The Word Was God

The Hard Texts · Article 1 of 13

No verse is quoted to us more often. When we say that there is one God, the Father, and that Jesus is the man he anointed, someone opens a Bible to the first page of John and reads it aloud: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). For many readers that settles it. For others, especially those who grew up reading “a god” in this verse, it is where the questions began.

This series takes the texts most often quoted against our faith and answers them from Scripture. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” (John 17:3). John 1 does not contradict those words. Read in its own setting, it confirms them.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), current eBible.org edition, checked word for word. The WEB prints God’s name as Yahweh. Notes on the Hebrew and Greek are at the end.

Our Case, Stated Plainly

One God made all things by his word. “By Yahweh’s word, the heavens were made: all their army by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalm 33:6). “For he spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood firm.” (Psalm 33:9). Yahweh is the one “who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24).

John begins where Genesis begins. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). “God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). John’s Word is God’s own word, the word by which he spoke the world into being.

That word became a man. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1:14). John does not say a second person entered a body. He says the Word became flesh: Jesus of Nazareth, conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary (Luke 1:35), the man who could say, “The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:24).

John tells us what to believe about Jesus. “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31). Jesus calls himself “a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God” (John 8:40).

Our conclusion, stated at the start: John 1:1-3 speaks of God’s own word, wisdom and purpose, through which he made all things and which became flesh in Jesus. It does not teach a second divine person, and it does not teach a god beside God.

A Fair Question

So here is the question for this article: What does John 1:1-3 say about the Word, and does it teach that Jesus personally existed before he was born?

We hold one rule. Scripture answers the question, and we believe what it says without changing or adding to it. When we take a step beyond the words, we label it our conclusion, so that you can test it.

The Text in Its Setting

Read the opening of John whole before reading any one line of it:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.” (John 1:1-5).

John then introduces a man: “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.” (John 1:6). The light “was coming into the world” (John 1:9). Then: “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognize him.” (John 1:10). Some received him: “to them he gave the right to become God’s children” (John 1:12). And then: “The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). The prologue closes: “No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.” (John 1:18).

Three things about the setting are explicit.

First, John writes so that his readers will believe something specific about Jesus: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31).

Second, the name Jesus Christ first appears in verse 17: “For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17). Before verse 14 the prologue speaks of the Word, the life and the light. The word Son first appears in English in verse 14, and the Greek of that verse has no noun for Son (see the Notes).

Third, the opening words are the opening words of the Bible (Genesis 1:1). John does not cite Genesis here, so this is a canonical connection we see, not one John spells out. But the echo is unmistakable: a beginning, creation, light and darkness.

The Word in the Hebrew Scriptures

Before John wrote, Israel already knew a great deal about God’s word. God creates by speaking. Genesis 1 does not describe God working with his hands. It says, “God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). The psalmist draws the conclusion: “By Yahweh’s word, the heavens were made: all their army by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalm 33:6). And again: “For he spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood firm.” (Psalm 33:9).

God’s word goes out and does his will. “so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do.” (Isaiah 55:11). The word is described with active verbs, yet it is Yahweh’s own word. Scripture speaks the same way elsewhere: “He sends his word, and heals them” (Psalm 107:20), and “His word runs very swiftly.” (Psalm 147:15).

God’s wisdom was with him at creation. “By wisdom Yahweh founded the earth. By understanding, he established the heavens.” (Proverbs 3:19). In Proverbs 8, wisdom speaks in the first person: “Doesn’t wisdom cry out? Doesn’t understanding raise her voice?” (Proverbs 8:1). She says, “Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old.” (Proverbs 8:22). “When he established the heavens, I was there.” (Proverbs 8:27). And “then I was the craftsman by his side. I was a delight day by day, always rejoicing before him” (Proverbs 8:30).

These texts are explicit, and they matter for John 1 in one clear way. Long before John, Scripture already spoke of something that was God’s own, that was with him at the beginning, that could be described in personal, active language, and through which he made the world, without making it a second being. Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is called “her” (Proverbs 8:1), and no reader of Proverbs takes her to be a woman standing beside God. She is God’s wisdom, personified.

Our conclusion: this is the background John is drawing on. John does not quote Proverbs 8 or Isaiah 55, but this background keeps John’s opening inside Israel’s Scriptures, where he himself sends us with his first three words.

What the Text Says

Take John 1:1-3 one clause at a time.

