EPISODE 1 John Chapter 1 ”Meet the Logos” at Share The Word

Welcome, friends, to Share the Word. Whether you're just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you'll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. Thanks for being a listener. Now let's get right into today's lesson. John chapter 1: Meet the Logos. Friends, welcome to Share the Word, the best way to learn the New Testament chapter by chapter.

Thanks for checking us out. We're going to start this educational series focused on the Gospel of John. You might be thinking, I thought the New Testament started with Matthew. Well, yeah, it does, but realize the New Testament is not a novel. It's a collection of 27 separate writings. The first four, in the normal order in our Bibles, we call the Gospels, and they are about the life of Jesus.

We're going to tackle two of the Gospels up front in our podcast series, and we'll get to the other two accounts later on. We decided to begin with the Gospel of John because it's the clearest presentation of Jesus in his own words. By the way, there's an intro to the Gospel of John you can download at www.sharetheword.org. That intro will answer the who, what, when, where, and why questions regarding this crucial early Christian writing. Importantly, it will explain why we're confident this account of Jesus was written by the apostle John, who was an actual eyewitness of the things in it. And another important why: it will explain why John wrote his Gospel.

Near the end of his account, he explains why he wrote his Gospel. He states his thesis very clearly. He says he wrote what he did to convince us that Jesus was both the true Messiah God promised to send, as well as the very Son of God. And most important for us personally, that it's by believing into Him that we can have the gift of eternal life. That is, live on in a situation much better than the one we're in now, after our lives here are over. This is at the very heart of Christianity.

That is, that God, our Creator, loves us enough that He made a way for us to enjoy life with Him eternally. John's going to tell us how we came to believe that is possible, and how Jesus is at the very center of why and how that is possible. So let's get into it. The Apostle John wrote his gospel late in the first century. By then an old man, he decided or was persuaded to leave a written record about the years that he knew and followed Jesus. Over the time they were together, John and Jesus became close friends.

In fact, John was his most loyal follower. After Jesus' earthly ministry was over, John lived on in Jerusalem for a while, then traveled as a missionary carrying the story of who Jesus was and what he had done to places where people had never heard of him. For a while, he was exiled on an island in Mediterranean when the Roman government decided they needed to start curbing the influence of rapidly growing Christianity. But then he spent his final years living in the city of Ephesus in what is today southwestern Turkey. That was heavily populated in the first century and became a hub of early Christian activity. It's during those final years while at Ephesus, John, now a very old man, at that point the last living link to Jesus, sat down and wrote the gospel that carries his name.

This is his unique story, the story of Jesus through John's eyes. As we open to chapter one, if you're at all familiar with the other gospels which were written before it, you might expect to find information about Jesus' royal lineage or about the virgin who amazingly found herself pregnant. Or the timely journey to Bethlehem and the Savior's birth in, of all places, a stable. You know the Christmas story. But when we come to John's Gospel, that's not what we find. No angelic birth announcements or shepherds or wise men.

No baby in the manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. Nothing like that. Instead, the Gospel of John introduces Jesus very, very differently. Listen. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, who came as a witness to testify concerning that light, says that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he only came as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed into his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent or human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory as of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Maybe you think of the world in which Christianity was born as being a place of ignorance filled with barbarians.

But if so, you have the wrong picture. Because the first century Greco-Roman world was actually a very sophisticated culture, and it honored philosophy and it prided itself in accumulated wisdom. I'm sure, like any good communicator, once John decided he would write an account about Jesus from his own experiences, he wanted to do that in a way that would engage those he hoped would read his work. He wanted those in a sophisticated metropolis like Ephesus, where he was living and ministering in those years, one of the great cities of the Roman world, to understand just who Jesus was, why he had come, and why it mattered to them. So how could he introduce Jesus to them in a way that would pique their curiosity and that would make them want to binge-read his account?

Not only the Jews in Ephesus like him, but also the majority pagan Romans and Greeks, who, although influenced by centuries of philosophy, did not know the true God. Guided by the Holy Spirit, this is what he came up with. He introduced Jesus to his readers as the Logos, translated in English versions of the Bible, the Word. Now what I'm going to say next is very important to understand and to always keep in mind when approaching Bible study. When reading or listening to the Bible, remember, each of its books was written in a specific historical and cultural context. My personal view is that the Bible is verbally inspired.

By that I mean its human authors wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit so that what they wrote is trustworthy. But I also believe the process was organic. The human authors were not robots taking dictation from God. They were writing what they knew, what they'd experienced, in their own words. All the while, the Holy Spirit was overseeing and guiding them so that what they wrote was not only their words, but also ultimately God's word. I take that high view of Scripture, by the way, because that's the claim that the Bible makes for itself.

