The Logos…
Love Never Dies, prt. 2
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
April 11, 2010
Good morning. What a fantastic service we had last week, huh? It was wonderful to be here with all of you last week to celebrate Easter in what turned out to be one of my favorite Easter services ever – at Wildwind or anyplace else. We had 177 people in attendance, contributions of over $4000, our first-ever choir up front singing – just a really, really great time together.
Our text for last week, as we talked about the resurrection of Christ, was John chapter 20. Today we are starting back in John chapter 1, and will work straight through the gospel of John, one chapter per week, until we get to the end. As we do this, you are going to get to see something extraordinary. You are going to see not only Jesus, but the cosmic Christ. Does that sound weird to you? Or New Age? Or cultish? Just throwing the word “cosmic” into anything makes it sound – well, cosmic, dude. It lends an other-worldly sense to whatever you are talking about. And in this case, that’s good. Because if Jesus truly was the Son of God, which he was, if Jesus was truly God himself, which he was, then Jesus must in fact be “cosmic.” That is to say, he must be beyond time and space. But enough from me, let’s look at the text. Listen carefully to these words. Without them, the Christian faith as we know it would not exist.
John 1:1-18 (NIV)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.
7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.
8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'"
16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
This is one of most theologically loaded, and exquisite, passages in the Bible. It says far more than we have time to deal with today. If you are interested in further exploration of this passage, I invite you to read the New Testament book of Colossians, a book written by the Apostle Paul, that takes this and expands on it, going into great detail about the mystery of the cosmic Christ.
Now I want you to notice something to begin with. Nowhere in these first 18 verses of John is the word Jesus mentioned. In fact, the word Jesus is not mentioned until verse 29. There is a reason for this. John is not writing primarily about Jesus. If John were writing primarily about Jesus, he would have started right off talking about Jesus. But instead he starts off talking about what? The Word of God – the cosmic Christ – the one who was with God, and was and is God – the one who participated with God in the act of creation – the one from whom all things come. John is writing about Jesus, the cosmic Christ.
It is no accident that in this passage the Apostle John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John wrote in Greek, and the Greek word John used with is translated into English as the word “Word,” is “Logos.” Let’s talk about the Logos, because John’s use of the word “Logos” to describe the cosmic Christ is key to what he is trying to communicate.
John wrote not to Jews, but to Gentiles – to people who did not have the background the Jews had in prophecies concerning the Messiah that was to come into the world. He needed to find some way to communicate to his audience that this person he was going to write about was unique. So he opens with the phrase “In the beginning was the Logos…” Any Jew reading this would have understood immediately that John is conjuring up a parallel to Genesis 1:1 – “in the beginning, God created.” And indeed John goes on to say that everything that was created was created through the Logos – the Word of God.”
Now the Jews thought of words as being living and powerful. When I say to my children, “I love you,” I am not simply making noise, but I am communicating a very profound reality to them, something directly from my heart to theirs. There is meaning in those words and the meaning that is there holds the power in it to shape who they are, and how they understand themselves. The Jews understood the power of words and thought of words in this active and powerful sense. This is perhaps nowhere made clearer than the passage in Hebrews:
Hebrews 4:12 (GW)
12 God's word is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword and cuts as deep as the place where soul and spirit meet, the place where joints and marrow meet. God's word judges a person's thoughts and intentions.
John is a Jew, so the word “Logos” contains all of this depth for him. But he’s writing to non-Jews – to Gentiles. How can he communicate to them who Jesus really is? Well, it turns out that the Gentiles had another understanding of the word “Logos” that also communicated incredible things about who Jesus was. When the Gentiles (the Greeks to whom John was writing) looked at the world and the universe, they saw in it an amazing order. They saw that everything proceeded from birth to death in an orderly fashion. They believed that behind the universe were a mind, a reason, and a power that held everything together and kept everything in its proper place, and this they called the Logos.
This Logos they also understood to be the power that enabled human beings to think and reason and make sense of things that brought light and understanding to us and brought order to the jumbled thoughts in a person’s mind so it could be clearly expressed. The Logos was understood not only as the reason for all things, but reason itself -- the underlying system of understanding and rationality beneath all things – the power and force that holds together everything in the universe.
Most importantly, the Greeks believed that this Logos, whatever it was, was the power that allowed men and women to come into contact with God and express their thoughts and feelings to him.
My friends, are you picking up what I’m throwing down? John realized that in that one word Logos, he could describe the cosmic Christ as the picture, the pattern, the image of what God wanted to say to humankind. Jesus was the perfect man, the perfect expression of all God wanted man to be. Jesus was God’s speech, God’s word to man – the living Word, active and able to communicate living reality so that we can understand God’s heart and mind, and in doing so we can come to understand who we are.
