Yesterday I, Pastor Todd, started us off on a new series coming from the Gospel of John. As I mentioned, John is a Genesis-ish kind of book. I first learned this from the New Testament Scholar N. T. Wright. Once I picked my jaw up off the ground, I went to investigating this and found it making perfect sense. So today, I’d like to briefly recap some of what I mentioned yesterday and add one more detail.
In The Beginning
From the very opening words of both Genesis and John, we can see what the Apostle John is doing. He is connecting his Gospel with the Genesis account. He is essentially saying “Jesus coming is a Genesis-ish kind of thing.” From there the parallels keep flowing.
What happens “In the beginning” of Genesis? God makes the heavens and the earth. The first subject to appear right after the opening phrase is “God.” The next thing is the verb “to create.”
In John, we get “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John gives an expanded commentary of Genesis one with his wording. In Genesis, God “created” with what scholars have called “Divine Verbal Fiat” (Creation by Words). John goes on to say that everything that’s ever been created has been done so through the Word.
John’s assertion here is to equate Jesus with “the Word,” by connecting him with other terms used by Jesus, “Light of life/world, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and so on. So for John, what Jesus did during his time on earth was a mirror of God the Father’s acts in Genesis. (Remember, Jesus said, “I do nothing except for what I see the Father do.”)
Word of God Is God
John’s equation of the Word with God is the first clear assertion that Jesus is God. As my Classical Greek professor told me one day, “The Greek grammar of John’s Gospel is extremely simple. It is the theology that is complex. Were we to use two different nouns in John 1:1, it wouldn’t make any sense. Let’s replace “Word” with “Coffee Cup” and “God” with “Table.” What follows makes no sense:
“In the beginning was the Coffee Cup, and the Coffee Cup was with the Table, and the Coffee Cup is the Table.”
Yet from the beginning, we have this equation of Jesus and God.
In many instances we see the “Divine Verbal Fiat” reflected in Jesus like it was with the Father. In Genesis, God created the three realms of existence: heaven, earth, firmament, along with creatures to fill them: sun, moon stars, birds, fish, beasts, plants, and humans–this was almost all done by God’s power to create with words.
Likewise, we see Jesus performing many miracles with his words. To the woman with the issue of blood, “Go your faith has made you whole.” To the centurion’s servant, “Go, your servant is healed.” To Jairus’ Daughter, “Talitha Koum” (“Little Girl, Get up”), to Lazarus, “Lazarus, Come Forth.” Jesus’ words were had enough power to do the impossible…to do what only God could do.
In addition to Jesus mirroring the Father by expressing creative power with His words, he was also part of the initial creation setup. When we read the creation account in Genesis 1, we only get the idea that God’s words created the heavens and the earth. Yet when we look closer at the words of John 1, we get something we don’t tend to think about. “The word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and nothing that was made was made without Him.”
Who would have ever thought to consider that the Divine Verbal Fiat of God in Genesis 1 (the creative power words) was actually another person, not just iterations of God’s vocal chords? That is something to contemplate. Jesus is the Word of God that brought for the cosmos, and in John has come down in human form to 1st Century Judaism.
Light Enters Dark
The next parallel I’d like to recap is the Light V. Dark we see. In Genesis 1, before God does anything, darkness dominates the world. It is only when God says, “Let there be light,” does light enter the darkness and begin separating or pushing back the darkness. In the same way of thinking, John refers to Jesus as the Light of the World and the Light of Life. He is also the light that the darkness cannot comprehend/conquer.
So summing up these three things:
–Jesus is the was at the beginning of creation and in John is doing a creation type thing with the New Covenant.
–Jesus Is the Word of God. God’s Divine Verbal Fiat that created the Heavens and the Earth is/was Jesus himself, not just His vocal chords.
–Jesus is the light that dispells the darkness, like the Father’s command that light enter and dispell the darkness at creation.
Israel
The parallels to Genesis can go on as Jesus really did come to make things new. For the sake of time, I had to hold back this final point yesterday.
In Genesis, God started with creation, but we can see the end focus of Genesis pointing toward the establishment of Israel. That means from Creation to Joseph’s narrative, God’s special relationship is centered around Abraham and his descendants through Isaac. All the rest of mankind falls off into sidestories as the path from Creation–>Adam–>Noah–>Abraham shows the main focus of the book.
So if God the Father was setting humanity up for establishing a people all his own, then the Son, who “does nothing he hasn’t seen the Father do,” would be well within his confines to mirror that as he did the previous points. And that is just what Jesus does.
In Genesis, the Father pointed to Abraham and established the people of Israel (a people all his own) through his 12 great-grandchildren. Likewise, Jesus the Son comes to establish a new covenant (an eternal covenant) and follows the pattern set by the Father. He selects 12 disciples to lead through his mission and purpose. These 12 would establish a new kind of God’s people. This new kind of people won’t be selected by lineage, but rather by faith. Some have referred to Jesus’ own people as the True Israel, the New Covenant People, The Way, etc. Jesus referred to his own people as His Church (English equivalent of “ekklesia). Jesus’ eternal covenant people were called by Him, as was Abraham & Co.
Conclusion
In John’s Gospel, Jesus mirrors the works of the Father in Genesis. He establishes a precedent for New Creation with His mission much like the Father established a precedent for Original Creation. Jesus came to set right what went wrong in creation the first time around. So, in the end, John’s Gospel can be considered a Biography, a Gospel, and simultaneously a book recounting the beginning of a new creation narrative alongside Genesis. Isn’t it amazing how divine and connected God is with revealing himself through the Bible?
What are your thoughts about this Genesis-John parallel. Is this new information for you? Have you heard it before? How does it affect the way you look at Scripture?
Let us know in the comments below!
I hope this week’s post helps you better experience God’s