The Eternal & Incarnate Word
J.I. Packer (1926-2020) was an English-born Canadian scholar, theologian, curate, author, and editor.
Packer was the author of Knowing God, perhaps the most impactful work of his full and influential life.
In Knowing God, Packer unpacks the meaning of John’s references to Jesus as the Word of God in John chapter 1.
1. “In the beginning was the Word.” Here is the Word’s eternity. He had no beginning of his own; when other things began, he—was.
2. “And the Word was with God.” Here is the Word’s personality. The power that fulfills God’s purposes is the power of distinct personal being, one who stands in an eternal relation to God of active fellowship (this is what the phrase means).
3. “And the Word was God.” Here is the Word’s deity. Though personally distinct from the Father, he is not a creature; he is divine in himself, as the Father is. The mystery with which this verse confronts us is thus the mystery of personal distinctions within the unity of the Godhead.
4. “Through him all things were made.” Here is the Word creating. He was the Father’s agent in every act of making that the Father has ever performed. All that was made was made through him. (Here, incidentally, is further proof that he, the Maker, does not belong to the class of things made, any more than the Father does.)
5. “In him was life.” Here is the Word animating. There is no physical life in the realm of created things except in and through him. Here is the Bible answer to the problem of the origin and continuation of life, in all its forms: life is given and maintained by the Word. Created things do not have life in themselves, but life in the Word, the second person of the Godhead.
6. “And that life was the light of men.” Here is the Word revealing. In giving life, he gives light, too; that is to say, all people receive intimations from the very fact of being alive in God’s world, and this, no less than the fact that they are alive, is due to the work of the Word.
7. “The Word became flesh.” Here is the Word incarnate. The baby in the manger at Bethlehem is no other than the eternal Word of God.