John 1:1-18
LOGOS
The Word of God
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 light and life for humanity…that prophetic word which goes forth from God’s mouth to accomplish creation, judgement, redemption and renewal. John uses logos because it is the natural word for expressing the meaning of the Hebrew word dabar when that word was used in the context of God’s revelation. Beginning with its first sentences the Gospel asserts that Jesus is God’s final Revelator (cf. Heb. 1:1-2).
Jesus was YHWH embodied. All of Scripture points to Jesus. He shows us the point of it all. He trumps everything with reference to God. This is what we Christians believe. Jesus showed and shows us God. there is no greater love than that of YHWH, and this He most profoundly showed us through His Son and His sacrifice for humanity. Self-sacrificial love for all, including enemies, is the way of Jesus. Revenge is not Jesus.
Proverbs 7:4-5
Say to Wisdom, “You are my sister.” Call Understanding “Friend,” so that she might guard you against the strange woman and from the foreign woman whose speech flatters you.
Personifying Wisdom, the father tells the son to cultivate a relationship with Wisdom. Calling Wisdom “Sister” was very intimate language in its ancient context. Here “Sister” is not a reference to a sibling, but rather a romantic designation. It was a term of endearment between an intimate couple in the Near East, particularly Egypt.
Parker Palmer tells us that we are to make troth with truth. To know it intimately, not just objectively. To internalize truth. We don’t get to know anything from a distance.
The purpose for developing an intimate relationship with Woman Wisdom is to block out an illicit relationship with the “strange/foreign” woman. This language refers not to an ethnically or politically foreign woman but to one who is outside social custom and law….It is telling that the father mentions flattery as the first characteristic of the woman that might attract the son to an illegitimate relationship. It is not her beauty but her appeal to the man’s vanity that is so dangerous.-Tremper Longman III
It is not her beauty but her appeal to the man’s vanity that is so dangerous.