Jesus Our Logos; the First and Last Word

Joel Rice

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 (NASB 1515). The prologue of the Gospel of John, starting with verse 1 and ending with verse 18 of chapter 1, are some of the strongest verses supporting not only the Deity of Jesus, but also of Jesus being the Unique God the Father. At first glance we notice right away that John uses some unique choices of words in describing Jesus. The “Word” is translated from the dominate singular Greek word “Logos”, which can also be translated as: measure, computation, reason, account, expression or even wisdom. A good basic definition of logos is “the expression of thought – not the mere name of an object.” (Vine’s 1252) Why would John have used this word to describe Jesus? What meaning would it have to the Jewish readers of his time? What would it bring to mind of 1st century Gentiles? Most importantly, what does it mean to you and me today?

I would like to start with the Gentiles of the first century, being they were one of the original groups this Gospel would have been read by. Around 500 B. C. a philosopher by the name of Heraclitus, who resided in Ephesus, in observing the constantly changing universe, believed it was made of fire. Yet he found there was one law that seemed to be a constant, unchanging law of logic which he called Logos. This Logos was the original fire which set the rest of the universe aflame and a kind of wisdom which continued to direct the course of nature. Heraclitus wrote, “It wills and it wills not to be called Zeus.”(Clark 16) To him it was “wisdom” over the top of everything else.

Now enter the Stoics which organized their schools of philosophy around 300 B.C. They took Heraclitus’ doctrine and developed it further. They taught the current form which Logos resided was the actual physical universe, though it is not its final form. So in reality everything was deity, a form of pantheism. As such, being apart of the universe made us logoi and deity as well. Not everyone of the 1st century Gentiles knew the full scope of the Stoics philosophy, but just like the environmentalist in our society, its general ideas were known to most. (Clark 16)

Working with these philosophies, most of Hellenistic Jews liked to mix in these ideas with that of God’s Truth. A 1st century Jew named Philo from Alexandria, Egypt was drawing on two sources in his use of the word Logos, the Jewish wisdom literature and Plato. Plato was not a Stoic; however he still asserted a world of supersensible Ideas as the highest reality. Philo pulling from Plato and Solomonic wisdom philosophy represented this highest reality as being the Mind of God. Philo called it Logos, the Son of God, though he uses very figurative language. (Lange’s 51) All of these teaching among others were floating around the Jewish community; more importantly though was what was written in the Old Testament. Things like “God said,…and there was.”, “Then the Lord said to Moses”, “according to the word of the Lord”, was what they considered authoritative. (NASB 5, 98, 181) The Pharisees had several side laws they thought of as clarifying God’s laws from His word. All of this was there in 1st century Jewish culture.

For the Gentiles familiar with the Stoic’s teachings, John using the word Logos and applying it to the Unique God and Man in the person of Jesus would have given them pause. The Gentiles believed everyone had Logos, yet John claimed only one was the True Logos. The Jews would have had similar feelings and more animosity for someone claiming that a man could be God, no less being the very Mind of God in flesh. We can see Jesus’ word telling the Jews that He is not another God, but that He and the Father are one in the same.

As we dig a little further we also find that John was battling one more thing at the end of the 1st century: Church heresies in the form of Gnosticism. They used the word Logos as “reason”. (Johnson 26) They also believed the “Christ” part of Jesus was never really flesh, all flesh was evil and only our souls were saved. Therefore, any sin done in the flesh was not considered a sin against the soul. John tells us Logos became flesh and all of God’s Deity dwelt in Jesus.

Therefore using Logos to describe Jesus, I believe John was trying to prepare our hearts to hear Jesus’ voice, to listen to Jesus’ words and obey Jesus’ word, exactly like we should God’s word. (Gundry 10) In conclusion, Jesus explains if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. Likewise, if we have heard Him, we have heard the Father. What comes out of the mouth of a man shows what is in his heart and who he is. Jesus is the Word from God flowing from His heart and showing us who He truly is, Jesus our God, our Logos.