John 1:1-5, 14-18
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

Verse 14
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me."
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him."

Philippians 2:5-11
"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Hebrews 1:1-4
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds:
who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,

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when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."

John 17:1-5
"Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come, Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.
And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Revelation 13:8
"All who dwell on the earth will worship Him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

John 3:13
"No one has ascended to heaven, but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven."

Today, we want to consider the eternality of Christ, or, to say it in a different way...we want to consider the Scriptural teachings concerning the Christ’s existence in eternity, before He became incarnate in human flesh at His human birth.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us as human beings to conceive the concept of eternity past, of existence stretching back into the past without beginning. But this is true of God. "Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." (Psalm 90:1-2)
"Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the First and I am the Last; beside Me there is no God" (Isaiah 44:6).
"For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place. (Isaiah 57:15)

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"For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
In the passage we have quoted from John 1, "In the beginning was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God," John is telling us that since God has always been eternal, and has always existed, then Christ has always existed.
Let’s take a moment and consider what John meant when he spoke of the "WORD." John wrote his gospel while in Ephesus about the year A.D. 100. By that time two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world, and no longer was the Church predominantly Jewish. The vast majority of its members now come, not from a Jewish, but Hellenistic background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which that truth was to be stated had to be changed.
Let me illustrate.
A Greek might take up the Gospel according to St. Matthew. No sooner had he opened it than he was confronted with a long genealogy. Genealogies were familiar enough to the Jew, but quite unintelligible to the Greek. He would read on. He would be confronted with a Jesus who was the Son of David, a king of whom the Greeks had never heard, and the symbol of a racial and nationalist ambition which was nothing to the Greek! He would be faced with the picture of Jesus as Messiah, a term of which the Greek had never heard.
John faced the problem fairly and squarely. The Greeks had two great conceptions. They had the conception of the LOGOS. In Greek LOGOS means two things--it means WORD and it means REASON.
The Jews were entirely familiar with the all-powerful WORD OF GOD. "God said, Let there be light; and there was light" (Genesis 1:3).
The Greek was entirely familiar with the thought of reason. The Greek looked at this world; he saw a magnificent and a splendid and a dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path.
Nature had her unvarying laws. They questioned...What produces this order?

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And the Greeks answered this question with this explanation...THE LOGOS OF GOD!
The mind of God is responsible for the majestic order of the world. The Greek went on. What is it that gives man power to think, to reason and to know? What makes him a rational, thinking creature? Answer! The LOGOS OF GOD, the mind of God dwelling within a man makes the men a thinking, reasonable creature. So John, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, seized on this. He said to the Greeks, ‘All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Christ Jesus. Look at Him, and see what the mind and thoughts of God are like." John had discovered a new category in which the Greek might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in the form of human being. Jesus said: "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."
If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on, you know Him and have seen Him."
Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, "Show us the Father?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves" (John 14:7-11).
As previously stated, the Jews understood the all-powerful WORD OF GOD. To the Jew a word was far more than a mere sound; a word was something which had an active and independent existence and which actually did things. The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive! It was a unit of energy charged with power. Of that general idea of the power of words the Old Testament is full. Once a word was spoken, it could not be erased. When Isaac had been deceived into blessing Jacob instead of Esau, nothing that he could do could take that word of blessing back! We see the Word of God in action in the creation story. At every stage of it we read: "And God said"...The Word of God is a creating power!
So when John begins his gospel, to introduce Christ, he uses a term...WORD...which spoke volumes to both Greeks and Jews. Jesus Christ is the LOGOS OF GOD, the LOGOS IS GOD!

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In these opening verses of John’s Gospel, he has three things to say about the Word who is Christ.
(1) The Word (Christ) was already there at the very beginning of things. John’s thought is going back to the very beginning of the Bible. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." What John is saying is this--the Word (Christ) is not one of the created things; the Word was there before creation. The Word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the Word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and before the world began!
If the Word was with God before time began, if God’s Word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Christ.
(2) John goes on to say that the Word was with God. What does he mean by that? He means that always there has been the closest and the most intimate connection between the Word and God. Let us put that in another and simpler way--There has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God! Now that means that there is no one who can tell us what God is like, what God’s will is for us, what God’s love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.
(3) Finally John says that the Word was God. John is not merely saying that there is something divine about Jesus. He is affirming that He is God. He says "the Word was God", not, "God was the Word." The latter would have meant that God and Word were the same. So right at the beginning of his Gospel, John lays it down that in Jesus, and in Jesus alone, there is perfectly revealed to men all that God always was and always will be, and all that God feels towards and desires for men.
And John continues..."He was the agent through whom all things were made; and there is not a single thing which exists in this world which came into being without Him."
Paul picks up this theme in his letter to the Colossians and he writes: "[Now] He is the exact likeness of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible]: He is the Firstborn of all creation.
For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him [by His service, intervention] and in and for Him. And He Himself existed before all things, and in Him all things consist (cohere, are held

