Gospels Part 050

We should note that Genesis 1:1 starts with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Both Genesis and John’s Gospel start with the same identical words, “In the beginning,” and that is deliberate. What is John telling his readers? He is essentially saying, “Do you remember Genesis 1 where it says, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’? I am going to tell you about that God. Because I met that God. He taught me. I lived with Him. He was my rabbi and teacher. Now I am going to tell you the rest of the story about that God who created the heavens and the earth.” That is exactly what John then does throughout the rest of his Gospel. He ties his story of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ back to the God who created all things in Genesis 1. 

The Hebrew word translated “God” in Genesis 1:1, and in most other places in the book of Genesis (and more than 2,200 times in the Hebrew Scriptures) is Elohim. In Hebrew, when a word ends in “im” it is plural, indicating more than one. For example, the Bible uses the word cherub, for a type of angel, but it also repeatedly uses cherubim for more than one angel. When the Bible uses Elohim, it is referring to more than one divine Being. 

We see this brought out in the first chapter of Genesis in verse 26 where we read what Elohim says: 

“Then God [Elohim, plural] said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26).

Notice the plural pronouns “Us” and “Our” used in this verse. They’re correctly used here because this refers to more than one divine Being.  

We see something remarkably similar in Genesis 11 at the tower of Babel. Picking up the story in verse seven, 

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:7).

Clearly, this is speaking of more than one Being when God says, “let Us go down and there confuse their language . . .”  

When we begin reading in John 1:1 that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God,” it agrees with Genesis 1:1 that more than one divine Being is discussed here.

We see a Being whom the apostle John calls “the Word,” and this Being “was with God”—a different divine Being—and the Word was God. There is a Being called “the Word,” who was God, but was with another Being who also was God. Clearly two Beings are mentioned here.   

This phrase “In the beginning,” refers to the time before the creation of the universe described in Genesis 1:1. This is the time before anything else existed. This is the time before time existed, if we can try to understand that. What is time? Time isn’t something we can hold in our hands. We can measure time, but how do we measure it? We measure it by the movement of heavenly bodies. A year is the time it takes the earth to make one rotation around the sun. But what did “time” mean when there was no sun or planet earth to rotate around it? Time was essentially meaningless when the universe didn’t exist before there was anything to measure time by.   

Both of these Beings existed before time, before the universe was created. They were Themselves uncreated. One didn’t create the other. As we see here in John 1:1, They both existed in the beginning, before there was any physical beginning of anything in the universe.   

We’ll explore these awesome concepts more in our next lesson.

© 2026 Scott Ashley. All rights reserved. Used with permission.  

UYA Team | uya@ucg.org  

United Young Adults (UYA) primarily serves the 18–32-year age group for the United Church of God. There are three main areas of contribution to the lives of the young adults: Promoting Spiritual Growth, Developing Meaningful Relationships and Making the Most of Your Talents. The Know Your Sword series is a daily expository message introducing God’s Word from a trusted perspective.