Daily Reading:
John 1:1-4: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
It took John more than three years of time spent living with Jesus to figure out the fullness of who Jesus was. John does not want to keep us waiting to learn the truth, and in three verses he shares what took him so long to know. He wants us to have in our minds from the beginning of his Gospel, the eternal majesty and deity and Creator rights that belong to Jesus Christ.
John starts with the words, In the beginning – where have we heard that before? Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word.” The words “in the beginning” are identical in Greek to the first two words in the Greek Old Testament: That’s not an accident, because the first thing John is going to tell us about is that Jesus is that He created the universe.
Here is what else we are taught by John in regards to Jesus in the very first verse:
the time of his existence (in the beginning/before all time),
(2) the essence of his identity (“the Word was God”),
and (3) His relationship to God (“the Word was with God”).
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
Anything in the category of made, Christ made it. Therefore, Christ was not made. Because before you exist, you can’t bring yourself into being. Christ was not made. That is what it means to be God. “And the Word was God.”
What God had to say to us was not only what Jesus said, but who Jesus was and what he did. His words clarified himself and his work. His self and his work were the main truth God was revealing.
Light is triumphant over darkness (John 1:5).
When John says in verse 5 is that "the light shines in the darkness," he means that the Word has become flesh. Jesus has come into a dark world and is the light of the world.
John gives three reasons why light will triumph over darkness
1.The Light Is the Life of the Son of God (John 1:4).
2. The Life Is the Life of the Creator of All Things (John 1:3).
So, we know that the powers of darkness are not as strong as this life because this life created the powers of darkness. "Without him was not anything made that was made." And no created thing is more powerful than its creator. We cannot use ourselves as an argument of a creator building something stronger than themselves that can overcome us (guns, bombs, etc…) because we took material that was already created. We did not create out of nothing.
3. This Light and Life Is God (John 1:1).