In the Beginning Was the Word
What does it mean that the Word became flesh?
John opens his Gospel by telling the whole story in eighteen verses: the one through whom everything was made has come close enough to touch, and everything else in the book teaches you to recognize him.
This chapter walks slowly through John 1:1–18, the passage often called the prologue — the doorway John built into his Gospel. You will learn what “the Word” meant to John’s first readers, why the light-and-darkness language matters in hard seasons, what the strange phrase “dwelt among us” is quoting, and how these eighteen verses train you to read the rest of the book.
- 01
Explain in your own words what John means by “the Word” and why he starts before creation.
- 02
Trace the Exodus echoes in John 1:14–18 — the tent, the glory, and “grace and truth” — from the text itself.
- 03
Name three themes the prologue announces and show where the rest of the Gospel picks each one up.
- 01
In the beginning — what “the Word” meant
John opens with words his first readers already knew — from Genesis and from Greek thought — and then says something no one had ever said with them.
- 02
The light the darkness has not overcome
John describes the Word as life and light entering real darkness — and chooses a verb that means both “overcome” and “understand,” because the darkness failed at both.
- 03
The Word became flesh and pitched his tent
Verse 14 says the eternal Word became a real human being and “tabernacled” among us — deliberately quoting the wilderness tent where God’s glory dwelt with Israel.
- 04
Grace and truth — how the prologue teaches you to read
The prologue is an overture: every major theme of the Gospel sounds here first, so learning its melodies now means recognizing them everywhere later.