You can't just go changing words in the scriptures.
He did no such thing. Christ Jesus always was and always will be the personification of the Father's Word.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." is not the same as, "In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God."
Well, John clarifies that for us in verse 14: "...the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." And the writer of Hebrews echoes this in saying of Christ Jesus, "...in these last days He (the Father) has spoken to us by His Son (indisputably Jesus Christ), Whom He appointed the heir of all things, through Whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and He upholds the universe by the Word of His power."
Suffice it to say, an abstract thing such as logos can not literally become a person.
Yet John and the writer of Hebrews immediately above say the exact opposite of what you are saying here, as well as Paul, when he writes, "Christ Jesus, Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
God had a plan, the logos, in mind from the beginning.
Agreed.
It of course centered around Jesus.
Agreed. Jesus, Who was the Word ~ and is, and always will be, as He is eternal and unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8).
Jesus, being the perfect image of God (note: an image of something is not the thing itself)...
A well-worn Jehovah's Witness talking point... and actually a tradition of man (not all men, of course) in exactly the same sense as how Jehovah's Witnesses (try to) turn it around and throw it back in the face of believers in the triune Jehovah. What you're saying here gets into the issue of idolatry and even the first and second Commandments, that we are to
"...have no other gods before (Jehovah)
" and that we
"...shall not make for (ourselves) a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth... (we)
shall not bow down to them or serve them..." To look at an image and to worship an image of God is the fundamental breaking of the first two of the Ten Commandments. Yes, Christ Jesus most certainly is the perfect image of God, and as such He invites worship of Him. If the Watchtower position on this issue were true, it would be to say that Jesus actually encourages and even commands the breaking of the first and second Commandments, which is... well, a horrible misconstruing Who He was, is, and always will be. No, as Paul says twice in Colossians (1:15 and 3:10, and says it also in 1 Corinthians 11:7 and 2 Corinthians 4:4), He
is the image of God and as such
is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature (Hebrews 1:3), and not merely
made in His image and thus a reflection of His glory and nature as we are. But this is why all other images are prohibited, because they are not the image of God. To not understand this is to fly directly in the face of Paul and even accuse him of exhorting us to idolatry and blasphemy, which quite ridiculous.
Jesus deals with His disciples (and us, by extension) in John 14, when Philip, speaking for all of them, says to Him in His last days on earth, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." And what does Jesus say? He says:
"Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever 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 is in me?"
Jesus is saying very clearly, in so many categories, “I am God.” I can anticipate at least one of the things you'll come back with on this. Yes, He does say,
"The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority," but this is not, as Jehovah's Witnesses wrongly suppose, that Jesus has no authority of His own and that it is merely lended to Him for a time by the Father, but that He has this authority with and wields it in the same way as the Father. which cannot be soft-pedaled in any way. Yet again, this is one of John's central themes throughout his gospel, that Jesus was, is, and always will be God... the second Person of the one triune Jehovah.
...when I was presented with evidence and did my own research, I discovered that tradition does indeed make God's Word of no affect.
It's no "tradition." It is what it is, and no amount of human word-parsing can make it what it is not.
The trinity and Jesus being God are traditions not settled upon until the 4th and 5th centuries by councils called together by Roman emperors and Greek philosophy adherents. That is a historical fact, one that is easy to verify.
Sure, but all that means is that it was a debate among men then, and still remains one. But debates among men have no affect on the Word of God, which is what always was, is now, and always will be. As Peter (1 Peter 1:25) says, quoting from Isaiah (Isaiah 40:8):
"All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains/stands/endures forever."
It's a completely different story when we get the basic nature of the two main characters correct. In this case, it's much much better story, the greatest story ever told! Try it, and you'll see what I mean. :)
Actually, I would say exactly the same thing back to you. The real story is under-told in many ways by many groups of folks in many different ways, and the Watchtower narrative is one of them. Yours is a completely different "story," that's for sure. :) I don't mean to make light of that, because it's truly a gravely serious matter.
Grace and peace to you, Rich.
