Revelation: The Logos of God
Revelation: The Logos of God.
“The revelation of Jesus Christ…” (Rev. 1:1). John the Divine left no doubt about the purpose of his Book of Revelation. His very first words in his prologue were that his vision was an unveiling of Jesus. His baffling and otherworldly writings in this book were not primarily about future events, or the destiny of human life on planet earth, or all those mysterious activities in the heavenly sphere. John was writing first and foremost about the Person of Christ, and he intended everything in the book to point back to Him. Revelation was a lifting of the veil on the full identity and activity of Christ. It is a revelation of Jesus, from God, concerning Christ Himself. The Godhead is both the primary source of John’s vision and its main subject. Everything in this extended vision that came to John straight from heaven is to be understood through the prism of Christ. Regardless of how dramatic, puzzling or profound its contents, everything in John’s vision is intended to help us discover more of Christ and deepen our knowledge of and love for Him. All these events in Revelation that seem to pique the reader’s curiosity are nonetheless streams that are meant to lead us back to the River of Life. Perhaps it would do us all well if we continue to remind ourselves of Paul’s declaration as we read John’s vision… “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2). So then, we can’t let ourselves get too sidetracked, too stuck in the weeds, with these fancy special effects in John’s vision… the beasts and the dragons and the angels, the numbers and colors and gemstones, the symbols and metaphors and poetic imagery… After all is said and done in Revelation, St. John has composed an essentially Christ-centered book.
Gold Mine: Another way of looking at the book of Revelation is to strap on your miner’s helmet and search for Biblical gold. In John’s vision are many gold mines that have Jesus Christ as the source… Mines like His appearance in His glorified presence, the Logos of God, the seven titles of Christ, the words to the seven churches, the seven Beatitudes, and the many songs of worship that come straight to us from heaven! And there is more! Mining all the gold in Revelation will make us wealthy with His treasure for all of eternal life. But all those fancy special effects in John’s vision are only fool’s gold if they distract us from Jesus.
“John, who has faithfully reported everything he saw in the vision – that is, the Word (Logos) of God, the message of truth revealed by Jesus Christ.” (Rev. 1:2).
St. John’s famous term “Logos” has popped up again here in Revelation, and what a wonderful thing to happen! “Logos” as a general term is used over 300 times in the New Testament to simply mean a word of communication, a thought expressed through the spoken or written word. But John doesn’t want to stop there… It appears that he wants us to stretch the meaning of “logos” in two important ways:
On the one hand, John wants to tell the readers that his book is anchored in the Hebrew Bible, that the contents of his vision didn’t just magically appear out of thin air. John is telling us that Revelation has a biblical context, and that he has actually referenced the prophetic works of the Hebrew Scriptures over 500 times in his book. In other words, John’s inspired and extensive imagination at work as he lays out the heavenly vision enjoys the foundation of God’s Word.
On the other hand, John’s favorite title for Jesus is “Logos,” or Word. He powerfully used that term in the first chapter of his gospel… “In the beginning was the Logos, the Word, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” (John 1:1); “And the Logos 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.” (John 1:14). John also used his favorite term for Jesus in the first verse of his first letter: “We saw Him with our very own eyes. We gazed upon Him and heard Him speak. Our hands actually touched Him, the One who was from the beginning, the Logos of life.” (1 John 1:1).
So now John is at it again using “logos of God” in verse 2 above, in verse 9, and in 19:13 in naming Jesus as “The Logos of God.” John was well aware of the thinking at that time… Behind the written Word of God is the Living Word of God, and behind the Living Word is the creative and personal Reason that resulted in all the beauty, order, and design of nature. John viewed Jesus as the physical expression of the Father’s thoughts and reasoning that was used in the creation of the universe.
The Greek Logos. The Greek term for “word” was logos. Logos evidently started in the centuries before as a mathematical term, meaning to count up or give an accounting for, as in bookkeeping. It was still used occasionally in that way, such as in Matthew 12:26. For the most part, the term logos evolved into a Greek philosophical term. Using their famous Greek logical thinking, many Greek thinkers looked at our reasonable, well-ordered world and concluded that there must be a universal principle of Reason that is behind the running of the cosmos. They thought, mostly as a logical necessity, that there is an Intelligence somewhere, a transcendent source for this order that is beyond man’s understanding. There must be something that provides the world with this amazing form and coherence and exquisite design. They called this rather vague ideal “Logos.” This invisible force of Reason unifies the world into order from the chaos from before the world became reality. This logos is able to speak aloud, and whatever truth, goodness or beauty it speaks in fact exists the moment it is spoken. In a sense the Greek logos is able to create truth and reality. The Greeks never dreamed that their logos would become an actual person. The idea that logos would take on flesh would be laughable and unthinkable, and would actually defeat their whole understanding of this ideal of an impersonal, governing force in the world. The Greek logos had many hints of the true faith, though, and has been called a “bridge-word” because of the many Greeks who baptized the Greek logos into Christian belief after finding Christianity a logical step forward.
