The prologue to St John's Gospel is considered one of the ‘great chapters’ of the whole Bible. From its first verse it is clear that John wants Christians to see a direct connection between GOD’s creation of the cosmos in Genesis 1 and GOD incarnating into His creation. This was the whole point of creating this world: GOD & His people, living together in perfect Communion, enjoying the fellowship of each other on this Earth in undisturbed harmony. The first coming of JESUS is the beginning of putting that plan into action. As in so much of his Gospel, John wants us to see JESUS in all the books that Moses wrote; He wants to train us to read these accounts to see the Incarnate Son of GOD ‘hiding in plain sight’- as the steady Voice that speaks to Abraham, and then to Moses from the Burning Bush, for example; or as the fierce Angel of the LORD leading Israel to the Promised Land, then later commanding Joshua and all GOD’s people against Jericho. Using this pattern, John retells the Creation Story in the first 5 verses. He harkens us back to the first thing that came into being: ‘light’. Yet the ‘light’ that illuminated the empty-darkness that surrounded the formless Earth was not JESUS: But it was ‘light’ meant to prepare Creation for the coming of the True Light, which is JESUS. He is the Light which shatters ‘the dark’ of a fallen human soul, and readies this soul to be brought up through the water of Baptism and into the divine brightness of Heaven, as GOD did the dry land through the gathered waters on the Third Day, that He would use to form the first of humankind- the first of His people. John writes-
For as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God,
to those who believe in His name:
who were born not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man,
but of God.
In the Old Testament, people outwardly became children of God by circumcision (“of blood”), by natural birth into one of the tribes (“will of the flesh”), and by the arrangement of contracts e.g. marriages, servants (“will of man”). Yet none of these produced a trusting people. John is saying in that section that it is those who receive GOD through the gift of faith- these are those who are truly GOD’s children (“born…of GOD”). So in JESUS, God would set into motion what had always been His plan from before Creation: that a heart renewed and alive by faith would be the true sign of those who are part of His Kingdom— this was even true of the faithful in the Old Testament, says JESUS, St Paul (‘Romans’), and other New Testament writers (‘Hebrews’).