John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him. Without him, nothing came to be that came to be. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not defeated it.
Who is Jesus?
Echoing the opening words of the Bible, John answers that question by taking us back to the creation of all things; In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 The God who eternally existed made all things. God, uncreated and existing outside of time, made time, matter, space, and energy. God created all things… Without him, nothing came to be that came to be.
How did God create the world?
By his Word, God created everything that came to be. God created ex nihilo, out of nothing. And God said, “Let there be light.” Genesis 1:3 Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image…” Genesis 1:26. The Word, already existing outside of time before anything came to be, is the source of all life. By his Word God spoke everything into existence. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
This account of creation completely contradicted the understanding of John’s Greek contemporaries. While there are differing variations on this theme, the Greeks believed that in the beginning the god Nyx, a big bird with dark wings laid an egg from which the god Chaos was born. From the union of Chaos and Nyx, Erebus was born. Erebus took Nyx, his mother as his wife and through a series of their offspring mating with each other the earth and mankind were eventually born.
While the Greek creation account might sound far fetched to our ears it is no more absurd than the understanding of our contemporaries. Today many are taught and believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, spontaneously coalesced into something. Then that something exploded eventually creating our current universe. And then finally the elements from that explosion coalesced into life.
Ask yourself, are you really nothing more than a cosmic accident coughed up by nothing, hurtling through time on a rock in the vastness of space?
Both John and many modern scientists answer, “No.”
There is vastly greater evidence of design than the supposition that the vast panoply of nature should be the incidental consequence of numerous random genetic mutations…The genetic code and language require a higher intelligence to devise the code and draw up the syntax. There is nothing intrinsic in the chemical molecules strung out along the Double Helix to explain why they should carry a specific genetic message…Just as it requires human intelligence to produce anything with high information content, whether books, or dictionaries, or music scores, so by analogy it would require a higher intelligence to formulate the genetic code. James Le Fanu, Why Us? Pantheon
What is that higher intelligence that first conceived and then ordered the code of life?
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17
Before time began God the Son, Jesus Christ, conceived of, designed, and by his Word, created the cosmos. In writing the genetic code God created life. God created men and women in his image and then, as we will see in John 1:14, the Word revealed himself to his creatures, by coming into the world.
The Word became flesh, and lived among us.
The light of God’s truth shines in the darkness exposing the subtle lies of deceiver of the whole world, Revelation 12:9, and exposing the folly of our creation myths. The light offers mankind good news. You are made in the image of God. Each individual has intrinsic value. You have been given life and light by a loving Creator.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.