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John 1:1-3 vs. “What A Beautiful Name”

Hillsong Worship · checked 2026-08-21

This song is checked more than once. Each proof takes it against one passage, so the findings differ. Also checked against Philippians 2:9-11.

What we checked

PassageJohn 1:1-3 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on John 1 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumLet There Be Light · 2016
Words addressed toJesus
Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The first section carries the two hardest things John 1:1 says, in the right order, that the Word was with God and that the Word was God, and it does so before any mention of what He did for us
  • Never says it is quoting and frames nothing as scripture, so nothing is misattributed
  • The writers have published a section-by-section list of the passages behind the song, which is more than most songs give you to check
  • Sung to Jesus and about Jesus throughout, with the singer present mainly as one who worships
  • The disputed line has a published defence from its own writer that appeals to a specific text, so a singer can go and read John 17:24 and decide

⚠ Cautions

  • The second section contains a line that has been publicly disputed for years. Read John 1:1-3 and John 17:24 before you decide how you are singing it, rather than deciding from the tune
  • Neither the song nor the publisher cites John 1. That connection comes from the writer's later interview, so it is his account of the song rather than something the song itself says
  • The publisher's song page lists only Philippians 2:9-11 for the whole song, which does not match the writer's own fuller account. Two rights-holder-adjacent sources, two different answers
  • John 1:3 does not appear anywhere in the writers' published list. The song is not obliged to carry it, but a singer who learns John 1 from this song will not learn it

Verse Proof

John 1:1-3

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.”

The opening of John's Gospel, written to persuade readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. John does not begin with a birth. He begins before anything was made, and makes three claims in order: the Word already was, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Verse 3 then states the consequence. Every single thing that has been made was made through Him, and nothing that exists was made apart from Him. The Word is named as Jesus in verse 14, when He becomes flesh and His glory is seen.

What the song says, described not quoted

A three-part song about the name of Jesus. The first section places Jesus with God before creation and says that in Him what had been hidden of God became visible, then names that name beautiful. The second section turns to what God did about our separation, and it is here that the much-argued line sits, the one critics read as implying God lacked something and defenders read as a poetic statement of God's determination to include us. The third section moves through the cross, the torn veil and the resurrection to a reign nothing can contest. No reference is cited anywhere in the song.

The song's writers have said in public which passages sit behind which section. Ben Fielding's own account grounds the first section in John 1, naming John 1:1 for the Word's identity with God and John 1:14 for the glory made visible, alongside Colossians 1:26. He grounds the disputed second section in John 17:24, Ephesians 3:19, John 3:16, Romans 5:8 and Romans 8:35, and the third in Matthew 27:51, Romans 6:9, Revelation 19:1 and Philippians 2:9. The publisher's own song page lists a different single reference for the whole song, Philippians 2:9-11. What is missing from all of it is John 1:3. The writer's account reaches John 1:1 and then jumps to John 1:14, and the verse in between, the one that makes the Word the maker of everything made, is not among the passages named.

· Not a quote: The song never says it is quoting and cites nothing. Its writer's own account of the first section names John 1:1 and John 1:14, but not John 1:3. That is the clause that places every created thing on the far side of the Word's making.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The verse the argument needs is one line further down than the verse the song used.

Why it matters

The public argument about this song is a question about God: does He need us. That question has an answer in the passage the writers themselves reached for. John 1:2 says the Word was with God in the beginning, which puts relationship before creation rather than after it. John 1:3 says all things were made through Him, so anything that could be imagined completing God would be something He had made.

That is why the missing clause is worth noticing. A settled doctrine cannot be dented by an ambiguous line, but an unsettled one can be shaped by whatever gets sung most. The three verses at the top of this page are shorter than the argument about the song and they answer more of it.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What this plants, sung week after week, is a name and an order: Jesus before creation, Jesus made visible, Jesus over death. That is a good deal to have lodged in a memory, and the song puts almost all of its weight on Him rather than on the singer. The one place attention turns toward us is the disputed section, and repetition is exactly what makes an ambiguity worth attending to, because the reading you are not thinking about is the one that settles in. So do the reading once. John 1:1-3 says the Word was with God before there was anyone else to be with, and that everything else came through Him. Hold that clause while you sing, and the section can only mean the generous thing.

