In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God. 
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
— John 1:1,14a, ESV

I used to like to listen to an itinerant preacher who was a few bricks shy of a full load when it came to intelligence.  However, he was blessed with uncanny common sense and a side-splitting sense of humor.  His sermons were more stand-up comedy than biblical exposition.  At least he was never boring.

One of his favorite sayings was, “I don’t know any Greek, and the people I preach to don’t know any, either.”  That would always get a chuckle from the congregation.  But, it shouldn’t have.  To refuse to dive into the original language of the New Testament, at least to some degree, is a grievous sin on the part of the preacher and leads to spiritual starvation in many a pew.  

A thoughtful preacher or pastor will, over time, educate his flock with at least a handful of important Greek vocabulary words and an occasional grammar lesson that will enhance their understanding of the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Everyone should know the names of God in the New Testament are (woodenly transliterated from root form) Theos, I’sous Christos, and O Agios Pneuma.  All should appreciate the difference between agape and other forms of love.  Salvation, or sozo,  is by charis alone through pistis alone in Christos alone, and cannot be earned or merited by one’s ergo.  Saved people receive baptizmo into the church, a true ecclesia and koinonia.  

And, of course, no one should forget the last word of Christ on the cross, which requires three words in English to convey, tetelestai, it is finished, and also in this case, paid in full.

Today I want to limit our Greek lesson to just one word, or two, if you include the definite article (the), which most certainly appears in the most relatable manuscripts (sorry, Jehovah’s Witnesses).  It is the word for the word.  It is O Logos. 

The Word is a Principle

The Middle East is the cradle of creation and civilization, and it was there where words were born.  It is hard to say for sure how old the spoken word is, but it would be as old as man.  The written word is a relative baby, only five thousand years old, first published by the Egyptians.  

The Bible traces history and language through the dynasties of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, with Israel tossed to and fro among the empires.  By the time of the first advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Jewish people spoke in Aramaic (and had since the days of their Babylonian captivity), read their Holy Scripture (the Old Testament) in Hebrew, and the first Jewish Christians wrote their inspired texts (the New Testament) in the legal language of the day, koine Greek, the most exact and expressive language in the history of linguistics.  

Koine Greek contains three words for word: glossa, rhema, and logos.  

Glossa is a distinct word from a distinct language.  It is often translated as tongue, but the meaning corresponds to a dialect, not a body part.  Thinking upon this truth gives great clarity to what it means, biblically, to speak in tongues.  It means to speak in known, distinct languages.

Rhema is historically interpreted to be a word spoken, a momentary word, perhaps remembered but not written down.  Gnostics and Charismatics wreak havoc with this word, too, interpreting it to be a secret word spoken silently into the mind and heart of a believer, with a specific, authoritative message from God, on par with or overriding the written word of God. 

Logos is to word what agape is to love.  It is the highest word for word.  It is a word that means more than just a word.  It is a word that, since the days of Herodotus in the 4th century BC and Aristotle in the 3rd century BC, weighs into transcendence and preeminence, the foundational and regulative principles of life.

So the aged Apostle John got it right when he wrote, “In the beginning was O Logos … and O Logos was God.”  God is the transcendent, divine, Creator and Sovereign Regulator of all life.  The imperfect indicative “was” means there was, is, and always will be God, the God who is always present and always at work.  

So here the word, O Logos, is the foundational principle of life.  God is at work in His world, knowing all things and making Himself known.  Therefore, the purpose of life is to know the word, O Logos, God, and once I know Him to make Him known to others, just like John is doing in this poetic prologue of his Gospel.

What John means is life begins with God, and with God it will never end.  Love begins with God, and with God it will never fail.  All of life and love begins with the bedrock principle there is a God, God has revealed Himself to us by the word, O Logos, and therefore we must make God and God’s word the foundational principle of our lives.  

This principle is discovered at a price, however, or a least a condition.  We will never know God or hear God speak to us unless we make God not only the foundational principle of our lives, but also the utmost priority of our lives.  

The Word is a Priority

God, O Logos, has always been and will always be.  The question remains, is He your God, and will you always be His.  The answer can be yes to those who make God the foundational principle and the first priority of life.  Like agape is the love that requires total commitment and sacrifice, so O Logos is the word which requires the same.

I want you to think about the two ways we typically use the phrase or title, “The word of God.”  The first thing that often comes to mind is the inspired pages of the Bible, the written word of God.  The second, which is what John is primarily pointing out here, is the living Word of God, the eternal and incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.  

