Sunday: In the Beginning—The Divine Logos
Daily Lesson for Sunday 13th of October 2024
Read John 1:1-5. What do these words reveal about the Word, Jesus Christ?
The Gospel of John begins with this amazing thought: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This one beautiful sentence contains a depth of thought that we can barely grasp.
First, the evangelist alludes to the Creation story in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning.” The Word was already there before the beginning of the universe. Thus, John affirms Jesus’ eternal existence.
Next, “And the Word was with God.” In John 1:18, John indicates that He is “in the bosom of the Father.” No matter how we may try to envision what this exactly means, one thing is sure: Jesus and the Father are intimately close.
And then, he says, “And the Word was God.” But how can the Word be with God and at the same time be God? The answer is found in the Greek. Greek has a definite article, “the,” but no indefinite article, “a/an.” What’s important for us, then, is that the Greek definite article, “the,” points to particularity, some particular object or person.
In the phrase “the Word was with God,” the term “God” has the definite article, thus, pointing to a particular individual, the Father. And the Word was with the Father. In the phrase, “and the Word was God,” the term “God” does not have the article, which, in this setting, points to the characteristics of divinity. Jesus is God—not the Father, but He is still the divine Son of God, the second Person of the Godhead.
The apostle verifies this understanding, for John 1:3-4 says that Jesus is the Creator of all things created. Anything that once didn’t exist but then came into existence did so only through Jesus, the Creator God.
“From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father; He was ‘the image of God,’ the image of His greatness and majesty, ‘the outshining of His glory.’ ”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 19.
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Why is the full deity of Christ such an important part of our theology? What would we lose if Jesus were, in any way, a mere created being? Bring your answer to class on Sabbath, and be prepared to discuss why Christ’s eternal deity is so important to our faith. |
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In the beginning...well, there was no beginning for Jesus.
In the beginning was the Word (was = already existed).
Ok, so in our beginning...there was the Word...Jesus.
The Word.
God spoke all things into existence. "Let there be..." "Let us make... (Gen. 1:26)." But when the making of humans actually took place, speaking ceased. God bent down, patted together the clay of the earth, and formed a human, breathing life into him (Gen. 2:7). Quiet. Only breath, and gazing.
Likewise, God took a rib from sleeping Adam and ever so silently, tenderly, shaped that rib into woman (Gen. 2:21-22).
Hello....I love you.... and so much more.... without words. This is in His image.
So all things - bees, and birds, elephants and whales - came to be through God's spoken Word. But none of them speak words. Man and woman were shaped together with the sweat of God's brow. But seldom stop talking. Interesting. Verbal man created through wordless action. Non-verbal animals created through words.
Now wait...before typing a protest reply.... let's see if we find out a precious truth here...if...if this is true that God stopped talking during the actual act of making us (because maybe there was talking and only it was not recorded), what can we discover?...
I'm picturing the passion of God, an intensely intimate moment, beyond forming nouns and verbs, God's whole heart and focus are zeroed in on the formation of Adam,... God is "making love"...we are God's love child....
Ellen White in "The Faith I Live By", p 29.3, says, "After the earth, with its teeming animal and vegetable life, had been called into existence, man, the crowning work of the Creator, and the one for whom the beautiful earth had been fitted up, was brought upon the stage of action....
The crowning work.
From reading my previous blog shares, y'all know that I love words. Words are creative and creation. In expressing with words, there is choice involved, and knowledge, and experience, and faith in what they represent, new horizons.
But...words also are overused and thrown about and they can litter our minds and rest spaces.
So as I contemplate this .....there is a special thing here for me....that Jesus, the Powerful, Creator, Word....is also all of that without speaking....the Word in action...the doing Word...the being Word...the silent Word....
And now my takeaway from this...
Perhaps this is where our testimony is strongest. The silent energy and expression of our love for Jesus flows out of us. A passion for Him beyond mere spoken words. Oh, words have a place and a time, God uses them, Jesus Himself is the first Word...He speaks to us through the Bible, His Word....we tell the gospel story with inspired words....
but also He is forming Himself (the Word) in our hearts, writing Himself in our foreheads (minds)...Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10; 2 Cor. 3:3.; Rev. 7:3. Jesus is to become our being (Gal. 2:20 "It is no longer I who live..."). We are to embody the Word. We are to BE God's Word.
Now I will be quiet ... to sit here wordlessly with the Word.... thanking You, Jesus and heavenly Father, that we can be still together...relishing that I can throw admiring glances at You ...as together we watch the orange leaves You created dance and shimmer on their limbs... thank You that the depth of our relationship is beyond syntax, through the gift of Your Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:26).
We are visiting New England, US, watching the orange, and the yellow, and the red become more and more orange, yellow and red leaves. Thank you for the beautiful word picture and thank you, Jesus for Your gifts.
Hello to you my dear sister Esther Pelletier! and to all my brethren in Christ Jesus...!
Come to think of it, in relation to your context above... what do you think first having in mind that Jesus Christ is the word and everything was created/came to existence through the word of God (who in this case is JESUS) now He was the one doing the assembling work then now when it came to the creation of man is when The Trinity came together and made man...?
