What is ‘the Word of God’?
I have started writing a column for Preach magazine, in which I explore a significant word or phrase in the Bible and the ideas that information technology expresses. The starting time one was on the phrase 'Word of God'. Despite the fact that many churches use this phrase with reference to the reading of Scripture, its meaning is often disputed, sometimes on the basis that it is Jesus, rather than the Bible, which is the word of God. The two ideas are actually closely related, and demand to be understood in the context of Erstwhile Testament understandings of the phrase, equally I explore:
'This is the Word of the Lord'. 'Thanks be to God.' This is quite a common refrain at the end of the Bible readings in many churches; you might have said i or both parts of this in the last week. But it is not always clear what we mean by the phrase 'Discussion of God', and the utilise of the phrase is sometimes disputed.
We encounter the idea of the give-and-take of God immediately on opening the Bible. The creation account in Genesis ane depicts God not so much as a craftsman shaping the world with his hands, just as a speaker bringing the earth into being but by his speech communication. What he speaksinto being comesinto existence; God's words do things. In the second creation business relationship, in Gen 2.4 onwards, God's words shape the globe he has made; his control to the adamto eat of whatsoever tree in the garden, but non the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, creates a boundary for the adam'sworld. The starting time claiming to the ability of God's words comes from the snake when it asks 'Did God really say…?'
The nature and importance of words in the Former Testament is indicated by the Hebrew term davar. Though it refers to the speech of God or people, information technology is connected to the root dr, which means 'order'. So when nosotros read 'God spoke these words to Moses…' in the Pentateuch, we might ameliorate understand information technology as 'God gave Moses these commands'. Indeed, the text which we call 'The X Commandments' is in Hebrew called 'The Ten Words', devarim; these and God'southward other words to Moses function to 'order' and shape the life of his people Israel. Thus, on occasions, the give-and-take davartin can refer not merely to the words, simply to the things themselves which take been put in order by God's words. Well-nigh English translations render Num 18.7 as 'Merely you and yous sons may serve in connection with everything at the chantry', where the Hebrew is 'every davarof the chantry…'
The sense of God'due south discussion as a thing continues in the prophetic tradition, where time and once again the prophet claims that 'the word of Yahweh came to me…' At times, these 'words' have visionary elements, but they constantly serve to call God's people back to the ordered life that he has set before them.
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With God's ordering spoken communication to his people inscribed in the various books of the Quondam Attestation, Jesus consistently takes these written words to be the words of God. About oft these are referred to simply by the introduction 'it is written', as we find in the substitution of Scriptures with the Devil in Jesus' temptation. Merely Jesus also uses the bodily phrase 'word of God' on several occasions (Mark 7.xiii, John ten.34) referring to the text, and even cites the narrator'south words of Gen two.24 as God's own speech ('the Creator…said…' Matt xix.five). This makes it all the more than hitting when Jesus goes on to utilize the phrase 'give-and-take of God' to mean the practiced news of the gospel which he himself is preaching (Luke 5.1, eight.11), and Luke continues to use this phrase to refer to the subsequent churchly preaching of the skillful news (Acts iv.31, six.7).
Since this 'give-and-take' focuses on the person of Jesus, nosotros can easily understand the adjacent evolution of this terminology: in John ane, it is Jesus himself who is this divine Word, the pre-existent logos. Jesus, God'south word made flesh, is himself the expression of the ordering, communication and wisdom of God. But this claim goes even further; for John's Greek-speaking readers, the logosis not simply the words spoken by God, previously found in the One-time Testament, but in Stoic philosophy the rational principle that holds the whole fabric of the universe together (compare Heb 1.three).
Thus the phrase 'word of God' refers to God own speech as he brings order out of chaos and makes his will known. Information technology refers to the prophetic correction to his people to keep them within his gracious ordering, and then to the written tape of the law, prophets and wisdom. It then refers to the teaching of Jesus as he announces the coming of God's kingdom in fulfilment of Old Testament hope, and farther to the apostolic educational activity about Jesus, now inscribed in our New Testaments. Rather neatly, the Book of Revelation completes the canon past referencing these dissimilar meanings in the seven occurrences of 'word of God' in its chapters. Revelation is saturated in the Old Attestation every bit the discussion of God, but this give-and-take is now both the 'testimony of Jesus' (Rev 1.2) also every bit Jesus himself (Rev xix.13), and includes the prophetic message given to John (Rev 19.ix) which aims to proceed his readers true-blue to the Jesus whom he sets earlier them.
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