Logos: God’s Own Self-Expression
John’s Word-language grows from Scripture’s portrait of God creating, revealing, and accomplishing His will through His own word.
Lesson thesisThe Word is personally related to God because it is God’s own reason, expression, and revelatory action, yet the Word is not another God beside Him.
Start with the main point: John’s Word-language grows from Scripture’s portrait of God creating, revealing, and accomplishing His will through His own word.
- Name what the passage says before explaining what it means.
- Use one clear Scripture before stacking several references.
- Answer the checkpoint in plain words first.
John begins with God before creation
The opening deliberately reaches behind Genesis 1. Before anything was made, the Word already was. The Word was with God and was God. Both relation and identity must be heard.
John does not write that the Word was one God alongside another. He places the Word in intimate orientation toward God while identifying the Word as fully divine.
Scripture already speaks of God’s active word
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made. God sends His word and it accomplishes His purpose. His word proceeds from Him without becoming a second speaker beside Him.
This background gives content to logos. God’s wisdom, will, reason, utterance, and self-disclosure are active and effective because they are His own.
The Word is not a created intermediary
All created things come into being through the Word. The Word therefore cannot belong to the class of things that came into existence.
John’s categories are God and creation. The Word belongs to God’s eternal identity and action; later the Word enters creation by becoming flesh.
Build John’s word-background
Compare what God’s word is, where it comes from, and what it accomplishes in each text.
- God creates by His own word and breath.
- The word proceeds from God and performs His will.
- John identifies the eternal Word as God and the agent of all creation.
- Logos
- Word, expression, reason, message, or self-disclosure; in John, God’s eternal creative and revelatory self-expression.
- Pros ton theon
- John’s phrase commonly translated ‘with God,’ expressing orientation or relationship toward God.
John also says the Word was God and that all creation came through the Word. Old Testament word-language allows real relation without adding another God.
Explain how your own word can be with you, express you, and go out from you without becoming another human being.
Lesson check
Check your understanding
The lesson check asks for the core idea and the clearest Scripture connection.