THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
THE WORD
DR. JIM DIXON
MARCH 1, 1987
JOHN 1:1-18
“Prove to me that You’re divine
Change my water into wine
Prove to me that You’re no fool
Walk upon my swimming pool”
Those were the words of Pilate addressed to Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in the British rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, a rock opera which stressed the humanity of Christ and probed and even mocked his deity. It is a rock opera in which Simon the Zealot viewed Jesus Christ as a revolutionary, Mary viewed Jesus Christ as a man of deep compassion, and the crowds viewed Jesus Christ as their superstar. This rock opera tried to portray the Lord’s alleged sexual temptations, his agonizing suffering, and ultimately his shattered expectations. At the end of this rock opera, Christ was in the grave and all was silent.
But all through this opera, one question was asked of Jesus of Nazareth. That question was this: “Who are You? Jesus Christ superstar, who are You? What do You think You are, Jesus Christ superstar? Do You think You are who they say You are? Who are You?” And that is the question the 20th century man asks of the carpenter from Nazareth. But the Bible answers that question clearly, and particularly in the prologue of the Gospel of John, our passage of scripture for today, where we are told that Jesus Christ has one title above all others. That title is the Word. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now, this title, the Word, seems perhaps strange in our time and in our culture. But in the first century, this title was loaded with meaning. In fact, among the Hebrew-speaking people, Greek-speaking people, and Aramaic-speaking people of that time, this title had new and fresh meaning for each language group. This morning, I’d like us to explore those three meanings briefly.
First of all, let’s explore the meaning to the Hebrew-speaking peoples. In calling Jesus Christ the Word, it meant that Jesus Christ was the power of God incarnate. For the Hebrew-speaking people, the Word of God was the power of God. God spoke and things happened. The Word of God was not static; it was active and dynamic. By the Word God accomplished all things. So, saying that Jesus Christ was the Word of God was saying that He was the very power of God incarnate.
Now, we can understand on a human level how even our words can have power. It is possible for human speech and human words to have power. I was looking in a book a couple of weeks ago and in that book I saw a picture of a painting that portrayed Adolph Hitler. The setting was early in 1939, and Hitler was speaking to an audience of people. It was obvious from the picture that his words were filled with hate. You could see that from the expression on his face. It was also obvious that he was instilling hate in all the people he was talking to. You could see that from the expressions on their faces. He was speaking words of hate, and this hate ultimately resulted in World War II. This hate resulted in 50 nations going to war, global war. This hate resulted in the deaths of 20 million people from the Allied and Axis powers and the incineration of 6 million Jews. This hate resulted in the cost of $1.150 trillion. The title of that picture that I saw in this book was this: “In the beginning was the Word.”
His words were words filled with hate, words of power. That’s how it is even with human words: they have power for good and they have power for evil. That’s true of each and every one of us. I’ve heard that the average man speaks 25,000 words a day and read that the average woman speaks 30,000 words a day. I’m not sure about that, but there’s very little power in them for good or evil. Most of our words just fall to the ground, and we can be thankful for that. It’d be kind of a scary thing if we spoke and it always happened, or if our words had such power in this world.
I heard a story long ago about a man who was rock hunting down near Castle Rock. As he kind of probed around the ground there, he saw an old bottle and dug it up. He accidentally rubbed it and a genie came out. The genie told the man that he could have three wishes, as long as he would allow the genie to go back in the bottle. He said he could make his wishes at any time, but the genie had to go back in the bottle immediately. The man granted this. And then the man began to walk towards his car. He looked at his car. It was an old car and he didn’t like it. And he said, “I wish that my car would become a brand new Rolls Royce.” And immediately that car turned into a beautiful, immaculate Rolls Royce. It was beyond this man’s comprehension. He got in that car and felt the luxury of it. He couldn’t believe it. He began to drive it around. He thought, “This is great.”
