John 1:1-18 introduces the reader to 'The Word'. Why would John use such a concept to describe Jesus?
There are a number of reasons put out there as to why:
1. It could be capturing some thoughts of that current day. Some people, called the Stoics, understood the word to be the rational principle by which everything else exists. That is everything that was on this earth was the seed of the Word.
2. Another group of the day were those who believed in Gnosticism although this is less likely
3. Some think John was leaning on a guy called Philo who made a distinction between the world we can see and the ideal world. The world we can see is a copy of this ideal world. And the word was the ideal man from which all other human beings are derived from.
4. However none of these seem to be the forefront of John's mind, the place to begin is the Old Testament. It is there we see God's word connected with
- The powerful activity in creation
- Revelation of himself
- Deliverance
- Judgment
- Healing
- Rescuing from the grave
- The Word is personified in Proverbs (see 8:22ff)
To quote Don Carson from his commentary on John
In short, God's 'Word' in the Old Testament is his powerful self-expression
in creation, revelation and salvation, and the personification of that 'Word'
makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to God's ultimate
self-disclosure, the person of his own Son.
And again,
The term had a semantic range so broad that they could shape the term by
their own usage to make it convey, in the context of their own work, what they
knew to be true of Jesus Christ.
So, it seems that John takes a term commonly used in his era and uses it convey something of the majesty and glory of the revelation of the Father in his Son, Jesus Christ.
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