John 1 beautifully teaches the concept of God manifest in flesh. In the beginning was the Word (Greek, Logos). The Word was the thought, plan, or mind of God. The Word was with God in the beginning and actually was God Himself (John 1:1). The Incarnation existed in the mind of God before the world began. Indeed, in the mind of God the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world (I Peter 1:19-20; Revelation 13:8).
In Greek usage, logos can mean the expression or plan as it exists in the mind of the proclaimer—as a play in the mind of a playwright—or it can mean the thought as uttered or otherwise physically expressed— as a play that is enacted on stage. John 1 says the Logos existed as the mind of God from the beginning of time. When the fullness of time was come, God put His plan in action. He put flesh on that plan in the form of the man Jesus Christ. The Logos is God expressed. As John Miller says, the Logos is “God uttering Himself.”1 In fact, TAB translates the last phrase of John 1:1 as, “The Word was God Himself.” Flanders and Cresson say, “The Word was God’s means of self disclosure.” This thought is further brought out by verse 14, which says the incarnate Word had the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, and by verse 18, which says that the Son has declared the Father.
In Greek philosophy, the Logos came to mean reason or wisdom as the controlling principle of the universe. In John’s day, some Greek philosophers and theologians influenced by Greek thought (especially by the Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria) regarded the Logos as an inferior, secondary deity or as an emanation from God in time. Some Christian heresies, including an emerging form of Gnosticism, were already incorporating these theories into their doctrines and therefore relegating Jesus to an inferior role. John deliberately used their own terminology to refute these doctrines and to declare the truth. The Word was not inferior to God; it was God (John 1:1). The Word did not emanate from God over a period of time; it was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was none other than the Word, or God, revealed in flesh. Note also that the Greek word pros, translated “with” in verse 1, is the same word translated “pertaining to” in Hebrews 2:17 and 5:1. John 1:1 could include in its meanings, therefore, the following: “The Word pertained to God and the Word was God,” or “The Word belonged to God and was God.”
look again at this term to distinguish it in usage from the term Son. The Word or Logos can mean the plan, thought, or mind of God. The Incarnation was a predestined plan—an absolutely certain future event—and therefore it had a reality attached to it that no human thought could ever have. The Word can also mean the plan or thought of God as expressed in the flesh, that is, in the Son. What is the difference, therefore, between the two terms “Word” and “Son”? The Word had preexistence and the Word was God (the Father), so we can use this term without reference to humanity. However, the Son always refers to the Incarnation, and we cannot speak of the Son in the absence of the human element. Except as a foreordained plan in the mind of God, the Son did not have pre existence before the conception in the womb of Mary. The Son of God preexisted in thought but not in substance. The Bible calls this foreordained revelation the Word (John 1:1, 14). It is also interesting to note that this verse does not use the word Son, but Word. “Son of God” never means the incorporeal Spirit alone. We can never use “Son” correctly apart from the humanity of Jesus Christ.
