More New Creation in the Gospel of John: Why John’s Prologue Should be Interpreted in the Context of New Creation
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In a previous podcast, episode #7, we saw that the phrase “in the beginning” of the Gospel of John 1:1 relates to the new beginning that God began with Jesus the Messiah. “In the beginning” of John 1:1, while being an intentional allusion to the Genesis creation, introduces a new beginning or new creation that begins with Jesus the Messiah.
In this podcast we will examine further the New Creation theme in the Gospel of John, keeping in mind that biblical New Creation is not a demolition of the current heavens and earth followed by a total new re-creation of matter. Rather, biblical new creation is the rejuvenation or restoration of the current heavens and earth to the righteousness and goodness that God intends.
More New Creation in the Gospel of John
Biblical scholars have recognized the New Creation theme in the Gospel of John. I will read three quotes as examples from scholars who recognize that the Gospel of John is proclaiming God’s work of New Creation:
The first quote is from F. F. Bruce, from his commentary called, The Gospel of John: A Verse-by-Verse Exposition. Here is what F.F Bruce wrote:
“It is not by accident that the Gospel begins with the same phrase as the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1:1, ‘In the beginning’ introduces the story of the old creation; here it introduces the story of the new creation."
F. F.
Bruce, The Gospel of John: A Verse-by-Verse Exposition, Kingsley Books, 2018, pp.
28-29.
The next quote is from N.T. Wright, from his article called: What John really meant, the Gospel of the New Temple
“John’s opening move is, of course, bold... Are you really sitting down to write a new Genesis?
‘Yes!’ replies John, ‘because that is the truth to which I am bearing witness. I am telling a story about something that has happened in which heaven and earth have come together in a whole new way, about the … fulfillment of the creator’s purposes for his creation.’”
N.T. Wright, What John Really Meant, the Gospel
of the New Temple.
And then Leon Morris, from his commentary published by Eerdmans, The Gospel According to John:
“John is writing about a new beginning, a new creation, so he uses words which recall the first creation. He soon goes on to use other words which loom large in Genesis 1, such as “life” (v. 4), “light” (v. 4), and “darkness”. Genesis 1 described God’s first creation. John’s theme is God’s new creation.”
Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 71–72.
These are just samples. Comments like these are found in many scholarly commentaries. Unfortunately, Trinitarian scholars like the three quoted above seem to forget what they say about New Creation in John’s Gospel, as they then go on to contradict themselves by interpreting John 1 as referring directly to the Genesis creation. These commentators seem to ignore there own comments about New Creation in John’s Gospel, and then interpret John 1 as describeing some 2nd God-person, the Logos or Word, who participated in the creation of rocks, planets and trees, animals and humans in Genesis 1, a concept found nowhere else in any of the other 65 books of the Bible.
I suggest it is their presuppositions about a “pre-existent Jesus” or “deity of Christ” that force Trinitarian commentators back into an incorrect interpretation of the Gospel of John’s introduction. These modern commentators apply a non-Hebraic theological framework about a pre-existent Logos god person, developed in the 2nd-4th centuries after Jesus, onto this 1st century Hebraic document. Applying pre-existent Logos or “deity of Christ” interpretations onto John 1 has at least two very unfortunate consequences:
1) it creates a contradiction between John 1 and so much of the rest of the Bible that says YHVH, God, the Father alone is the Creator (Gen. 2:1-4, Exo. 20:11, Deut. 32:6, Isaiah 44:24, Mal. 3:10, Matt. 19:4, Mark 13:9, Rom. 1:20, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, Rev. 3:14, 4:11, 10:6, 21:5). I’ll quote just one example, Isaiah 44:24, “Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: "I am Yahweh, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself”.
2) The second very unfortunate consequence of interpreting the first chapter of the Gospel of John to be a describing directly the Genesis creation, is that it diminishes, ignores and even forgets the recreation work that Yahweh, God is doing through the life and ministry of His Word in flesh, Jesus the Messiah.
So let’s look at the idea that the Gospel of John is presenting a New Beginning, a New Creation
The God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, is the God of New Beginnings
The Old Testament is the foundation for knowing that new beginnings are the specialty of the God of the Bible, Yahweh’s. That is, a Hebraic, biblically thinking person could recognize that the Gospel of John is declaring that God, through Jesus, has begun something new which the Old Testament writers expected and longed for.
