Three other men have already told the story of Jesus’s life — His birth, His ministry, His miracles, His death. John, writing last, decades after the others, does not retell that story from the beginning of His life. He goes back further than any genealogy, further than any manger, further than Genesis itself, and identifies exactly who was walking through all of it: not merely a teacher, not merely a prophet, but the Word who was with God, who was God, and by whose own hand every single thing that exists was made. Before John tells a single parable or records a single miracle, he wants no reader left in any doubt — the man from Nazareth is the Architect of the universe He was born into.
A study in John 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 30 min read
In The Beginning Was The Word
“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.”
John 1:1-2
Genesis 1 opens with “In the beginning, God created.” John’s own opening line deliberately echoes it — and then reaches back before it. Whatever “the beginning” means here, the Word was already there. Not created at that beginning, but present at it, already existing when it began. This is the single most direct claim of Christ’s eternal, uncreated deity anywhere in Scripture, and John states it as a plain fact before he has told his readers a single story about Jesus’s life.
“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34
This is why the opening chapter of the whole Bible’s story of redemption, in the very first book Ellen White wrote covering that history, quotes the opening verse of John’s Gospel. Before Adam, before Eden, before the angels themselves were created, the Word already stood beside the Father — “one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God” (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34).
“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
John 1:3
This is the verse the user of this study specifically asked to see given full weight, and it deserves it: read carefully, it does not merely say the Word made some things, or many things. It says “all things,” and then closes the door on any exception a reader might imagine — “without Him was not any thing made that was made.” Every galaxy, every atom, every law of physics, every living creature in the entire universe that has ever come into existence by an act of creation, came into existence through Him. There is no second category of “things not made by the Word.” The verse does not leave room for one.
“In the beginning, God was revealed in all the works of creation. It was Christ that spread the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth. It was His hand that hung the worlds in space, and fashioned the flowers of the field.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 20
This is the very first chapter of The Desire of Ages, Ellen White’s own life of Christ, and this is where she chooses to begin it — not at Bethlehem, but at the same starting point John himself chose. Before a single chapter of His earthly biography, the identity of the Architect has to be established: it was Christ’s own hand that hung the stars, and Christ’s own hand that shaped a single flower.
“The Father wrought by His Son in the creation of all heavenly beings. ‘By Him were all things created, … whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him.’ … But the Son, the anointed of God, the ‘express image of His person,’ ‘the brightness of His glory,’ ‘upholding all things by the word of His power,’ holds supremacy over them all.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34
Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:3, quoted together here, widen the scope of John 1:3 even further — not only this physical universe, but “thrones,” “dominions,” “principalities,” the entire order of created intelligent beings, angels included, all made through Him, and all still held together, moment by moment, by His own sustaining power. The universe was not merely started by Christ and then left to run on its own. It is upheld by Him still, right now, “by the word of His power.”
In Him Was Life; And The Life Was The Light Of Men
“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
John 1:4-5
The same Word who spoke a universe into being is now described as the very source of life itself — not merely a giver of life from some outside supply, but life in His own person, underived and self-existing.
Scripture does not leave the timing of this creative work to guesswork. This site’s own study of Job’s thirty-eighth chapter has already shown the moment God Himself points to as creation’s own dawn — “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). The Word who made all things was already being celebrated by a heaven full of created beings before this planet had even been formed.
But this same passage in Scripture that establishes Christ as Creator also, necessarily, raises the question of how evil entered a universe He made perfect. Ellen White answers it directly, tracing the origin of the darkness John says “comprehended not” the light:
“Lucifer, ‘son of the morning,’ was first of the covering cherubs, holy and undefiled. … Though all his glory was from God, this mighty angel came to regard it as pertaining to himself. … He ventured to covet homage due alone to the Creator.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 35
The very being who owed his own existence to the Word’s creative power is the same being who first refused to acknowledge it — the first and greatest instance of the world’s own failure to know its Maker.
“All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings: through the beloved Son, the Father’s life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all. … In heaven itself this law was broken. Sin originated in self-seeking.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 21
Self-giving love, flowing out from the Father through the Son to every created being and back again, is described here as the very law of life for the whole universe — the same self-giving character the Word would one day demonstrate to this dark world in person, at a cost His own creatures could never have imagined asking of Him.
“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”
John 1:10-11
This is, in miniature, the whole tragedy of the incarnation: the Architect walks into His own building, and the tenants do not recognize the One who framed it. The world He Himself had spoken into existence did not know Him when He stood in the middle of it.