It's also the view of Scripture that Jesus Himself held. So as a Christian, a follower of His, I'm just following His lead in this. So when we open to John's prologue, his introduction here in chapter one, realize John certainly had an immediate purpose and audience in his mind when he sat down to write. He was intentionally addressing people in his world. And if our goal is to understand what he wrote, we should try to understand the original reader's mindset who would have first read it. That's what I'm going to explain next.

Let's consider carefully John's opening lines. In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. Why would he have written that? Let me tell you the backstory. Several centuries before John's time, a philosopher by the name of Heraclitus had lived and taught in this very same city of Ephesus where John now found himself. Heraclitus' ideas were well known in the first century world, certainly among the people who lived in the area where John was.

This philosopher from Ephesus, interestingly, is the one who first used the term Logos with a specialized meaning. After him, other important writers and thinkers like Plato, for example, picked it up and used the term similarly. And still later, in the first century, in Jesus' time, in John's time, the well-known Jewish philosopher Philo was using the term in similar ways in his writings. To these ancient philosophers, Logos was the term they used for the first cause, the original intelligence and power behind and ultimate reason for everything else that exists. Think about that for a moment. To them, logos was the term they used for the first cause, the original intelligence and power behind the ultimate reason for everything else that exists.

Philosophers have always wrestled with the big questions: Who are we, and how did we get on this planet? And what's the meaning and purpose of life? When Heraclitus, Plato, and others theorized about the origins of the universe and the origin of life, they used the term logos for the reason our world exists, for the first cause that brought everything in it into existence, and the rational intelligence that somehow made it all work together. To them, there had to be some force, some intelligence, some reason for how the ordered universe works. They were smarter, frankly, in that respect than many today who somehow imagine that the universe came out of nothingness, or that order could somehow come out of chaos. They realized there had to be a super intelligence, some immensely powerful first cause.

They called this the logos, but to their minds it was an unexplainable, impersonal, and unknowable force. But do you see maybe now why this term was ideal for John to borrow from his world to use to introduce Jesus, to catch the attention of his first readers? With that historical cultural context in mind now, John chapter 1 makes better sense, doesn't it? He's using the term logos, which his first readers were familiar with, but he's taking it to an entirely new place. He's essentially saying, You know the logos, the power and intellect responsible for our world? It's not an impersonal, unknowable force out there somewhere beyond us.

The Logos is actually a person, and for a time he was in our world in flesh and blood. And, I knew him. Let's back up for a moment and try to think through what John actually dropped on his first readers' heads. In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, or it could be read, In the beginning the Logos was. The Logos, he's saying, is not created. It's something that existed in the beginning before anything else.

Of course, John's Jewish readers, who had some familiarity with the Old Testament, would hear an echo in these words of Genesis chapter 1, where it says, In the beginning God created. But here John writes, The Logos was with God, and the Logos was God, and he created. Think about what he does not say here. He does not say God was the Logos. He says, The Logos was God. Why is that difference significant?

Well, because while John's word choice requires that we understand him to be saying the Logos was deity, that the Logos had the same essential nature as God, it does not require us to conclude that the Logos is all the deity that there is. I hope I'm not losing you yet. John is asserting that the Logos is divine, that the Logos is God. But he's not asserting that Logos is all there is to God. This fits to the Trinitarian concept. He's saying that the Logos was both with God in the beginning before anything else, and that the Logos was God.

So far, the ancient philosophers may have been able to nod in some cautious general agreement. They would have concurred that our ordered universe had to have some ultimate cause behind it. Call it God if you want, John, they would have said. But they preferred Logos. So John continues, Through him all things were made, and apart from him nothing was made that has been made. What might start sounding a little odd to John's first-century reader at this point is that he's using personal pronouns to refer to the Logos, whereas they thought of the force behind the universe as an impersonal thing.

John is saying he and him, not it. As he continues in verse 4 and 5, he says, In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. That light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Life sprang from the Logos, John is saying, and light shines from him. Heraclitus used the term fire. To him, the light in men, the fire in men, was their higher understanding, their perception.

Enlightened people were those who were in tune with the Logos. They understood higher things, while the unenlightened were in ignorant darkness. I'm trying now to explain how a first-century reader who knew nothing yet about Jesus might have heard what John is saying here when he read these lines for the first time. Up to this point, I don't think they would have had too many things that shocked them or they found objectionable, but they'd be wondering where John is going with all this. Then in verse 6, John begins a radical departure, and it's based on his own personal experiences. He says, A man appeared on the scene in Israel.

