John, to my dear friends in Christ; in John 1:1-3 we have an awesome promise from God. We see the Apostle John beginning his Gospel by showing us that Jesus is God. In fact, as we proceed through the Gospel of John we will see the whole Gospel is about the deity of Jesus Christ. When we study and analyze God's Word we need to carefully study why a passage is in His Word and why the passage is worded the way it is worded and that's what I will try to do. Be patient with me as I take my time in these first passages to lay the foundation for the Gospel of John and I learn to teach to you the logic of God's Word as well as the spiritual insight God gives to me.

In Verse 1  we have "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We will analyze the first part of the verse first, "In the beginning was the Word". The Greek word for beginning is (arche) which stands for beginning, first, principle, etc. This combined with "In the" gives us a fixed position in time. What kind of beginning is this? First we know God has always existed from verses like Psalm 90:2, "Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." Since God always existed this "beginning" cannot be the beginning of eternity, since eternity has no beginning. Now if we look ahead to the third verse, "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." we see a description of creation. God started the creation in Genesis 1 so we know from Genesis creation had a beginning. From this, if the Word created all things we can only assume we are talking about creation, hence, the beginning being talked about is creation. Also, from the wording of the verse we cannot assume that the Word was a creation, only that the Word existed some time before creation.

In the second part of the sentence we see that the "Word was with God ". The Greek word for with is (pros) which means not to just exist at the same time as but to be at the side of or close to. So we understand that the Word was at the side of or close to God in the beginning. The idea is that there are two separate elements "Word" and "God". It doesn't say God spoke the Word, but shows us they are two separate and distinct elements that are together.

Now the most interesting part of the sentence, in the third part of the sentence "and the Word was God". The Greek word for God is (theos) and is the same word used for God in the second part of the sentence as well as over 1000 other times in the new testament. Also, the direct Greek reading is interesting to, because it says "and God was the Word". As far as I can tell the word theos is translated only as god, gods, or a few times as godly. By the structure we can only interpret the word as God, and since we know there is only one God from Deuteronomy 4:35, "To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him." and other scripture, then we can safely assume the Word can only be the God that existed for all time because John doesn't believe in other gods. Also, when we reach the third verse we will see that the word can only be the God of eternity. >From this  we know that the Word existed not only at the beginning of creation but for all time. Also, there are many references to Jesus being the Word of God; 1 John 1:1, "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life"; Revelation 19:13, "He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God."; and others. We can see by this part of the sentence that the Word of God is God, and we know Jesus is the Word of God, then by putting the two together we know Jesus is God.

And as if the first verse wasn't enough, in verse 2  we have, "He was in the beginning with God.". Clearly letting us know the fact that the Word (Jesus Christ) was with God during the time of creation.

Verse 3 gives us, "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. ". No mysteries in the Greek language here, this is the literal meaning. This describes creation where all things come into existence through the Word and nothing exists that wasn't created by the Word. Since we know God created all things from Genesis 1-2, then again, Jesus is God. It is interesting to note in Genesis 1-2 God speaks creation into existence. This makes it easy for see the logic and connect the creation spoken into existence by God in Genesis is the same creation brought into being by the Word or Jesus in John 1:1-3. Again, this verse confirms and proves our initial assumption that the Word is God and since Jesus is the Word, He is God.

I took the long way around to try to prove to you one glorious promise to us, Jesus is God, and as you may already know and we will learn later on, Jesus needed to be God in order to atone for our sins, awesome isn't it?

Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for myself and my friends that we always remember Jesus is God, without which we have no atonement for our sin, in Jesus name I Pray, Amen.

God's Many Blessings to You,