Perhaps the most prominent and obvious New Creation references are spoken by Yahweh through the Prophet Isaiah:
Isaiah 65:17-18 (Yahweh says) "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.”
Isaiah 66:22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, says the LORD; so shall your descendants and your name remain.
Yahweh says in Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Yahweh then goes on to describe a revolutionary change in both the earth’s and mankind’s circumstances, a change from a barren, desolate, uninhabited land to a flourishing, living, thriving land for His people. Indeed, the change is described as restoration to a Garden of Eden. Isaiah 51:3, “Indeed, Yahweh will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, And her desert like the garden of Yahweh.”
But the Prophet Isaiah was not speaking suddenly in a vacuum. He wasn’t a lone voice in the wilderness in this case. He was part of a long tradition of biblical hope of Yahweh’s restorative redemption. Indeed, redemption is new creation.
As described in the early chapters of Genesis, through the sin of the first man Adam, death, and a “futility curse” came upon humanity and creation. But God said he would not leave humanity and creation forever subject to death and destruction under the futility curse. Instead, God promised a reversal of death and removal of the futility curse, and that the reversal would come through a descendant of Eve, that is, through a human being.
The Apostle Paul knew of this promise of restoration and recreation, and that it would come through one man. Let me emphasize this: Hebrew scriptures anticipated, and the New Testament proclaims, that the redemption and restoration of humanity and the earth comes through one human being. Paul says in Romans 5:15: “For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the gift in the grace by that one man Jesus Christ, abounded for many”.
Note a couple of Old Testament parallels to how God works redemption through one man, which anticipate the work through the one man Jesus the Messiah. The author of Genesis described an example of the death of humanity and destruction of the earth in the flood waters in Noah’s day. Humanity, except for one human being and his immediate family, was destroyed by the flood waters. The old world perished. The old world was destroyed. But the receding of the waters brought renewal of life and a new world, a new beginning, a new history. In the New Testament the perishing of the Old earth by the flood is described in 2 Peter 3:5-6:
“… an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.”
Likewise, 2 Peter 3:13 goes on to say how the current age is destined to be purged by fire, “But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
Again, it should be emphasized that the biblical New Creation does not involve a demolition of the current heavens and earth followed by a total new re-creation of matter. Rather, as with the destruction and renewal of the earth after the flood during Noah’s time, the new creation is a renewal or restoration of the current heavens and earth to the righteousness and goodness that God intends (cf. 2 Pet. 3:6). This is an important point. Renewal and restoration are affirmation that God’s creation is good, indeed, like God said, very good. To maintain that this earth will be totally demolished by disintegration contradicts what God said that this material world is good, and rejects God’s promise that He can and will restore creation to righteousness. Biblical belief is not neo-platonic that wants to escape the created world to some nebulous dis-embodied state.
So, through the one man, Noah, humanity was “re-started” on a renewed earth. With Noah God began a new beginning. It is fair to say that Noah, as later Jesus, was a kind of 2nd Adam. Through one man God formed a new humanity, with a new covenant, on a new land.
Now consider another man, one single individual, one human being, through whom God brought about a new beginning. As we said, New Beginnings are Yahweh’s specialty. Yahweh God chose one man, Abraham, and through him formed a new covenant people, or community of God. When the one-man Abraham’s descendants through his barren 90-year-old wife Sarah had multiplied, God redeemed them, brought them out of slavery into a promised good land. Known by Abraham’s grandson as Israel, the Bible views Israel’s exodus from Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea as a new beginning, a kind of new creation. Note the parallels of God’s spirit or wind involved in making dry land appear at these three events 1) the creation account of Genesis, 2) after the flood in Noah’s day, and 3) at the crossing through the Red Sea.
The redemption of Israel out from Egypt was a new beginning, a new creation. No wonder Israel was to begin his calendar year by starting with the month of the Exodus.
Again, we need to remember that redemption is a kind of new creation, a new beginning. God redeemed Israel, established a new covenant with a new community which He called “my people”. And God promised and gave his people a new, good land. The possession of a good land by the people of Israel is a both a reflection back to Eden, but also a paradigm of the land to be given to the covenant people of God created in Jesus the Messiah. The meek shall inherit the earth. And keep in mind, all this began and came about through one man, Abraham.
