1 John 1:1-3 doesn't say the Word is a thing. And there are examples of the Word being God in the Old Testament if you understand what John said about the Word in John 1.
You know
@Jim ... it seems to me that they would jump on anything they could use to knock who Jesus is and was back in that day.
I am so tired of hearing them say the Word is not a person , which of course they would say the same for logos, or if another
one was used like maybe the Speech, The Talk, The Mouth or anything that gets across that utterances came from this person.
This persons name does/did not have to be a name.....
Most of the objectors here, I think, are younger then you or I but I wonder if they know or ever hear of Peekaboo Street and how she made her mark in sports? How about "The boss". One I am certain they never heard of was from the very old TV show called Amos and Andy... And the one they called The Kingfish.
It, to me , is just idiotic to think that anyone would say that Jesus could not have been the Word because Word is not the name of a person sheesh.
Anyway... Got Questions says this.
By starting out his gospel stating, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”
John is introducing Jesus with a word or a term that both his Jewish and Gentile readers would have been familiar with. The Greek word translated “Word” in this passage is Logos, and it was common in both Greek philosophy and Jewish thought of that day. For example, in the Old Testament the “word” of God is often personified as an instrument for the execution of God’s will (
Psalm 33:6;
107:20;
119:89;
147:15-18). So, for his Jewish readers, by introducing Jesus as the “Word,” John is in a sense pointing them back to the Old Testament where the Logos or “Word” of God is associated with the personification of God’s revelation. And in Greek philosophy, the term Logos was used to describe the intermediate agency by which God created material things and communicated with them. In the Greek worldview, the Logos was thought of as a bridge between the transcendent God and the material universe. Therefore, for his Greek readers the use of the term Logos would have likely brought forth the idea of a mediating principle between God and the world.
So, essentially, what John is doing by introducing Jesus as the Logos is drawing upon a familiar word and concept that both Jews and Gentiles of his day would have been familiar with and using that as the starting point from which he introduces them to Jesus Christ. But John goes beyond the familiar concept of Logos that his Jewish and Gentile readers would have had and presents Jesus Christ not as a mere mediating principle like the Greeks perceived, but as a personal being, fully divine, yet fully human. Also, Christ was not simply a personification of God’s revelation as the Jews thought, but was indeed God’s perfect revelation of Himself in the flesh, so much so that John would record Jesus’ own words to Philip: Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (
John 14:9). By using the term
Logos or
Word in
John 1:1, John is amplifying and applying a concept with which his audience was familiar and using that to introduce his readers to the true Logos of God in Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God, fully God and yet fully man, who came to reveal God to man and redeem all who believe in Him from their sin.
