John 1:1 NIV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This name is peculiar to the Fourth Gospel, and there it occurs only in the Prologue ( John 1:1; John 1:14). Much controversy has arisen as to the probable sources from which the Apostle derived his conception of Christ as the Logos—a controversy the more natural that the term ‘the Word’ as used by St. John represents the meeting point of Hebrew theology, Hellenic philosophy, and the religion of Jesus Christ. To that controversy little reference need here be made.
The Logos doctrine of St. John may be summarized thus. God’s revelation of Himself in the history of mankind is a complete unity. Creation, Providence, and Redemption are parts of the same grand purpose, whose object is the highest well-being of God’s creatures, and especially of man, the head and crown of the creation. In each we have God revealing Himself, and that through a Mediator. This Mediator, more or less darkly imagined by mankind from the beginning until these last times, and more or less clearly revealed to God’s chosen people in the days of the fathers as the Angel of the Covenant or the Angel of the Presence, is the same in whom He has now manifested Himself, the Christ by whom God has now spoken to those to whom the promise was given, and who had long been expecting their Messiah, and to all the sons of men, as many as will receive Him. Thus is the Christ, the Redeemer of Israel, the very Word of God, the last, the perfect revelation of the Most High, and the Redeemer of the world.
The Prologue of the Gospel is St. John’s appeal to the nations, and speaks thus: ‘In Christ Jesus, whom we knew, who as a man among men companied with us, God has spoken, has manifested Himself to us who beheld His glory, and to all that have welcomed that Word of the Father. In Christ the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.’ This conception of Christ as the Logos, the same that was in the beginning with God, necessarily involves the doctrine of the essential Deity and eternal pre-existence of Christ. But the point which St. John specially brings out by his use of the term is that in Christ God perfectly reveals Himself to man, and gives to all that receive Christ that adoption by which they may become ‘children of God’ (τέκνα θεοῦ, not υἱοί, John 1:12; cf. 1 John 3:1). Having in the Prologue established this point, St. John makes no further use of the term Logos in his Gospel, where ‘Son’ or ‘Son of God’ takes its place.
Names And Titles Of Christ from Hastings’ Dictionary of the New Testament