Well, he drove a little ways. He thought he’d make a second wish, and he said, “I wish I had a 10,000-square-foot home in Cherry Hills Farm.” Well, he just couldn’t wait to drive to Cherry Hills Farm and see where the house was. He drove up University Boulevard. He turned into the entrance to Cherry Hills Farm. Amazingly, the guard knew him and invited him to come right on in. He drove on in and saw this brand new 10,000-square-foot house with a mailbox out front with his name on it. He couldn’t believe it. He got out of his Rolls Royce, went into the house, and walked around. This was too good to be true. He went back out to the car and he decided to drive around a little bit. He didn’t want to make his third wish right away because he wanted to be careful to use it wisely. And as he drove around in the car, he turned on the radio and they were playing the lyrics and the tunes of old commercials. And there was one tune that was particularly familiar to him, and he began to sing along with it: “I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener.” Instantly he was transformed and his third wish fulfilled.
Wouldn’t it be horrible if our words had power like that? Wouldn’t it be horrible if your every thought, your every word, happened? It’d be horrible because our characters are so flawed that we get ourselves into all kinds of trouble. But you see, the Word of God is like that. The Word of God has that kind of power. God just speaks and it happens. The Hebrew term for “word” is the term dabar. When the Hebrews thought of dabar, the Word, they thought of the power of God because God’s Word never returned to Him void. God’s Word always accomplished that for which it was purposed. By God’s Word, The worlds were created. God spoke and it happened. As every Hebrew knew, you go to the Book of Genesis, and you look at the acts of creation, and again and again and again, we read “and God said,” “and God said,” “and God said,” and in every case the power of God poured forth. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. That’s the power of God, dabar, the Word. So, for the Hebrew, when it was said that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, that meant that He was the very power of God incarnate. And indeed He was and is.
We look at the life of Christ on this earth and see Him standing outside the tomb of Lazarus. He speaks the word and He says, “Lazarus, come forth,” and the dead man came out. The power of God poured forth, and the crowds were stunned.
We see Jesus Christ standing outside the city of Nain near the gates of the city and a young man, a widow’s only son, dead, being carried out of the city on a stretcher. Jesus sees this mother weeping. He’s moved with compassion, and He speaks the word, “Young man, I say to you, arise,” and power went forth and the man was resurrected from the dead.
We see Jesus Christ standing over the body of a 12-year-old girl. She was dead, her family was weeping, and Jesus Christ was moved with compassion again. And He spoke the words, “Talitha, cumi!” and the power of God went forth and that little girl was resurrected from the dead.
We see Jesus Christ by the pool of Bethesda, looking down at a cripple who was crippled for 38 years. Jesus speaks the word, “Rise, take up your bed and walk,” and the power of God goes forth and he rises. He takes up his bed and walks.
We see Jesus in Capernaum as recorded in the eighth chapter of Matthew. A centurion comes up to Jesus and he says, “Sir, my servant is very ill and near to death. Would you help me?” Jesus said, “Where is he? And I will go with you.” The centurion says, “No, I’m not worthy to have You come under my roof, but I’m a man under authority and I have soldiers under my authority. And I say to one, ‘go,’ and he goes. I say to another, ‘come,’ and he comes. I say to my servants, ‘do this,’ and they do it. Just speak the word and it shall be done.” Jesus looked at him and marveled at his faith. And Jesus spoke the word and said, “Go, it is done,” and that very moment the servant was healed and the power of God went forth. Jesus Christ is the Word, the power of God in the flesh. If you want God’s power in your life, if you want His power in your life day by day, it can only happen through Jesus Christ: dabar, the Word, the power.
