Jesus is the Word

 

In John’s Gospel he famously referred to Jesus as “the Word,” writing, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1).” How do we know the Word is Jesus? John tells us in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  

 

It is clear John called Jesus the Word, but why? The simplest answer is that John was referring to the words spoken by the Godhead during the week of creation, for John wrote, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made (v.3).” By calling Jesus the Word, John clearly pointed back to the words spoken in the opening chapters of Genesis, when God said “let there be…and there was.”

 

But John meant more than just the spoken words. He used the Greek word logos, which is a special word. He could have used the word rhema, for example, but he didn’t. Logos is deeper than just the words used, but speaks to the thought process behind the words. As William Dembski wrote in his book The End of Christianity, “Logos is therefore an exceedingly rich notion, encompassing the entire life of the mind.” 

 

Etymology refers to the study of a word’s history, and the etymology of logos is interesting. The Greek word stems from the root lego, translated as “to speak,” but the earliest definition of lego is actually “to lay something down.” Over time, lego began to mean “to pick up and gather,” and then “to select and gather.” As it relates to speaking, then, logos means “to select and gather words.” Logos is not just about speaking, or even speaking certain words, but in choosing which words to speak.

 

Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon has among their many definitions of logos, “the word by which the inward thought is expressed.” The etymology continues when we trace the variant root lec (rather than leg), which appears in our English words intellect and intelligence. Intelligence literally means “to select or choose between.” 

 

Now we have something larger than just saying Jesus spoke the world into existence. Logos speaks to the question of motive. God chose to create the world; speaking was just the vehicle by which He accomplished His will. Logos speaks to the intelligence in our Creator. Jesus was the brains behind the operation, not just the one who carried it out. Isn’t this exactly what we see when we look at the universe? The world attributes everything to random chance, but the Bible points to intelligent design. The universe is far too intricate to have been a coincidence or luckiness; our Lord—the Logos, the Word—put it together as only a sovereign God could.