Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. Almost nobody has ever had to defend one.

He was a good teacher. He was a good man with bad followers. He becomes whatever you need Him to be.

Every one of those keeps Jesus manageable - big enough to admire, small enough to ignore. But a Jesus you create can never be bigger than you are. And a Jesus built in your image dies the same day you do.

An opinion about Jesus is easy to have. It's a lot harder to stand on when life is hard.

Read them one after the other, out loud if you can. John opens his Gospel with the opening words of the Bible - and then he adds something Genesis did not say.

Genesis tells you that in the beginning, God created. John tells you that when the beginning began, Someone was already there.

This is not a claim that Jesus is very old. It is a claim that He never started. Everything else in the universe has a first moment. He does not.

Which means your opinion of Him - however carefully you built it, however long you have held it - is younger than He is.

Don't rush these. Give yourself a few minutes with each one before moving on.

Write your answer to the first question down before you move on. You will come back to it on Friday.

Come back tomorrow - Tuesday you'll find out why John calls Jesus "the Word," and what it means that God did not leave you guessing.

• John 1:1-2 - with God, and was God
• Hebrews 1:1-3 - the exact imprint of His nature

Nobody knows what you are thinking until you say it. Everything inside you stays inside you until it comes out in words. That is what John is doing when he calls Jesus "the Word" - he is saying that everything God is has come out where you can see it.

Then look at the rest of verse 1. The Word was with God - face to face, a relationship older than time. And the Word was God - not a lesser copy, not a messenger, not a spokesman. Whatever God is, He is.

John says it twice, in verse 1 and again in verse 2, because he does not want you to miss it. Everything in the next twenty-one chapters depends on it being true.

And here is what it means for you: He was not lonely. He did not make you because something was missing. He was complete, and He came anyway.

• John 1:3 - all things were made through Him
• Colossians 1:16-17 - in Him all things hold together

Verse 3 says it twice, once forward and once backward: all things were made through Him, and without Him not one thing was made that has been made. John closes the door and then locks it. There is no category of existing thing that falls outside this.

Including you. You were not an accident and you were not an afterthought. Before you were anyone's child, you were His idea.

Which means His claim on your life is older than your opinion of Him. He is not waiting for a vote. He is inviting a return.

• John 1:4 - in Him was life
• John 20:31 - life in His name

Read verse 4 carefully. "In Him was life." Not from Him. In Him.

He does not hand life out the way a utility company delivers power to a house. He holds it - which means you cannot get it anywhere else, and you cannot get it apart from Him.

This is why John tells us at the end of his Gospel that he wrote so that by believing you may have life in His name. Not information about Jesus. Life in Him.

Plenty of people have known about Jesus for decades and never received a thing from Him. Knowing about Him has never given anybody life.

• John 1:5 - read it twice, slowly
• John 1:1-18 - then the whole prologue

John does not say the light shined. He says it shines - present tense, right now, dropped into a paragraph full of past-tense verbs. The tense is the point.

And the word he chose at the end means two things at once: to understand, and to overpower. The darkness could not figure the light out, and it could not put the light out. Both failures. Both permanent.

Whatever you wrote down on Monday, whatever you named on Wednesday - the light is already shining in it. It has been tried. It did not go out.