There Are Not Enough Words

[HKHaugan]

The Word 5

The Gospel of John? It’s magnetic. I find every word draws me inexorably to ask why. John is a spiritual eye opener. Its first words are its context which is why I try to glean as much as I can from the first two verses, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” If I can let the thoughts about these two verses flow then the rest of the Gospel falls into a deeper place and lifts me higher every time I read it. More important is sharing with you all those insights with which I have been blessed.

Just the fact that John uses the word ‘Word’ three times in the first verse is enough for me to dwell on that as I have for the past three articles. It’s got to be obvious that he has this ‘Word’ emphasis for a reason. His approach is so different from the other Gospels.

Before I continue let me share something. Just recently I was criticized for being too wordy. I must confess that not having a brilliant intellect that can reduce the impact of Scriptural thoughts into simple statements I probably do sound wordy. So occasionally I will ask for the reader to be patient with me in my explanations since I don’t want to be misunderstood, especially since I am handling the most important set of documents in the world, the Word of God.

Then too is the subtle effect of a constantly changing technological culture. Our technology is choking us. In the past two decades the impress of TV ads and news, texting on cell phones and the use of email have reduced our attention span. Apparently they have caused communication to be condensed into twenty second sound bites thus forcing us to use fewer words and be increasingly isolated as persons. It’s instant gratification on steroids. We’re losing the ability to be open and sharing persons with ideas and feelings when we are in the presence of others. The very persons, who may say something to you in one of the electronic media, when seen in person, have a blank look as though nothing had ever been communicated. We’re losing that direct flesh and blood interpersonal touch.

Having said all that I’d like us to pursue together the intensity of John’s introduction. His three time use of ‘Word’ had particular significance in the first century. The tremendous impact of Greek thought on the known world had a dualistic emphasis. The Greek philosophers worked from a basic assumption. Ideas come from a perfect invisible mind and their material existence is imperfect visible copies of the ideas. A chair was an imperfect copy of a perfect chair idea. The Greek word ‘logos’ was used to describe that invisible perfection behind everything.

When John used it he was deliberately joining the realm of perfection with what philosophers said was impossible, an imperfect world. What had been revealed to John by Jesus were three incredibly confronting challenges to mankind’s self-indulgent thought systems (and still are):
First, the Logos was a Person.
Second, that He, Jesus, was the Logos, in the flesh.
Third, that He was bringing an eternal Logos Kingdom for everyone to share by faith in Jesus Himself.

Thus he identified Jesus as the perfect mind, the perfect person, the perfect idea of God, whose personal perfection lived in a perfect physical body. In one verse, ‘one felled swoop’; John turned human philosophy upside down. In his ensuing words he goes even further. He dares to identify Jesus as the One through whom all things came into being and underscores His oneness “with God.”

As if that was not enough He really seals it with the idea that Jesus was the light and anything less than Him was darkness. So whatever ideas, thinking systems, man comes up with that do not proceed from Jesus, are darkness. Jesus is the light that exposes what is in the darkness. This means that all reasoning behind all political systems, all social patterns and all cultures that are derived apart from God are part of the darkness since they are not finally spiritual and personal in origin. Is it any wonder that early believers in Jesus had such a hard time? Jesus challenged the very depth of man’s intellectual, social and political power simply by being who He was.

And when you continue in John’s Gospel the bottom line really threw the culture a curve. God allowed that which was perfect to be a perfect sacrifice, a perfect substitute, to die for all the imperfection that had befallen the world and its people through sin and the evil one. What Greek philosophy had done in leaving man in total despair and resignation to an impersonal force, Jesus turned around. God was indeed not only a Person, He was personal, caring, loving and wanted everyone to know Him personally. Thus He gave mankind an individual personal hope and destiny.

So whenever you hear terms like ‘its fate’ or ‘karma’ or ‘the luck of the draw’ or ‘what goes around comes around’ they’re just echoing the old time philosophy of hopelessness. Jesus, and only Jesus, makes sense out of everything. If this is too wordy let me say this. There are not enough words to adequately describe, elaborate or magnify what God has done in Jesus. Only Scripture captures the essence. Only by faith, as God intended, can each of us give that witness.