Scripture Query and Answer: In the Beginning

Q.-Gen. 1:1. “In the beginning.” Is it the same word used by our Lord in regard to the devil in John 8:44?
J. C., Clydesvale, Hamilton, N.B.
A.-Not so. The phrase with which Genesis opens is the beginning of creation, and hence of time, though not yet in relation to man and his environment as from ver. 3 and onwards. “The days” are accordingly literal, as the context forbids any sense but the historical. Poetry or allegory is out of the question here. It is all a plain and sure statement of fact, where man's ignorance can only form hypotheses, more or less defective and short of the truth. Phraseology however is not everything; for the same phrase occurs in John 1:1 where it imports a still grander truth, the personal subsistence of the Word, Who was with God and was God, in the depths of eternity. Go back, as one might in the boundless existence of Godhead, there was no moment when the Word was not with God. That this is the meaning is certain from the third verse of this Gospel, where creation is absolutely and exclusively described and attributed to the Word. Consequently John 1:3 coalesces with Gen. 1:1, and its verses 1 and 2 precede creation, setting out the co-existence of the Word with God, while Himself God before He began the mighty work of creation. The same truth appears most precisely in Col. 1, one grieves to say, enfeebled in the R. V. though they could not destroy it. The enemy shows his malice in detracting from the Deity of the Son all he can as God sustains it sedulously throughout scripture.
But John 8:44 supposes neither the measureless depths of eternity nor the commencement of creation, when vast periods preceded the time of man's earth. It means in time, though before man was formed. “From the beginning” is pointedly distinct from “in the beginning” either in its highest application to the being of the Word or in its use to convey the entrance of creative energy. The devil was not always, but an angel that, inflated or lifted up with pride, fell. He had no standing in the truth and became a murderer as well as a liar, its father (cf. 1 Tim. 3). Thenceforward (άπ' ἀρχῆς from a beginning of this dark and baneful kind) he was a murderer. His hatred was against man, and especially in enmity to God against Him Who deigned to become man for God's glory and to deliver man. See also 1 John 3. Clearly it is impossible to make ἀπ' ἀρχῆς mean from all eternity, which would deny the devil to be a creature and simply that God made him originally a devil, instead of his being an angel like others that kept not their own original state (Jude 6).
Scripture Query and Answer: In the Beginning
Q.-Gen. 1:1, John 1:1, 1 John 1:1; 2:7, 13, 14; 3:8, &c. What is the difference, if any between “in the beginning,” and “from” it? X. Y. Z.
A.-” In the beginning” in Gen. 1:1 is clearly the first recorded action of God in calling the universe into being, the creation of angels (it would seem from Job 38:7) being anterior. It was the beginning of time on the largest scale. But in John 1:1 the phrase goes back into the eternity that preceded, because it expresses the being of the Word Who was God and created all (ver. 3), trace back indefinitely far as you may.
“From the beginning” is always in time, not before it, to whatever epoch or period, person or thing, it may be applied. Take the earliest application, as said of the great angel who fell: “the devil sinneth from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). It was not even the beginning of his existence as an angel, but only as a fallen one.
For the angels were all sinless at first, as Adam was. God never is the author of moral evil.
But the phrase “from the beginning” carries the same time-force as to good. It never means “in the beginning,” even though applied to Him Who was the Eternal also. It refers from its own nature to a time relation. So we see in Luke 1:2, where “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” can only mean from the manifestation of Christ in the public testimony. It is even distinguished from ἄνωθεν in verse 3, by which the evangelist draws the line between many chroniclers from tradition and his own accurate acquaintance with all things “from the outset” or origin. The phrase therefore does not and can not refer to eternity but to what was before its witnesses in time.
So it is in the all-important use of the phrase in 1 John 1:1, ὅ ἧν ἀπ’ἀρχῆς....περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς δωῆς
“That which was from the beginning.... concerning the Word of life.” Undoubtedly He Who is thus presented was “in the beginning;” and this is fully implied in ver. 2 that follows, as in John 1:1, 2. But here it is the concrete Person of our Lord, truly subsisting here below, heard, seen, contemplated, and even handled by the hands of chosen witnesses. This therefore can express nothing but the Lord's manifestation on earth among men.
1 John 2:7 is equally conclusive. “An old commandment” which the saints had “from the beginning” cannot refer to the eternal counsels of God as such, but solely to what was enjoined by our Lord when with them here below. They certainly did not hear it from eternity, but in time and at that time solely. This accordingly gives the true bearing of vers. 13 and 14, of course also 24, and 3:11, 2 John 5, 6. “He that is from the beginning “is the very same person” who was in the beginning,” both truths of the highest moment to faith; but they are distinct and in no way to be merged in one another. If I believe in Him that was in the beginning, it is the true faith of His deity and of His personality as the Word; I am not an Arian or a Sabellian assuredly. But this is not to believe in “Him that was from the beginning,” the Word made flesh and tabernacling among us full of grace and truth, Whose glory was contemplated by the apostle John and his fellows, as of an Only-begotten of (or with) a Father. Hence it is the distinctive badge of the father in God's family here below to know “Him that is from the beginning,” certainly not alone His divine personality and Godhead, however indispensable, but to know Him as He was manifested here, unchangingly divine indeed, but in all the wonders of His life among men in the lowliest, holiest, most familiar love and obedience: Christ Himself as He lived, moved, and had His being with the disciples, not only declaring God but showing the Father. To know Him thus is indeed to be a “father.”