Day 3: Connect
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” A few more words than Day 02, but they are huge. And they connect brilliantly to “In the beginning.”
...was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God.
Those words brilliantly connect with the audience. Remember how Greek philosophers had a word that described this “ordering principle” that brought us into existence? That word in Greek is “Logos,” which in English is translates to “Word.” That word connects.
I speak to groups of people I have never met. One time I used an example from a popular television show. As they left, about half of them shared with me that they did not own a TV. Oops. Connecting is critical.
As John is saying, “In the beginning was the Logos,” I imagine the Greek heads of his day bobbing up and down agreeing with him: “Yes, yes! The Logos!” They are connecting.
He continues. “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with Theos (Greek for God).” Uh oh! The head bobbing starts to slow down. To the Greeks, the gods were a whole different kind of thing. They were angry, and petty, and worse. John says, “No… in the beginning, the Logos (which you Greek philosophers love) was hanging out with the Theos (whom you don’t really know). The Word was hanging out with God.”
Then John takes it one step further. Not only was Logos hanging with Theos… Logos is Theos.
Hold on! Say what? Yes, John is saying this “thing” we love, the “ordering principle of the universe,” this Logos, it’s not an abstract idea... it is God. Forget about all those petty little gods - they're not real. Mic drop.
Fast forward. The world is trundling along in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. We humans are “knocking it out of the park” with science. We identify gravity, we develop calculus, even the experiments we design are impressive. Locomotives, internal combustion, and more. The human race is rocking.
But then science hits a speed bump. Turns out the universe is expanding (see day 2). It is almost like a second “Big Bang.” The science community has to reluctantly acknowledge that there was a time when the universe “was not” here. And guess what, we are back to John 1:1… I just think that is cool!
And look, John is not trying to scientifically prove to you Jesus is the Son of God. He believes it. Not only that, but he believes it will change you for the better forever if you believe it, too. He will write later that Jesus came to give you life, and to give it to you more abundantly.
God’s Word was trying to get the philosophers of John’s day to consider Jesus. God’s Word is trying to get the people of our day to consider Jesus.
What I find amazing is that most people don’t consider the Bible, or the disciples for that matter, super-intellectual. Funny that this first idea, Logos, is sort of like a Lego, it connects us, as we engage the deepest meta-physical question of time immemorial.