Day One Jesus and the Eternal God - John 1:1-2

When you download a large file from the internet, a program will often compress the data. It shows up in as an icon on your screen with a zipper on the front. When you click it, out come all the contents that have been 'stuffed' inside! Its a packet of information, just waiting to explode! Well that's the way it is with the first two verses in John's Gospel - just seventeen words in both the original Greek and my English translations - but when you 'open it up,' is full of rich information that is exploding with insight and implications!

The first image that comes to mind in opening this information packet is the image of a bridge. A bridge connects or joins two places together over something that separates them. When John was writing, he had two groups of people in mind - Jews and Greeks. He needed to find a bridge - a conceptual bridge - that would connect these two disparate cultures with the message about Jesus he wanted to convey. To do so, he chose a word that had meaning in both cultures - the word...Word!

When you and I read, "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times...", we immediately think of Charles Dickens. When John's Jewish readers read, "In the beginning..." they immediately thought of the Book of Genesis. And in the Book of Genesis, the Word was nothing less than God in creative action - seven times in the first chapter of Genesis - 6,9,11,14,20,24 and 26 - check it out for yourself.

For the Greeks, Word was the logos - the principle that shaped, ordered and directed the universe. One of their philosophers, a Jewish teacher in North Africa, Philo, used many images to convey meaning of logos to the Greek mind - one of which was the 'captain and pilot of the universe.'

For the Jews, with their strict monotheism, the idea that the Word would actually be expressed in a person would challenge their very understanding of the nature of God. For the Greeks, the idea that the Word was more than an abstract concept would challenge their understanding.

Stop for a moment and reflect on this first little bundle of information. Put yourself in the ''shoes" of John's readers for a moment. How would you respond to his message in the use of this conceptual bridge, about the person he will ultimately refer to in verse 14, when he writes, 'And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us'?" In what way would it challenge your understanding of the nature of God, of the nature of reality?

There's a second image that occurs to me in unpacking this bundle - its the word boundary. John says that the Word was in the beginning. Now there's a mind-stretcher! Physicists are spending billions of dollars to build particle accelerators in hopes of discovering what happened in the moment of creation, the beginning. While they are getting closer and closer, there is a boundary that has to be overcome - the boundary of technology, the limits of power, etc. And one of the most important questions lurking beyond the boundary is this - "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

Physicists are attempting to overcome this physical boundary in their attempts to understand the forces released at the moment of creation. However they face another boundary. If you ask them what existed one nanosecond before that moment, they really can't say. But that's when we can begin speaking about Jesus - the Word. John is claiming that he shares God's eternity! And he is the reason, the creative activity of God that explains the why behind creation.

As you read through John's Gospel, keep in mind John's claim as to just who the person of Jesus really is!

The final word that comes to mind in reading this information packet is the word baffling. John writes, the Word was with God. In the original language, the strong idea is that the Word was 'face-to-face' with God - a distinct existence in an intimate relationship. John's final thought is that there is no distinction in essence between God and the Word. Both are distinct, both are equal. The Word is not all there is to God and there is more to God than either the Father or the Son. If I think about this mathematically, 1+1 does not equal 2 - it equals 1. And I find that baffling! John is clearly inferring the mystery of the Triune nature of God, which will become even more clear as we read through the Gospel.

Bruce Milne, in his wonderful commentary say this about the Word. God himself has come to us in Christ, who is the Word. Christ is always at the center of our approach to God and our thinking and relating to God. These two verses point to the supremacy of Christ, whom we are to worship without cessation, obey without hesitation, love without reservation and serve without interruption. To Him be all glory and honor forever.