New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John Vol. 1. William Barclay
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not complete chaos? How can there be any sense in a world where there is constant flux and change?
The answer of Heraclitus was: all this change and flux was not haphazard; it was controlled and ordered, following a continuous pattern all the time; and that which controlled the pattern was the Logos, the word, the reason of God. To Heraclitus, the Logos was the principle of order under which the universe continued to exist. Heraclitus went further. He held that not only was there a pattern in the physical world; there was also a pattern in the world of events. He held that nothing moved with aimless feet; in all life and in all the events of life there was a purpose, a plan and a design. And what was it that controlled events? Once again, the answer was Logos.
Heraclitus took the matter even nearer home. What was it that in us individually told us the difference between right and wrong? What made us able to think and to reason? What enabled us to choose aright and to recognize the truth when we saw it? Once again, Heraclitus gave the same answer. What gave to men and women reason and knowledge of the truth and the ability to judge between right and wrong was the Logos of God dwelling within them. Heraclitus held that in the world of nature and events ‘all things happen according to the Logos’, and that in the individual ‘the Logos is the judge of truth’. The Logos was nothing less than the mind of God controlling the world and everyone in it.
Once the Greeks had discovered this idea, they never let it go. It fascinated them, especially the Stoics. The Stoics were always left in wondering amazement at the order of the world. Order always implies a mind. The Stoics asked: ‘What keeps the stars in their courses? What makes the tides ebb and flow? What makes day and night come in unalterable order? What brings the seasons round at their appointed times?’ And they answered: ‘All things are controlled by the Logos of God.’ The Logos is the power which puts sense into the world, the power which makes the world an order instead of a chaos, the power which set the world going and keeps it going in its perfect order. ‘The Logos’, said the Stoics, ‘pervades all things.’
There is still another name in the Greek world at which we must look. In Alexandria, there was a Jew called Philo who had made it the business of his life to study the wisdom of two worlds, the Jewish and the Greek. No one ever knew the Jewish Scriptures as he knew them; and no Jew ever knew the greatness of Greek thought as he knew it. He too knew and used and loved this idea of the Logos, the word, the reason of God. He held that the Logos was the oldest thing in the world and the instrument through which God had made the world. He said that the Logos was the thought of God stamped upon the universe; he talked about the Logos by which God made the world and all things; he said that God, the pilot of the universe, held the Logos as a tiller and with it steered all things. He said that the human mind was stamped also with the Logos, that the Logos was what gave people reason, the power to think and the power to know. He said that the Logos was the intermediary between the world and God and that the Logos was the priest who set the soul before God.
Greek thought knew all about the Logos; it saw in the Logos the creating and guiding and directing power of God, the power which made the universe and kept it going. So John came to the Greeks and said: ‘For centuries you have been thinking and writing and dreaming about the Logos, the power which made the world, the power which keeps the order of the world, the power by which we all think and reason and know, the power by which we come into contact with God. Jesus is that Logos come down to earth.’ ‘The word’, said John, ‘became flesh.’ We could put it another way – ‘The mind of God became a person.’
Both Jew and Greek
Slowly the Jews and Greeks had thought their way to the conception of the Logos, the mind of God which made the world and makes sense of it. So John went out to Jews and Greeks to tell them that in Jesus Christ this creating, illuminating, controlling, sustaining mind of God had come to earth. He came to tell them that men and women need no longer guess and grope; all that they had to do was to look at Jesus and see the mind of God.
THE ETERNAL WORD
John 1:1–2
When the world had its beginning, the Word was already there; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God. This Word was in the beginning with God.
THE beginning of John’s gospel is of such importance and of such depth of meaning that we must study it almost verse by verse. It is John’s great thought that Jesus is none other than God’s creative and life-giving and light-giving word, that Jesus is the power of God which created the world and the reason of God which sustains the world come to earth in human and bodily form.
Here at the beginning, John says three things about the word, which is to say that he says three things about Jesus.
(1) The word was already there at the very beginning of things. John’s thought is going back to the first verse of the Bible: ‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). What John is saying is this – the word is not one of the created things; the word was there before creation; the word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and the world began. John was thinking of what is known as the pre-existence of Christ.
In many ways, this idea of pre-existence is very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to grasp. But it does mean one very simple, very practical and very tremendous thing. If the word was with God before time began, if God’s word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Jesus. Sometimes we tend to think of God as stern and avenging; and we tend to think that something Jesus did changed God’s anger into love and altered his attitude to human beings. The New Testament knows nothing of that idea. The whole New Testament tells us, this passage of John especially, that God has always been like Jesus. What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.
We may well ask, ‘What then about some of the things that we read in the Old Testament? What about the passages which speak about commandments of God to wipe out whole cities and to destroy men, women and children? What of the anger and the destructiveness and the jealousy of God that we sometimes read of in the older parts of Scripture?’ The answer is this – it is not God who has changed; it is our knowledge of him that has changed. These things were written because people did not know any better; that was the stage which their knowledge of God had reached.
When children are learning any subject, they have to learn it stage by stage. They do not begin with full knowledge; they begin with what they can grasp and go on to more and more. When we begin music appreciation, we do not start with a Bach Prelude and Fugue; we start with something much more simple, and progress through stage after stage as our knowledge grows. It was that way with human beings and God. They could only grasp and understand God’s nature and his ways in part. It was only when Jesus came that they saw fully and completely what God has always been like.
It is told that a little girl was once confronted with some of the more bloodthirsty and savage parts of the Old Testament. Her comment was: ‘But that happened before God became a Christian!’ If we may so put it with all reverence, when John says that the word was always there, he is saying that God was always a Christian. He is telling us that God was and is and ever shall be like Jesus; but that could not be known or realized until Jesus came.
(2) John goes on to say that the word was with God. What does he mean by that? He means that there has always been the closest connection between the word and God. Let us put that in another and a simpler way – there has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God. That means no one can tell us what God is like, what God’s will is for us, what God’s love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.
Let us take a simple human analogy. If we want to know what someone really thinks and feels about something, and if we are unable to approach the person ourselves, we do not go to a mere acquaintance who has known that person only a short time; we go to someone whom we know to be an intimate friend of many