Now John writes about Jesus.  And what this closest friend says will be of intensest interest to all lovers of Jesus.  But it is of even intenser interest to note keenly when John writes.  He waits until the end.  He gets the longest range on Jesus that his lengthening years will permit.  Distance is essential to perspective.  You must get far away from a big thing to see it.  The bigger the thing to be seen, the longer the distance needed for good perspective.  John shows his early appreciation of the size of Jesus by waiting so long.  When all his mental faculties are most matured, when any heat of mere youthful attachment has cooled off, when the eye of the spirit is clearest and keenest, when the facts through long sifting have fallen into right place and relation in the whole circle of truth, then the old man settles to his loving task.

He had been looking long.  His perspective has steadily lengthened with the looking years.  The object has been getting bigger and bigger to his eyes.  He is getting off as far as possible within his earthly span.  At last he feels that he has approximately gotten the range.  And with the deep glow of his heart gleaming up out of his eyes, he picks up a freshly-sharpened quill to tell folk about Jesus.

As he starts in he takes a fresh, long, earnest look.  And so he writes, like a portrait artist working, with his eyes ever gazing at the vision of that glorified Face.  He seems to say to himself, “How shall I—­how can I ever begin to tell them—­about Him!” Then with a master’s skill he sets out to find the simplest words he can find, put together in the simplest sentences he can make, so simple folk everywhere may read and get something of a glimpse of this Jesus, whose glory is filling his eyes and flooding his face and spilling out all over the pages as he writes.

He is seeing back so far that he is getting beyond human reach.  So he fastens his line into the farthest of the far-reaches of human knowledge, the creation, and then flings the line a bit farther back yet.  He must use a human word, if human folk are to understand.  So he says “beginning.”  “In the beginning,” the beginningless beginning, away back of the Genesis beginning, the earliest known to man.

Then he recalls the tremendous fact that when, in the later beginning man knew about, the worlds came into existence, it was by a word being spoken, a creative, outspoken word.  The power that created things revealed itself in a few simple words.  Then he searches into the depths of language for the richest word he knew to express thought outspoken.  And taking that word he uses it as a name for this One of whom he is trying to tell.  The scholars seem unable to sound the depths of the word that John in his own language uses.  It means this, and beyond that, it means this, deeper yet, and then this.  And then all of these together, and more.  That is John’s word.  “In the beginning was the Word.”