We start a new series in our daily meditations today. For the next three weeks, I will be answering the question, who is Jesus? We live in a time when the god of this world, Satan, is trying to undermine basic Bible teaching as to who the Scriptures say Jesus is. Let's start with the Gospel of John and his opening testimony:
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1-3).
John gets straight to the point: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2). Jesus was not only from the beginning, but He was also "in the beginning." He was and is eternal for He was before all creation and had no beginning and will have no end (Hebrews 7:3). This thought also tells us that Jesus was not "in" God, He was and is with God (v. 2), meaning that He has a separate personality. The one God has three distinct personalities, and yet the Word was God. Jesus came as God revealed.
Why would He be called “the Word?” In another place, Christ is called the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 22:13), the beginning and the end of the alphabet in the Greek language. God’s chosen form of language is the person of His Son. The Scriptures are clear that Jesus is God and fully self-existent with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ was the agent of the creation of all things: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). Writing to the Colossian church under the inspiration of the Spirit, Paul said something similar, and yet takes the thought further:
16For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16-17).
Not only did Christ create all things but also every quark, atom, and molecule of the whole created universe is held together by Christ’s power. R. Kent Hughes writes about this:
There are about 100 billion stars in the average galaxy, and there are at least one hundred million galaxies in known space. Einstein believed that we have scanned with our largest telescopes only one billionth of theoretical space, and he made this observation over six decades ago. This means that there is probably something like 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in space (ten octillion). How many is that? 1,000 thousands = a million; 1,000 million = a billion; 1,000 billions = a trillion; 1,000 trillions= a quadrillion; 1,000 quadrillions = a quintillion; 1,000 quintillions = a sextillion; 1,000 sextillions = a septillion; 1,000 septillions = an octillion. So ten octillions are a ten with twenty-seven zeros behind it. And Jesus created them all! Not only is He the Creator of the macrocosm of the universe but also of the microcosm in the inner universe of the atom. The text in Colossians explains that He holds the atom and its inner and outer universe together (“in Him all things hold together”).[1]
The eternal Creator spoke the worlds into being through the Word of God—the Lord Jesus. Eight times in the Book of Genesis, chapter one, we read the words, "And God said." Each day of creation, God spoke, and the creation was brought into being, that is the power of the Lord Jesus. This thought that He was in the beginning of the creation and that through Him all things were made shows up in two other places apart from the above two references. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, “God…created all things through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3:9). Then again, in the book of Hebrews, the writer states that God, “has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2). Jesus is God in the flesh. Keith Thomas
To look at this passage in more depth, go to the Home Page and click on the All Studies box, then click the Gospel of John. Click on study 1; The Word Was God (John 1:1-18).
[1] R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word Series. John: That You May Believe. Published by Crossway, 1999. Page 17.