The Word of God is a Person

Yes, of course, Christ-followers must revere the Scriptures.

Image via Pixabay

We believe that the Scriptures are the Holy Spirit-breathed Word of God (2Tim 3.16-17). They are light for our path and food to sustain our souls (Dt 8.3; Ps 119.105; ). We cannot possibly know God apart from them.

But along with this core belief, we also believe that the Word of God is a person. Well, not a person, but a Person.

Jesus is also called the Word of God (Jn 1.1-14). If the Scriptures are God’s Word written down, Jesus is God’s Word lived out perfectly, a flawless life for us to imitate and follow that shows us exactly who God is and how God wants us to live. If the written words and teachings and revelations of Scripture were to be personified, they would (and do!) look exactly like Jesus.

God has spoken to us through the Scriptures, and in these last days, He has also spoken to us through His Son, who is “the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact representation of His being,” (Heb 1.1-3).

Just as the Scriptures make God known, and we cannot know God apart from them, so too Jesus makes God known, and we cannot know God apart from Him.

That being said, if the Scriptures were enough to reveal God to us, there would have been no need for God to send Jesus to reveal Himself to us as well. God has not just sent us a Book, but a Person. We have been gifted the Word both written and living.

This means knowing Jesus is crucial to helping us understand the Scriptures. If He is, indeed, the revelation of God in the flesh, then we understand God and His Word better through getting to know Christ better.

It also means that we let the perfect life and teaching of Jesus shape the way we approach the Scriptures. If Christ is our perfection, our infallible role model, our flawless example of God’s character, love, and holiness lived out without error, and our exact picture of who God is, then we form our life and our understanding of God and Scripture through our understanding of Jesus – who came down to us, in part, to reveal to us precisely who God is (Jn 10.30; 17.6).

Because of this, if our understanding of the written Word doesn’t look like Christ the lived-out Word, then our understanding of the written Word needs to change. We live our lives to become more like Jesus (Rom 8.29; 2Co 3.17-18; 1Jn 2.6).

The written Word is given to us to point us to Christ the living Word (Jn 5.39-40; 1Co 15.3-8). The Bible is there to reveal Jesus and His glory, in all His perfection.

And so we revere and follow the Word of God, both the Bible and the Christ, but of course we worship Christ alone.

We follow Jesus as Lord, and let the God-breathed Scriptures guide us to Him, and guide us in His ways (Jn 5.39-40). We hold to the Book as inspired and holy, and we hold to the Christ as Lord and Saviour.

We look to His example as the perfectly lived life, and aspire to emulate it, as we feed on the Scriptures and allow them to teach us, encourage us, correct us, and equip us for everything that we need in this Christian life (2Tim 3.16-17).

And we remember that Jesus is not merely a role model to us, but He is God’s revelation to us, and the perfect picture of God’s Word lived out. We read the Scriptures through this prism, and we live out God’s Word in His example.

********

If you’ve enjoyed what you read here, you can follow Third Way Christians on Twitter,  Facebook and Instagram, or sign up here to get new columns emailed directly to you! As well, you can track along with Chris’ Sunday morning teaching at Meadow Brook Church’s YouTube page!