What do we mean when we confess that Jesus Christ is the Logos of God?
We mean that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word (Logos) of God the Father, the living Message whom the Father addresses to His creatures. In Him the Father speaks His ultimate word of love: “I love you.”
As St John declares: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Joh 1:1, 14). This Logos is not a mere sound or written text, but the personal, consubstantial Son who perfectly expresses the Father’s mind and heart. Through His incarnation, life, teaching, Cross, and Resurrection, Christ is the Father’s definitive self-revelation and gift of love to mankind. Scripture
repeatedly reveals this message of divine love. The Lord says through the prophet Isaiah: “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isa 43:4); and again, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jer 31:3). The Apostle John teaches: “God is love… In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him… We love because he first loved us” (1Jo 4:8–9, 19). Our Lord Himself declares: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love… Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Joh 15:9, 13; cf. Joh 3:16; Rom 5:8).
This divine Message of love cannot be grasped by human reason or natural powers alone. It is received and understood only by the illuminating and vivifying power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit opens the heart, grants the eyes of faith, and makes the Word living and effective within us, so that we may truly hear the Father’s “I love you” and respond in love. St Justin Martyr
(c. 100–165), one of the earliest apologists, already taught that Christ is the full Logos of God, of whom every person receives only a “seed” (logos spermatikos). The philosophers and righteous among the nations possessed partial rays of this truth, but the complete Logos, the perfect Message of the Father, is found only in Jesus Christ, who became man for our salvation.
