The Baby in the Manger #11: Word

Word (grk: logos)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:1-5,14

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.

Genesis 1:1-5

We come today to one of the most beautiful, sublime and enigmatic passages in the Bible, which often takes it's place in our Christmas carol service readings: the opening verses of John's gospel, where the apostle sets the scene for his biography of Jesus, going right back to the beginning, and creation itself.

In the very first sentence we learn three things.  First - that Jesus was there in the beginning.  He was not an afterthought - a later addition to the trinity.  He was not a created being (with extra confirmation given to this in verse 3: through him all things were made).  The words In the Beginning... take us right back to the words of Genesis 1:1, when: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The next thing we learn is that Jesus is the Word.  In Genesis 1, out of the darkness and chaos, God spoke.  And when God spoke, there was light.  John goes on to elucidate: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (verse 3).   So what does it really mean to say that Jesus is the Word?   It means that He is the communicating and creative expression of God.  The communicating and creating essence of God - when he spoke - is what made the universe.  This creation is not just anything that you or I might create, but life (verse 4).  And words bring light and clarification: ...the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness...(verses 4-5) - and so through creation we are pointed to God himself, as his testimony to us - the outpouring of his Word:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
  the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
  night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
  no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
  their words to the ends of the world.
(Psalm 19:1-4)

Finally, we have the two apparently contradicting statements, set side by side: the Word was with God, and the Word was God (verse 1).  How can Jesus be both God and with God?  Because of the beautiful and mysterious fact of the Trinity: God in three distinct persons, and yet One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; impossible to truly represent in our own understanding and language, and yet fundamentally important to our understanding of who God is.  I still remember the first time I truly appreciated the Trinity: I had been troubled by the apparent representation of God as some kind of vain despot seeking his own glory.  I knew this couldn't be the case, because God had shown himself who he was in the incarnate Jesus, but the two didn't seem to match up.  It was then, at a student leadership conference where the teaching had an emphasis on the trinity, that I started to understand.  God is love (1 John 4:8) because God is Trinity: three persons, not seeking their own glory, but seeking the glory of another for all eternity.  God was relational long before he created human beings - that love has existed forever, and is part of who he is.

But John's story does not end with the eternal truths about God or the story of creation.  We reach verse 14 and are brought into John's here-and-now: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).  As the writer of Hebrews puts it: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. (Hebrews 1:1-2).

The Trinity may be tricky to get our heads around (my children are definitely struggling with it!), but that's ok, because God has given us his Word - his testimony of who is is - in something infinitely easier to understand: himself as a human being, walking, breathing and living.  And so we can see his glory, and his grace, and his truth.  When we look at the living, incarnate Jesus, we see who God is.  And this is the the point of John's gospel - to show who Jesus was: the Word, the Bread of Life, the Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Gate for the Sheep, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and Life, and the Way, the Truth and the Life.  

All of that - majesty and mystery - lying in the manger on the first Christmas.