This week, we watched the final video in Bible Project’s Creation series, looking at John 1. This chapter has become known as John’s Prologue, and it is a beautiful retelling of the creation story in a way that puts Jesus at the very center of it.
John’s opening calls our minds back to Genesis 1 with the phrase “In the beginning,” but here he shows us that Jesus was with God in the creation process, and that Jesus is himself God as well. This introduces a very complicated, yet essential, truth about who Jesus is. He is separate from God, yet fully God, at the same time.
As we keep reading through John 1, we see that he structures his prologue similar to Genesis 1 throughout. In Genesis 1, we see two sets of three days in Creation, with the first set forming Creation, and the second set filling it. Here in John 1, our video points out that John uses two sets of three scenes regarding how Jesus came to his creation. The first set pulls images from the Genesis Creation account, and the second set pulls images from the Exodus story to show how Jesus is at the center of who God is and how we should receive and relate to him.
The video ends by discussing how Jesus again is portrayed as being closely knit with God the Father, yet distinct from him. Jesus is the only one who has seen the Father, and Jesus came to show the Father to us. The video points out a couple interesting things, though. First, Jesus is described as being in the lap (or bosom) of the Father, which gives an image of a father holding a child in his lap. Jesus is truly the Son of God. Second, the video points out that what Jesus came to “make known” is left open-ended by John. This is a great literary tool that then invites the reader to keep reading, to see what exactly Jesus has made known.
John is a brilliantly and beautifully written book. It is simple and clear enough that we should easily see that Jesus is the Son of God who came to give life to all who believe. Yet John also carefully crafted his entire book in a way that has hidden treasures just waiting to be found by the diligent reader. The Bible nerd in me always jumps at the opportunity to mine the depths of John’s Gospel, and I hope you do the same!
