In the beginning was the Word

During some recent study and research, I began looking more intently at one of my favorite passages from the gospel of John.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 6 There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. 9 There was true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-14, NASB)

There are several elements, or phrases, that I want to focus on in this article.

First, let’s look at verse 1. John establishes the fact of an eternal being that was uniquely different than God, yet was God. Alfred Marshall’s interlinear translation of this passage, says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.” Ralph Earle’s work, Word Meanings in the New Testament, from which much of the content below is obtained, begins John’s gospel with a focus on the Greek word “logos”. He states that the word “logos” is found 330 times in the New Testament, and is translated 25 different ways, in the KJV, including 218 times as “word”, with a small w, and 50 times as “saying”.

But, in Ephesus, 600 years before John penned his gospel from there, Heraclitus used the term “logos” for “the rational principle, power, or being which speaks to men both from without and from within”. Plato used it for the “divine force creating the world”, and Aristotle used it for “insight”. Earle says, “in general, the Greeks thought of “logos” as reason, or thought, whereas the Jewish emphasis was on “logos” as word.” Philo, a Jew who lived in Alexandria at the time of Jesus, “sought to combine” the ideas of thought and speech in “logos”. He used the term over 1300 times in his writings. But with Philo, as Earle states, “the Logos is often personified but never truly personalized”.

John, through divine inspiration, goes beyond Philo, and those who came before him. John presents Jesus as the eternal Logos, “the true concept of God and also the Word, expressing that concept fully in His incarnation in verse 14”. Of all the New Testament writers, only John, and only on three occasions, applies “logos” to Jesus (John 1:1, 14; 1 John 1:1; and Revelation 19:13)

Notice the imperfect tense “en” in verses 1 and 2. This is the Greek word for “was”, but it implies continuous existence. In fact, “in the beginning” implies eternal existence. Also, note the word “pros”, our word “with”, which notes “close proximity”. The Logos was “face to face” with God, eternally and continuously.

At the end of verse 1, our versions read, “and the Word was God”. The Greek actually states “God was the Word”. Either rendering is correct, boldly acknowledging the deity of the Word, identified in verse 14 as Jesus.

I would draw your attention to verse 5, to the phrase “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” The Greek word is “katalambano”, for which two meanings are prominent in the New Testament. Basically, it means “to take hold of”, but is used in the mental sense, “comprehend”, or in the physical sense “seize hold of”. The KJV translates katalambano as “comprehend”, and the NIV translates it “understood” but margin notes state “the darkness has not overcome”.

The context (verses 9 through 11) requires, to me, the mental aspect of the word. Jesus is the Light and the world is darkness. And the darkness doesn’t grasp, or understand, the Light.

Prior, in verses 1 and 2, we looked at “was” (en) and its continuous, eternal existence. Now look, in verses 3 and 6, at “came into being”, ginomai in the Greek. Ginomai is translated, in verses 3 and 6 in the KJV, as “was” also. Yet, this time, “was” is different. In verses 1 and 2, the Logos eternally and continuously existed and exists. “All things that were made”, the creation, came into being. This is the reason for the differences in the KJV and NASB translations. Then, most interestingly, in verse 14, in reference to Jesus, “the Word became flesh”. Again, this is not “en”, but “ginomai”. The Logos always existed, but He became flesh at His incarnation.

Finally, in verse 14, the word for “dwelt” is similar in the Greek, “skenoo”, to our words “tabernacled” or “tented”. The NIV captures the thought of tenting, with its translation, “lived for a while among us”. The Logos became flesh and temporarily lived among us. He lived with us for a short while, and brought Light to darkness. Those of us who receive Him, He has given to us the right to become children of God. He has given us the ability to see our way in darkness.

Jesus said, in John 8:12, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

Jesus also said he came to give sight to the blind (Matthew 11:5). Do you think he was speaking of physical sight or blindness?