Most of us in church today would confess the word/Word of God is the foundational principle of our lives.  We may even go farther in our faith and declare the word/Word of God to be the priority in our lives.  But to prove it, we would have to gauge our total commitment and willingness to sacrifice on behalf of O Logos, the word/Word of God. 

When you think about the written word of God, the Bible, do you make its principles and precepts the priority of your life?  When you want to do one thing, but the Bible teaches you should do another, what will you do?  When your goal in life is one thing, but the Bible says it should be another, what will be your ultimate goal?  

For example, my love for fried chicken is legendary.  But if there was a clear commandment in Scripture, thou shalt not eat fried chicken, what would I do?  I would have to determine if the priority of my life is my will or God’s will, my wishes or O Logos, the word of God.  Try this exercise out with other things, like ways and means of making money, sexual activity, spending your Sundays, etc., and you will discover whether or not O Logos is the priority in your life.  

If the word of God, the Bible, is a priority in your life, it is because either you are a legalist trying to work your way to Heaven, or a loyalist to the living Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.  You are either a Pharisee, or a faithful follower of God who understands the inextricable link between the word of God and the Word of God.  You keep one because you love, and prioritize, the other.  See John 14:15.  

Now let’s take a step back and see the bigger picture John is painting in the prologue.  God cannot be the guiding principle of your life if you do not know Him.  Jesus cannot be the priority of your life if you do not love Him.  You cannot know and love the Lord until you realize how much He knows and loves you, and what He has done to show it, namely showing up. 

This is really what John is getting at in this perfect, poetic look at O Logos.  O Logos is our guiding principle.  O Logos is our first priority.  This is only possible because O Logos is the ultimate person.

The Word is a Person

Augustine said man cannot touch God until God touches man.  God has reached out and touched us in the perfect person and work of O Logos, the Word, who “became flesh and dwelt among us.”  

While Mark skipped the birth of Christ to go immediately to His ministry, Matthew and Luke give us the virgin birth narratives from two different perspectives, Joseph’s and Mary’s.  It is left to John, then, the erudite son of the family who owned their own company and companioned with the High Priest, to put articulate words for the Word, O Logos, into elegant poetry.  

That the poem ends with “us” makes it personal, real, urgent, important.  What have you done, what will you do, with O Logos?  Are you one of the “us” who knows God personally, savingly, eternally?

You see, it is not enough to make God the guiding principle of your life, as all religions basically do, for religion cannot save you and make your life ultimately meaningful.  Making God the priority of your life will not necessarily catapult you into a favorable eternity, either, as those on the extreme end of Islam find out after blowing themselves up in order to accomplish jihad for God.  

For God to be the eternal guiding principle and saving first priority of your life, God, the God, this God, the Lord Jesus Christ, must be expressly personal.  He must come to you, personally, and you must receive Him, personally, in order for Him to be your personal Lord and Savior.  

The rest of John’s Gospel will recount how this first follower experience a truly, historical, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  John heard the words of the Word, O Logos.  John witnessed the miracles he writes about.  John takes the supreme being of the cosmos and wraps himself up in His personal, loving, eternal embrace.  

The rest of “us” have to enter into the living Word’s embrace through the preaching of the written word.  But the personal power of the event and the embrace is the same.  I remember when Jesus Christ became personal to me, in 1982, and therefore became my guiding principle and first priority.  I felt, I knew, three things:

I am a sinner.  Sometimes, my head gets bloated by your compliments and I fancy myself a good preacher.  Then I listen to a sermon by Alistair Begg or Elizabeth Elliot, and I feel wholly inadequate.  This is only a glimpse of how I felt when I first experienced Jesus in a personal, powerful way.  Standing before Him was deeply convicting, sorrowful, personal.  And it led me to repentance and faith to find forgiveness and acceptance. 

I am forgiven.  My mother’s baptism was instrumental in my conversion.  She, perhaps more than any other human being, loved me no matter what I had ever done or would ever do.  She looked at me as if I were sinless.  Now, because I have trusted in Jesus, so does God.  Because of the person and work of Christ on the cross and beyond, I am, in the words of the Emancipation Proclamation, “forever free.”  

I am loved.  And I mean this in the highest form of the koine Greek word.  Jesus totally committed Himself to “us.”  He sacrificed for “us.”  He did so because He loves “us.”  And the Lord Jesus Christ, O Logos in the highest form of the word, will never stop loving, saving, and embracing “us.”  

So the next time someone asks you if you know any Greek, I hope you can tell them you know O Logos, personally.  Confess Him as the guiding principle of your life.  Obey Him as the first priority of your life.  Enjoy Him because He is personal in your life, your personal Lord and Savior, O Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ.