Is Jesus Christ the Creator of all things?

26-06-2023 - Posted by Hans

All Scripture testifies from beginning to end that God is the Creator of heaven and earth (Acts 17:24). He alone created all things.

Who alone is stretching out the heavens…
Job 9:8

I am Yahweh, Maker of all, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, Stamping out the earth and who was with Me?
Isaiah 44:24

Creator – through the word

The Scriptures also leave no doubt that God created all things by His word. In Genesis 1 it sounds like a refrain: “And Elohim said … and it came to be so”. Or as Psalm 33 puts it:

By the word of Yahweh, the heavens were made, And by the spirit of His mouth, all their host. For He spoke, and it came to be; He enjoined, and it stood firm.
Psalm 33:6,9

The word is the means by which God created. God is the Creator and OUT of His mouth and THROUGH His word He called all things into being.

in the beginning was the word.

It is these simple statements that form the basis of the famous prologue to John 1. Below is a (fairly) literal translation of the first verses.

In (the) beginning was the word (Gr. LOGOS), and the word was toward God, and God was the word. This was in the beginning toward God. All came into being through it, and apart from it not even one ting came into being which has come into being

John is clearly referring here to Genesis 1, the chapter that also begins with the words “in [the] beginning…”. The word sounded from the beginning and the word referred to God as the One who spoke. The God of Genesis 1 is not seen (cf. John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God…”) but heard. “God was the word”. All things were made by the word, without one exception.

Notice the word WAS, while all things BECAME. The LOGOS is not a creation but the expression of God through which He created everything.

not an independent person

There is no reason at all to see the LOGOS in John 1:1-3 as an independent person who brought about creation together with God. Regardless of any theology, “the word” (the LOGOS) in this passage is nothing but the verbal expression of God by which all things came into being.

the word became flesh

But is the LOGOS in John 1 not a person? Yes… and John 1 also testifies from when that was:

And the Word (LOGOS) became flesh and tabernacles among us, and we gaze at His glory, a glory as of an only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…
John 1:14

When God sent his word to Mary and she heard that she would conceive, from then on the word became flesh. Literally: Mary was conceived by God’s word. Without the intervention of a man. Note that the glory of “the word that became flesh” is defined as the glory “of an only begotten from [the] Father.” The word became flesh in that the Most High begat his Son with Mary. As the angel informed Mary:

…Holy spirit shall be coming on you, and the power of the Most High shall be overshadowing you; WHEREFORE also the holy [ One Who is ] being generated shall be called the Son of God

Preexistence

God’s Son pre-existed because He is the word/LOGOS that became flesh. The same word that once begotten all things became human in the womb of Mary. Hence, right after the prologue of John 1:14, John the Baptist bears witness to this word that became flesh:

“This was He of Whom I said, He Who is coming after me, has come to be in front of me, for He was first, before me,”
John 1:15

John the Baptist was half a year older than Jesus (Luke 1:36), yet he testifies of his nephew: “He was before me”. How? As “the LOGOS that became flesh”! It is in this sense that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was pre-existent.

Anachronism

It may be objected that it is anachronistic to say that Jesus Christ or the Son existed before His birth, because He was not then Jesus Christ or Son. For indeed, it was not until his circumcision that He received the name Jesus (Luke 2:21). And it is by virtue of His begetting that He is called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). But this way of speaking is not a stylistic error, but a common figure of speech. As I can say, for example: my hairdresser was born in 1975. No one will then object that he was not yet a hairdresser in 1975. Scripture sometimes goes very far in this figure of speech. Thus we read that Levi (“so to speak”) tithes through Abraham to Melchizedek, despite the fact that Levi was born more than two hundred and fifty years later (Heb.7:9,10). And in Revelation 13:8 we read that the Lamb has already been slain since the foundation of the world.

OUT OF God the Father, THROUGH the word

It is not as Son or as Jesus that He pre-existed, but as Word/LOGOS. “Through Him” as LOGOS incarnate, all things came into existence. Not only John 1 testifies to this, but Paul also alludes to this truth several times in his letters. Paul, too, does not present Jesus Christ as the Creator, but as the means by which all things came into being.

Nevertheless for us there is one God, the Father, OUT OF Whom all is, and we for Him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, THROUGH Whom all is, and we THROUGH Him.
1 Corinthians 8:6

…for in Him is all created, that in the heavens and that on the earth, the visible and the invisible(…) all is created THROUGH Him and for Him and He is before all and all things have their cohesion in Him
Colossians 1:16

God is the Creator of all things. How? By his word! And that word became flesh two thousand years ago. He is the Word (made flesh) through which all things were made!