In just a minute we will look at more biblical examples of Yahweh God bringing about a new creation, or a new history, a restart, or renewal and restoration to a kind of Garden of Eden. But for Israel’s prophets and people, all these biblical examples looked forward to the ultimate New Creation, the consummation - the removal of death and the futility curse. And for Israel’s prophets and people, this ultimate New Creation was to come with the Messiah. This is what the Gospel of John is telling us: the new creation has begun!
Some Examples of New Creation in John’s Gospel
Try googling “New Creation and the Gospel of John” and see that the world of biblical scholarship, and laity, has and is recognizing that the Gospel of John is describing God’s new creation work in and through Jesus the Messiah (see the end of this blog post for examples of internet "hits" to "New Creation in the Gospel of John).
Let’s look at a few examples of how Jesus is being presented in the Gospel of John as the beginning of God’s New Creation, in parallel to the Genesis creation account:
Language and events in John that Parallel Genesis
The Gospel of John uses language, and records concepts and events that parallel the book of Genesis. In our previous podcast we mentioned how John re-appropriates Genesis language in his prologue, using words like “the beginning, darkness, light, life, the world (Gen. 2:1), and being born. John uses the Genesis language because he has in view the Gospel of the new life that God brings about through Jesus.
The first day
As in Genesis, John makes reference to days of the week, and the day’s numbers, e.g., “the next day”, “on the third day”, and “on the first day of the week”. References to days of the week recall Genesis. It is quite likely that the seven days mentioned in the first chapter of John are an intentional allusion to the seven days in the first chapter of Genesis.
In the Garden
Like the first Adam, the Gospel of John describes how Jesus wrestled with doing God’s will in a garden (Gen. 3:1-6, John 18:1, 26). The first Adam failed, but Jesus, the second Adam, obeyed. The climax of John’s Gospel, the resurrection of Jesus to life, is also set in a garden. John 19:41. “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden”. Compare Gen. 2:8, “And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” John is the only Gospel that mentions these gardens, and in doing so alludes to the original man, Adam in a garden.
After his resurrection to new life, the first person to see the resurrected Jesus was Mary Magdalene. Mary thought that Jesus was – surprise, surprise - a gardener! The scene is a recreation, indeed a restoration, of the first Man Adam, who was placed by Yahweh God in the Garden of Eden. Again, Genesis 2:8, “Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed (cf. Gen. 2:8, 15, John 20:15). Genesis starts with a man, a gardener in a garden, but then exiled from that garden. John’s Gospel has a resurrected man considered to be a gardener – back in a garden.
It is finished
In his prayer the night before his crucifixion, the Gospel of John records the words of Jesus, speaking to his Father, Yahweh. In John 17:4 Jesus says: “I have finished the work which you gave me to do” (cf. 4:34). Then, for the Gospel of John, the last words of Jesus on the cross were, “It is finished” (John 19:28, 30). The words of Jesus recall Gen. 2:1-3, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.”
In John’s Gospel, the Sabbath arrives after the completion of Jesus’s work at his death (John 19:30-31). Jesus died on the evening before a Sabbath. His work was finished. The women and apostles rested on the Sabbath, while Jesus “rested” in the grave. Then, John reiterates that what happened next occurred on the first day of the week (20:1, 19). The first day of the week is another allusion to Genesis. Jesus was raised to new life on the first day of the week, the first day of the new creation. The historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week overlaps with the theological declaration that this is the first day of creation renewal. Jesus is the first of the Old World to come through death into the New day.
More details of language and events that are parallels between the Genesis creation and the New Creation of the Gospel of John are catalogued in articles and books like the ones listed above and at the end of this post.
The Gospel of John’s Signs and the Renewal of Creation
Now let’s turn our attention for a few minutes to the miracles, or signs that Jesus did as recorded in the Gospel of John, as they also are evidence that the New Creation has begun.
John tells us specifically that he recorded the signs that Jesus did “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (20:31).
The signs that John presents are evidence that as the Messiah, Jesus ushers in the redemptive transformation of the old creation to the new.