My girls cannot understand themselves in a healthy way apart from hearing and deeply absorbing my words that I love them, which contain the reality that they are mine and I created them and they are loved beyond measure without condition and without reservation. Likewise, men and women cannot understand themselves in a healthy way apart from hearing and deeply absorbing the living Word – the reality that we are God’s and he created us, spoke us into being, and loves us beyond measure, without condition, and without reservation. Even these words I speak to you now are words of God – they carry with them the power to mold your understanding of yourself and in so doing, to change you from the inside out. This was the Logos – the cosmic Christ. Jesus was and is the mind, the power, the reason behind all things in the universe, and the power by which all things hold together. It is in him that we understand the world and ourselves. The Logos is not only the light that we see, he is the light by which we see everything else.
As the Apostle Paul told the Gentile audience in Acts:
Acts 17:26-29 (MSG)
26 Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living
27 so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near.
28 We live and move in him, can't get away from him! One of your poets said it well: 'We're the God-created.'
Do you see why you must understand what the Logos is to understand not only what John is telling us in these first 18 verses, but in order to understand what he’s saying in the rest of his gospel, what the other three gospels are talking about, what the Apostle Paul is talking about, and what the entire New Testament means? And we haven’t even gotten to Jesus yet! We’re talking so far only about the cosmic Christ. Jesus was the historical figure in whom the cosmic Christ appeared and took up residence, in order to show us that there is no division between spiritual life and human life – that human life at its best simply IS spiritual life. That work is spiritual, that being at home with your children is spiritual, that milking cows is spiritual, that typing at your desk is spiritual, that experiencing fear and discouragement is spiritual, that failing is spiritual, that starting over is spiritual, that sex is spiritual, that joining your church is spiritual, that not joining your church is spiritual, that there is no realm of life where you are cut off from God, from participation in God’s divine life (which Jesus simply called the Kingdom of God). That’s why it’s a cruel fallacy that you will get your “spiritual life” together as soon as you stop smoking or as soon as you can get back to church or as soon as you can take care of a few things in your life first – for you are already spiritual – you are already living and moving and breathing in divine space – in fact cannot get away from God, because he is so near. And this is why it is a cruel fallacy that there is Christian and non-Christian music, Christian and non-Christian books, Christian and non-Christian culture. There is simply music, simply books, simply culture. God cannot be bottled up and located within the domain of things and people we call Christian, and God is not separated from the domain of things and people we call non-Christian. In fact this past week someone wrote me a heartfelt note and said, “I have to confess I’m not a Christian at this point but I’m trying to listen to the Holy Spirit and hear what he is saying to me and my family,” and I responded, “I have no use for the Christian/non-Christian thing. That’s a polarity, a duality, which is not helpful. There are only two kinds of people – those watching and listening and looking for God, and those not. If you’re watching and looking and listening for God, then you will find him, and already have, for everyone who seeks finds – and this is true whether you call yourself a Christian or not. And if you are not watching and listening and looking for God, then it matters little what you may call yourself. This was the testimony of the Logos – that divine life and human life are supposed to be the same thing, and that they can be, because the man Jesus showed us how.
All of this from the first verse of John chapter 1.
John 1:1-3 (NIV)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
The first thing John establishes is that the historical man Jesus was actually the cosmic Christ – beyond all time and space. In other words, before he introduces us to Jesus, he reveals to us his true identity. John dug this approach, and repeated it when he wrote his first letter to the church. His opening words in that letter appear to be a shortened version of his gospel:
1 John 1:1-2 (NIV)
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word (that word “Logos” again) of life.
2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
Historically the church has done a great job of dealing with the divinity of Jesus. We proclaim it, write hymns about it, put it into creeds, and evangelize others into it. But we have neglected his humanity. That’s the only way we could have come up with the legalism we see in the church, the only way we could have the current state of things where we break everything down into sacred and secular, the only way we could have had the historically disdainful view of sex we have had. Because we have not embraced the humanity of Jesus, we have taken things God himself created and called “good” and turned them into obstacles and hindrances in the spiritual life. The purpose of Jesus the Christ was to make us “whole” – to restore to us a way of seeing our life – our everyday life – as full of potential for knowing God in this present moment.
Romans 12:1 (MSG)
1 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
This sounds good, but it’s what we largely have not done. We have largely relegated our spiritual life to a subset of overtly spiritual activities. Because we have done away with the humanness of Jesus, we have also in many ways rejected our own humanness. Because we have seen Jesus as just a spiritual figure in his dealings with God, we struggle to bring our own humanness into our relationship with God and consequently feel that anything “human” in us must be eradicated (bad habits, bad attitudes, bad feelings, bad behaviors, etc.) before we can approach God. The message Jesus came to teach us is that we are either united with God in our humanity or not at all.
