Here is the point people do not see. There is NO "person" or "being" named God. There is a Father and a Son and together they are God. God is like a family name. I have a son who is not me and I am not him but we both are part of one family. The Father and Son are both part of one God. People cannot see this and continue to think of God as an old man with a white beard. But that could be a description of the Father, who is just one part of God. The Word in John 1:1 became flesh in the form of Jesus. So the Word and Jesus are really the same, just in different form.
Very true that there is no being named God. However there is a being named Yhovah. Technically, He is not a person. He is spirit (John 4:24). He is the father of Jesus. Why you understand that you and your son are not the same individual, and yet Yhovah and his son are the same, is a mystery to me. We all know what a son is and what a father is. We all know that they are in no way, shape, or form, the same individual. Why throw away all logic, word meaning, and common sense when it comes to the scriptures? There is a better way.
God communicates to us via words. Unless He specifically says so, he doesn't change the meaning of those words as we understand them. He uses the words "father" and "son" the same way we do. There is nothing in the scriptures that would indicate that a son can be his own father or that a father can be his own son. Men came along and said that, but even on the surface, it is an insane idea and God never said such a thing.
With regards to John 1:1, I suggest you do some study on Greek word "logos." That is is Greek word translated as "Word" in John. First of all, in the Greek texts there were no small and capital letters. They were all what we would call capital letters. Therefore, the capitalization of the word "Word" is man's idea, not Gods, By the time our modern Bibles were translated from the Greek originals, the trinity was totally accepted as doctrine. It was that bias that caused the translators to capitalize the word "Word." They wanted to make everybody thing the Word was literally Jesus. But the word "logos" means much more than that.
Do your own research, but I think you will see that the word logos means more like the following:
Part of the definition of "logos:" in Abbott-Smith's Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament is:
"a word, not in the grammatical sense of a mere name (ἔπος, ὄνομα, ῥῆμα), but a word as embodying a conception or idea:"
The Encyclopedia Britannica says the following:
“Logos, (Greek: “word,” “reason,” or “plan”) plural logoi, in Greek philosophy and theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.”
The New American Standard Greek Lexicon gives the following as the primary meaning of the word logos:
“a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea”
The logos is God's plan of redemption. While Jesus is certainly the star of the plan, he is not the plan itself. In John 1:14 the plan was made flesh, and that of course was Jesus. It was not until the day Jesus was born that the logos became flesh. While the plan was with God in the beginning, Jesus was not. Just read what's written without inserting preconceived ideas.
Jesus was a perfect representation of God's plan. He always obeyed his Father. Never missed a beat, not even when God asked (not forced) Jesus to die on the cross. That is why Jesus was called the image of God. An image of something is just that, an image. It is not the thing itself. That is why Jesus could say that if you saw him, you saw the Father. The scriptures are clear that nobody has ever seen the actual God (John 1:18), so Jesus could not have meant that he actually was God. Ever heard the phrase, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all?" We all know what that means. You didn't actually see every dog in the world, but by seeing just one, you know, more or less, what they all look like. That is all Jesus was saying.
The same idea of John 1:14 is brought out in Hebrews.
Heb 1:1-2,
1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by [his] Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
In the OT God communicated the logos, the word (logos) of John 1:1, via the written word and the spoken word. But "in these last days" He spoke to us via his son, Jesus Christ. Those "last days" are the days that "the word became flesh" in John 1:14.
Here is some info on the last phrase of John 1:1, "and the word was God." It is very misleading the way it is translated in our modern Bibles. It makes God and the word seem as though they are one identical thing. That is not really accurate at all.
The words in the Greek texts do not always follow the same order as they do in our English translations. In particular, the last phrase in John 1:1, “and the Word was God” is written as “and God was the Word” (και θεος ην ο λογος) in the Greek texts. The reader should note that while the English translation of this phrase begins with the “Word,” the Greek original texts begins with the word “God.” Also noteworthy is the fact that both translations use the definite article associated with the word “Word” while there is no definite article used with the word “God.” With that in mind, I submit the following:
"...the fact that the word ‘God’ is used first in the sentence actually shows some emphasis that this Logos (Word) was in fact God in its nature. However, since it does not have the definite article,
it does indicate that this Word was not the same ‘person’ as the Father God, but has the same ‘essence’ and ‘nature’."
All of this is to say that the word (logos - plan) that God had in mind from the beginning was Godly in nature. It was divine in nature. Jesus was God's son and thus, like all offspring, shared his Father's nature. So while it is accurate to say Jesus was divine, that he shared the divinity of his Father's nature, it is not true to say that Jesus actually
was his Father, an idea that makes no sense unless we ignore the simple meaning or words, in this case, "father" and "son." There is no need to do that.
By the way, thanks to Jesus' willingness at great personal cost, to carry out his Father's plan, we too share in the same divine nature of God.
2Pet 1:4,
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
That's pretty good!
I hope you decide to do your own research on the logos. Simply substituting the word "Jesus" for it pretty much mashes the redemption story to bits. God' plan (logos) was genius to the nth degree. He knew that since death came by man, so would the resurrection of the dead have to come by a man, not a god or a god-man, but by a man.
1Cor 15:21,
For since by man [came] death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead.
Just read what's written. Don't add ideas to it that aren't there. Anyway, that's my advice and I'm confident it's God's advice as well.
The entire OT is the unfolding of God's plan, the logos of John 1;1. Jesus read that plan and little by little learned what he must do to bring that plan to fruition. By his free will he decided every moment of every day to carry out that plan. What a man! Give God the credit He deserves for coming up with a plan to redeem mankind and to Jesus for the love he had to carry out the plan.
God bless.
