" Many years after, when the Apostle John was a very old man,
he wrote in one of his letters, "We know that the Son of God is come."
[Footnote: I John v. 20.]
Now look back to the first words of our chapter. "In the beginning was the
Word." Who is the Word? It is "the Son of God." When was the beginning?
Long, long ago in Eternity that is past "the Son of God was the brightness
of His Father's glory and the express image," [Footnote: Heb. i. 3.] or
exact representation, "of His Person." In His last prayer with His
disciples our Lord speaks of "the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was." [Footnote: St. John xvii. 5.]
The first verse of this Gospel takes us back long before this world was
created. Then we come to the creation in verse 3: "All things were made by
Him." This is exactly what is said in the first verse of the Bible of
another beginning, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." Long before this world was created we read of God's dear Son as
"the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature." All
things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, the
Eternal Son of God. [Footnote: Col. i. 15-17.]
He says, "I was set up from everlasting from the beginning, before ever
the earth was. When He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was
by Him as one brought up with Him; I was daily His delight, rejoicing
always before Him: rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and My
delights were with the sons of men.
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