John 1:4-5 (NIV)
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
In him WAS life. In other words, Christ simply IS life. He said as much:
John 14:6 (NIV)
6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Christ IS life. The Apostle Paul confirmed this:
Colossians 3:3-4 (NIV)
3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
In him was life. Our life is Christ. He is the fountain and source of our life.
The next verses make clear the central problem of living.
John 1:5 (NIV)
5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
John 1:10-13 (NIV)
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
God is here, but we don’t get it. We don’t see it. We don’t understand it. We are Mary, standing at the tomb of Jesus, asking the risen Christ where Christ is. We are the Pharisees, asking God to show us he is God. We are the disciples, in the presence of God, but not understanding that we are safe when the boat is shaken all around, that we have more than enough when only five loaves and two fishes seem available. That is our tragic, and chronic, problem in living. God is here, God is among us, God lives, God is light – as we continue to stumble around in darkness in the very presence of that light.
John 1:14-18 (NIV)
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Here is the key verse in this section, and the reason John is writing in the first place. The Logos, the eternal Word of God, took on human form – became flesh – and lived among us. This is called “incarnation,” deriving from the Latin word “in” meaning “into,” and “carnis,” meaning “flesh.” [That is how the word, “reincarnation” (which, incidentally, Christianity rejects) means “into flesh again.”]
It is easy to dismiss John’s words, “We have seen his glory.” But we’d better not. After all, he has just finished saying, “The world did not recognize him.” Then he goes on to tell story after story of people – including himself and the other disciples – who continually did NOT recognize him. So those simple words, “We have seen his glory” are incredible, and help frame the 20 chapters that are to come – for it was only afterwards, upon reflection as he thought and wrote, that John really realized what he had seen.
Then I love John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus:
John 1:15-18 (NIV)
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'"
Jesus was before everything – he was IN THE BEGINNING. He was physically born six months after John the Baptist, but has always existed. He surpasses John the Baptist both in age and in honor, and the Baptist is trying to clearly communicate both of those things.
John 1:18 (NIV)
18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
John concludes this section kind of the way he began it, by reinforcing both that Jesus IS God, and that Jesus reveals God to us.
I cannot stress enough that this is the absolute foundation of the Christian faith. If you do not believe Jesus was and is God in the flesh, then your faith, whatever you may call it, is not Christian in any real sense. For the faith itself is named Christianity. And notice it is not named Jesusianity. Yes, we worship Jesus, but only because he was and is the Christ. “Jesus” was and still is a popular name in the region where Jesus lived. Every other guy was Jesus in that area. But we do not simply worship Jesus, we worship Jesus Christ. And no, Christ is not Jesus’ last name! He’s not Jesus Christ the way Rick is Rick Light or Michelle is Michelle Webster. His name is Jesus, but his title is the Christ. I am David, but am called “Pastor,” meaning shepherd, or “Professor,” meaning teacher – these are my titles. Most of you probably have some kind of title, if only “mother,” or “father.”
Jesus’ title was “Christ,” meaning “Messiah” or “Anointed One.” Our challenge, if we are going to understand properly who Jesus is, is to believe as deeply in Jesus as we believe in the Christ. It is to embrace both divinity and humanity in him, so that we may embrace both in ourselves. My friends, that is NOT a New Age teaching, and any New Age teaching that might sound like that is ripping off Christianity, which has as its foundation that perfect humanity IS perfect spirituality. That is the meaning of the birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the risen Christ. Yeshua Hamachiach – God the Son – is fully man, and fully God. He came to show us what it means to live life as one who is fully divine and fully spiritual – to show ordinary human beings what the divine life looks like. We have over-spiritualized Jesus. We have embraced him as Christ and ignored him as Jesus, exalting his divinity and missing his humanity and that is why we struggle to accept humanity in ourselves – why we are perfectionists, why we struggle with weakness, why we feel we cannot approach God until we get it all together. That is why I have focused this morning on the first 18 verses of John chapter 1 today. To get the rest of this book, you must get what the first 18 verses are saying because yes, this book is about God, but it is about the God-Man.
In the beginning was the Word – the Logos. The Logos – the creator – became flesh and lived among us. The Logos can show you how to realize the life of God in the temple of your body, how to live in the presence of God with your weaknesses and flaws, and how to connect to God in this present moment. That is what he did, and if we model ourselves after him, that is what we will do as well.