Water to Wine
Let’s look at the first sign miracle that Jesus did, or, as Jesus said, that God did through him (John 3:2, 5:36, 10:32, Acts 2:22). The first sign is the changing of water into wine at the Galilean village called Cana. This water to wine event is a sign of the coming of the new, of the breaking in of the recreation, of restoration, of the joy and abundance of the age to come.
When Noah stepped off the ark onto the new world, after worshiping God, what was the next thing recorded that Noah did? He planted a vineyard (Gen. 9:20). Vineyards, and the wine produced, used properly of course, became one of the main biblical symbols of hope, of renewal - of the renewal of life, peace, joy, provision and abundance on the God’s renewed earth.
It is not because of the alcoholic potential of grapes that make vineyards and wine a symbol of the age to come. The Bible clearly warns of the misuse of wine. But along with other agricultural abundance, the vineyard and wine became fitting symbols for God’s blessings upon mankind because God doesn’t provide man with just subsistence water, but with the rich abundance, sweetness, joy, beauty and luxury exemplified by wine, a product of peaceful inhabitation on the good land that God has given mankind.
During the Solomonic kingdom, Israel, for however so briefly, had a taste of the peace, joy and prosperity of a kingdom ruled by a son of David. The Bible described this as a time when “Judah and Israel dwelt in safety, from Dan to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:25, cf. Micah 4:4).
Wine and vineyards are a chief sign of Yahweh’s restored blessing upon His people Israel. On the other hand, the symbol of wine and vineyards can be used in a negative way. The prophets saw lack of vineyards and lack of wine as a sign of the futility curse, of the current old age and old system, of paradise lost:
Isaiah 24:4-7 The earth mourns and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. 5 The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. 6 Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left. 7 The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh.
And Joel 1:12:
“The vine dries up… and gladness dries up from the children of man”
But Yahweh promises restoration. Here is Isaiah again, who promises a reversal, the curse removed:
Isaiah 25:6-8 On this mountain Yahweh of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich foods, a feast of wine on the lees, of rich foods full of taste, of wine on the lees well refined... 8 He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Yahweh has spoken.”
To Isaiah, abundance of vineyards and wine accompanied the abolishment of death and sorrow!
And listen to Joel again, this time a description of a blessed reversal:
Joel 3:18 "And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water…”
Just about everyone one of Israel’s prophets use the same type of imagery: Here is Amos (9:13), "Behold, the days are coming," declares Yahweh, "when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.”
One Bible commentator says: “vineyards and wine exist at every turning point in redemptive history…and represent God’s plan for creation brought to consummation…of God’s desire for his people to experience joy and happiness…Wine is consummated creation.”
On the night before Jesus was put to death, at Passover, Jesus associated the coming of the kingdom of God on earth with wine: Mathew 26:29 “I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
With so much rich symbolism from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament connected to wine and vineyards, it is no wonder the Gospel of John records, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11). The glory that Jesus manifested was that he is the Messiah, whose coming ushers in the promised restoration of creation, symbolized in the Hebrew scriptures by abundant provision of wine.
All of the signs that John’s Gospel records are evidences that through Jesus the Messiah, God is bringing about the promised redemption of mankind and creation renewal.
The lame walk, and the blind see
No Old Testament prophet ever healed the lame or gave sight to the blind. These signs seem to have been reserved for the Messiah, and are evidence of the Messianic age, when restoration comes, when the new breaks in. For the New Testament authors, these restoration-to-health events are evidences, signs, that Jesus is the Messiah.
It is also of note, oddly enough, that none of the synoptic Gospels describe a miracle of Jesus done in Jerusalem (with the exception of one verse, Matthew 21:14, which also briefly relates the healing of blind and lame). The miracles done in Jerusalem are described in John’s Gospel, with great detail. Jerusalem is the place, as the Psalmist relates, that Yahweh has commanded “eternal life” (Psalm 133:3).
