Today I want to share some insights from a recent study of Genesis Chapter 1 and The Gospel of John Chapter 1.
Both passages begin almost the same way.
Genesis Chapter 1 starts, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.
While John Chapter 1 opens, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
John alludes to the Genesis narrative with the blessing of hindsight. He’s seeing in the Genesis account, how God in His omniscience and genius has given humanity a preview of Christ on page one, before Christ ever landed there, at least in His revealed and named form.
First and foremost, both passages are about creation and both introduce universal themes:
Light and darkness. Creativity. Incarnation. The mysterious and powerful, Holy Spirit of God. The chaos of sea and water.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
The first key concept we are introduced to in the Text, is that light was created to be separated from darkness.
Another is that Yahweh divides a line between the chaos of the sea and world, and the order He desires to see.
Hebrew minds would have understood that sea and water in Genesis One represent chaos. Even the river that John baptizes people into in John One, reveals chaos. The chaos of sin in our lives, and the untamed world, are at first, outside of our control.
But as Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God, hovered over the chaos in the thickest darkness, He spoke: “LET THERE BE LIGHT.”
Unyielding and unafraid and unhindered the Lord of life brings light to darkness and separates one from the other.
And so we find that Genesis Chapter One and John Chapter One are all about DIVISION.
Dividing the light from the darkness, separating water from the land, calming the chaos of the young earth where Father God came down, and planted a Garden.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The chaos of the seas in the untamed world of Genesis, are the chaos of sin and darkness the sinner must crucify in John’s Gospel. Christ, the creator of all things in Genesis, is Christ the creator of the new man in John.
And I love how John the Baptist spots the gardener in the distance, while he’s standing in the river Jordan, standing boldly in the chaotic waters, from where he invites every lost soul to go down, to breathe their last breath as a dying man or woman, and put to death the misdeeds of the body.
And going under there is a separation or a division once again. In that brief moment of chaos, because of God’s power to overcome it, darkness turns to light, the new creation son or daughter emerges and the being who comes up from the grave of suffocation under water, is finally - and suddenly - and fully - alive.
Dead to sin. But Alive in Christ. For it is no longer they who live, but Christ alive in them.
Baptism, as revealed in John 1, is a dividing line, a spiritual line in the sand of your life, that you have been born again. It’s not merely a symbol, it’s the violent act of spiritual warfare that shows you have been born into the Kingdom of Christ. It rightly divides you from the world, and places you in the Kingdom.
But the division doesn’t stop there, and we are meant to discover increasing division in our lives, of the Godly kind, when we choose to follow Christ. Here are four of the areas that we can glean from the Text, are ways God the Father wants to divide rightly in our lives, for our benefit.
He wants to divide the chaos of sin in our lives, and replace it with order.
He wants to divide the darkness of this world from our lives, and increase the light.
He wants to take our body out of the water, and place us on the firm foundation of solid ground, ie. His Word.
And so when we look closer, we begin to see that the entire testimony of John, is a yes and amen to Genesis Chapter 1.
But it’s actually better news than we find in Genesis! Because in John 1, we are not hearing the Word spoken from far off. It’s not, “let there be light and there is light,” but rather, it is a revelation that THE LIGHT HIMSELF HAS COME DOWN.
And now that He’s been revealed as Yahshua Messiah, you are invited to come and SEE HIM, come and TOUCH HIM, come to the Fountain of Life where you can actually know him as Emmanuel, God Who is with you!
And even as creation’s light and dark can not coexist, the redeemed man or woman of God has been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into Christ’s everlasting and glorious light.
Keep Breathing,
Daniel Kooman
"Unyielding and unafraid..."
Love that. 💙
Thank you Daniel! Jesus is indeed the light of the world! And Jesus can bring light into our lives if we but ask Him. We can in turn bring light into the situations that come into our lives!