The Word of God – 15 September 2020

The Logos. John the Evangelist is the only one who uses this expression in connection with Jesus. It is only found in the Gospel according to John, the First letter of John and Revelation, also written by John. Although scarce, it is central to John’s understanding of who Jesus was.

The importance of the logos was well known in Greek philosophy more than five centuries before the coming of Jesus. They saw it as synonymous with man’s reason. The way you express yourself, your view of life itself was to be found in the logos or word. This is such an important concept about who Jesus is, that we are going to look at it again tomorrow.
John brings a new dimension to the understanding of the word “logos” when he tells us that Jesus is the Logos and this Logos is God himself. He has been with God and has been God himself right from the beginning. It gives us a very important view of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

The people, in the time that John wrote the Gospel, would have known the very first words of the book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” With these words, John also started the Gospel – “In the beginning the Word already existed.” John wanted his readers to realise that this Jesus of Nazareth was not just an ordinary person or even a prophet, but God himself. It was this idea that the Jewish Council saw as the greatest form of sacrilege.

This was, however, not the only reason John called Jesus the Word. Let us look again at the Greek philosophers’ idea that our words reveal who we are and how we reason. Jesus as the Word, is then the way that God reveals how he “thinks” and “feels” about us. By sending His Son to us, God actually said exactly who we are in His eyes and this is what the Gospel is all about. When Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected from the grave God put under words his love for us as John said in chapter 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.”

Prayer: Thank you, God. Amen