In and From the Beginning (John 1:1; 1 John 2:13): Appendix C

JOH 1:1¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) 1JO 2:13¹³I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. (1 John 2:13)HE was the Word and Son before the time described as "from the beginning." The Eternal Son of the Eternal Father no human mind can fathom; and the incarnation necessarily adds to its inscrutability. But this is not the least ground for not believing what is infinitely above and beyond us; it is revealed without a doubt. And the reason why men break down upon it all is that they reason from man up to God, which is always false. You must reason down from God to man if you are to be in the truth; for who knows the truth but God? And who can reveal the truth but God, as He has done in Christ?

In the Gospel, John is most careful to say that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It matters not how far one essays back in thought into the depths of eternity. Imagine millions of years! These are not the beginning; though of course one cannot with propriety talk of “years” before the measures of time apply. But go back in imagination into these unmeasured depths, there He subsisted. No beginning had He Who is eternal, and in His own personality He was “with God."

Again, not only was He with God as a distinct person from the Father and the Spirit; but He was God. Nor is there any property of God more distinctive than His being eternal; if not eternal, not God.

But quite a different thing is referred to in 1 John 2:13¹³I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. (1 John 2:13). It is not knowing Him that was in the beginning with God, but knowing “Him that is from the beginning." It is the beginning of His taking flesh, the incarnate Word, in this world. Such is the absolutely new fact. “From the beginning " is reckoned from His manifesting Himself as Emmanuel, the God-Man.

This was He Whom the “fathers" knew. What can you know about the Son in eternity except that He was the Only-begotten Son in the Father's bosom, the object of His everlasting delight, as even Prov. 8:30, 31³⁰Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; ³¹Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:30‑31) tells us?

Such He was when not a creature existed above or below, neither angel nor man nor lower being. There was only the blessed God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as we know now; and there were divine counsels which were afterward to be divulged to us who now believe. What do we know more than this? But if we look at “Him that is from the beginning," there is, one may say, almost everything to learn and know.

Exposition of the Epistles of John,