John’s record of the healing in Jerusalem of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5) and the blind man at the Pool of Siloam (John 9) are a declaration that the great hope of Israel expressed by the prophet Isaiah is here. Isaiah 35:5-6, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy”
Through Jesus, God’s original purpose for man is restored. God’s original purpose for giving man legs was so that man could walk. Eyes are made for seeing. Through Jesus, the futility curse is lifted, instantaneously. As John recorded and Jesus said, Jesus “made a man’s whole body well” (5x in John 5, John 5:4, 6, 9, 11, 14; also, 7:23). The “making whole”, or “making complete” of a man’s whole body is a sign that through Jesus the restoration and rejuvenation of creation comes. Creation is restored to God’s original purpose. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened…the lame shall leap like a deer”.
the dead are raised up
Although there are other important features of the age to come that are ushered in with the Messiah, perhaps there is none more important than the resurrection of the dead. God gave life to humankind at creation. In the recreation of resurrection life, sin and death are defeated and God gives life again. Man is born again, resurrected from the dead, and placed on land. The Apostle Paul called the resurrection from the dead “the hope of Israel” (Acts 23:6, 24:21, 28:20).
Contrary to biblical, Hebraic thought, the Greek thinker, and this applies to much of western Christianity today, sought bliss in some dis-embodied, non-material existence. Not so the biblically minded Hebrew, whose hope was in the promise of God, bodily resurrection and life on a renewed earth in which righteousness dwells.
The Gospel of John records two resurrections, both in the vicinity of Jerusalem. These resurrection accounts are signs that the Messiah, Jesus, is here, that the new has come, death is defeated. The dead are raised. Resurrection (John 11, 20) of the dead is the ultimate evidence of renewal, of recreation.
The first resurrection in the Gospel of John is that of Lazarus in chapter 11. The event is infused with the idea that resurrection accompanies the coming of the Messiah. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life”. Martha replies, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is coming into the world”. Then Lazarus, dead in the tomb, heard the voice of Jesus (cf. John 5:26-28) and came out from the grave, alive.
The ultimate sign in the Gospel of John is the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah from the dead, which is the first moment of permanent recreation. Lazarus was raised, only to die again. Like others, Lazarus had been resurrected as a sign of God’s power at work in Jesus, but Jesus is the first human being resurrected to immortality.
As mentioned, as recorded in John 20, it is not a coincidence that Jesus was resurrected from the dead “on the first day of the week”. In another parallel with the Genesis creation, the resurrection of Jesus is the first day of the new creation. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, the beginning of God’s new creation.
Summary
I have looked at some examples of new creation in the Gospel of John’s language, events and miraculous signs, to show that the prologue of John, John 1:1-18 is about the new beginning that God brings about through Jesus the Messiah. The prologue, while intentionally alluding to and appropriating Genesis creation language, is not describing the original Genesis creation of land, plants, animals and humankind. Rather, the prologue of John introduces Jesus, through whom God brings about a new beginning, new creation, new life.
In other words, to interpret John’s prologue as referring directly to the Genesis creation is to miss or ignore that the Gospel of John is about God’s work of new creation.
John’s Gospel sees God at work in renewal and recreation in and through Jesus. Jesus is not the creator or even the re-creator, but he is the firstborn of the recreation, the channel through whom God recreates all. By describing the actual historical events in life of Jesus, John wants his readers to understand and believe that in and through Jesus the Messiah, God has begun, and will bring to a completion, the renewal of creation. Which means for mankind life in the age to come.
In John’s Gospel, the new creation has so far only come through Jesus in sample and symbol as evidence of its eventual coming in fullness, in completeness.
In a future podcast we hope to show how understanding John’s Gospel as a declaration of the new beginning or new creation fits the historical context of the 1st century. That is, a declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, who indeed ushers in the new beginning had significance and meaning for the first century readers of John’s gospel. We also hope to see how other writers of the New Testament see Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, as the beginning of God’s new creation.
Listen to and read similar teaching on the One God Report Podcast.
Besides the scholarly commentaries on the Gospel of John, here are some internet resources:
Brown, Jeannine. Creation’s Renewal in the Gospel of John. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2010.
Green, Peter. Vineyards and Wine from Creation to New Creation. PhD dissertation, 2016.
Myers, Jeremy (podcast): The New Creation in the Gospel of John
Perry, Andrew. Jesus, Creator of an Old Creation or a New One? (non-Trinitarian)
Tabb, Bryan. Review of A. Moore, Signs of Salvation: The Theme of Creation in John’s Gospel
Tabletalk Theology. New Creation in John’s Gospel
Wright, N.T. What John Really Meant: The Gospel of the New Temple
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