John 1 – The Word was God
It’s about time I gave you an update on the “memorize the Gospel of John” project!
The bad news is that I have fallen behind – only having memorized about half of what my goal was.
The irony is that I’ve actually found John easier so far than Philippians – I’m thinking it’s because so far the verse length is shorter.
Anyway, I’m carrying on and would like to catch up, but for the time being I’m just trying to keep up with a normal schedule.
The Prologue of John is a masterpiece of literature, describing eternal truths and God’s invasion of light into a dark world with expert skill.
Unfortunately, a lot of the discussion of John 1 has been highjacked by the decision of the Watchtower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) to render John 1:1 as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.”
If you bring up the topic with a Jehovah’s Witness, you’re likely to hear a long speech about why the Greek supports adding “a” before the word “god”.
But you don’t need to go to the Greek to be suspicious (to say the least) of such claims, never mind that Greek scholars from around the world would disagree with this highly unusual version of the verse.
Earlier this month this chapter was mentioned in passing in a Sunday service as we learned about the Biblical teaching on the Father, Son and Spirit. Standing on the foundation of the monotheism of the Old Testament, it’s reasonable to ask – is the Word (Jesus – see John 1:14) a false god or a true God (1Thess 1:9; Jer 10:10)?
It’s clear that John doesn’t think Jesus is a false god. And as every good Jew, he would know how many true gods there are (count them on 1 finger).
The Father, Son and Spirit cannot be three gods – they are one God. One Being, three Persons.
The context of the passage and the Bible as a whole overwhelmingly support this conclusion as well – and the correct translation of John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Recently I read an article pointing to verse three: All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
This of course points to Jesus as Creator with the Father (remembering that God created the world by Himself – see Isaiah 44:24). But someone might say,”Oh, that just means the Word was created first, and then everything else was made.”
But this is not a possible explanation, if you take a moment (or a few minutes, in my case!) to wrap your mind around the language. I’ll let you read the article yourself rather than explaining further.
The Greek is important, but it’s not necessary to know Greek to realize that John was claiming that the Word-made-flesh was God Himself.
But for an introduction to the Greek, check out John 1:1, “The word was a god” (and in Spanish here). More excellent resources can be found here.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are ubiquitous here. As light shone into the world when Jesus came, may light shine into their hearts, and the hearts of many who do not yet worship the One True God.
