“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2)
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
If you have ever struggled to get your point across in a conversation, trying over and over again to explain something, rewording it this way and that way, always in the face of a blank stare, then you understand the difference between information and communication. What was in your head was the information, and in this example, you failed in your communication. The result was that the information in your head was not adequately transferred and your listener never got it. The better scenario is when, in the course of your struggle to communicate, you see the proverbial “light bulb” flash on your listener’s face. At that moment you know they got it and you have successfully communicated your information.
The opening chapter of the Bible records God creating: “Then God said, ‘let there be light;’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). “Then God said, ‘Let there be a firmament …’” (Gen. 1:6). “Then God said, ‘Let the waters …’” (Gen. 1:9). And so on. There is great truth revealed here beyond the basic fact that God created things from nothing. The manner in which He created is absolutely wonderful!
Consider it this way. If it were instead recorded, “God stretched out His arm and there was light,” it would reveal something very different. It would still mean that God created things from nothing, but it would convey an emphasis on His eternal and infinite might, that through an outstretched arm He brought everything into existence (exactly the point of Jeremiah 27:5). Instead, we are told over and over in the creation account, “And God said …” It is through this detail that He reveals a desire to communicate. God spoke creation into existence. Speaking is for communication. God had information to convey so He spoke. He is mighty, holy, righteous, great, and perfect. He is far beyond all we can ever imagine. Yet in creation itself, God wants us to know He was communicating. “And God said, ‘let there be light.’”
So then, what does creation tell us? David puts it this way:
“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…” (Ps. 19:14, NIV).
Despite man’s continuing rebellion against God’s authority, even denying He exists, all man needs to do is look into the night sky with an “ear to hear” and he will know there is a mighty and glorious God. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).
God very effectively communicates an enormous amount of information through His creation. But He does not communicate everything through creation. There remained something far greater that God always intended to communicate to mankind; creation itself was only a means to that end. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). We generally use words written on a page or words uttered in our speech to communicate our ideas. But in this verse, “Word” comes from the Greek, “Logos,” which here refers not to the communication, but to the information.1
In that earlier example where you were struggling to get your thought across to someone else, your logos would be the thought or idea you had in your head that you wanted to communicate but could not. The logos is the information. We learn from John 1:1 that the Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the Logos of God: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.”
Many like to think of Jesus as some great teacher or even a great prophet – and so He was. But John is teaching us right from the start of his Gospel that the Lord Jesus is not just the bringer of God’s message. He is God’s message! He is the very information itself that God had been preparing to communicate to mankind from the very beginning. Creation speaks its volumes, but creation is not God’s ultimate message to us. Creation is not the Logos God sought to communicate throughout the ages. “And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us …” (John 1:14). He is what (or rather, who) God wants us to know. All of God’s written Word is there to communicate to us God’s Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s intent from the beginning has been to bring us to know Himself. After the Lord Jesus rose from the dead He met two of His disciples on the road. They did not recognize Him at first as they expressed their discouragement about the recent events surrounding the cross. “…we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel…” they said (Luke 24:21). Then the Lord Jesus spoke to them, saying, “…‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:25-27).2
Everything we study in this written Word of God (the Bible) is there to guide us in our understanding of God’s Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. What He communicates in His written Word is not simply the intricacies of creation, or end-times prophecy, or the Old Testament animal offerings, or Israel’s history, or ethics, or any other specific thing recorded in the Scriptures. God has given us all these things with all their detail to communicate to us His Son. Certainly, we need to be diligent in studying all the specifics. But let us understand that whenever we properly study those specifics, a “light bulb” is going to flash in our minds as we get it and gain further knowledge and insight into the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son and Logos of God.
Endnotes:
1Λόγος (Logos) – “I. Of that by which the inward thought is expressed … 1. a word, not in the grammatical sense of a mere name (ἔπος, ὄνομα, ῥῆμα), but a word as embodying a conception or idea …” (Abbott-Smith, G. (1922) A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.)
2See also Heb 1:1-2 – “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son …” Note, literally this is “… by Son” where NKJV translators added the word, “His.” NASB reads, “in His Son”. The meaning is that God had spoken in the past through prophets but now His Son is the message. The book of Hebrews then expounds to us who the Son is rather than the things He spoke.