An Exposition of the Gospel of St John Author:William Kelly General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1898 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER I. "IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (ver. 1). The Word, the expression of the Godhead, has eternal being, distinct personality, and proper Deity, not merely deiorw but OeoTtjs. We see One Who was before time began. It is not even the beginning of creation, but before then, when the Word was with God before all things were made by Him. Look back as we may before creation, the Word was -- not eyevero, existed, as One that had commenced to be, but qv, was, the Word increate, yea the Creator. Further, He "was with God," not exactly here with the Father as such; for scripture never speaks with such correlation. "The Word was with God." Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were there; but the Word was with God, " and the Word was God." He was no creature, but essentially divine, though not He alone divine. Other Persons there were in the Godhead. " The same was in the beginning with God " (ver. 2); not at a subsequent date, but "in the beginning," when no creature had commenced its existence. For this truth we are entirely indebted to God. Who could speak of such things but God ? It is He Who uses John to write, and all He says is worthy of implicit faith. The Word " was in the beginning with God." His personality was eternal, no less than His nature or being. He was no mere emanation, as the Indo-Aryans dreamed in the earliest form of their thoughts known to us. For God thus was not really supreme and free, but subject to restraint necessarily incompatible with sovereignty, and ever tending to that pantheism which, making the universe to be God, denies the on...« less