Day 14 – Word

“Word” is the word.

In college, we had a friend who defiantly stated, “The Bible is NOT the Word of God.”

Wait, what? How could she say such a thing? I mean, we state it every week after we read the passage for the week, in community, right?

“The Word of God.”

“Thanks be to God.”

What heresy, heretic, or heretical source would lead her to this dangerous conclusion?

She quoted the Bible itself.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

She said, “Jesus is the Word of God. Not the Bible.”

Wait a second… is she right? Far be it from me to argue with John 1:1. Jesus is MOST DEFINITELY the Word of God. But what does that mean for the Bible? Which is it, Jesus or the Bible? Are they mutually exclusive? Must it be one or the other?

To understand HOW Jesus is the Word of God (and parenthetically, how the Bible could be the Word of God), we must understand the word, “Word.”

What is a word? We say them, write them, yell them, inscribe them. They surround us everywhere we look, all the time. We produce them, from our voices and our hands, we receive them through our senses, eyes, ears, and sometimes fingertips. We engage with words constantly, but we rarely think about what they are. What is a word?

Simply put, a word is what a word does.

What does a word do? Think carefully.

This question is the key to understanding HOW Jesus is the Word of God (and possibly, the Bible).

What a word does, is that a word makes tangible something that is intangible.

A WORD MAKES TANGIBLE SOMETHING THAT IS INTANGIBLE.

What am I thinking about right now?

Any guesses? No cheating…

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Dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Yum.

You had no idea until I wrote THE WORDS.

This is what a word does: A word makes the intangible, tangible.

The words made my intangible, invisible thoughts tangible to you. Now you can envision the peanut butter cups. Some of you (like me) may be having a Pavlovian salivary response right now. Simply because of THE WORDS.

Jesus is the Word of God, because Jesus reveals the invisible, intangible God to us.

“Anyone who has seen Me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

As we saw Jesus, we learned more about who God is, and what God’s heart for humanity and creation is. Jesus, as God Incarnate, showed us God’s values and priorities. Jesus is the highest and best representation of God that we have ever seen.

But what about the Bible? Was our friend right? No, she wasn’t. The Bible is also the Word of God for the same reason that Jesus is. The Bible is something tangible that we have that reveals the invisible, intangible God to us.

That’s not where God’s Word ends, though. In fact, God’s Word can be seen in natural laws as well, i.e. physics, biology, chemistry, etc. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3).

The invisible God is shown to us through creation!

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

As we continue to reflect on the words that God has used to shape us through this blog series, let’s remember what a word does. God’s Kingdom, like all kingdoms, is a kingdom built and sustained by words. May we be a community dedicated to not only the Word of God, but also committed to using OUR words with the values, priorities, and intentions of the Word.