“In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). The Word already was when the beginning came. John does not say the Word was made, and he gives no point at which the Word began.

“the Word was with God” (John 1:1). The Word is distinguished from God. The Greek is pros ton theon, with the article: with the God (see the Notes). Whatever the Word is, it is not simply another name for the God it is with.

“the Word was God.” (John 1:1). Yet the Word is also called theos, God. In Greek this third clause puts theos first and leaves off the article (see the Notes). We will come back to this, because the whole debate turns on it.

“All things were made through him.” (John 1:3). The world came to be through the Word. John uses the preposition dia, through. Our conclusion: God is the Creator; the Word is that through which he created. Paul draws the same distinction of prepositions: “one God, the Father, of whom are all things… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

“The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). At a point in time, the Word became something it had not been: flesh, a human life, Jesus of Nazareth. John says “became,” not “put on” or “entered.”

What the text does not say is just as important.

• It does not say the Son was with God in the beginning. It says the Word.
• It does not say God the Son, or that there are persons within God. Those phrases are not in John.
• It does not say the Word was a god, or the first thing God created.
• It does not say how the Word was with God, or what kind of existence it had before it became flesh. John does not define the Word.

The Greek of 1:1c, Simply Put

The third clause in Greek is kai theos en ho logos, word for word and God was the Word. Two facts about it are plain.

First, ho logos, the Word, has the article and is the subject. Theos has no article and is the predicate, placed before the verb. Grammarians debate what that placement does: some see emphasis, many see a qualitative sense (what God was, the Word was), and others allow an indefinite sense. If John had written ho theos with the article, the two would be interchangeable: the Word was the God, and the Word would simply be the one he was with a moment earlier. John did not write that.

Second, Greek has no word for a. An English translator has to decide whether a noun without the article should be rendered God, a god, or with an adjective like divine. Grammar marks the options. It does not choose between them.

So the Greek tells us this much: the Word is not the God it was with, and the Word is theos in some real sense. Which sense must come from John and the rest of Scripture.

Our Reading

Our conclusion: John is speaking of God’s own word: his spoken word, his wisdom, his purpose and plan for creation and for his Son. That word was with God in the beginning, as wisdom was “by his side” (Proverbs 8:30). It was God, in the sense that a person’s word is fully theirs: what God says is God speaking, God’s own self-expression, carrying all that he is and purposes. Through that word he made all things, exactly as Genesis 1:3 and Psalm 33:6 say. And in the fullness of time, that word became flesh: a real human being, Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of Mary (Luke 1:35), in whom everything God meant to say was spoken and lived.

On this reading each clause of John 1:1 keeps its full force:

• In the beginning was the Word: God’s word never began; God was never without his word.
• The Word was with God: God’s word is distinguishable from God, as Isaiah 55:11 speaks of it going out and returning.
• The Word was God: not a second God, and not a god, but God’s own self-expression.
• All things were made through him: God spoke, and it was done (Psalm 33:9).
• The Word became flesh: the word did not enter an existing man; it became the man Jesus.

Three lines of Scripture support this reading.

First, Jesus describes his own words this way. “For I spoke not from myself, but the Father who sent me gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak.” (John 12:49). “The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:24). “The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.” (John 14:10). The man Jesus speaks the Father’s word. Our conclusion: he does so because he is that word made flesh.

Second, Hebrews opens with the same movement. “God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). God spoke for centuries; at the end of those days, he spoke in a Son. Our conclusion: that fits a word that became a person, rather than a person who was always the speaker. The same sentence goes on, “through whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2); Article 4, Through Whom He Made the Ages, shows from Hebrews itself that God made the ages with his appointed heir as their goal, and that God alone is the maker (Hebrews 3:4).

Third, John speaks of a life that was with the Father. In his first letter, the eternal life “was with the Father, and was revealed to us” (1 John 1:2). The Greek is the same construction as John 1:1b: en pros ton patera, was with the Father (see the Notes). So the same writer uses was with for something that was with the Father and was then revealed in Jesus. Our conclusion: was with does not by itself make the Word a second person. Trinitarian readers take the life in 1 John 1:2 to be the Son himself, citing 1 John 5:20; but the letter’s own opening speaks of “the Word of life” as that which the apostles heard, saw and touched (1 John 1:1), and was with by itself does not show that what was with the Father was a person.