I guess it may not make sense but anyone having an answer / convincing statement that outrides this may share please...
NB// i'm not right this but just an afterthought and i'm right to be corrected please... thanks
Open question to all.
Hello dear Brother Benjamin,
Thank you for your greetings and response. I'm not sure if I clearly understand your question...perhaps You are wondering if Jesus Christ created all things on His own in 6 days, and then the full Godhead - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - joined together to create human beings?
The Godhead is a mystery, even though we have several texts showing different roles and aspects of function. I'm thinking of 2 Cor. 13:14, for example:
Is Jesus the only member of the Godhead who displays grace? Is the Father the only source of love? Is the Holy Spirit the only person of the Godhead who brings us into fellowship? We would answer "no" 3x. Rather, each of these phrases shows us aspects of God's character demonstrated by the three persons of the Godhead. Jesus shows us His grace in becoming human and dying for us, however all 3 members of the Trinity gave all of themselves in securing our salvation. The Father shows His love in sending a part of Himself to Earth, but His only begotten Son co-created the salvation plan and was more than willing to come, and God joined to Mary in conception through the act of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings us into fellowship with God and with each other, though He acts through the resurrection power of the Son and authority of the Father and Son.
I've heard the Trinity likened to 3 strands of a rope or yarn....they function together and we call them singularly...we say "rope" and "yarn" meaning the 3 strands: We don't say "ropes" and "yarns". God is 3 and all three always exist and act together.
Therefore, to answer your question, my understanding is that Creation week involved all 3 members of the Godhead all of the time and for all of creation. All 3 created everything, including humans. Perhaps when the Bible speaks of all things created through the Word it refers to Jesus as being, from all eternity, the "form" of God...He is the one who takes shape and He is the sound of the words. Jesus appears to Joshua as the Commander of the Army, to Moses in the burning bush, and to us as a baby in Bethlehem. Jesus is God incarnate (in physical form), forever and always. God the Father and the Holy Spirit do not take form (John 4:24; Col. 1:15).
These are just my thoughts, dear brother, which may or may not be accurate. There will be so much revealed when we meet God face-to-face (1 Cor. 13:12; Rev. 22:3-4).
I think the Trinity created man.in Gen1:26 God said let us create man in our own image according to our own likeness.The words us and our says it all that the creation of man was by the Trinity.
This makes me think of when I am being creative, I get into "the zone" and I am quiet, there are no words, I am caught up in the moment of what I am creating, and I am enjoying every moment. Maybe we experience a little bit of "God in us" when we create.
Amen Esther. However, an in-depth study will reveal that all creation was done the same way, and the only difference is man having the image of God (This makes the difference between man and animals). The Bible does not say God bent down. He is not that limited. There is more on a creation story we learn how God created by calling Lazarus from the grave when he was already decomposing. We were called into existence.
Profound, yet willing to be quiet.
In Genesis 1:1-3 we discover three actors in creation: (1) God, (2) the Word und (3) the Spirit. Capitals I have used to emphasize the trinitarian action in cooperation of creation. God is the Speaker, Christ is the Word, the Spirit (brooding, moving, hatching) is seen in the Outcome of creating action.
In John 1:1-3 God, the Father; God, the Son are both revealed in cooperating action of creation. The Spirit as trinitarian supplement (so to humanly speak) occurs in the creative miracle of the new birth as entrance into the kingdom of God, which amounts to another kind or creation. (John 3:3-5) The invisible Spirit is visible only by the outcome of His creating action. (John 3:6-8) His personality is revealed in personal qaulity-actions. (John 14:26; 16:8-15) God is love, and love exists in plurality only. (1 John 4:7-11)
When I toured the scandinavian country as student literature evangelist even in winter time in ice and snow and tent, I had to love myself in order to survive. After I got married, there was a plurality in family life that made survival in this sinful life more endurable. Love is not alone: neither in the Trinity nor in the earthly family.
I found a Bible that only has 13 verses instead of 14 verses like all the other versions. Yet it still does not leave out the Trinity. It just puts the two short texts of verse 13 with verse 12 to make 13 verses of 2 Corinthians 13:13 LEB, instead of 2 Corinthians 13:14 NKJV. Be that as it may, it does express the Trinity of our 2nd of 28 beliefs. I also get support of the Trinity from 2 Corinthians 1:21-22. Take a look at the slide in your memory bank beneath your skull of John 3:16.
Now for the rest of the story.
Yes I believe in
the Godhead. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The word Trinity is not in the Bible, but neither is the word agape. Yet there is agape love in Romans 8:35.
Good day
Jesus said to the woman at the well in John 4:23-24. "The hour is coming and now is when the TRUE worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him. God is a Spirit and they that worship him MUST worship in spirit and in truth." (emphasis added)
What a great start to the Gospel of John.
It is one of those combinations of substance and mystery to be intriguing. It is a bit like a maths problem that you can solve only to find it opens up other ideas to explore and develop.
