Event 1 — The Word
Most stories of Jesus start at a manger. John starts before the universe. Before there was anything, the Word already was — and the Word was God. Then the Maker stepped inside His own creation.
The story begins in eternity, not in Bethlehem
Matthew and Luke open with Jesus’ birth; Mark opens with His ministry. John reaches back further than any of them — before time, before light, before matter — and tells us the One we’re about to follow already existed as God. Then comes the sentence that should stop us cold: that eternal Word “became flesh, and dwelt among us.” The infinite stepped into the finite. This is the foundation the whole rest of the study stands on: Jesus is not a good man who became divine, but God who became a man.
The text
Underlined words link down to their original-language card in Word secrets below.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. 9There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” 16For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
John 1:1–18 (NASB95)📖 Why John opens this way
John wrote last of the four Gospels, and most openly states his purpose: “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:30–31). So he opens not with a genealogy but with a deliberate echo of Genesis — “In the beginning” — to say plainly: the One you are about to meet is the eternal God who made everything. Read the whole passage on Bible Gateway (NASB 1995).
What the original words mean
John wrote in Greek, and four of his word choices carry the whole weight of the passage.
A brilliant bridge word. To Jewish ears it recalled how God spoke creation into being (“and God said…,” Genesis 1) and the wisdom that was with Him. To Greek ears, logos meant the rational order holding the universe together. John takes the word everyone reached for and says: that Word is a Person, and His name is Jesus.
↑ Back to the passageA tiny word doing enormous work. Ēn describes existence with no beginning — “was already there.” John pointedly does not use the other verb, egeneto (“came to be”), which he saves for created things (v.3) and for John the Baptist (v.6). Created things became; the Word simply was.
↑ Back to the passageThe word is built from skēnē, “tent” — the same picture as the wilderness tabernacle, where God’s glory came down to live among Israel (Exodus 40). John is saying the glory that once filled the tent now wears skin: God pitched His tent in a human life, right in the middle of the neighborhood.
↑ Back to the passageNot “made” or “created” — the root is genos (“kind”), so it means one of a kind. Jesus is not one of many sons; He is the unique Son who shares the Father’s very nature. That’s why verse 18 can call Him “the only begotten God who… has explained Him” — He is the one Person who can show us exactly what God is like.
↑ Back to the passage🔤 Two more to notice: “grace” and “explained”
Grace (charis, vv.14, 16–17) means undeserved favor — and John stacks it: “grace upon grace,” wave after wave. “Explained” (v.18) is exēgēsato (ἐξηγήσατο) — the root of our word “exegesis.” It means to lead the meaning out, to unfold and narrate. Jesus is God’s self-explanation: if you want to know what the invisible God is like, He has been narrated to you in a Person.
The descent of the Word
John’s prologue moves in one direction — downward. The eternal God comes all the way down into flesh, and brings us all the way up into His family.
🏺 “The Word” in Jewish and Greek ears
John picked a word loaded for both of his audiences. For Jews, God’s word was how He created (“and God said,” Genesis 1) and revealed Himself; later Jewish writers even spoke of God’s “Word” (Aramaic Memra) as His active presence, and of Wisdom as present at creation (Proverbs 8:22–31). For Greeks, the logos was the rational principle ordering the cosmos. John meets both worlds and says the Word is neither an abstraction nor a force, but the Son who became flesh.
🗺️ Glory in a tent: the tabernacle behind verse 14
“Dwelt among us” literally means “tabernacled.” In the wilderness, God told Israel to build a tent so that He could dwell in their midst, and His glory — the shekinah — filled it (Exodus 40:34–38). When Moses asked to see God’s glory, the LORD passed by proclaiming Himself “abounding in lovingkindness and truth” (Exodus 34:6) — the very pairing John uses: “full of grace and truth.” John’s point lands hard: the glory that once filled a tent now lives in a Person, and we have seen it.
How it ties to the rest of Scripture
| Passage | Connection |
|---|---|
| Genesis 1:1–5 | “In the beginning”; God speaks, and light separates from darkness. John deliberately reopens Genesis with Jesus at the center. |
| Exodus 34:6 | The LORD reveals Himself as abounding in “lovingkindness and truth” — the grace-and-truth pairing of John 1:14, 17. |
| Colossians 1:15–17 | “By Him all things were created… and in Him all things hold together” — Paul says exactly what John 1:3 says. |
| Hebrews 1:1–3 | The Son is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature” — the One who “explains” God (John 1:18). |
| 1 John 1:1–3 | The same writer, decades later: “the Word of Life… we have seen with our eyes… and testify.” The eternal Word was touchable. |
A thinking tool: inversion
The glory that filled the tabernacle now wears flesh
Hear this the way a first-century Jew would. For Israel, God’s presence was the glory (the shekinah) that came down to dwell in the tabernacle and the temple — and the bedrock truth was that “no one can see Me and live” (Exodus 33:20). John takes that whole world of expectation and turns it inside out.
And the deepest reversal is in verse 18: the God of Sinai whom “no one has seen” has now been “explained” — narrated, unfolded — by the Son at His side. The unapproachable glory of the temple did not stay behind the veil; it came all the way out, and down, into a human life.
Israel’s whole story was God coming down to dwell with His people — in a tent, then a temple. John says it reached its end: in Jesus, the glory came down into flesh.
Resources to explore
Play the video here, then use the links below to dig deeper.
🎬 Watch & listen
- Video: BibleProject — John 1–12Overview with study notes and downloads.
- Podcast: “In the Beginning” (John 1)BibleProject works through John 1 — creation, the tabernacle, and grace upon grace.
📖 Study tools
- John 1:1 interlinear + Strong’sSee logos and ēn word-by-word in the Greek.
- Full passage (John 1:1–18, NASB95)Read the whole prologue on Bible Gateway.
🔗 Cross-reading
- Genesis 1The “in the beginning” John is echoing.
- Exodus 33–34Glory in the tent; “lovingkindness and truth.”
Discussion questions
- John opens with “In the beginning,” deliberately echoing Genesis 1. For a Jewish reader who revered the Torah, what claim is John staking before he has told a single story about Jesus?
- Israel held firmly that “no one can see God and live” (Exodus 33:20). To a first-century Jew, which would have been the greater scandal — that the Word was God, or that this God “became flesh”? Why?
- “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” — “His own” is Israel, the covenant people. What weight would that line have carried for John’s first readers, many of them Jewish?
- “Dwelt” means “tabernacled” — the tent where God’s glory met Israel in the wilderness. What is John claiming about Jesus by saying that same glory now “pitched its tent” in a human life?
- “Grace and truth” (v.14, 17) repeats the LORD’s own words at Sinai — “abounding in lovingkindness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). Why might John reach for that exact Old Testament pairing to describe Jesus?