John 1:1–5 — Before the World

1Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, (En archē ēn ho logos)
καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, (kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon)
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (kai theos ēn ho logos) 2οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. (Houtos ēn en archē pros ton theon) 3πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, (Panta di' autou egeneto)
καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν, (kai chōris autou egeneto oude hen)
ὃ γέγονεν. (ho gegonen) 4ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, (en autō zōē ēn)
καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων· (kai hē zōē ēn to phōs tōn anthrōpōn) 5καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, (kai to phōs en tē skotia phainei)
καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν. (kai hē skotia auto ou katelaben)

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't overcome it.

κατέλαβεν (v. 5) — the verb carries a deliberate ambiguity: did not overcome (conquer, extinguish) or did not comprehend (seize, grasp). Perhaps both. The darkness neither quenched the light nor understood it.

Pericope boundary. This is the first of five movements within the Prologue (1:1–18). It establishes in five dense verses the theological grammar of everything that follows: pre-existence, relation, identity, agency, life, light, and the confrontation with darkness.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ (v. 1). The same two words that open Genesis, but here they introduce not a creation story of forming and ordering but a person. John rewrites the beginning of the Torah around a name that precedes the world.

θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (v. 1). Not "the God was the Word" — the absence of the article (θεός, not ὁ θεός) is grammatically significant. This is the most compressed Christological claim in the New Testament: the Word shares the divine nature without exhausting the person of the Father.

WEB translation note. The WEB renders John 1:1–5 cleanly and readably. Notable choices: 'hasn't overcome' in verse 5 (slightly more conversational than 'did not overcome' but carries the same force), and 'nothing was made that has been made' in verse 3 (clear word order, same meaning). The WEB is a public domain translation (World English Bible, based on the ASV), giving us full freedom to use, adapt, and distribute it.

Greek text: NA28 · English: World English Bible (Public Domain)

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John begins before the beginning. Genesis starts with the creation of the heavens and the earth — the moment when time and matter and space began to exist. John starts before that moment, with something that already was.

The verb is imperfect — ēn — continuous existence in the past. The Word did not come into being at some point. The Word always was, before anything else was.

And the Word was with God — pros ton theon, face to face with God. This is not a solitary principle emanating from the divine. This is a relationship, a facing-toward, an eternal communion within the one God.

And the Word was God. Not "the God" — John drops the article deliberately. The Word shares the divine nature without exhausting the person of the Father. Two persons, one God. The grammar bends under the weight of what it is trying to say, and John does not stop to explain it. He states it and moves on, as though he expects us to believe it before we understand it.

Which, it turns out, is exactly what faith does.

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Then verse 3: "All things were made through him." This is what Calvin calls the practical knowledge — the proof of divinity from works. Not a philosophical argument about the Logos, but a claim you can test against everything that exists. The universe is Christ-shaped.

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Verse 4 narrows the focus. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Not just the biological life that animates every creature, but the life — the particular kind of life that illuminates. Every poet who has ever reached for something beyond the page. Every philosopher who could not stop asking. Every person who has lain awake in the dark and wondered if there is more. That reaching, that restlessness, that hunger — it is the life that is the light of men.

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"And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." The Greek verb katelaben carries both meanings: the darkness did not comprehend the light, and it did not conquer it. The light keeps shining. Not because the darkness is not real. It is. But the light keeps shining. And at the end, it is the light that remains.

Primary Sources

Calvin on John 1:3: "Having affirmed that the Speech is God, and having asserted his eternal essence, he now proves his Divinity from his works. And this is the practical knowledge, to which we ought to be chiefly accustomed; for the mere name of God attributed to Christ will affect us little, if our faith do not feel it to be such by experience."

Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, Homilies 1–5: "For suppose a blind man standing in the sun, the sun is present to him, but he is absent from the sun. In like manner every foolish man, every unrighteous man, every ungodly man, is blind in heart. The Wisdom of God is present, but when the blindness is present, it is not perceived."

Luther on John 1:5: "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it. This passage has been interpreted with such lofty ideas, and made to mean that reason has a natural light... yet reason does not recognize, understand, nor feel him, the real Light, by whom it is kindled."

Written for the Grace Memorial devotional series · July 2026

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