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The Logos, part 3

In John 1:4 and 5, the apostle links life to the light, saying, “the life was the light of men.” The wording makes it appear that life is light, as if they are somehow the same.

Of course, both life and light are explained and unfolded throughout the rest of John’s gospel. We have already commented on the meaning of life, but we also read Jesus words in John 9:5, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Witnessing Light

John the Baptist’s role is given John 1:6-8,

⁶ There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷ He came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. ⁸ He was not the light but came that he might bear witness of the light.

Jesus said later in John 5:33,

³³ You have sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.

Here we find that the light is “truth.” As the prophesied forerunner, John bore witness to the truth that Jesus is the Messiah.

Jesus’ claim in John 9:5 that He was the light of the world was made in the context of the sixth miracle-sign, where He healed the eyes of the man born blind (John 9:1). Light does not enlighten anyone who is blind, neither does truth affect positively those who are spiritually blind. The blind man was healed and received light and truth, but the Pharisees refused on the grounds that Jesus had violated the law by working on the Sabbath (John 9:16).

To believe in Jesus—that is, to believe that He is the Messiah, with all that this entails—is to come out of darkness and into the light. Jesus said in John 12:44-46,

⁴⁴ … He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me. ⁴⁵ And he who beholds Me beholds the One who sent Me. ⁴⁶ I have come as light into the world, that everyone who believes in Me may not remain in darkness.

We see, then, a sequence of witnesses. Jesus bore witness of the Father, and John in turn bore witness of Jesus. Consequently, the people themselves were supposed to believe John’s witness and thereby provide the final double witness that established truth to all individually.

The Power of Light

This takes us back to the beginning in John 1:9,

⁹ There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.

Obviously, not every man received the truth during His ministry. Much darkness remained and has continued to the present time. But light is greater than darkness. Darkness, no matter how deep, flees from light, for it neither apprehends it nor extinguishes it. Hence, John 1:5 says,

⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The Greek word translated “comprehend” is katalambano (kata is “according to”; lambano is “to seize or take to one’s self). Hence, katalambano means “to seize upon, grasp, take possession of, or to understand with the mind.” John uses the term to indicate a double meaning. First, the darkness cannot understand the light; second, the darkness cannot seize the light as if to overpower and extinguish it.

The Pharisees provided the example in John 9 of the inability of darkness to receive or understand the light of truth that Christ was manifesting. Yet at the same time, their unbelief and opposition was destined to fail in the end, because darkness has no power to extinguish the truth. Hence, the light is destined to enlighten every man by the time His Story concludes.

Let There Be Light

The first command at creation was “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). John intended to show how Jesus Christ is that light which came into the world at the beginning of time. The word (Logos) of the one true and living God both begat and birthed the living Light out of Himself, that is, out of His substance (hupostasis). He was “the Firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15), because “light” was the first Logos of the Creator.

John 1:1 says: “In the beginning was the Logos.” In that Logos was life, and this life was “the Light of men” (John 1:4). The light burst forth, dispelling all darkness, and enlightening the world and “every man” (John 1:9). That original creation was “very good,” but when sin entered the picture, darkness enveloped all that was under the authority of Adam.

Hence, the history of the world is about the re-creation and renewal of all things. The Light was again begotten by the Father, and the Son was born in Bethlehem. “Let there be light” is again the first Logos of the Father in the restoration of all things. No man can come to the Father except through Jesus Christ, for we read in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

These three elements provide us with the path from darkness to light and from death to immortal life. These are pictured architecturally in the tabernacle of Moses, where “the way” is the outer gate into the outer court; “the truth” is the veil into the Holy Place, where the lampstand gives the light (truth) to the seven churches; and “the life” is found in the Most Holy Place, when one passes through that final veil into the very presence of the Logos.

This path is also pictured in the three main feasts of the Lord. Passover is about faith in the blood of the Lamb; Pentecost is about hearing God’s voice, receiving revelation of truth by the Holy Spirit, and learning obedience in being led by the Spirit; Tabernacles is about full agreement, where “we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

In other words, Passover is the realm of the outer court; Pentecost is the Holy Place; and Tabernacles is the Most Holy Place, where we behold Him face to face. This is the “Highway of Holiness” (Isaiah 35:8) which every man must travel to be enlightened by the Logos.

Logos: Masculine and Feminine

I mentioned previously that the Greek word logos is masculine in gender, and for this reason, the Logos is referred to as “Him” in most translations. The Hebrew equivalent, davar (or dabar), is also a masculine noun. Nonetheless, the manifestation of Christ as the Logos includes revelation of the feminine as well.

