John 1:1 and the Jehovah’s Witnesses – episode 1, In the Beginning

When you hear or read the words, “In the beginning,” where does your mind go? Do you not think of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”? How could you not? And the same is true of the readers of John’s Gospel when he first penned it. It was written for the church and the church swam in the waters of Genesis.

“In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1a)
[en archē ēn ho logos]

John is mentioning the same “beginning” that Moses is describing in Genesis 1:1. It is the
beginning of the existence of our universe, or perhaps, more particularly, the beginning of our own planet and solar system. And at the beginning, John is saying, the Word was. Jesus was, Jesus existed, “in the beginning.” John does not say, “In the beginning Jesus became,” but rather, “In the beginning Jesus was.” The difference is huge.

If I were to describe the beginning of my family, I could say, “In the beginning of my family, my wife and I were.” But couched in that statement is also the idea that my wife and I had
something to do with the beginning. And couched in John’s statement is not just the idea that Jesus was already existing at the beginning, but that he had something to do with the beginning.  Of course, John makes that more plain just two verses later:

All things came into being through him, and nothing that came into being came into
being without him. (John 1:3, author’s translation)

When John says “nothing” came into being without him, that means nothing came into being without him.  But did Jesus come into being?  John does not, again, say “In the beginning the Word came into being,” but, “In the beginning was the Word.”  Can these words fit with the idea Jehovah’s Witnesses have that Jesus was the first and highest created being?

How does your conception of who Jesus is affect your attitude toward him, your dependence on him, even your love for him?  If Jesus were a created being, how would that, or would that, change your feelings toward him?