Sunday Devotional: John 1:3

All things came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be that has come to be.

In the first two verses of chapter one, John established that the Word, Jesus, is separate from God while sharing in His divine nature. Jesus is God, and yet there is only one God. Jesus’s divinity, however, is not only manifest in who he is but also in what he does. John bore witness to this while the incarnate Son walked the earth, healing the sick, raising the dead, taking dominion over the weather, and fulfilling Messianic prophecy. But Jesus’s divine activity goes back well before his incarnation.

The opening phrase of John 1:1, “in the beginning,” recalls the opening phrase of Genesis 1:1. So the first readers of John’s Gospel would already have Genesis 1 in mind as they read of the Word existing from the beginning with God. But Genesis 1:1 doesn’t simply say that God has always existed. It assumes God’s existence, but the point of Genesis 1:1 is to introduce the main theme of the first few chapters: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

John 1:3 picks up on this theme of creation and, in another parallel to Genesis 1, speaks of the Word, Jesus, as the one through whom all things came to be. Throughout this verse, John uses the Greek verb γίνομαι (ginomai). This verb has a range of meanings centered around the idea of existence or occurrence: to be, to become, to come into being, or to happen. The point, made quite emphatically (which I’ve tried to bring out in my translation), is that there is nothing that has come into being, nothing that has been created, that was created apart from the Word. Genesis 1 points to God as the author of creation; John 1 further identifies Jesus as the agent of creation.

Paul speaks similarly of Jesus in Colossians 1:16, though there Paul uses the verb κτίζω (ktizo). This verb also means “to create” or “to bring into existence” though I think there is a nuance of meaning restricted to the physical. This is not a contradiction of John 1:3. Paul is crediting the creation of the material world to Jesus, so he’s echoing the same truth. John’s use of γίνομαι opens up the range of things for which Jesus was the agent of creation beyond merely the physical to things like reason, justice, love, and the supernatural world. All that we know of as reality exists because God the Father through God the Son brought it into existence.

What John is saying in verse 3 truly is a remarkable statement, especially when coupled with verse 14. All that we know in the universe, every star and planet, every beast and insect, every physical and metaphysical law or concept, was made through the Word. And this Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Everything that exists was made through the Word, God the Son, and this Word took on flesh to dwell with his creation.

Lest we mistake or misunderstand what John is saying, he says the same thing in both a positive and negative way. First positively: All things came to be through him. Then negatively: Apart from him not one thing came to be that has come to be. John really doesn’t want us to miss this point. Jesus is the one through whom the trees were made from which were fashioned both his manger and his cross. The tomb from which he emerged risen from the dead was made from a rock that owed its existence to his hands.

This is the God we worship: the God who entered into His own creation to redeem it. May that be the meditation of our hearts this week.