Among the Four Gospels, John is unique. Unlike Matthew and Luke, there is no birth narrative. Like Mark’s Gospel, he begins with John the Baptist announcing the Messiah’s imminent revelation. However, John adds a prologue, a preface to the historical beginning, when John the Baptist testifies, “I am not the Christ,” to priestly inquisitors sent by Jerusalem’s religious rulers. With a few, albeit profound, words, the prologue testifies to the Messiah’s eternal, theological, and scriptural identity prior to his incarnation.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1–5)
As if imitating the fullness of the one called the Word, the Evangelist begins his Gospel with these words that densely compress the truths expounded in the unfolding storyline concerning the One testified to by “a man sent from God, whose name was John” (John 1:6). First, the Evangelist identifies the One about whom John testifies as the Word who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God, and through whom every created thing came into existence. Second, he identifies the Word who spoke everything into existence as the wellspring of Life so that Life is an apt title for him, which he owns for himself by announcing: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). From the Life emerges the Evangelist’s third designation for the Word: “and the Life was the Light,” a designation dominating John’s Gospel. Dense as the Evangelist’s opening statements are, his next is more compact: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). This compressed declaration establishes light as a core thematic imagery punctuating John’s Gospel with its counterpart, darkness. This imagery summons other clusters of counterpart symbols that will feature prominently in John’s gospel: day-night and sight-blindness. More than this, the compact thesis statement anchors the light-darkness theme in creation’s first day (Gen. 1:3). The Light that shined into darkness on the first day presaged the dawning of the new creation with the advent of “the Light of the world” whose revelatory radiance is the unfolding mystery recounted by John. How do so few words—only thirteen in the Greek text—within this single verse capture the plotline of John’s Gospel and connect the initial day of God’s creative activity with the dawn of the new creation? This is worthy of careful unpacking in this article and in its sequel (part two).