John opened his Gospel with a word Jews and Greeks both knew, then said something neither saw coming. The Word became flesh.
When John says Jesus is the Word, he means Jesus is God's own self-expression, the Logos who was with God in the beginning, was God, and became a human being. Everything God has to say about Himself, He says in Jesus.
The Word is not a book about God. The Word is a Person, and the Bible is the God-breathed witness that points to Him.
John 1:1 to 18, usually called the prologue, is eighteen verses long and carries the weight of the whole Gospel. Life, light, glory, grace, truth, and a Son who makes the Father known are all already here.
The word John chose was logos, and it had deep roots in two worlds at once.
Something spoken: a word, a message, a report. Also the reason behind a thing, which is where logic comes from.
A title for the Son, used in the prologue and then set down. After verse 18, John lets Jesus speak for Himself.
The Bible. The New Testament does use logos for the preached message, but the title in John 1 names a Person who was there before a line of Scripture was written.
John opens with the same words Genesis opens with: in the beginning. Before any Greek philosopher enters the conversation, a Jewish reader already hears creation. And in Genesis 1, God creates by speaking. God said, and it was.
Ten times the chapter says that God said. The world exists because God spoke it.
“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” Word and breath go out together.
The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea. The Hebrew is dabar YHWH, and it acts. Isaiah 55:11 says it does not return empty.
Wisdom speaks as a person: “When he established the heavens, I was there,” and “then I was beside him, like a master workman.” Poetry that let Jewish readers speak of God's own wisdom sharing in creation.
Aramaic paraphrases of Scripture read in the synagogue often put the Memra, the word, of the Lord where the Hebrew has God acting directly. In Targum Onkelos at Genesis 3:8, Adam and Eve hear the voice of the Memra of the Lord God.
Two honest notes. The written Targums reached their final form after John, so nobody can prove he had them in hand, though Aramaic paraphrase in the synagogue is older. And the Memra was a reverent way of speaking about God's own presence and action, not a second divine person.
So John is not copying a doctrine. He is taking language his people already used for God reaching into the world and saying: that reaching has a name.
A Jewish reader heard “the Word” and thought of the God who speaks, sends, and refuses to stay distant.
Now the other side, stated fairly. John wrote in Greek, and early church tradition places him in Ephesus, a city that had heard logos in philosophy for centuries.
A philosopher from Ephesus itself. He spoke of a logos, a rational order running through a world of constant change, which most people fail to notice even though it is right in front of them.
Taught that a divine reason, the logos, pervades and orders the whole universe. Closer to the soul of the world than a Person you could know.
A Jewish contemporary of Jesus who blended Scripture with Greek philosophy. He called the Logos God's “first-born word, the eldest of his angels” and wrote that “the image of God is his most ancient word.”
Not one of them said the Logos became a man, ate with sinners and died on a Roman cross. That sentence belongs to John alone.
Scholars still argue about how much of this John had in mind. Our read is that John's thinking is Jewish to the core, and that he chose a word Greek readers would also recognize so the door stood open to both. Paul did the same in Athens in Acts 17.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1, ESVThree claims in one breath. The Word already was when the beginning began. The Word was with God, and the Greek carries the sense of facing toward someone, a relationship, not a lone individual. We trace that in is God and Jesus the same person. And the Word was God.
Hold those together and you have the seed of the Trinity: one God, distinct Persons.
Jehovah's Witnesses read the last clause differently. Their New World Translation renders it “the Word was a god.” The argument is grammatical and deserves a fair hearing. In Greek, the first theos in the verse has the article, the God, and the second does not. Witnesses read that as a lesser, created divinity.
Here is why we do not read it that way. John uses theos without the article all through the prologue for the Father: a man sent from God in verse 6, children of God in verse 12, born of God in verse 13, no one has ever seen God in verse 18. Nobody translates those as “a god.”
In verse 1 the missing article does a specific job. It lets theos describe what the Word is without making Him the same Person as the Father He was with. The New English Bible caught the sense: “what God was, the Word was.” Same nature, distinct Person.
Verse 3 closes the other door: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” If the Word were made, He would have made Himself. And a lesser god beside the one true God is exactly what a Jewish monotheist like John never allows.
Many Witnesses are sincere, careful Bible readers who deserve patient conversation, not mockery.
Why does “God” lack the article in the last clause of John 1:1?
John leaves the article off theos for the Father in verses 6, 12, 13 and 18, so its absence cannot mean a lesser god. In verse 1 it tells you what the Word is, fully God, while keeping Him distinct from the Father He was with.
“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, ESVHere John parts company with every philosopher above. Much of Greek thought hoped to rise above the body. John says the Word took one. Not appeared in flesh. Became.
The verb is skēnoō, to pitch a tent. Israel's God once lived among His people in a tent in the wilderness. Now He lives among them in a body. We walk through what the booth pictured in the Feast of Booths.
When the tabernacle was finished, the glory of the Lord filled it (Exodus 40:34). John says that same glory is now seen in a face. More on that presence in the Shekinah glory.