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together).
He also is the Head of [His] body, the church; seeing He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, so that He alone is everything and in every respect might occupy the chief place [stand first and be preeminent].
For it pleased the Father that all the divine fullness (the sum total of the divine perfection, powers, and attributes) should dwell in Him permanently." (Colossians 1:15-19) Now we turn to the Book of Hebrews where we are immediately confronted with some dramatic statements concerning Jesus Christ. "In many separate revelations [each of which set forth a portion of the Truth] and in different ways God spoke of old to [our] forefathers in and by the prophets, [But] in the last of these days He has spoken to us in [the person of a] Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time [He made, produced, built, operated, and arranged them in order].
He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:1-3 Amplified Text.)
The writer of this passage is telling us that there is both a finality and a universality about the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. In Christ, God’s self-disclosure is complete!
This completeness is emphasized by the greatness of the Person through whom the revelation was made. He is given the highest imaginable descriptive titles, in relation first to the universe and then to God Himself. In relation to the universe, He is called "the heir of all things," the agent ‘through whom God created the world’ and the one who is meanwhile ‘upholding the universe by His Word of power.’
Thus, by three simple expressions, the writer moves from the beginning of history through all its unfolding to its climax, and claims that the whole universe was created through the agency of Jesus Christ God’s Son in the first place, is now sustained by His powerful word and will one day be received by Him as His rightful inheritance!

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In relation to God He is first called ‘Son,’ an ‘excellent name’ or exalted title which (as the writer goes on to demonstrate at length, verses 4:1-14) is given to no angel. Next ‘He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature’ (verse 3). Better, He is ‘the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.’
Both these expressions are forceful figures of speech, taken on the one hand from the outdoor world of sunshine and on the other from the indoor world of documents, wax and seals. And both express, in so far as human words and images can express, one relation of the Son to the Father in the eternal mystery of the Godhead.
According to the first, the Son is "the radiance of God’s glory," like the sunlight streaming continuously from the sun, or in the words of the Nicene Creed ‘light from light.’ Jesus is the shining of God’s glory among men. He says that He was the character of God’s very essence and substance and being.
According to the second, the Son is ‘the exact representation’ of the Father’s being, like the impress made by a seal on wax. Together, the two expressions complement one another, the sunlight picture emphasizing the Son’s oneness with the Father, and the picture of the seal’s impress on wax His distinctness from the Father.
So, when the writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus was the character of the very being of God, he meant that Jesus is the exact image and expression of God, that just as if you look at the impression; you see exactly what the seal which made it is like, so if you look at Jesus you see exactly what God is like.
Together, the two expressions in this passage were of great importance when the theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries were seeking to define the nature of the Son’s relation to the Father over against the heretics. The ‘modalists’ made Christ out to be the same person as the Father, though now in a different mode, that is, God ceased to be the Father and became the Son. The Arians on the other hand, taught that he was a totally distinct person from the Father, indeed created by and therefore subordinate to Him. In contrast to these heresies, the Son is described here as being at the same time and eternally one in being with the Father (‘the radiance of God’s glory’) and distinct in ‘person’ or mode of being from the Father (‘the exact representation of His being’).

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What an amazing and profound thought, that Christ, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death on the cross!
In a word...we need Jesus Christ, for apart from Christ, God remains the infinitely Beyond. Only once has this Beyond come personally into our midst, when the Eternal Word of God actually became a human being and lived among us! Only then did human eyes behold true ‘glory’ in human form, the radiance of ultimate personal reality, "glory as of the only Son from the Father."
The gulf between God and us is still wider than we can imagine. It is a chasm that yawns between us as rebellious creatures and God our righteous Judge. For the unpalatable truth is that we have defied our Creator, rejected His authority, rebuffed His love and gone our own selfish way.
The intractable problems of the world hear witness to this human alienation from God. It is not only that we lack the moral integrity to approach Him, we also lack the mental equipment to conceive Him.
We are unable to find God by ourselves!
Worse, we are unfit to do so. So the kind of mediation we need is ever greater than we first thought. It is not just a personal disclosure of God, a making known to us in intelligible form of Him who would otherwise remain for ever unknown. It is more, much more than this. We need ‘grace,’ the free initiative of a merciful God who comes to His rebel creatures not to judge but to save them, not to destroy but to re-create them! And when we are talking about such a gracious initiative of God, as when we are talking about a personal disclosure of God, we are talking about Jesus Christ!
For the saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Apart from Jesus Christ, then, the chasm between God and us is impassable. It is our human finitude on the one hand, and our self-centered rebellion on the other. Only one bridge spans the otherwise unbridgeable gulf. It has been thrown across from the other side! It is Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Son, who entered our world, became a human being, lived our life, and then died our death, the death we deserved to die because of our sins.
Oh! What a wonderful God who so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him has eternal life!