Secondly, to the Greek-speaking world, saying that Jesus was the Word meant that He was the very mind of God incarnate. It meant He was the divine Reason, the mind of God in the flesh. The Greek term for the word is the term logos. As we look at this word, logos, which is used in the first chapter of John (because most of the New Testament reflects the Greek language), as we look at this word logos through time and through history, it takes on a change of meaning. 560 years before Christ, Heraclitus, the great Greek philosopher, said that the logos was the order that was in the universe. In contrast to the chaos, the logos was order. 450 years before Christ, Anaxagoras, another Greek philosopher, took it one step further. He said the logos was the entity, the being, the force behind this unity that was in the universe. 200 years before Christ, the Stoic philosophers said that the logos was actually God—the mind of God, the Reason of God. And so it was that an Alexandrian Jew whose name was Philo, who had great influence upon the Greek and Jewish worlds, said that the logos was the pure thought of God—unpolluted, uncorrupted. For the Greek world, when it was announced that Jesus Christ was the logos it meant that He was the pure thought of God, the very mind of God in the flesh incarnate.
Now it’s very hard for most of us to even understand the human mind and the capacity of the human mind. Perhaps some of you have heard of a man whose name was Jeffrey Janet. He was a Frenchman born in England in the town of Ilford in the year 1945. When Jeffrey Janet was born, he was blind, crippled, and spastic. His doctors said that he would be an imbecile and he probably wouldn’t live more than two or three years. His doctors were wrong. Jeffrey Janet grew up and he had mental abilities that boggle the imagination. He was what physiological psychologists call an idiot savant. In some areas of his mind, he was indeed intellectually disabled. But in other areas of his mind, he had mental capacities that far exceed the range of normal. His memory was beyond comprehension.
They once took a copy of the British equivalent of the TV guide, a book that had the whole week of television programs and the whole week of radio programs. They couldn’t have Jeffrey read it because he was blind, so they read it to him. They read to him the whole week of programs. More than a hundred programs were read to him verbally in a public demonstration. They asked him how much he could remember, and he recited the whole thing word for word without forgetting a single thing, having heard it once. It would be like picking up your TV guide, reading it from cover to cover, and then turning around and quoting it word for word. Incomprehensible.
Mathematically, his mind was like a computer. They asked him what the number eight to the 16th power is in a public demonstration again. He thought for 28 seconds, and then he said 281,474,976,710,656. It took me all week to remember the number. He calculated the number in 28 seconds. They said, “If you have 64 cartons and you put a kernel of corn in the first carton and you double it with each carton, how many kernels are you going to put in that 64th carton? Now that results in a number that is just beyond our ability to conceive. And in 58 seconds, again, in a public demonstration, he responded with a 20-digit number. It wasn’t in the millions, it wasn’t in the billions, it wasn’t in the trillions. It was a 20-digit number and it was right to the last grain of corn. He did that in 58 seconds. He could take any seven-digit number and multiply it by any other seven-digit number in less than four seconds. He was a walking computer. These things are documented.
And he had the calendar. I mean, his mind was the calendar. He could look at all the centuries future and all the centuries past. You could give him a date and a year and he’d tell you the day. You could say, “Jeffrey, October 13th, 2473,” he’d say “Tuesday,” and you’d look it up, accounting for leap years and everything, and he’d be right.
Now, how could the human mind do that? How could any mind do that? But you see, physiological psychologists tell us that your mind can do that, and my mind can do that. Now, these abilities, admittedly, are very dormant. But you see, physiological psychologists tell us that we only use 4% of our brains. The highest estimates say 15%, most say 4%. What would we be able to do if we had the fullness of our minds? Perhaps much of what is within the realm of parapsychology—mental telepathy, clairvoyance, pre-cognition, psychokinesis—perhaps these things would be possible for us if we had the fullness of our minds. But the Bible says our minds have been subjected to futility. We have become futile in our thinking. Our senseless minds, the Bible says, have been darkened. Now, perhaps Satan can release some of these dormant abilities for his own evil purposes from time to time. And certainly God promises that in the life to come He will restore our minds even beyond what they were in Eden before the fall. But even if our minds were full, they would pale when compared with the mind of God. Who can comprehend the mind of God?
