2. This title will have many advantages. It will lead up naturally to the stress which the writer wants to lay on the words of Jesus as being spirit and life, and on His discourses as being the utterances of Him who claimed to be the Truth : they will be sayings of One who had already been described as " the faithful
ST. JOHN I. I 7
and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God." And " the Word " also has its roots in the Old Testament ; it recalls each " God said " of creation : it recalls the Psalmist's summary of creation, and his use and that of the Apocryphal writers of " God's Word " as the agent of His Providence in healing and delivering His chosen people : above all, it will take up the Eabbinic reverence, which when speaking of God's manifestation of Himself to man substituted for God the title " the Word of God," " the memra." In using it, he will be speaking of the same Being of whom the Jewish Kabbis thought when they spoke of God pro- ' tecting Noah by " his Word," making a covenant between Abraham and " his Word," of Moses bringing forth the people to meet " the Word of God " at Mount Sinai. There was one further reason why the title would help his purpose ; for through Philo its Greek philosophical meaning had become current throughout the eastern religious world, and even in Christian circles ; much of the language associated with it had been adopted by St. Paul and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; and yet there were striking points in which the Philonian doctrine might mislead Christian disciples : he would be able to guard against this, while he stated shortly, clearly, authoritatively, what " the Word " really was.^
^ A word is the true expression of him who utters it. We have various ways of communicating with one another, but the chief of all these ways is by speech. Within this intricate apparatus, which we call the body, sits a tenant who is wholly distinct from the body. This tenant thinks, wills, feels — lives a life separate from the senses — a life sacred and invisible. How shall this tenant communicate with the outer world ? By speech : alphabets and words come to his help ; the lip is taught their use, and then the sacred tenant within the body can utter itself to the world. So St. John conceives God as cut off from man by many barriers ; " no man hath seen God at any time, nor can see him." How shall God communicate with the creature He has made ? He does so by Christ who is His Word. Christ is the very mind of God translating itself into symbols which man can comprehend. As your word is yourself uttered, so Christ is God uttered. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 2
^ W. Lock, The Bible and Christian Life, 25. « W. J. Dawson, The Reproach of Christ, 23.
8 THE WORD
11.
The Nature of the Word.
1. In the Prologue to St. John's Gospel we have a principle by which we may harmonize the facts of Christ's life. St. John gives us a key which proves itself by fitting into all the wards of the lock. What Christ did and said becomes explicable only by knowing what Christ is.
2. The first sentence of the Gospel offers a perfect example of the stately symmetry by which the whole narrative is marked. The three clauses of which it consists are set side by side ( . . . and . . . and ...)', the Subject {the Word) is three times repeated ; and the substantive verb three times occupies the same relative position. The symmetry of form corresponds with the exhaustiveness of the thought. The three clauses contain all that it is possible for man to realize as to the essential nature of the Word in relation to time, and mode of being, and character : He was (1) in the leginning : He was (2) luith God : He was (3) God!^ At the same time these three clauses answer to the three great moments of the Incarnation of the Word declared in verse 14. He who " was God," became flesh : He who " was with God," tabernacled among us (cf . 1 John i. 2) : He who " was in the beginning," became (in time).^
3. The three propositions are brief, having a deeply marked character like oracles. The first indicates the eternity of the Logos ; the second expresses profoundly the idea of His person- ality ; the third His divinity.
i. His Eternity. " In the beginning was the Word."
1. The phrase " in the beginning " carries us back to Gen. i. 1, which necessarily fixes the sense of the beginning. Here, as there, " the beginning " is the initial moment of time and creation ; but with this difference, that Moses dwells on that which starts from the point, and traces the record of Divine action from the beginning (cf. 1 John i. 1, ii. 13), while St. John lifts our