The Power of the Most High God i.e Almighty God, Yahweh, ʾel ʿelyon, El, ʾel ʿolam, ʾel shadday and many more! He is God alone and besides Him, there is no other, no, not even the Christ would claim to be God though he represents Him perfectly. The Lord sits at His Right Hand for evermore!
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In the beginning] The meaning must depend on the context. In Gen_1:1 it is an act done ‘in the beginning;’ here it is a Being existing ‘in the beginning,’ and therefore prior to all beginning. That was the first moment of time; this is eternity, transcending time. Thus we have an intimation that the later dispensation is the confirmation and infinite extension of the first. ‘In the beginning’ here equals ‘before the world was,’ Joh_17:5. Compare Joh_17:24; Eph_1:4; and contrast ‘the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,’ Mar_1:1, which is the historical beginning of the public ministry of the Messiah (Joh_6:64): ‘the beginning’ here is prior to all history. To interpret ‘Beginning’ of God as the Origin of all things is not correct, as the context shews.
was] Not ‘came into existence,’ but was already in existence before the creation of the world. The generation of the Word or Son of God is thus thrown back into eternity. Thus S. Paul calls Him (Col_1:15) ‘the firstborn of every creature,’ or (more accurately translated) ‘begotten before all creation,’ like ‘begotten before all worlds’ in the Nicene creed. Comp. Heb_1:8; Heb_7:3; Rev_1:8. On these passages is based the doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son: see Articles of Religion, i. and ii. The Arians maintained that there was a period when the Son was not: S. John says distinctly that the Son or Word was existing before time began, i.e. from all eternity.
the Word] As early as the second century Sermo and Verbum were rival translations of the Greek term Logos = Word. Tertullian (fl. a.d. 195–210) gives us both, but seems himself to prefer Ratio. Sermo first became unusual, and finally was disallowed in the Latin Church. The Latin versions all adopted Verbum, and from it comes our translation, ‘the Word.’
None of these translations are at all adequate: but neither Latin nor any modern language supplies anything really satisfactory. Verbum and ‘the Word’ do not give the whole of even one of the two sides of Logos: the other side, which Tertullian tried to express by Ratio, is not touched at all; for ὁ λόγος means not only ‘the spoken word,’ but ‘the thought’ expressed by the spoken word; it is the spoken word as expressive of thought. It is not found in the N.T. in the sense of ‘reason.’
The expression Logos is a remarkable one; all the more so, because S. John assumes that his readers will at once understand it. This shews that his Gospel was written in the first instance for his own disciples, who would be familiar with his teaching and phraseology.
Whence did S. John derive the expression, Logos? It has its origin in the Targums, or paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures, in use in Palestine, rather than in the mixture of Jewish and Greek philosophy prevalent at Alexandria and Ephesus, as is very commonly asserted.
(1). In the Old Testament we find the Word or Wisdom of God personified, generally as an instrument for executing the Divine Will. We have a faint trace of it in the ‘God said’ of Gen_1:3; Gen_1:6; Gen_1:9; Gen_1:11; Gen_1:14, &c. The personification of the Word of God begins to appear in the Psa_33:6; Psa_107:20; Psa_119:89; Psa_147:15. In Proverbs 8, 9 the Wisdom of God is personified in very striking terms. This Wisdom is manifested in the power and mighty works of God; that God is love is a revelation yet to come. (2) In the Apocrypha the personification is more complete than in O.T. In Ecclesiasticus (c. b. c. 150–100) Sir_1:1-20, Sir_24:1-22, and in the Book of Wisdom (c. b. c. 100) Wis_6:22 to Wis_9:18 we have Wisdom strongly personified. In Wis_18:15 the ‘Almighty Word’ of God appears as an agent of vengeance. (3) In the Targums, or Aramaic paraphrases of O.T., the development is carried still further. These, though not yet written down, were in common use among the Jews in our Lord’s time; and they were strongly influenced by the growing tendency to separate the Godhead from immediate contact with the material world. Where Scripture speaks of a direct communication from God to man, the Targums substituted the Memra, or ‘Word of God.’ Thus in Gen_3:8-9, instead of ‘they heard the voice of the Lord God,’ the Targums have ‘they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God;’ and instead of ‘God called unto Adam,’ they put ‘the Word of the Lord called unto Adam,’ and so on. ‘The Word of the Lord’ is said to occur 150 times in a single Targum of the Pentateuch. In the theosophy of the Alexandrine Jews, which was a compound of theology with philosophy and mysticism, we seem to come nearer to a strictly personal view of the Divine Word or Wisdom, but really move further away from it. Philo, the leading representative of this religious speculation (fl. a.d. 40–50), admitted into his philosophy very various, and not always harmonious elements. Consequently his conception of the Logos is not fixed or clear. On the whole his Logos means some intermediate agency, by means of which God created material things and communicated with them. But whether this Logos is one Being or more, whether it is personal or not, we cannot be sure; and perhaps Philo himself was undecided. Certainly his Logos is very different from that of S. John; for it is scarcely a Person, and it is not the Messiah. And when we note that of the two meanings of Λόγος, Philo dwells most on the side which is less prominent, while the Targums insist on that which is more prominent in the teaching of S. John, we cannot doubt the source of his language. The Logos of Philo is preeminently the Divine Reason. The Memra of the Targums is rather the Divine Word; i.e. the Will of God manifested in personal action; and this rather than a philosophical abstraction of the Divine Intelligence is the starting point of S. John’s expression.
To sum up:—the personification of the Divine Word in O.T. is poetical, in Philo metaphysical, in S. John historical. The Apocrypha and Targums help to fill the chasm between O.T. and Philo; history itself fills the far greater chasm which separates all from S. John. Between Jewish poetry and Alexandrine speculation on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other, lies the historical fact of the Incarnation of the Logos, the life of Jesus Christ.
The Logos of S. John, therefore, is not a mere attribute of God, but the Son of God, existing from all eternity, and manifested in space and time in the Person of Jesus Christ. In the Logos had been hidden from eternity all that God had to say to man; for the Logos was the living expression of the nature, purposes, and Will of God. (Comp. the impersonal designation of Christ in 1Jn_1:1.) Human thought had been searching in vain for some means of connecting the finite with the Infinite, of making God intelligible to man and leading man up to God. S. John knew that he possessed the key to this enigma. He therefore took the phrase which human reason had lighted on in its gropings, stripped it of its misleading associations, fixed it by identifying it with the Christ, and filled it with that fulness of meaning which he himself had derived from Christ’s own teaching.
with God] i.e. with the Father. ‘With’ = apud, or the French chez: it expresses the distinct Personality of the Logos. We might render ‘face to face with God,’ or ‘at home with God.’ So, ‘His sisters, are they not all with us?’ Mat_13:56; comp. Mar_6:3; Mar_9:19; Mar_14:49; 1Co_16:7; Gal_1:18; 1Th_3:4; Phm_1:13; 1Jn_1:2.
the Word was God] i.e. the Word partook of the Divine Nature, not was identical with the Divine Person. The verse may be thus paraphrased, ‘the Logos existed from all eternity, distinct from the Father, and equal to the Father.’ Comp. ‘neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.’
John 1:1-18
Chap. Joh_1:1-18. The Prologue or Introduction
That the first eighteen verses are introductory is universally admitted: commentators are not so unanimous as to the main divisions of this introduction. A division into three nearly equal parts has much to commend it:
1. The Word in His own Nature (Joh_1:1-5).
2. His Revelation to men and rejection by them (Joh_1:6-13).
3. His Revelation of the Father (Joh_1:14-18).
Some throw the second and third part into one, thus:
2. The historical manifestation of the Word (Joh_1:6-18).
Others again divide into two parts thus:
1. The Word in His absolute eternal Being (Joh_1:1).
2. The Word in relation to Creation (Joh_1:2-18).
And there are other schemes besides these. In any scheme the student can scarcely fail to feel that the first verse is unique. Throughout the prologue the three great characteristics of this Gospel, simplicity, subtlety, and sublimity, are specially conspicuous; and the majesty of the first verse surpasses all. The Gospel of the Son of Thunder opens with a peal.
Cambridge.
Joh 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
Joh 1:11 He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not.
Joh 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Joh 1:13 which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Joh 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.