The Gospel Logos. The term Logos in John 1 has been the most debated and discussed term in all the Greek New Testament, according to the biblical scholars. It has been described and amplified and studied and defined in any number of ways. But for our purposes in the Christian faith, Jean Vanier’s definition of Logos is as good as any other: “Logos has come to mean the spoken Word, the thought and idea behind that Word, and the wisdom that inspired that Word.” The term logos was not a foreign word in that part of the world during the time of Jesus and the early Christians. The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, was widely used for biblical reading and considered the Bible of reference of that time. John decided to adopt that term and baptize the Greek version with a more complete understanding of it from the Christian viewpoint. In the New Testament era, logos meant the expression of a thought of the Father through the Holy Spirit; an utterance or a word embodying a divine idea; a message through speech or in writing; or more generally, reasoning expressed by words. John’s logos would include these sorts of thoughts:
(1.) There is indeed a universal Reason that is behind the well-ordered and reasonable world. This powerful force of divine intelligence is the God of the holy Scriptures, Yahweh, the Sovereign God who put the cosmos together. This God is the Person who created the world with His spoken Word, “Let there be...” and has sustained it ever since.
(2.) This personal Creator God, the eternal Lord of the cosmos, wanted to yet again use His spoken Word to start a new beginning. God’s Word would once again be in the act of creation, but this time would create salvation and renewal. God’s spoken Word was actually a divine Presence, His Son, Jesus Christ.
(3.) The Creator God expressed Himself with His spoken Word, and His ultimate self-expression was when He revealed Himself to the world in the form of His Son. In this way, God revealed His divine Reason and Wisdom, and His desire to personally share His presence in this world He created. So God, the invisible Source of Reason and Wisdom, sent forth His Son as His visible, eternal spoken Word. Jesus, the spoken Word, is thus the Voice of God.
(4.) Jesus Christ is the Logos, the living Word of God, the Word who once said, “Let there be light!” That creative Word has taken on flesh and is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus is the physical representative of God’s existence, heaven’s Ambassador of the Godhead to bring messages from His home. Jesus is the Co-Creator of the cosmos and has been face-to-face with the almighty God for all eternity. The Word that spoke light into the world has now become the Light of that world.
(5.) So John declares that Jesus, the Son of God, is in fact the Logos…not only the spoken Word of God in the flesh in a new creation, not only God’s thought behind that living Word, but also the embodiment of the Wisdom that inspired God’s spoken Word. John presents Jesus as the absolute revelation and self-expression of God. Jesus is Yahweh spoken into flesh, the holy Scripture in the form of a Person. If we want to read God’s mind, we read Jesus.
The Hebrew Logos. The Bible used during the time of Jesus and the early Christians was usually the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The original Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but Greek was the prominent language used during Jesus’ time. The Septuagint had been translated several centuries before Christ, and so it was commonplace for New Testament writers to quote the Greek version and not the Hebrew version of Scripture. For the most part, when we see a quote from the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament, it is from the Septuagint. The Greek term logos was used literally hundreds of times in the Greek Old Testament, and was often used to highlight the Word of God. Logos was also used to translate “truth,” and implied thought, meaning, planning and design. It’s interesting that the Hebrew Bible’s logos was so similar to the Greek understanding. In many ways, the Greek Old Testament laid the groundwork for John’s use of logos. The Word of God in the Hebrew Bible (logos), as with John, signified the presence of the Lord. Logos suggested God’s self-expression, whether in creation, in the prophet’s message, or in the Torah itself. When a prophet declared “the word of the Lord,” the prophet’s words were considered coming from the mind and mouth of Yahweh Himself.
The Living Logos. Another way to understand Jesus “fulfilling” the written Torah is that He is indeed “Logos,” the Living Word. He is the living Torah. He embodies the Law of Moses, and was the spiritual inspiration to all that is in the Hebrew Bible. He is the Author of the absolute truth that is in the Jewish Bible. Jesus fulfilled Torah by fulfilling the OT prophecies about Him, through His teachings saturated with truth, through His actions performing God’s will. Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of the Law. The Greek Bible translated the term “the Ten Commandments” (Deut. 5, Ex. 20) into “the Ten Logos,” the Ten Words.” That’s why so many refer to the “Decalogue” when referring to the Ten Commandments. As outrageous as this might sound, Jesus wasn’t merely fulfilling the Word of God, He was embodying it. He wasn’t merely living in light of the Ten Commandments, He was a living, breathing version of them. Jesus was not merely unpacking the Torah in His teachings, He was the Torah. Jesus the living Word, Scripture in the flesh, Torah with a pulse.