Did the Apostles Believe Jesus was the Creator?
But did the apostles believe Jesus was the one who created everything—including us?
In Genesis the God of the Bible is revealed as Creator of everything from tiny quantum particles to over a trillion galaxies averaging 100 billion stars each. He also created the complex coding of DNA that organizes proteins to develop all living life forms including us.
The prophet Isaiah confirms that God (Yahweh) is the Creator:
I (Yahweh) am the one who made the earth and created people to live on it…. I stretched out the heavens…. All the millions of stars are at my command!” (Isaiah 45:11a, 12, 13b).
The fact that God created the universe and everything in it is foundational to both Old Testament and New Testament theology.
The Apostle John’s Testimony
When Jesus’ disciples gazed at the stars on dark evenings, they didn’t dream or imagine that the Creator of those stars was in their very presence. Although Jesus healed the blind and deaf, calmed storms, and even raised Lazarus from the dead, John and the other disciples saw him as a man with real physical needs for food, rest and sleep.
Yet once they saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion, their eyes were open to his deity. They immediately began spreading the word that Jesus was both God and man.
The apostle John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, begins his Gospel by revealing Jesus as the eternal “Word” who created everything:
In the beginning there was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him. In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people (John 1:1,3-4, NCV).
Let’s look closely at what John, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, is saying here:
- the “Word” existed before creation
- the “Word” is the Creator who created everything
- the “Word” is God5
John has told us that the Word is eternal, created everything that exists, and is God. But he doesn’t tell us whether the Word is just a force or a person until verse 14, which makes it clear that John is speaking about Jesus as the Son of God.
The Word became a human and lived among us. We saw his glory—the glory that belongs to the only Son of the Father—and he was full of grace and truth (John 1;14, NCV).
John also refers to Jesus as the Word in his epistle,
Christ is the Word of Life. He was from the beginning. We have heard Him and have seen Him with our own eyes. We have looked at Him and put our hands on Him (1 John 1:1, NIV).
The apostle John tells us that “nothing exists that he (Jesus) didn’t make.” If nothing existed apart from him, it follows that Jesus couldn’t have been a created being.
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