The Bible says His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts and His ways than our ways. What kind of a mind could have designed this universe? With galaxies beyond galaxies, some galaxies literally billions of light years away? With quasars and pulsars and black holes, in the vastness of the macrocosm and the mysteries of the microcosm? With atomic and subatomic particles with electrons just whirling at incredible speeds around a nucleus of protons and neutrons? Who could have designed all of that? The mind of God. And here’s the incredible statement, the incredible truth revealed in the prologue of the Gospel of John: Jesus Christ is the logos. Jesus Christ is the mind of God incarnate in the flesh. That is why the Bible says that He created the world. Jesus Christ, the Word, the logos, created the world, and He sustains the universe by His word of power.
Now, admittedly, when Jesus Christ became incarnate in those 33 years He walked this earth, He in some sense emptied Himself. In order for the infinite to become finite, that was the sacrifice He made. It says in the second chapter of Philippians that He emptied Himself and became a man. And perhaps some of His divine prerogatives became limited. But nevertheless, when you look at Jesus Christ of Nazareth in the flesh, what you see is the pure thought of God. What you see is the mind of God. You see how God thinks. Have you ever wondered, “How does God think? What’s important to God? What does God like? What does God dislike?” You look at Jesus Christ, and that’s how you know. You see the mind of God reflected perfectly in Him. You know what God loves and you know what God hates when you look at Jesus Christ.
We look at Jesus Christ and we see beyond a doubt that God hates hypocrisy because we see Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers and running them out of the temple. You look at Jesus Christ and you see that God in His mind hates self-righteousness because we see Jesus Christ calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers. When we look at Jesus Christ we see that God hates sin, since Jesus wept outside the city of Jerusalem, thinking of its corruption and fallenness. We look at Jesus Christ and we see that God hates death itself and the agony and suffering it brings, because Jesus, outside the tomb of Lazarus, is weeping and His tears are mixed with indignation. But you see, we look at Jesus Christ and we also see what the mind of God loves. We see that God loves sinners. He hates sin, but we see that He loves sinners. Therefore we see Jesus Christ going to Calvary’s cross and dying for you and for me.
We see that God loves innocence, and therefore we see Jesus Christ holding little children. We see that God loves to give forgiveness where there is repentance, and therefore you see Jesus Christ again and again saying, “Your sins are forgiven you.” We see that God loves to serve because we see Jesus Christ washing the feet of His disciples. And we see Jesus Christ saying that He had come not to be served, but He’d come to serve and give us life, a ransom for many. Who could have imagined that God had a mind like that, a servant’s mind? But you see, we observe the mind of God when we look at Jesus Christ. No man has ever seen the Father. The only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He made Him known. To the Greek world, He is the logos, the mind of God.
Finally and briefly, to the Aramaic-speaking world, this title, the Word, meant that Jesus Christ was the very person—the very essence—of God in the flesh. The Aramaic term for “the word” is the term memra. This is an extremely important word because most of the biblical world spoke Aramaic. Jesus Christ spoke Galilean and Aramaic. Many of the disciples spoke Aramaic. To know what the Aramaic term is for “the word” is very important. And that term is memra.
The Aramaic world used this term memra as a title for God Himself. It was a way to say the name of God without really using the name of God. It was a circumlocution for the name of God, kind of like the Hebrew world, when they didn’t want to really say the name of God, Yahweh, they would say Adonai or they would say Jehovah. Well, for the Aramaic-speaking world, that’s what the term memra was like. When they didn’t want to say the actual name of God, they would use this roundabout way of saying God by calling God memra. And so you go to Exodus chapter 19 and you see Moses calling the people to come to the holy mountain that they might meet with God. The Old Testament in the Greek world was translated from Hebrew to Greek in a book called the Septuagint. For the Aramaic world, the Old Testament was transferred from the Hebrew to the Aramaic in books called the Targums. When you go to the Targums to Exodus 19, you see that in Aramaic, they say that Moses called the people to go to the holy mountain and meet with memra: the Word.