When I solved my first differential equation, I was excited by the power of the method, only to discover that there were a lot more differential equations of varying levels of complexity to explore and apply.
In many respects John provides us with the differential equation of spiritual development. It is not the solution that is important, but the application.
When I married Carmel, I married both substance and mystery. The substance was the groundwork for the marriage but the mystery is still there after 56 years, still intriguing and captivating.
Does the Word/Flesh do that to us in our spiritual lives?
Why is the full deity of Christ such an important part of our theology? What would we lose if Jesus were, in any way, a mere created being?
The deity of Christ is important because it helps us understand that Jesus is God in flesh. No human being is qualified to atone for our sins. It had to take a sinless being to stand in the gap and pay that ultimate price for us. The Lamb had to be spotless, without sin. Jesus was that Lamb.
Indeed He was fully God, yet fully man. Had Jesus lived in His divinity then He would have a huge advantage over mankind because we don't have divine "super powers". I say Jesus had a huge disadvantage in that He set aside His divinity and lived in His humanity. For Christ to live in His divinity then Satan could cry that He had an unfair advantage. Jesus lived totally dependent on His Father to be victorious against the enemy. The same advantage that we have available to us. We don't have inherit divine "super powers".
The full deity of Christ is a cornerstone of Christian theology for several significant reasons:
1.Atonement and Salvation: For Christians, salvation hinges on Jesus' ability to atone for humanity's sins. If Jesus were merely a created being and not fully God, His sacrifice might not suffice to cover the sins of humanity or have the infinite value required for such an act. His divine nature ensures that His sacrifice is sufficient, once and for all, for the forgiveness of sins.
2.Revelation of God: Jesus as fully God provides the most complete and tangible revelation of God to humans. If Jesus were not divine, then He could not fully reveal God's nature and character. The belief in His deity affirms that in knowing Jesus, one knows God.
3.Union with Humanity: The doctrine of the Incarnation, which teaches that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, maintains that God understands and redeems human experience from within it. Jesus, being both divine and human, bridges the gap between God and humanity, highlighting the closeness and accessibility of God.
4.Worship: Christians worship Jesus as God. If Jesus were not fully divine, worshiping Him would be idolatrous, which goes against one of the core tenets of monotheism. The full deity of Christ justifies and validates the acts of worship directed towards Him.
5.Trinitarian Theology: The deity of Christ is essential for maintaining the doctrine of the Trinity, which posits one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If Jesus were a mere creature, this doctrine would collapse, significantly altering core Christian understandings of God's nature.
The loss of acknowledging Christ's full deity affects the entire foundation of Christian belief and practice, impacting how God is perceived, how salvation is understood, and how faith is expressed.
Ameeen Simeon, thanks a lot for explanation
Today's lesson goes into a long and complicated explanation as to how the Word can be God and be with God. To me its just as easy as saying that the congressman from Florida is a congressman and with congress when congress is in session. Its not complicated at all. Or how Messi is a Argentina football team member and is with the team.Why are we wanting to make it complicated?
Because that's what humans do. 🤔😉😆
Im more convinced that Jesus is divine,all be blessed.
I appreciate being able to have both a simple illustration of how the Word can be God and be with God, as well as the more "complicated" explanation, which really is delving into the deep theological basis that allows us to have a correct simple illustration. Praise God for revealing these mysteries to us and helping us to understand them through various means.
As humans, we needed something/someone who will be able to redeem us from our sinful nature. A mere human being would not accomplish what Jesus did because they would also be needing a savior. We needed the creator Himself to come and redeem his creation. We sometimes take it for granted that God laid down his life for us, what manner of love is that? An eternal KING died on the cross of shame so we can be free from the bondage of sin. The mere fact that God had to lay down his life so we can live shows fearfuly we were made and how important we are to God. What a privillege!
I am just lost in the wonder and the awe of it all - Jesus, the transcendent One; there before the beginning of time; the One without Whom nothing was made that was made; that it is this same Jesus who stands by my side and Who died such a terrible death; endured so much for me; for us! Thank You, Jesus!! What else can I say, but thank You!
This subject has baffled me. The comments on this subject/ page has made it a lot clearer. I now have a better understanding, by Esthers use of the rope/yarn explanation. Lord help me to accept the things I cannot change or understand.
Good evening everyone:
What our memory verse implies is that prior to the creation of anything, before heaven was made, prior to the creation of a single angel, before anything animate or inanimate was made, that in the very very beginning of the universe that there was first a Word, a conversation, a plan that was passed between the Word of God, and God the Father. That initial Word proposed how they would order the universe, how they would reveal how deep is the love, not only between God the Father, and God the Son, but also between the God Head, and all subsequent created living beings.
Every subsequent act of God is an outflowing of that initial conversation that these infinite beings had in the very beginning. In perfect harmony, these Three Divine Beings outlined the unfolding of their divine plan to reveal their infinite love to every created being.
"To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. Jude 25
This explains why only God could atone for our sins and why the diety of Christ is such an important part of the Christian's theology.