“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1:12-13
The very same creative power that spoke galaxies into existence is what John describes here at work again, on a much smaller and much more personal scale — not shaping stars this time, but making sons and daughters of God out of people who were not born that way, by nature, at all.
The Word Was Made Flesh, And Dwelt Among Us
“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
Everything the first thirteen verses have just established — the eternal Word, the Creator of all things, the source of life and light — comes down, in a single verse, to this: flesh. The Architect of the universe took on a body that could grow tired, feel hunger, bleed, and die. This is the hinge on which the entire Gospel of John turns, and everything that follows in this book is simply an unfolding of what that one verse means.
“By coming to dwell with us, Jesus was to reveal God both to men and to angels. He was the Word of God,—God’s thought made audible.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 19
“God’s thought made audible” is as compact a definition of “the Word” as has ever been written — not merely a messenger sent to speak on God’s behalf, but the very self-expression of God, translated into a form human beings could finally see, hear, and touch.
“He had begun to discern the glory of Christ,—not the worldly pomp and power for which he had been taught to hope, but ‘the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 139
This is written of the disciple John himself, in the very days this chapter describes — the same John who would go on, decades later, to write these words down as an old man, still working out what he had first glimpsed as a young fisherman on the banks of the Jordan.
“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 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 1:17-18
No one has ever seen the Father directly — but the Son, who has always been “in the bosom of the Father,” in the closest possible relationship, has made Him known. Every study on this site of the Old Testament’s own record of God has, in a sense, been reading ahead to this verse: the fullest, clearest revelation of who God actually is was never going to come through the law of Moses alone. It would take the Word Himself, become flesh, to declare Him.
Behold The Lamb Of God
“And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? … He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.”
John 1:19, 23
“He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.”
John 1:27
“Suddenly, as his glance swept over the throng, his eye kindled, his face was lighted up, his whole being was stirred with deep emotion. With outstretched hands he cried, ‘I baptize in water: in the midst of you standeth One whom ye know not, even He that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose.’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 136
Untying a sandal was, in that culture, the task of the lowest household servant. John’s declaration is not false modesty — it is an accurate, humbling comparison of scale, spoken by a man whom the whole nation already regarded as a prophet, about someone standing anonymously in the very crowd he was addressing.
“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
John 1:29
“With the light of the glory of God resting upon him, the prophet stretches out his hands, declaring, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 137
Every lamb ever offered on an altar in Israel’s entire sacrificial system, from the Passover in Egypt to that very morning’s own temple offering, had been pointing forward to this one unrepeatable moment — a prophet on a riverbank, identifying the actual, final Lamb by name.
“And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.”
John 1:32
The Creator of every living thing receives, at His own baptism, a visible sign from the very Spirit that had moved over the waters at creation’s own beginning — the same Godhead present and active at both bookends of this story.
We Have Found The Messias
“And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.”
John 1:36-37
“Moved by an irresistible impulse, they followed Jesus,—anxious to speak with Him, yet awed and silent, lost in the overwhelming significance of the thought, ‘Is this the Messiah?’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 138
One of these two silent, awed disciples was John himself — the very man who would, decades later, sit down and write the words “in the beginning was the Word” from the far side of a lifetime spent thinking about exactly who he had followed that day.
“Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, … where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see.”
John 1:38-39
“He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus.”
John 1:41-42
“With the calling of John and Andrew and Simon, of Philip and Nathanael, began the foundation of the Christian church. John directed two of his disciples to Christ. Then one of these, Andrew, found his brother, and called him to the Saviour.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 141
Not one of these first five men was recruited by a public sermon or a crowd. Every single one was brought by someone who already knew him — a brother, a friend, a fellow disciple — the same simple pattern this site has already seen used throughout Scripture, at work here at the very founding of the church.
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.”
John 1:48-49
“The divine Spirit that had borne witness to Nathanael in his solitary prayer under the fig tree now spoke to him in the words of Jesus. … His faith went beyond that of the one who had brought him to Jesus.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 140
Nathanael had been praying in private, under a fig tree no other human being could see into. The same Word who framed the universe in the chapter’s opening verses is shown here doing something far smaller in scale and no less telling — quietly present at one man’s own hidden, unwitnessed prayer.
“And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”
John 1:51
This closing promise reaches all the way back to Jacob’s own vision of a ladder set up between earth and heaven, already studied on this site in the book of Genesis — except now the ladder itself has a name. Christ is the connecting point between a fallen world and the God it lost touch with, the same Word who made this world in the beginning now standing inside it, in person, to bring it home.
