The first Christians confessing Christ

The Word Was God (John 1)

The prologue of John's Gospel, John 1:1-18, opens not with a manger but with eternity: "In the beginning was the Word." Its measured, poetic cadence has led many to ask whether John adapted an earlier hymn, a question that remains genuinely debated. However it was composed, the prologue confesses the eternal Word who was God and became flesh.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”John 1:1

The passage

The passage. John begins his Gospel with a deliberate echo of Genesis: "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 by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4). The prologue moves through the light shining in darkness and the witness of John the Baptist, then to the world's rejection and to those who received him, "to them gave he power to become the sons of God" (John 1:12). It reaches its center in the incarnation: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). It closes: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John 1:18). The passage carries the reader from the eternal Word to the Word made flesh.

Why it is read as an early creed or hymn

Why it is read as an early creed or hymn. The prologue has a rhythmic, layered quality unlike ordinary narrative, with clauses that pick up the last word of the one before, a poetic device that gives it the feel of a hymn. For this reason some propose that John built on an existing hymn to the Word, perhaps adding the sections about John the Baptist as prose insertions. This is more debated than passages like Philippians 2 or 1 Timothy 3:16. Others hold that John composed the whole prologue himself in an elevated, meditative style, and that its poetry need not imply a borrowed source. The evidence does not settle the question, and honesty requires naming it as open. What matters for our purpose stands either way. Whether John quoted, adapted, or freshly composed, the prologue gives us a confession of Christ that the Evangelist places at the threshold of his Gospel as the key to everything that follows. If the Spirit led John to gather up the church's worship of the Word, that only deepens the wonder of the opening lines.