The Logos.
Logos is Greek for “word.” Theologically, its meaning is far richer and deeper.
LOGOS (λόγος, logos). A concept-word in the Bible symbolic of the nature and function of Jesus Christ. Also used to refer to the revelation of God in the world.
Logos is the “principle of divine reason and creative order, identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ.”
When John’s Gospel opens with, “In the beginning was the Word,” it actually means the Logos. Not just God’s word — but His “Created order.” John 1:1-2(KJV)
A. The Word (Logos) as he was in the beginning (1:1–5)
This opening paragraph of the Prologue (a) describes the person and work of the Word in a number of brief but highly significant statements.
A. The Word as he was in the beginning (1:1–5) This opening paragraph of the Prologue (a) describes the person and work of the Word in a number of brief but highly significant statements.
1. The first statement, in the beginning was the Word, echoes the opening words of Genesis, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …’ (Gen. 1:1). As God was in the beginning prior to the creation of the world, so too was the Word. This implies something to be stated explicitly shortly: that the Word partakes of divinity.
The second statement, and the Word was with God, is susceptible to two interpretations. It may simply mean that the Word was with God in the beginning, just as Proverbs 8:27–30 says Wisdom was with God at creation. Alternatively, it could mean that the Word was faced towards God, in intimate relationship with God. The final paragraph of the Prologue (a1), which balances this first paragraph and extends its meaning, makes just this point when it describes the Son (= the Word) as the one ‘who is close to the Father’s heart’.
The third statement, and the Word was God, on first reading might suggest a unitarian understanding of God, the Word being simply equated with God. But the original language (kai theos ēn ho logos) will not allow such an interpretation. To read the text in that way also overlooks the stress on the relationship existing between the Word and God (being ‘with God’ and being ‘close to the Father’s heart’). Relationship implies different persons, and this moves us away from unitarianism (one God, one person) towards trinitarianism (one God, three persons—Father, Son [=the Word] and Spirit). As the Fourth Gospel unfolds it becomes clear that this is what is intended. Jesus, the Word incarnate, claims to be one with God, but that involves being in relationship with God. So when the Prologue says ‘the Word was God’ it is not saying that the Word and God constitute an undifferentiated unity, but rather it is saying, in words aptly coined by Moloney, ‘what God was the Word also was’.
2. Two key ideas stated separately in verse 1 are brought together and repeated in verse 2: He was with God in the beginning, i.e. the Word was in intimate relationship with God and he was in that relationship at the very beginning.
3. The evangelist explains the work of the Word in the beginning: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. Genesis 1:1–31 tells how God brought the universe into being by his creative word. The evangelist picks this up when he says that it was ‘through’ the person of the Word that God brought all things into being, or, putting it negatively, without his agency God brought nothing into being. This teaching is also found in Colossians 1:16–17 and Hebrews 1:2.
Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 4, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 63–64.
Last Thought:
the Word was with God
the Word was God.
All things were made by him
without him was not any thing made that was made
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Jn 1:1.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Jn 1:3.
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