Our conclusion again, clearly labeled: Jesus did not personally exist before his conception. What existed, and was with God, and was God, was God’s word and plan. That word became flesh in him.

Answering the Trinitarian Reading

At its strongest the Trinitarian reading runs like this. The Word is eternal, because it already was in the beginning. It is personal, because it is with God and is the he of John 1:10-12. It is fully God, because the Word was God, and the missing article only keeps the Word from being identified as the Father. It is the Creator, because “All things were made through him” (John 1:3). John the Baptist adds, “He who comes after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.” (John 1:15). And the lexicon Abbott-Smith lists John 1:1 under a heading of its own, the Divine Word or Logos (see the Notes). We take this seriously, and we answer it from John’s own words.

• God was with God? If the Word is God in the same sense as the God it is with, John has said that God was with God. Trinitarian readers answer with persons, but that word and that idea are not in the text; they are brought to it.
• The prologue ends by distinguishing. “No one has seen God at any time.” (John 1:18). The one who declares God is set against the God no one has seen. Elsewhere Jesus calls himself “a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God” (John 8:40), and John’s purpose is that we believe Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31), not God the Son.
• The he of John 1:10. The verse continues the light of verses 4-9: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4). “The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.” (John 1:9). Then, “He was in the world” (John 1:10). The Greek pronoun is masculine because logos is masculine, so the grammar fits it as well as him (see the Notes). Our conclusion: the he of 1:10 is God’s word and light, through which the world was made, coming into the world in Jesus, who says, “I have come as a light into the world” (John 12:46). The world did not recognize God’s word when it stood before them in flesh.
• He was before me. John the Baptist explains himself in rank: Jesus is the one “who is preferred before me” (John 1:30), the one “whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to loosen.” (John 1:27). The Greek of 1:15 and 1:30 is protos mou en, he was first of me, and protos can mark rank as well as time (see the Notes). Trinitarian readers reply that a reason of rank repeats the claim. But the Gospel itself states the Baptist’s view as rank: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30). Our conclusion: he was first of me names Jesus’ place in God’s order as the reason he has surpassed John.
• Through whom are all things. Paul writes, “one God, the Father, of whom are all things… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The same verse makes the Father the source. And Paul shows how far all things reaches when he speaks of Jesus: “it is evident that he is excepted who subjected all things to him” (1 Corinthians 15:27), and the Son “will also himself be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Our conclusion: the Lord Jesus is the one through whom God carries out his purpose, the new creation included: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation… all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Colossians 1 is weighed in Article 6.
• The lexicon. Lexicons record how scholars have read a passage; they are not Scripture. Abbott-Smith’s heading for John 1:1 reflects the reading under debate. The same entry lists the ordinary sense, the word of God, citing John 10:35 (see the Notes), and Scripture itself defines God’s word by its use (Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 55:11).

Answering the Jehovah’s Witness Reading

The New World Translation renders 1:1c the Word was a god. At its strongest the case is this. Greek has no word for a, and translators do supply it when a noun lacks the article. The WEB itself does so in Acts: the people of Malta “said that he was a god” (Acts 28:6), where the Greek theon has no article (see the Notes). The Word is distinguished from the God it is with. Jesus calls the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3). Scripture can call others gods: “I said, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High.” (Psalm 82:6). On this reading the Word is a mighty spirit, God’s first creation, through whom he made everything else.

We share the conviction that the Father alone is the true God, and we say this gently, because many of our readers once read a god in their own Bibles and believed it sincerely. But this reading does not fit Israel’s Scriptures.

• No god formed. “Before me there was no God formed, neither will there be after me.” (Isaiah 43:10). “I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. Besides me, there is no God.” (Isaiah 45:5). “There is no god with me.” (Deuteronomy 32:39). A second, lesser god standing beside God at creation is the one thing these texts rule out.
• No created helper. Yahweh “who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24).
• Psalm 82 does not rescue it. The judges there are called gods because “the word of God came” to them (John 10:35), as Moses was made “as God to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:1). They are human beings who bore God’s word and authority, not a spirit creature who made the world.
• Nothing was made without the Word. The Word is not among the things made (John 1:3). Our conclusion: the Word is not a creature, and God’s word never was.

So the JW reading is right that the Word is not the God, but wrong about what the Word is.