In Exodus 34 God passes before Moses and proclaims His own name, rich in steadfast love and faithfulness. The name Moses heard now has a face.
One piece of folklore, usually told by people who love Jesus: some say the word tabernacled proves He was born during the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a lovely idea and an argument from silence. John is making a point about presence, not giving a birth date.
John 1:14 also answers anyone who wants a spiritual Jesus without a real body. The incarnation means God is not embarrassed by bodies, kitchens, commutes or ordinary Tuesdays. The Kingdom He brought is here, in real places, among real people, now.
“No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.”
John 1:18, ESVThe verb behind “made him known” is exēgeomai, the word English borrowed for exegesis. Jesus is the Father explained. Some manuscripts read “the only Son” and others “the only God,” but every reading makes the same claim. The Son alone brings the Father into view.
Paul opens Hebrews on the same note. We hold that Paul wrote Hebrews, for reasons that include Timothy in 13:23, the testimony of the early Eastern church and its Pauline themes, though some scholars see it differently. He writes: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” Those last days were Paul's own, the closing years of the old covenant age. The Son “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”
The Word and the Bible mean the same thing, every verse carries equal weight, and loving God means treating each page as the final picture of Him.
The Word is Jesus. Scripture is God-breathed and trustworthy, and it bears witness to Him. He is the lens, not one voice among many.
At Sound of Heaven we love the Bible. We preach it and believe it is God-breathed. We also believe it was written through human authors in real cultures, revealed progressively, and brought to its clearest point in Jesus. So when a passage seems to paint God in a way that clashes with what we see in Christ, Jesus gets the final word, because He is the Word. More in is the Bible the Word of God.
The teaching we believe is wrong treats the Bible like a fourth member of the Trinity. It sounds like reverence and gets used on people: on the spouse told a verse requires them to stay in an abusive home, on the honest questioner told that doubts about a violent passage are rebellion. Jesus answered that to the Bible experts of His day.
The opposite error is just as real: using “Jesus is the Word” as permission to set the Bible aside and follow feelings. The Jesus we know is the Jesus the apostles saw, heard and wrote down. You do not honor the Word by throwing out His witnesses, and every word we believe we hear from God gets tested by them, as we explain in what a rhema word is.
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
John 5:39 to 40, ESVScripture is the God-breathed witness. Jesus is the Word it witnesses to. Read every page through Him and you honor both.
If Jesus is the Word, then God is not hiding a different face behind Him. There is no darker Father behind the Son. What you see in Jesus, touching lepers and forgiving from the cross, is what God is like.
That changes prayer, because you are speaking to the Father Jesus revealed. It changes how you read your Bible, because now you have a lens. And it changes how you live, because the Word who became flesh still makes His home in ordinary people by the Spirit, and the Kingdom He brought is present and active right now.
For related reading, see the names of Jesus, is Jesus the Son of God, the Alpha and Omega meaning and what we believe. If something here stirred up a need, our team would count it a privilege to pray with you.
The God who spoke creation, sent His word through the prophets and made His wisdom known took on flesh in Jesus, pitched His tent among us and showed us exactly what the Father is like, and the Bible is the trustworthy witness that points to Him.
Whether it is the Greek, the Trinity, or a conversation with a Witness at your door, send it in and someone at Sound of Heaven will walk through it with you.
It means Jesus is God's own self-expression. John 1 calls Him the Logos and says the Word was with God in the beginning, was God, and became flesh. Everything God wants to say about who He is, He says in Jesus. He is not one message from God among many. He is the message. The Word is a Person, and Scripture is the trustworthy witness to Him.
For Heraclitus, who lived in Ephesus around 500 BC, logos named the rational order running through a world of constant change. The Stoics later taught that a divine reason pervades and orders the universe. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish contemporary of Jesus, called the Logos God's firstborn word and His image. None of them said the Logos became a human being. John took a familiar word, filled it with the Hebrew picture of God speaking creation, and said the Word became flesh.
Jehovah's Witnesses point out that the last theos in John 1:1 has no article in Greek, and they read that as a lesser, created divinity. But John uses theos without the article for the Father in verses 6, 12, 13 and 18, and no one translates those as a god. The construction describes the Word's nature while keeping Him distinct from the Father. Verse 3 says all things were made through Him, so He cannot be a created thing. The text points to one God.
In John 1 the Word is Jesus, a Person who existed before anything was written. The Bible is God-breathed Scripture that bears witness to Him, and the New Testament also uses word for the preached message. We honor Scripture and read it through Jesus, because He is the final and clearest revelation of the Father. Jesus said the Scriptures bear witness about Him, and life is found in Him.
It means the eternal Word became a real human being without ceasing to be God. John 1:14 says He dwelt among us, using a verb that means to pitch a tent. Israel's God once lived among His people in the wilderness tabernacle, and His glory filled it. In Jesus that presence took on a body. John says we have seen His glory, full of grace and truth. God did not send a message from a distance. He came.