This is one of the titles of our blessed Lord. In the majestic opening of John's Gospel, we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Same was in the beginning with God." (John 1:11In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1))
We may well ask, Why should this appellation, the Word [Greek, Logos], be used to indicate a Divine Person? An illustration will help here. The writer has often been in foreign lands, whose languages were unfamiliar to him. It has been sometimes his lot to sit in a room alone with a Christian man for some considerable time. Apparently both of us intelligent in mind and manners, yet there we sat, looking at each other, unable to know each other's minds, all for the lack of the spoken word, understandable by us both, all for the lack of a medium of conveying our thoughts one to the other.
How amazing that when the God of infinite love wished to make His mind known to the creature for his eternal blessing He should give to man a living WORD, a Person, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
As we closely examine the passage it becomes more and more wonderful.
1. The Word was in the beginning, that is from all eternity.
2. The Word was WITH God, a distinct Personality.
3. The Word was God, DEITY is claimed for the Word.
4. The Word was WITH God in the beginning, that is eternally, a distinct Personality.
As we study these assertions of Scripture we begin to see who the Lord was from all eternity.
Writers for the sake of clearness sometimes speak of God absolute, and God relative. What is meant by these terms? When we think of God as Father, Son and Spirit, One God, God in all His fullness, we mean by that God absolute. When we read of the Word being WITH God, we think of God relative. We learn that the Word is relative to God. When we speak of the Father and the Son, then we have God, the Father, relative to the Son; and the Son (or Word), who is God, relative to the Father. This is a great mystery, and we only gather these thoughts as revealed to us in God's Holy Word.
We are told in Scripture that God absolute dwells in unapproachable light, that no man hath seen Him, nor can see Him, and that is true for all eternity. (1 Tim. 6:1616Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. (1 Timothy 6:16)). Yet, thank God, He has been pleased to reveal Himself in a Person, who is Himself God, as the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. We gladly sing:
" The higher mysteries of Thy fame-
The creature's grasp transcend:
Thy Father only, Thy blest name
Of Son can comprehend."
There has been an attempt by Russellites to belittle the Person of our Lord at this point. They claim that the literal Greek of John 1 r is as follows: In the beginning was THE Word, and the Word was with THE God, and the Word was A God. They teach that the Lord Jesus was only A God, an inferior God, created as the head of God's creation, but a creature, with power to create all else. This strange and blasphemous Russellite teaching is the revival of the Socinian heresy that sprang up in the 16th century. The Russellites simply show their ignorance of Greek. They deceive simple souls, who may have a very indifferent knowledge of their own language, and unable to check the truth of what these itinerant Russellites put forth. In the Greek language there is a definite article, but there is NO indefinite article, and they have no right to speak of the Word as "A God."
Further the passage goes on to say, "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made." (John 1:33All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)). This completely refutes the idea that our Lord was created, but asserts that He is the Creator of everything without a single exception.
When John 1:1 Says that " The Word was with THE God," it means God absolute, that is Father, Son and Spirit, One God, the Fullness of the Trinity. If it had gone on to say that the Word was THE God, it would have predicated that our Lord was Father, Son and Spirit, which would not have been true. But when it says, " The Word was God " without putting in the definite article, we see Deity claimed for the Word, God relative. Thus carefully does the inspired word of God put the definite article where it is needed, and leaves it out, when its insertion would not have conveyed the truth of the relative position of our Lord in the Godhead.
Then further, we read, "And the Word was made 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: 14).
Is it not passing wonderful that the Son, One with the Father and the Spirit, The Word, chosen of the Father to reveal God to man, should stoop to man's estate, and dwell among men?
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