Logos

I said John 1 was jam-packed with good stuff and I meant it. We will look at another three names for Jesus with ties to John 1 before we branch out more, and we’re finally going to look at the name given to Jesus in John 1.

“In the begin was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created. Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness did not overcome it. … The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-5, 14

Now most of the time when I have heard someone discuss Jesus’ name the Word, they have referred back to Genesis and the creation story, particularly how God spoke the world into being. God’s Word was the vehicle of creation. This thought nicely coincides with what we see in the first few verses of John 1 as well as what is written in Psalm 33, “The heavens were made by the word of the Lord, and all the stars, by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into a heap; He puts the depths into storehouses. Let the whole earth tremble before the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it came into being; He commanded, and it came into existence.” (verses 6-9) So Jesus as the Word is clearly marked as the active force in creation.

A look into the history of the Greek word logos (which translates to “word” in the passage in John) gives even greater context to what John may have meant when he called Jesus the Word. The basic historical definition of the word logos is “to pick up, collect, count up, give account” and most directly refers to the act of bringing items into relation with one another. Early philosophers began to make the connection between the word logos’ meaning “to give account of something” and the order and balance found in the universe, eventually referring to this force as the cosmic logos. Heraclitus (ca. 535-475 BC) “understood logos as a principle of universe coherence and saw the world as a collection of unified things all kept in order by logos.” (Hillar, Logos to Trinity) Like others before him, he believed in a singular principle that unified and ordered the world and identified this principle by the term logos. Other philosophers would add to this- particularly as logos applies to the spoken word- but it is John who would give a name to this cosmic unifying principle- Jesus. (If you’d like a more in depth read on the history of the word logos, I found this article most interesting. https://blog.logos.com/2-ways-jesus-is-the-word-of-god-revelation-and-logos/)

But this name holds even more for us. “John calls Jesus the Word because he had come to see the words of Jesus as the truth of God and the person of Jesus as the truth of God in such a unified way that Jesus himself- in his coming, and working, and teaching, and dying and rising- was the final and decisive message of God.” (John Piper, In the Beginning Was the Word) Jesus is the message of God. From the first sin in the garden, God had a plan and it was Jesus.

Jesus is the manifested revelation of God’s message of love, redemption and justice. Take some time to be still and hear the Word of God.

Verses to help us on our way:
Genesis 1, Isaiah 55:10-11, Hebrews 11:3, Hebrews 1:1-3

 

Lord,
May we never forget the power of your word and the power in your son, the Word. All we know, and even that which we do not, exists by your will and through your Word. More amazing is that this same creator would come down to earth to live amongst us and experience all that we see and feel. We celebrate that this Christmas season and we worship you for your vast creativity and beautiful message of love, redemption and justice.