30 Days in the Bible, Day 2: John 1:1-14

Any discussion of God's Word has to begin with the Person who embodied that Word, Jesus Christ. John applies the Greek word "logos" to Jesus four times in the prologue to his gospel. While he may have borrowed the term from Greek philosophy, John gives it a much different content. "Logos" isn't just a philosophical construct, or even some sort of archetype which may have a reality beyond our world. The "Logos" in John is a divine Person, eternally existent with God while also being God Himself.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is one that goes beyond anything we can imagine a finite human beings. How can Jesus be both fully God and fully human at the same time? I don't pretend to have an explanation of it, but I think that the revelation of God as Triune and the revelation of Jesus as the God-man are meant to stagger us. If we believe the Word of God, and if we believe these teachings of the Word, we have a God who we can't fully comprehend, who is beyond us not only in power but in His very being. If God is like this, then He is isn't a simple God we can grasp and manipulate for our own purposes.

Jesus, as the living Word, pointed the way to the Father in His teachings. The Word gave us His words, and those words have been passed along to us by those who heard Him speak. Although Jesus certainly said much more than we have in Scripture (as John himself points out in John 21:25), what we have is what He wanted us to know. The Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the gospels (and the rest of the New Testament) to write down the teachings of and about Jesus that were needed for all generations.

We, of course, did not see or hear Jesus while He was here on earth. Yet we still have access to the Word through the Word. The Bible reveals the truth about the living Word, Jesus, to us today. All of Scripture speaks about Him; Jesus even made that point Himself (John 5:39). May the written Word of God guide us to the living Word every day as we read and study it for His glory.