Thursday, Sept. 3

Thursday

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  

- John 1:1

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.  - John 1:14

This Greek word Logos translated "Word" doesn’t really mean what our english “word” communicates.  To the Greeks, “logos” referred to the reason or purpose behind all things, a kind of cosmic first principle.  This idea of the logos has an interesting history in Greek thought.  In about 560 B.C. there lived a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus. He taught that the world was in a constant state of flux, everything was constantly changing.  If you stepped into the river and stepped out, then stepped back in, you would not be stepping in the same river that you stepped in a moment ago. The current is constantly flowing. But If things are in the state of constant change, then how can you avoid chaos? His answer was the logos. The word or reason. The logos was the cosmic reason or purpose that kept order in the universe.

The greek philosophers took this idea of a logos (cosmic reason and order) and  proposed that in our lives there is also a pattern, that nothing really happened by happenstance, that there was an order and pattern in all things. This order and pattern they also called the logos.  Later the Stoics looking at the order in the Universe, the fact that the stars were not colliding with each other, the ebb and flow of the tides, the seasons of the year, all spoke of order which they called the logos/Word.

John was writing his gospel primarily to the Greeks. He was living in the city of Ephesus, the same city in which Heraclitus had lived some 600 years earlier.  That John was writing to the Greeks was evident from the fact that whenever he used a Hebrew word, he always translated it into Greek.  Some examples of this are verse 38, Rabbi which is translated Master, or Verse 41, Messias which being interpreted, is Christ. 

So, the Greek who thought of the logos as that order behind the universe, that which gives meaning to life, that which tells us what is right and wrong. He declares, In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Word was God.  Then John goes on to say that this Logos, this divine reason and order behind all things actually took on flesh and dwelled among us!   

John is saying that the universal principle, purpose and reason behind all that exists is not a philosophy, it is a person!  Therefore the way that we align our lives with the universe is not by following a particular philosophical system, but by knowing and loving Him, the Logos, the Word!

Jeff Frazier