John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” (Jn.1:1-3).

Let us review. The gospel of John is evangelistic in its purpose. John wrote so that his readers would believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, the man from Nazareth, and that by believing they would have eternal life in His name. John began his evangelistic message by taking the reader back into eternity with three powerful statements about Jesus whom he called “the Logos” or “the Word”.

John 1:1 has three clauses, and each clause has the same subject, “the Word”, and the same verb, “was”. We have already taken note of the importance of the verb “was”.  These three statements taken together are the foundation upon which the message of the gospel rests. The Word is described for us in three related ways : the preexistence of the Word (1:1a), the presence of the Word (1:1b), and the person of the Word (1:1c). The three clauses move progressively to define the Word in relation to God, with the third clause providing a climactic statement of the Word as God. (Klink).

In the beginning, that is, when time and creation began, the Word, Jesus, was there. As we have seen, the double emphasis in this first clause is, Jesus is eternal. Since being eternal is an attribute of Divinity, John first clause tells us Jesus is God. In the second clause John said (literal), “and the Word was with the God”, that is, the Word was eternally with the God (Father). We saw that John’s second statement distinguishes the Word from the God (Father). The Word and the God are two distinct eternal Persons. And the Word is in active face to face fellowship and communion with the God. Here is unsearchable mystery : the God-Head is one yet more than one. Klink wrote, “the Word shares the essence of the Father, though the Word is not the person of the Father. The Word is God but is not the Father.” 

This bring us to John’s third climactic clause, “the Word was God.” John’s third clause is absolutely bold and staggering because he was a Jew. For the Jews in John’s time, monotheism was more than a commonly held belief.  It was a conviction that was clung to with fierce tenacity. The Jews knew with unshakeable certainty that there was, there could be, only one God. Deut.6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” In Deut.4:35 & 39 Moses emphasized that there is no other God besides the LORD.

Now, when John said, “the Word was God”, his words must be understood in the light of Jewish pride in monotheism. Even though John regarded monotheism as a central tenet in his religion, yet he could not withhold from the Word the designation “God”. Or we can put it this way : John could not withhold from Jesus, the man from Nazareth, the designation “God”.    

John’s statement and teaching was radical and would have filled the average Jew with rage.  We see an example of this kind of rage in John 5:16-18; 10:33; 19:7. In these verses the Jews said Jesus was making Himself equal to God. As far as they were concerned, that was blasphemy and deserving of death. John would have fully understood that the opening statements in his gospel message could have resulted in a charge of blasphemy against him and the death penalty.

There was a time when men of God were prepared to die for preaching the truth of the exclusivistic gospel of God’s grace in Christ, a truth they knew would be deeply offensive to many. But this offensive gospel is the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. (1Cor.1:24; Rom.1:16).  Today, far too many preachers are peddling (2Cor.2:17) a whitewashed watered down inoffensive gospel because, the claim is that they want to see many “saved”. But are they really “saved”? I would suggest that you read and study carefully Paul’s answer in Gal.1:6-10.  

A translation of John’s third Greek statement in literal order is “and God was the Word.” However, “God” is not the subject of the verb “was”. “God” comes first for emphasis. The subject of the verb is “the Word”. We know this because the article “the” modifies “Word”. This means that “God”, without the article, is the predicate of the verb and the statement is not reversible. Furthermore, if John had written, “the Word was the God”, the statement would have been reversible and a contradiction of the second statement and heretical. Such a reversible third statement would have destroyed the distinctions in the Godhead that was affirmed in the second statement. John’s very precise statements were theologically and absolutely correct. It must also be emphasized that “God” is not an adjective. “God” (theos) is a noun.

“The Word was God”, must not be watered down.  There are those who have translated as follows : “The Word was divine” (theios);  “The Word was deity”; “What God was, the Word was”. Each of these translations fall short because they lack John’s succinctness and force. John said with emphasis, “God (theos) the Word was.”  Keeping in mind the meaning of “was”, (cf. article 1), what John said is that “From eternity the Word was God.” John is affirming the full deity of the Word (Jesus). The apostle Paul concurred when he wrote, “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.” (Col.2:9).

Morris noted, “Nothing higher could be said [about the Word]. All that may be said about God may fitly be said about the Word. This statement should not be watered down…. John is not merely saying that there is something divine about Jesus. He is affirming that Jesus is God, and doing so emphatically as we see from the word order in the Greek…. John lays it down unequivocally that nothing less than “God” will do for our understanding of the Word.”

Let us note that the word theios (divine) appears three times in the N.T. (Acts 17:29: 2Pet.1:3, 4). So, if John wanted to use theios, he could have BUT he did not. Morris noted, “One cannot help feeling that the tendency to write, “the Word was divine”, for theos an ho logos, springs from a reticence to attribute the full Christian position to John.”

Jesus is nothing less than perfect God. This teaching is very clear in the gospel of John. John began his gospel by affirming that the Word (Jesus) is God. (1:1). John ended his gospel by reaffirming that Jesus is God. Jn.20:28, Thomas’ confession to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Jn.1:1-18 is described as John’s prologue. John ended the prologue just as he began, Jesus is God. In vs.18 Jesus is called, “the only begotten God.”

Now, just in case you missed John’s points in vs.1, he repeated all three points in vs.2. John wrote (literal), “This one (that is, the One who is God [third point]), was (eternally) in the beginning (first point) with the God (second point).” Harris noted that “This One”, which is emphatic, can be paraphrased, “This one, and no other, who was God by nature.” Harris added, “vs.2 gathers together the three separate affirmations of vs.1 and declares them all to be true. This Word who was theos was in the beginning with God the Father,”

I repeat what was said before : if you deny that Jesus is the God-Man, you cannot be saved. John made it very clear that those who deny this truth are the antichrist. (1Jn.2:22; 4:3; 2Jn.1:7). John noted in 1Jn.2:18, “many antichrists have appeared.” For the welfare of your own soul, beware of these antichrists and the false gospel they are spreading. This false gospel will not save you. This false gospel will deceive you, give you a false sense of security, and send you into the eternal fires of hell.

 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying,

“To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen.” And the elders fell down and worshiped.  (Rev.5:13-14).