Today I’m thinking about The Word.
The first book of the bible that I read after becoming a Christian was the gospel according to John. When I mentioned this to a friend, he told me that he wouldn’t recommend that gospel to a new Christian because of the way it begins:
John 1:1
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”
He said it was too hard to understand, and he was afraid people would give up before they even got started.
I realized that I had just skipped over the verse in my mind, because I didn’t know what it meant, either! I didn’t understand “THE WORD”
Then I heard a story about a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived around 500 B.C. He said, “You can’t step into the same river twice.”
What he was thinking about was the fact that by the time you take the second step,
YOU have changed,
and
THE WATERS have changed.
He saw a world in constant flux, but even though THE WATERS are always changing and YOU are always changing, you are still YOU, and the river is still A RIVER.
He saw an underlying organizing principle behind it all, that he called “LOGOS”
In the Greek manuscripts, “Logos” is used three times in first verse of the Gospel of John, but in our English version it has been translated as the word “Word”. Would the verse be more understandable if it we replace the Greek word “Logos” (or the English word “Word”) with its definitions?
“In the beginning was the motive or the organizing principle ,
and the manifested thought was with God,
and the reason was God.”
If you combine all of those poor translations, these partial definitions…
I mean if you try to imagine the COMBINATION of motive and reason and organizing principle and manifested thought, all of it combined into one grand unifying system or structure for everything; That’s Logos. That’s Word.
So I think I’m starting to understand the verse now.
Then in the first chapter of John, verse 14, we read:
JOHN 1:14
The Word became flesh, and lived among us.
We saw his glory,
such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.
wow…
WORD.
Thank you for sharing this time with me,
and may God Bless You.
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