Helpful comparison

Two documented readings of the same line, and both are on the record. John Piper said on Ask Pastor John in August 2017 that the line fits too easily into a theology of a God who created because He was lonely, and stated plainly that God is not miserable and lonely without us. He did not call the line false. He said he does not favour it. Ben Fielding replied in a Hillsong blog post that there is nothing in scripture to indicate God has ever been lonely, and that what scripture shows is a God who actively desires reconciliation, pointing to John 17:24, where Jesus asks that those given to Him be with Him.

Both readings are available in the words, which is what makes this an argument rather than a finding. A poetic line about not wanting something without someone can carry a lack or a choice, and English will not decide it for you. This site grades what can be proved from the words, so it is graded as ambiguous and shown, not settled. Worship leaders have handled it differently in public. At least one has written that his church sings the song and omits that section, which is a lawful thing to do with an ambiguity.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

~ FAITHFUL “Just As I Am” Charlotte Elliott (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) John 6:37 Sing it. The clause it was printed under is quoted accurately, and the hymn answers that clause honestly. Read the whole verse once. The half the hymn leaves out is the half that makes the half it sings hold.

✓ The epigraph is a real citation, printed with the hymn at its first confirmed publication, and its clause is quoted word for word.

⚠ The epigraph names the address and not the version. Its wording is King James (KJV); a singer who looks the verse up in a modern Bible will find different words for the same clause.

 ~ FAITHFUL “Behold the Lamb of God” Andrew Peterson John 1:29-31 Sing it. The summons is the Baptist's own sentence, narrowed from the world's sin to ours and joined to other true titles of Christ. Read John 1 once, so you know the pointing began at the Jordan, not the manger.

✓ The refrain's summons is the Baptist's sentence in recognizable King James wording, and every stacked title is scripture's own: life and light of men, Son of God, Son of Man, Emmanuel

⚠ The world's sin becomes our sin. Nothing false enters, but the Baptist's clause is wider, and the width is the startling part of verse 29

 ~ FAITHFUL “God So Loved” We The Kingdom John 3:16-17 Sing it. The chorus walks through John 3:16 clause by clause, lightly reworded and never labeled. The verse's own alternative, shall not perish, stays unsung, so read the whole sentence once for yourself.

✓ The chorus keeps John 3:16's clauses in the verse's own order: love, gift, belief, life

⚠ No translation is named, so the near-quotation has to be recognized rather than checked

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “Who You Say I Am” Hillsong Worship John 8:31-36 Sing it. It quotes nothing, and what it says at its centre is what John 8:36 says. Read the whole exchange, though, because the passage says what we were freed from, and the song mostly does not.

✓ What the song says at its centre matches John 8:36: the believer's freedom is the Son's doing, not the singer's

⚠ John 8's freedom is freedom from slavery to sin, established over five verses against people who denied being slaves. The song states the freedom without the diagnosis

 NOT A QUOTE “To God Be the Glory” Fanny Crosby (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) John 3:16 Sing it. Nothing in it is offered as scripture. Stanza one restates John 3:16 in Crosby's own words, and the tie to that verse was made by hymn scholars, not by the song.

✓ Nothing in the sung words is offered as a quotation. No verse is named, and no line is framed as scripture, so nobody is asked to take a paraphrase for the text

⚠ Stanza one restates John 3:16 without the two outcomes the verse ends on. Crosby's text never uses perish, eternal or everlasting, in the two sung stanzas or in the third

 NOT A QUOTE “O Praise the Name (Anástasis)” Hillsong Worship Acts 2:24 Sing it. It is quoting nothing and tells the resurrection story truly. Acts 2:24 adds two things the song does not: that God raised Him, and that death could never have held Him.

✓ Gives the burial a full verse. Acts 2:31 says the point at issue was that His body did not see decay, and a song that stays in the tomb keeps that in view

⚠ Verse 24's reason, that death could not have kept Him, is not in the song. Repetition will plant the resurrection as a victory won, not as an outcome that was never in doubt

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