With these preliminary remarks, we must now take up our study at  John 1: 2,

remembering amidst all the wealth of detail that thin red line of redeeming love, that not

only binds the opening and closing verses of the prologue together (John 1: 1 and 18), but

runs through the whole Gospel, revealing that He Who made all things is "Love", and

that in the fulness of time He gave His all on our behalf.

Had verse 3 been a direct continuation from verse 1, we might have been uncertain as

to whether the phrase: "All things were made by Him" referred to Theos, "God" or

Logos, "the Word". Verse 2, however, makes it clear that the reference is to "the Word".

A literal translation of John 1: 3 would read: "All things through Him became, and

apart from Him became not one thing that has become." We may not approve of this as a

piece of English, but it has the merit of forcing the reader to perceive, in the insistent use

of the verb ginomai, the intended contrast between the Creator, and all things that He has

created. Ginomai in verse 3 means "to become", as in Acts 12: 18--"What was become

of Peter". The word is also often used in the sense of "to make" as in John 1: 3; and "to

come to pass", "to happen", "to be born" (Gal. 4: 4). Ginomai is essentially a word

that denotes origin, and such words as "generations", "beget", "parent", are derived

from it. In contrast with ginomai, we have the verb eimi, "to be", which meets us in

John 1: 1 and 2.  The reader will perhaps appreciate the contrast better if we turn to

John 8: 58:

The Jews fully understood what such words portended. Such a claim they regarded as

"blasphemy" (John 10: 31-33), and we read that they took up stones to stone Him

(John 8: 59).

There must always be a fundamental distinction between the One Who can say "I am"

(John 8: 58), the One Who was "in the beginning", and all who have come into being

(ginomai) as finite creatures. Further on in our study of this prologue, we shall discover

that, after the Word was made flesh, the word ginomai is used of Him. This, however,

we must leave to be dealt with later in the present series.

We saw, in our introductory articles, that each Gospel has its own point of view, and it

is interesting to notice that John is the only one of the four evangelists to put forward the

claim represented by John 1: 3. Paul also has his own particular point of view, and it is

enlightening to compare the way in which he refers to the same truth. Where John says

"All things were made by Him", Paul writes--in Colossians--"All things were created

by Him". John leaves the expression "all things" without further expansion, but Paul,

whose theme is Christ as the Head of the Church, and the glory of the dispensation of the

Mystery, expands the thought of the creation of all things, and speaks of "things that are

in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible".