He therefore that quarrels with the condition of faith must quarrel with all the world, since belief is the beginning of all knowledge; indeed, and most of the knowledge in the world may rather come under the title of belief than of knowledge. – Stephen Charnock
John 1:4
In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
Christ is the life-source. This is to say that there is no life outside of God. The reason God is the cause of all things is because He is the one who possesses pure life. All life has its source in God. All life comes from God and no life comes into existence that God did not breath into existence or somehow cause to come into being.
John 1:3
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
The Self-Existence of Christ
When John says that in Christ is life he is making an explicit declaration of the self-existence of Christ. The Logos was before all things and was in the beginning because the Logos is the self-existing being who possesses all life within Himself.
Christ is self-existent. He exists fully and completely independent. This is what is called the aseity of God. Aseity is that divine attribute in which God exists by Himself, in Himself, and through Himself. It comes from the Latin compound word meaning “from one’s self.
There are two aspects to God’s aseity:
1. Positive – Absolute independence and self-existence.
2. Negative – Christ as God is uncaused. He depends on no other being for His existence.
God told Moses:
Exodus 3:14–15
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.
God is. He is self-existent. He depends on nothing and no one for His existence. He does not become anything, He does not grow or change. He is and always will be. God says that he is “I Am” – which is his eternal name forever.
The highest statement that man can make of God is to say “He is.”
Who is God? “God is who He is and He is all that He is.” That is the sum of all of our theology. That is the extent of our human language. We find ourselves like stammering fools grasping at the height and depth and breadth of God and all we can say is “He is.” This is exactly what the name Yahweh means. It is the Hebrew 3rd person verb for being.
John equates Christ with Yahweh revealed in the Old Testament. This is the one who is. In him is all life. He possesses all life within himself. He is life and apart from him there is no life.
This is completely different than us. God exists because He is. A Creature is limited in its being. God is pure transcendent being. There is no real comparison between the being of God and that of the creature.
For God alone is unoriginated and incorruptible, and it is for this reason that He is God. Everything else after Him is originated and corruptible – Justin Martyr
Humans become. We are forever changing and growing. In fact, it is technically incorrect to call humans “human beings.” We are actually “human becomings.” There is only one True Being and that is God. Christ is God and He is the One who is who caused all things.
There is no created being like the being that is self-existent and transcendent. God is absolutely self-existent and independent. He needs nothing because He is all that He needs. So when John says that in the beginning was the Word, what He is saying is that Christ existed absolutely fully ase. That is what John means when He says “the Word was God.”
In the beginning was the Word is a statement of the aseity of Christ. He is ase – He is from Himself. In Him alone is life. John wants to make clear that Christ is the Logos. He is Yahweh, the one who needs nothing and no one for his existence. Christ is the one who is before all things and holds all things together.
While it is true that God needs nothing from us, we need everything from him. There is not a moment in our existence where we are not absolutely dependent on the independent being of God. We need him to supply the atoms that keep our bodies together. We need him to provide the molecules of air that we breath. We need his sustaining power from the moment of conception to the moment of death. And even then we will be dependent on the independent Omnipotent Logos to sustain us.
The greatest and best man can say is “by the grace of God I am what I am.” But the God says, “I am that I am.”