The Socinian Reading

Some who also believe that God is one person, the Father, and that Jesus began at his conception, read the prologue differently. They take the Word as a title of the man Jesus, who spoke God’s word, and the beginning as the beginning of the gospel, not of Genesis. Mark’s Gospel opens, “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1). John’s first letter speaks of “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes… concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). On this reading, the all things made through him are the new creation: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation… Behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

This reading has a real strength: it keeps Jesus a man from start to finish, and it notices that John’s letter uses the beginning for the start of the apostles’ witness. Its defenders read became flesh as the man Jesus entering a mortal, humble life, so they do not think verse 14 counts against them.

Our answer: “All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3). That is the language of the first creation, and John 1:10 says the world was made through him. The prologue moves from the beginning, to the light shining in darkness, to John the Baptist, to the Word becoming flesh. If the Word were already the man Jesus at verse 1, the statement that “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14) would have nothing to say. Our conclusion: the new-creation reading does not fit John 1:3, 10 and 14, and we do not take it.

Objections Answered

Objection: the Word is called he, so it must be a person. In Greek every noun has gender, and pronouns agree with it. Logos is masculine, so the pronoun that refers to it is masculine, whatever logos means. Proverbs calls wisdom “her” (Proverbs 8:1) for the same kind of reason, and no one takes wisdom to be a woman. Translators who already believe the Word is a person print him; that is a translation choice, not a word on the page. Once the Word has become flesh, John rightly speaks of Jesus himself, and John 1:11-12 moves toward him: the word God spoke is now a man who can be received or rejected.

Objection: nothing was made without the Word, so it cannot be a creature. We agree. God’s word is not a creature. That objection is fatal to the JW reading, and it does not touch ours.

Objection: Revelation calls Jesus the Word of God. It does: “His name is called “The Word of God.”” (Revelation 19:13). Our conclusion: the returning King bears that name because in him God’s word is fully spoken. It is a name given to the man who is coming, the same John who says the Word became flesh.

Objection: if the Word is only God’s plan, what does was with God add? It says what Proverbs 8 says of wisdom, and what Isaiah 55 says of God’s word: God’s word is his own, and also goes out from him. Something can be truly God’s and be spoken of as with him.

Objection: John never defines the Word. He does not, and so every reader supplies a definition from somewhere. We supply ours from where John’s first words send us: Genesis 1, Psalm 33, Isaiah 55 and Proverbs 8, and from Jesus’ own words about speaking the Father’s word (John 12:49; 14:24). Our conclusion: no definition is closer to Scripture than that one.

Objection: Proverbs 8 says wisdom was possessed or created, so it describes Jesus as a creature. Jehovah’s Witness publications, and some early readers, have argued this. The Hebrew verb in Proverbs 8:22, qanah, means to get, acquire in its ordinary use (see the Notes). But more important, Proverbs 8 is about wisdom, and Scripture never says Jesus was the wisdom of Proverbs 8 as a pre-human being. Paul says, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and the same verse calls him God’s power. God’s wisdom and power are seen in the crucified Messiah. That fits our reading: what God planned in wisdom is now shown in a man.

Summary of Tested Claims

1. John 1:1 says the Word was in the beginning, was with God, and was God. Explicit.
2. The Word is distinguished from the God it was with, and is called theos without the article. Explicit, from the Greek.
3. God created by his word, and his word and wisdom were with him at creation. Explicit (Genesis 1:3; Psalm 33:6; Proverbs 3:19; 8:27-30).
4. John 1:1 echoes Genesis 1:1. Canonical connection, seen in the words, not stated by John.
5. The Word became flesh. Explicit (John 1:14).
6. There is no God formed before or after Yahweh, and none beside him. Explicit (Isaiah 43:10; 45:5; Deuteronomy 32:39).
7. Therefore the Word is not a god. Our conclusion, drawn from claims 1 and 6.
8. The he of John 1:10 continues the light of 1:4-9, and the pronoun agrees with logos. Explicit; that it refers to God’s word coming into the world in Jesus is our conclusion.
9. The Word is God’s own word and plan, which became the man Jesus; Jesus did not personally exist before his conception. Our conclusion.

Verify It Yourself

• Read John 1:1-18 in one sitting, and mark every place Jesus or Son first appears.
• Read Psalm 33:6-9, Isaiah 55:10-11 and Proverbs 8:22-31, and ask what each says about God’s word or wisdom.
• Read Isaiah 43:10 and 45:5 beside any translation that renders John 1:1 a god.
• Read John 12:49-50 and 14:10, 24, and notice whose words Jesus says he speaks.

