"And the Word was God". These beautiful but cryptic words introduce the book of John, the most beautiful and cryptic of the gospels. Scholars have long pondered them, wondering why John would call Jesus “the Word” and what it means to say “the Word was God.” The answer, according to the Writings, lies in the infinity of God and the relationship between love and truth.

When we think of “truth,” we tend to think of cold, dry ideas that we are compelled to accept and obey. But this is only the most external view of truth, and one that appears to people (like us) who are still struggling with selfish desires and have not yet fully embraced the Lord and heaven. The Writings say that truth in its purest state is, simply, the expression of love, the expression of the desire for good. That makes sense on an external level: If we want to do something good, we need to know how to do it, so it takes some knowledge and some ideas – some truth – to give expression to that desire to do something good. But think of other uses of the word “expression”: Think about the expression on a new mother’s face when she holds her baby for the first time. Is that “expression” truth as well? According to the Writings, it is! In fact, it is a purer, deeper truth than any we could express in words.

Ultimately, any expression of love – a hug, a kiss, a gentle touch – is a deep form of truth. And love, if you think about, contains within itself the unquenchable urge for expression. When we love someone we want to show it, in a variety of ways. If there’s work we love, we want to do it. So love produces truth in an ongoing flow.

If we take that idea and apply it to God, what we see is astonishing. God is, in His essence, perfect and infinite love, a love so powerful that we can best approximate it by imagining the inside of the sun. That love, like all love, has an unquenchable urge for expression. That expression – what the Writings call “divine truth” – created reality, created nature, created the universe and continually creates all things in the universe.

Because that creation flowed (and flows) from God, it takes His form. The universe is a delicate balance of energy (love) and mass (truth), and that interplay of desire and idea flows through all things, finding its ultimate expression in humanity. But our form is just a reflection of God’s form, so if we are human then He is the ultimate human, the perfect human, the archetype of humanity – what the Writings call the “divine human.” And because of love’s unquenchable urge to express itself, God has been in divine human form for as long as His love has been burning – which is to say, from eternity to eternity.

That is what is meant here in John 1:1 by “the Word.” “The Word” means divine truth in divinely human form – and that truth has, indeed, existed from the beginning, is the form of God, and was the “him” who created all things. It is the source of our life, and gives us the light of truth to apply in our own lives.

But the light shone in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. This has been the case repeatedly through human spiritual history. Early humans knew God as a human, but an invisible, spiritual one. As they drew away from him this was twisted into the worship of nature, and forms of animals and even stones and trees. So God caused the Bible to be written, with stories and laws and prophecies in figurative language to contain His divine truth. But people turned away from the deeper meanings, regarding only the letter of the Bible.

So ultimately, God had to make his humanity completely tangible, by clothing it with earthly flesh in the form of Jesus. Then people could have a voice to hear and a face to see, could experience God’s divine truth and divine humanity directly.