Ngewa (2003, p.10) says of the background to Logos:
‘If Semitic, then the main idea is that God communicated himself through Jesus Christ. If the background is Greek, the central idea is that Jesus holds things together. Neither of these ideas is excluded in what John says about Jesus in this passage. ‘
In the Prologue the author presents three views of the Logos:
1) In verse one he presents the Logos as being with God and within this expresses three important ideas.
– The eternal existence of the Logos (‘In the beginning was the word’).
– The eternal relationship of the Logos (‘with God’).
– The eternal status of the Logos (‘was God’).
The Logos exists before creation, enjoys a special, intimate relationship with God and in his very nature is God. The writer is thus claiming that Jesus who lived on earth was in fact the eternal Word, God himself. The idea is repeated in verse two, emphasizing the point.
2) In verse three he talks about the Logos and Creation and emphasises the divinity of the Word by stating that he was God’s agent in creation . This is put both positively (‘Through him all things were made’) and negatively (‘without him nothing was made that has been made.’).
3) In verses ten to fourteen he speaks of the Logos in the world and deals with the rejection of the Logos (1:10-11), the new birth of those who accept him (1:12-13) and with the Incarnation (1:14).
The word ‘logos’ (word) is employed thirty-nine times in John’s Gospel but it is only in the Prologue, where it occurs four times, that ‘logos’ is used as a Christological title. The term ‘Logos’ is never again applied to Jesus in John’s Gospel. Jesus later identifies himself as ‘Light’ (Jn 8:12; 9:5), as ‘Son’ (Jn 5:19-24), and as ‘Life’ (Jn 11:25) etc. but never says ‘I am the Word.”
This is because from chapter 1:14 on, he is no longer called ‘the logos’ but ‘Jesus’ Jesus and ‘the logos’ are one and the same; ‘the logos’ is the pre-existent Christ.
Christ’s pre-existence is not only mentioned in the Prologue but also on several occasions throughout the Gospel of John there are references to his life before Creation. He speaks of himself as having ‘come down from heaven’ (3:13; 3:31; 6:33; 6:38; 6:62). He says: ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ in 8:58 and, in the prayer of chapter seventeen, ‘And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began’ and ‘you loved me before the creation of the world.’ (17:5, 24).
Kysar (1993, p.31) maintains that the affirmation that Jesus existed from the beginning is ‘one of the highest claims that the Christian has made for Christ’. He observes:
‘The pre-existence of the Logos affirms not only that he existed before creation itself, but that he existed ‘before all things began’. His existence goes back into that mysterious time before time – into the realm of temporality that eludes human conceptuality. While we cannot fathom what it would mean to exist before all else, we can try to fathom what the author is trying to affirm by saying this. Christ is so important that he could not simply have come into being like any other person or object. Christ is made to transcend beings and things by the assertion of his pretemporal existence….Christ is no created being. He is before creation.’
(1) THEMES IN THE PROLOGUE TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
(3) THEMES IN THE PROLOGUE TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
(4) THEMES IN THE PROLOGUE TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Written Exposition 
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