This is seen in the law, where all of the sacrifices of various animals and birds typified Jesus Christ in His great Sacrifice for the sin of the world. One kind of sacrifice in the law was to be “a goat, a male without defect” (Leviticus 4:23), and the other was to be “a goat, a female without defect” (Leviticus 4:28).

Likewise, the Passover lamb was to be “an unblemished male” (Exodus 12:5), while the “unblemished red heifer in which is no defect” (Numbers 19:2) was obviously female.

Jesus came to fulfill the law, which included both the male and female sacrifices. This may be where Paul apprehended the idea that in the spirit “there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), at least not as we know it in the earth today. The fact is that God, being complete and lacking in nothing, possesses all of the spiritual characteristics of male and female that were afterward divided up between males and females on earth.

Christ the Logos, being an exact representation of the Father (i.e., His Image), was both male and female in spirit, though He was male in the flesh. As such, He could fulfill the entire word (davar) that prophesied of Him. For this reason, one could make the point that the translators’ use of “Him” to describe the Logos in John 1:3 was not fully accurate. No doubt they were thinking only of personifying the Logos, so their use of “He” and “Him” were intended to identify the Logos with Jesus Christ. Yet by doing so, they focused upon His human nature, rather than His spiritual or heavenly nature as the Logos.

Deborah and Barak

There was a Judge and prophetess in Israel named Deborah, who, united with Judge Barak, set the Israelites free from their Canaanite captivity (Judges 4:4, 8, 23). Deborah’s name is the feminine form of davar, or dabar. Her name literally means “a bee,” implying divine order that comes from the word of God. Note that in Genesis 1:2 there was chaos, and that the word of God then brought creation into divine order.

Bees make honey. Honey is a biblical type of truth that enlightens one’s eyes. Israel was led to “a land flowing with milk and honey”—the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 11:9). While many have focused upon the physical land itself, which was merely a prophetic type, the real promise of God is for his people to become the living word. We are what we eat, and when we consume the milk of the word and the honey of the word, we then fulfill what God intended from the beginning.

There is also an enlightening prophetic story, where Jonathan, son of King Saul, ate some honey, “and his eyes brightened” (1 Samuel 14:27 NASB). The KJV says, “his eyes were enlightened.” The problem was that his father, the king, had commanded that no one in the army should eat anything until he had subdued the Philistines (1 Samuel 14:24). Jonathan had been absent and did not hear about this ban on food. So we read in 1 Samuel 14:29,

²⁹ Then Jonathan said, “My father has troubled the land. See now, how my eyes have brightened, because I tasted a little of this honey.”

The people prevented Saul from executing his own son, but it shows how the religious spirit was already operating in the king. He should have admitted that he had made a rash vow, asked forgiveness for his foolishness, and moved on in humility. However, it seems that he interpreted the law in Numbers 30:2 as being exclusive to his gender, making it unlawful for a man to break a foolish vow.

The law says that a father may veto his daughter’s “rash statement” (Numbers 30:8, 12). Love is the overriding foundation of the law. Whenever the law is applied apart from love, it is a sin. If Saul had consumed a bit of spiritual honey, he would have been able to attribute his rash vow to his soul (feminine), and his inner spiritual man would have been able to issue a veto.

But Saul was a carnally minded king and a type of the church under Pentecost in its lawless condition.

The point is that Deborah was a manifestation of the word (davar, or logos). She was united with Barak, “lightning,” representing the sons of God, for lightning is pictured as God’s arrows hitting the earth (Psalm 18:14). Arrows are also “sons” in Psalm 127:4. Hence, God’s arrows are the sons of God. Deborah and Barak were united in their purpose, and this teaches us that when the sons of God become the davar or logos (being in Christ, the Logos), the power of the Canaanites will be broken.

This is the spiritual honey that God has promised us. When we partake of the word of God and truly assimilate it, we become living epistles, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:2, 3,

² You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; ³ being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.

To become a logos of God, the law must be written on one’s heart in accordance with the New Covenant (Hebrews 8:10). In this way the light that broke through the darkness at the beginning of time is enlightening our own eyes with the truth and is transforming us “into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When the light of the Logos finally enlightens every man (John 1:9), then all darkness will cease. There will be “no night there” (Revelation 21:25), and there will be no further need for the sun and moon to give their light, because “the glory of God has illumined it” (Revelation 21:23).

God’s New Covenant promise will be fulfilled when Christ has manifested the glory of God fully in the earth and the earth has become the double witness of His glory. Habakkuk 2:14 says,

¹⁴ For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.