At breakfast with a friend yesterday, we were talking about orthopraxy and what not, you know, pretty standard Labor Day breakfast conversation. And in the midst of discussing methods available to us and ways of life, he prophetically proclaimed, “But Jesus is the pre-incarnate Word, present at creation, through whom God brought everything we know into existence.”
Or something like that.
It was a real prophetic word, like Spirit just totally took over him for a few seconds. It trumped everything we were ruminating on. Stopped it. Even though we were talking about good things, there was an authority that seems to render it all as utter weakness.
It penetrated me, the Light of Life cutting through me viscerally.
I can’t seem to get John 6:63 out of my soul lately-“The words I have spoken to you–they are spirit, they are life.” The Message version reads, “Every word I’ve spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-giving.”
Jesus’ words, His teachings, His parables, somehow impart His Life to us. They actually impart Himself into our souls. I’ve never thought of that in quite this nuanced way before.
John 1 New Living Translation (NLT)
Prologue: Christ, the Eternal Word
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,[a]
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.
The Word is the person of the Godhead through whom the world was created, who took on human nature in history and who is the source of life and light for humanity.*
John’s use of Logos, which we translate as “Word”, is that prophetic word which goes from God’s mouth to accomplish creation, judgement, redemption, and renewal.*
What I’ve been mentally masticating of late is that we cannot get too much of Jesus, His teachings, His words. They cannot be reviewed too often. They cannot be probed too deeply. “Oops, I went too far into the mind of Christ, I better back out,” is probably a phrase we shan’t ever utter.
If we follow Jesus, as the pre-incarnate LOGOS of God, who created the cosmos, how can we not feed upon His words daily, throughout the day, meditating upon them, hence, upon Him, day and night?
* from the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels page 483
“You can be clever and you can be sensitive but you can’t be wise unless there is a Logos.”