You go to Deuteronomy 9 where the children of Israel are about to cross the Jordan and they’re afraid because there are mighty nations on the other side of the Jordan. They’re afraid because there are fortress cities on the other side of the Jordan and there are large people—the Anakim, a race of giants—and they’re terrified. But they’re told, “Do not be afraid because God is a consuming fire. God will protect you. God will defeat your enemies.” And you go to the Targums and it says, do not be afraid because the memra is a consuming fire, and the memra will protect you, and the memra will defeat your enemies. The memra is the Word, the person and name of God.
So here is the teaching. Jesus is not only the power of God and not only the mind of God. He is God. He is God of God in the flesh incarnate. That’s why John can say, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” You see, the Apostle John calls Jesus Christ God. The Apostle Peter calls Jesus Christ God. “Our great God and Savior,” Peter says, “Jesus Christ.” The Apostle Paul calls Jesus Christ God. He says in Him all the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell bodily. The Apostle Thomas calls Jesus Christ God. He fell on his knees, on his face, before the Lord and said, “My Lord and my God!” Make no mistake about this: Jesus Christ called Himself God. And the Jews understood, which is why they took up rocks to stone Him.
Jesus took the title of God, the “I Am,” and He applied it to Himself again and again and again and again. And the Father Himself calls the Son God, as in Hebrews 1, where the Father, speaking to the Son, says, “Thy throne, oh God is forever and ever.” And the prophets call Jesus Christ God, as when the prophets write, “Unto us a child is born unto us, a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace, El Gibbor, the Mighty God.”
So we say, well, how can this be? How can Jesus be the Son of God and at the same time be God? The Bible makes it abundantly clear that Jesus Christ as the Son of God bears one nature with His Father. It makes clear that Jesus Christ as the Son of God is one essence with His Father. And that is why when Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied,” Jesus said, “Philip, have I been with you so long and you don’t know Me? He who has seen Me, has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘show us the Father?’ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? I and the Father are one.” No man has ever seen the Father, the Bible says. The only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him know. So you might think Jesus Christ is a good teacher. You might think He is a moral leader. You might think He’s the founder of a great world religion. The world says such things. These answers to the question, “Who is Jesus?” are not enough, and in truth, they’re all compromises. CS Lewis, the great British writer and professor at Oxford who was a deeply committed Christian, got it right when he said that either Jesus Christ is who he says he is, the Son of God and God the Son, or Jesus Christ is a raving lunatic.
You see, Jesus Christ told the multitudes that He lived before Abraham was ever born, and Jesus Christ told the multitudes in John 17 that before the worlds were made He had fellowship with His Father. Before the worlds were ever created, He said He shared glory and love with His Father. Jesus Christ told the people that the Father was going to judge no one. God the Father will judge no one, Jesus said, but has given all judgment into the hands of the Son that all might honor the Son in the same way that they honor the Father. Jesus said, “Don’t marvel at this. The day is coming when all the dead will hear My voice and come forth, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting judgment.” Jesus Christ said, “I and the Father are one.” Either He speaks the truth or He was insane. If you’re a Christian, you believe He speaks the truth. He is who He says He is, Son of God and God the Son. He is the power of God incarnate, the mind of God in the flesh, and the very essence of God in the form of man.
We look at Jesus Christ and we see God, and that is why He is called Emmanuel, which means God with us. 2,000 years ago, Jesus said to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” He asks the same question of each and every one of you sitting in this room today: “Who do you say that I am?” Let’s close with a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Son of God and God the Son, we worship You as we worship the Father, as we worship the Spirit. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we worship You. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You came into our world to show us what God is like. We cannot comprehend the sacrifice You made when You left Your heavenly throne of glory and came into our world and took flesh upon Yourself, and became one of us, fully man yet fully God. Lord, we commit ourselves anew to You this day. We acknowledge that, in calling ourselves Your people, we not only have asked You to be our savior, but we’ve asked You to be our Lord and our God, and we seek to honor You in all we do and all we say. You are the Word, the power, the mind, the essence of God in the flesh. We love You. We pray these things in Your great name. Amen.