In His witness, He made God known to mankind.
All of nature depends on the sun's light and radiation. In like manner, because of the light of Jesus' life and the warmth emanating from His message about His way of life, humankind is dependent even in its ignorance. He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Psalm 84:11 reads, “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
It follows, then, that to those who consider carefully, His generosity in service to humanity is overwhelming.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Ten): Christianity's Claims
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing John 1:1:
Matthew 5:17-18