This happened when John was a young man, who was sent by God to bear witness to the light. He's referring to the prophet John the Baptist here, the last of the Old Testament prophets, whose ministry in Israel was to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah. In verses 8 to 10, John makes his first truly shocking statement when he says, This prophet was sent to bear witness to the true light that was coming into the world. This true light, John says, now had in fact been in the world, and though the world was made by him, the world did not recognize him. What? I can see the eyebrows going up and maybe puzzlement coming over the faces of those who were reading this for the first time in Ephesus.

They could no longer imagine John's Logos as referring to some vague impersonal force or some mysterious unknown intelligence. John is claiming that the Logos is in fact a personal being that actually came into our world, although he was not recognized for who he really was by most. In verse 14, he gets even more specific about this claim. The Logos, he says, became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Although this was a divine person who existed before anything else and through whose superintelligence and power everything else in the universe came into being, John is claiming that at a real point in time, the Logos entered our world as a flesh and blood person and for a time lived among us humans. And John says, I was one of those people, and I knew him.

This must have been starting to sound like science fiction or something like that, whatever their version was of that in the first century. John's claiming to know this all firsthand. He says, He made his dwelling among us, and we beheld his glory, his divine attributes. That word beheld, by the way, in verse 14 means to examine something carefully, to scrutinize it, to study it deliberately. John is claiming that he and others will meet in his account had the extraordinary experience, the hard-to-even-conceive-of experience, of examining this divine being personally, up close and deliberately, over a long period of time. Wait a minute.

So there was a real flesh-and-blood man you knew, John, someone you spent time with over years, actually, who you became convinced was the Logos in human form, the power and intelligence that created everything else in the universe. Yes, you got that right. That's exactly what John is saying. You may not be listening to me in minor shock right now, or maybe you are, but believe me, to John's first-century readers, this sounded pretty far out there. I'm sure after these opening lines in his gospel, some reacted, Wow, this is nuts, put it down and decided to go take a good soak in the baths. But others thought, This does seem pretty crazy, but it's interesting, and John sounds serious about it.

I'm going to read on and see how in the world he came to believe all of this. Although John has not yet identified the Logos with a name, we know his name. His first-century readers were about to learn the name too. Meet the Logos. His name is Jesus. If I can pull my own head away from what I've heard most of my life, step outside of my background, which was very steeped in Christianity, I have to admit John was certainly making outlandish claims.

But what we're going to see as we read on in his gospel is just how he personally was compelled to these conclusions over time. What convinced him and the others that this was the real identity of Jesus? Bear in mind, they had nothing to gain from that conclusion. In fact, John and other early Christians risked and lost a lot because they insisted this was true. And think about this too. If it is true, it's obviously the most important thing that's ever happened on this planet.

The creator of the universe, the source of life itself, was here among us for a time as a flesh and blood person. If that is true, what a story. If that is true, what in the world was he doing here? That's exactly why John wrote, to answer those crucial questions. I'd love to fully explore them more today with you, but I'm nearly out of time for this podcast, and also, if I did, you probably wouldn't tune in next time. But let me briefly point out a couple answers John suggests here at the outset in chapter one.

First, one reason he says the second person of the Trinity came out of heaven to live among us for a time, God in human form, rubbing shoulders with him and a whole lot of other people for those years, was to show us what God is really like. He was, John writes, full of grace and truth. He says that twice. Jesus demonstrated God's grace in action over and over, as we'll see in John's account going forward. But at the same time, he boldly shared God's unfurnished truth. He revealed to men spiritual realities, absolute truths we desperately need to hear and respond to.

Verse 18 says, No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in the closest possible relationship to the Father, he came to make him known. Another reason Jesus came, which I can see John hinting at, but not yet fully explaining, is that somehow the coming of the Logos into our world, Jesus in our world. Made it possible for us to become sons and daughters of God. I'm referring now to his line at verse 12 where he says, To all who did receive him, who believed into his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children not born naturally, he says, but born from God. What did Jesus do while he was on our planet that somehow enables us to be reunited with our Creator as our Father, born into his family and given the gift of eternal life?

That's where this story is headed. But John has a lot to tell us first about how he personally became convinced of all this, how he became a true believer. And we're going to see that story begin to unfold through John's eyes, beginning in chapter 2, in our next podcast. Until then, thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. If you're enjoying these commentaries on the Gospel of John, please help us share the Word by passing along the podcast to your friends and family.

There's no better way to learn the content of the New Testament than chapter by chapter. For more information, visit us at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.