Where We Stand

Our conclusions: The Word is God’s own word, wisdom and plan, fully his, through which he made all things, and which became flesh in Jesus. The Word was God means neither a second divine person nor a god. Jesus did not personally exist before his conception. The “a god” rendering fails because Scripture allows no god beside Yahweh at creation. The new-creation reading of John 1:1-3 does not fit John 1:3, 10 and 14.

Counter-texts, answered:

• John 1:10, he was in the world: the light of 1:4-9 coming into the world in Jesus (John 1:9; 12:46); the pronoun agrees with logos. Our conclusion.
• John 1:15 and 1:30, he was before me: the Baptist speaks of rank, “preferred before me” (John 1:30); “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30). Our conclusion.
• John 1:18, only born God in several editions: on either reading the one who declares God is distinguished from the God no one has seen; we build on neither (see the Notes).
• 1 Corinthians 8:6, through whom are all things: the Father is the one “of whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6), and the Son is subjected to him (1 Corinthians 15:28).
• Hebrews 1:2, through whom also he made the worlds: answered in Article 4; “he who built all things is God.” (Hebrews 3:4).
• The lexicon: a record of interpretation, not Scripture; Scripture defines God’s word by its use (Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 55:11).

What Scripture does not say: God the Son; that the Son existed before his conception; that the Word was a god or the first creation; that Jesus is Michael; that God was ever without his word.

Notes

• John 1:1: En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos (SBLGNT). In 1:1b ton theon has the article; in 1:1c theos has none and stands before the verb as predicate; ho logos with the article is the subject. Greek has no indefinite article. In Article 2 of Restoring the Foundations we noted that John uses theos without the article for the Father himself (John 1:6, 18), in a different construction.
• Logos: LSJ: verbal noun of lego. Abbott-Smith (1922; TEI text, github.com/translatable-exegetical-tools/Abbott-Smith): in the Greek Old Testament chiefly for Hebrew davar; I, that by which the inward thought is expressed (word, saying, the word of God, John 10:35); II, the inward thought itself, reason; III, the Divine Word or Logos, John 1:1, 14; 1 John 1:1; Revelation 19:13.
• Davar: Psalm 33:6 bidvar Yahweh, by Yahweh’s word; Isaiah 55:11 devari, my word (OSHB).
• Acts 28:6: auton einai theon, theon without the article, rendered a god by the WEB.
• 1 John 1:2: hetis en pros ton patera, which was with the Father (SBLGNT), the same en pros ton construction as John 1:1b.
• John 1:3, 10: di’ autou, through him: autou is masculine in agreement with logos; grammar alone cannot decide between him and it.
• John 1:3-4, punctuation: Editors differ on where ho gegonen, that has been made, belongs. In the BibleHub parallel texts, SBL (2010) and Westcott-Hort (1881) end verse 3 at oude hen and begin a new sentence, ho gegonen en auto zoe en, what has come into being in him was life. Nestle (1904), the Byzantine Majority Text (2005) and the Textus Receptus (Scrivener 1894, Stephanus 1550) end verse 3 with ho gegonen, not one thing was made that has been made, as the WEB does. Tischendorf 8th reads estin, is, for en, was, in 1:4. Neither punctuation changes our reading.
• John 1:14: doxan hos monogenous para patros, glory as of an only born from the Father; the WEB supplies Son.
• John 1:15, 30: protos mou en, he was first of me; protos can mark time or rank.
• John 1:27: the words who is preferred before me are in the Byzantine text (Robinson-Pierpont) only; Westcott-Hort, Tregelles and NA28 lack them (SBLGNT apparatus). In 1:15 and 1:30, emprosthen mou gegonen is in all four.
• John 1:18: BibleHub parallel texts: SBL (2010), Westcott-Hort (1881) and Nestle (1904) read monogenes theos; the Byzantine Majority Text (2005), Tischendorf 8th, Scrivener’s and Stephanus’ Textus Receptus read ho monogenes huios. The WEB follows Son.
• Proverbs 8:22: Yahweh qanani reshit darko: qanah (Strong’s 7069), to get, acquire (BDB, via BibleHub); reshit, beginning, is the same word as in Genesis 1:1, bereshit. Wisdom, chokmah, is a feminine noun.

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