In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

New Testament references to God in general use the generic Greek term for deity, “Theos.” Employed some 1,400 times in the Bible (give or take depending on the English translation), the term predominantly (with few exceptions, such as Acts 17:23 and 19:26) points to the same deity as that of the Old Testament. It is the default term used for God in the standard Scripture of Jesus’ day, the Greek translation of the OT, which today we call the Septuagint or LXX. In Genesis 1 (“In the beginning God created …”), God shows in the Hebrew text as “Elohim” and in the Septuagint as “Theos.” This is the case throughout the OT. So when Jesus and the gospel writers used the term “Theos” they were not referring to a new God, but to Elohim, whose name is Yahweh. All the names, epithets and name combinations of the OT carry over to “Theos” of the NT.

So when the apostle John begins his gospel account, he poignantly and succinctly packs great truth into one sentence. He speaks of “the Word” as being “in the beginning.” One is hard pressed not to see the allusion to Genesis 1:1, the start of the entire Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” To Jewish minds this was startling—such a bold proclamation. Granted, at the time of John’s writing this near the close of the first century, Christian teaching had become fairly widespread, and the shock effect of this teaching may have been tempered a bit. But the scandal of it would not have diminished. Whatever John was about to write in his account of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was irrevocably connected to and identified with Elohim, the one and only sovereign God of the universe, who became known as Yahweh—the One who would phenomenally and actively be present for His people in the way they would need Him to be.

This was the God (Theos) over all people, not just the Jews. In Athens, Paul debated the Greek philosophers and staked out the divine turf:

For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it … (Acts 17:23–24)

As NT believers we hold that the One we worship is the supreme Creator God over everything, the absolute Theos, above whom there is no other.

Lord, I worship You as the one and only true God. There is no other.