The Old Testament message was, “Someone’s coming: don’t miss it.” When the New Testament opens, the message of the first four books is an answer to that. “Someone has come.” We call these books the gospels, or “good news.” These authors wrote their books to tell the world the good news that Jesus, the Messiah, had come. Each biography of Jesus’ life was written from a different perspective, emphasizing different details, but each one makes the case that Jesus is the one that the Old Testament was pointing to.
The Gospel of John is very different from the rest. Matthew and Luke started their biographies with Jesus’ birth. Mark started his with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. John started his biography of Jesus before the beginning of time. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3 NIV).
John wass very intentional when he referred to Jesus as “the Word.” The Greek word, Logos, was loaded with meaning for the Jewish and Greek readers of his time. To the Jewish world, Logos meant divine power. To the Greek world, it meant the great mind and intellect of the universe. John used the word Logos to speak to both halves of his audience to communicate that what they held in the highest esteem was to be found in one person: Jesus. He is both the power and wisdom of the divine in the world.
This was crucial, because John was writing to convince people, as he himself was convinced, that Jesus was the Son of God. He wanted us to understand that before time existed, before space existed, and before matter existed, Jesus already existed. Jesus was there with God in that infinite state that we cannot wrap our finite brains around. Jesus was with God because Jesus was God.
John records seven “I am” statements that Jesus made and seven specific miracles He performed to help us understand Jesus’ divine nature. Throughout the account, John also noted all the moments when Jesus’ existence before His birth was referred to.
One of the most notable of these was a time the Jewish religious leaders confronted Jesus, accusing Him of being demon-possessed and of holding Himself in higher regard than Abraham. Jesus responded to them that He was, in fact, greater than Abraham and that Abraham himself foresaw Jesus’ arrival into history. They were bewildered, saying He was so young but claimed to have somehow seen Abraham. Jesus responded, “Very truly I tell you… before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58 NIV). When they heard this, the Jews prepared to stone Him. Jesus slipped away, but their confusion and fear remained: the only way that could be true is if Jesus was God in the flesh.
John also recorded how Jesus’ own cousin, John the Baptizer, testified that Jesus existed before His birth. “He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” (John 1:15 NIV) John was born six months before Jesus, but Jesus was older than John. Jesus was older than time, and His cousin knew it.
The author of the gospel also heard Jesus pray to His Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his execution on the cross. During this prayer, Jesus said, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5 NIV).
The Gospel of John tells the good news that Jesus truly came to be our Immanuel – God with us. Better still, Jesus was not a Plan B cobbled together to save humanity when we messed up. Before the world ever fell to sin in the Garden of Eden, before God ever promised Abraham a descendant that would bless the world, Jesus already existed. Jesus was always the plan, because God always knew that we would need Him.
