Joel M Bradshaw

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.…14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.–John 1 (with emphasis)

500 years before the Gospel of John was written, the philosopher Heraclitus made famous the idea that the divine had a logos. This was seen as God’s rationality, purpose, logic, and will. God’s logos made it possible for a being who transcended His creation to be active and caring for His creation.

So in his first two statements, John is right there with the Greek Philosophy of his day. God had a logos and it was with him in the beginning. The Greeks would have had no problem with that. To them, God’s logos directed all that God chose to do. But John changed the game with phrase 3. To be with God already implies two, but to also be God means that we are dealing with two Gods, right?

But, John gave the Word a pronoun–He. This implies that the Word was not just a divine attribute, but a person. The logos was already linked to God. But to have personhood? And in verse 14, John shocked the philosophical world again. This Word not only became flesh, but lived as a man. To see this Word-become-flesh is to therefore finally have light in the darkness. To behold this Word is to behold God’s glory and purpose. John even linked this using the terms Father and only Son from Him (John 3:16 foreshadowing).

So theologically speaking, in the beginning the divine existed as God the Father and God the Son. And the Son wasn’t a second God anymore than a man’s logos is a second man. As Logos, the Son was one in purpose with the Father, but was able to stand with him as a separate person sharing the same essence. Remember, “the Logos was with God and was God.”

We therefore expect all of God that could be present in the flesh to be present in the person of Jesus. We also expect Jesus to be fully man, but also fully God. The Logos becoming flesh demands that reality, even if it sounds like an oxymoron. To draw this altogether, we expect Jesus to fully represent the purposes and will of God. To know Jesus is therefore to know the Father. To follow Jesus the Son is to follow the Father. We expect the unseen God to be seen in Jesus. We expect the Father to fully care for his creation through His Logos in the flesh–a person who was with him as God in the beginning. God the Son therefore always existed, but became known as Jesus the Son when the Logos became flesh.–JMB