God’s Word: Lessons in wisdom and faithful giving
John 1:1-3; Prov 8:22-31
Imagine if everything we said came into existence! ‘Coffee’, we say, and hey presto, it materialises on our desk; ‘House’, we say, and the mansion we dreamed of is waiting for us with open doors. ‘Make spotless’, we cry, and the dishes are washed, the laundry is folded away and all surfaces gleam without a speck of dust. The idea sounds great until we pause to think of all the less than pleasant utterances of our mouths: vengeful wishes and punishing words. It would be terrifying to be given powers to make those a reality. Yet we read in John’s Gospel that God’s Word brings everything into being (John 1:3). As the psalmist reflects on creation (Ps 33:6, 9), he affirms that, unlike our words, His is always ‘upright and all His work is done in faithfulness’ (Ps 33:4). God need never regret His words.
God’s Word and wisdom
The Lord never speaks a reality into existence that is false, unreliable or malfunctioning, so creation can repeatedly be described as ‘good’ (e.g. Gen 1:4, 10, 12). The description in Genesis spoke of orderliness for ancient readers expressed through a series of separations (light-darkness; waters above-below; seas and dry land; Gen 1:4, 6-7, 9) and naming (Gen 1:5, 8, 10). No shoddy work or mistakes made here! This idea is well-expressed in Proverbs 8:22-31, where wisdom is personified as an entity that God ‘possessed… from the beginning’ (v.23),[1] ‘a master craftsman’ (v.30) at His side. In other words, God’s wisdom through His Word permeates creation and its functioning. Although John’s Gospel does not mention wisdom, the statement of an entity that is with God from the beginning and involved in creation (John 1:1, 3) evokes wisdom in Proverbs 8.
Gentile and Jewish associations and John’s perspective
Further, the ‘Word’ in Greek (logos) had rich associations for Gentile and Jewish readers alike. Platonic and Stoic philosophers understood logos as the Reason that permeated and shaped the universe, sometimes described as semi-divine.[2] The Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20BC-AD50), affirms that the Logos created the world and also sees it as the mediator between the ideal world of the immortal God and the physical world of creation.[3] John’s Gospel taps into these ideas but also transforms them. God’s Word is not only personified like OT wisdom, nor merely semi-divine but fully God, a being both distinct from God (‘with God’) and of the same nature as God (John 1:1),[4] who undergirds the world with wisdom. Later in the chapter, Jesus will identify Himself as a mediator between heaven and earth when he alludes to Jacob’s ladder connecting the two realms (John 1:51; Gen 28:12, 16-17). He will reveal the Father to people (John 1:18; 14:9) and intercede for His people with the Father (John 17:9).
Lessons from God’s Word
John then expresses the intimacy between God the Father and Jesus Christ, which will be evident throughout his Gospel. Jesus does what He sees the Father doing (John 5:19); Jesus’ words are His Father’s words (John 14:10, 24). Thus, Jesus is fully behind the Father’s plan when He comes into the world as a vulnerable baby and relinquishes His divine glory. The Father does not force Him to do it; He gives Himself willingly in life – and in death (John 10:17-18). There is harmony, a united will and effort here because God’s way is never coercion but a joyful giving of Himself. This is true in the relationship between Father and Son, in how God relates to humanity and how He designed us to relate to Him. Neither is Jesus a latecomer to the Father’s plans but one who had been involved in everything from the beginning, not only in the creation of the world, but in the creation and re-creation of Israel. Finally, much of what unfolds in the gospel is counter-intuitive to our human ways of thinking, yet in it is expressed God’s wisdom. As we reflect on what God has done in His grand plans for the world, we are also reminded to trust His wisdom in the puzzling details of our own lives. The Lord who held together the threads from the beginning and was able to offer a path back to life after sin, is also the God who holds the threads of our individual lives with wisdom.
[1] The Hebrew for NASB ‘possessed’ literally means ‘acquired’ (qanah), but the poetic language should not be pressed as if there were a time when God had no wisdom.
[2] Although we might think that philosophical ideas were far removed from the everyday person’s life, many of these trickled down and became part of the cultural thinking of the day. To give a modern example, most of us have not read Descartes’ philosophical work and may not know his famous maxim ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am), which lays the foundation for rationalism. Yet, when we encounter an unusual phenomenon, we immediately seek a rational explanation for it and many of our actions are governed by rational thought.
[3] Below is what Philo has to say on the Logos (Word) as mediator in Quis rerum divinarum heres sit [Who Is the Heir of Divine Things], 205-206 (translated by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whittaker, Philo: Volume IV; LCL [London: Heinemann, 1932], 385.):
To His Word, His chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the Father of all has given the special prerogative, to stand on the border and separate the creature from the Creator. This same Word both pleads with the immortal as suppliant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject. He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words ‘and I stood between the Lord and you’ (Deut. v. 5), that is neither uncreated as God, nor created as you, but midway between the two extremes, a surety to both sides.
[4] It is sometimes argued that the clause in John 1:1 should be translated ‘the Word was divine’ because the Greek theos (god) has no article in front of it, so that it is not referring to God but to God-like qualities. However, Greek has a word for divine (theios) and god (theos) without a definite article can still refer to God specifically. D.A. Carson cites John 1:49 as a comparison, where Nathanael confesses Jesus as ‘the King of Israel’ (the king in the Greek has no definite article either) and gives a detailed grammatical analysis of the issues. The Gospel According to John, Pillar NTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Leicester: Apollos; 1991), 117.
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