What is God’s Word?

I just did a short video related to this topic (you can watch it here), but I thought I the issue deserved a little more context and development.

I began thinking about the phrase “The Word of God” a couple weeks ago because of a twitter discussion I had with two individuals who were trying to promote the idea that Scripture is God’s word. Normally this colloquialism does not bother me at all but these individuals were trying to use the phrase to support the idea that Scripture is our ultimate authority, which in turn they were using in an inappropriate way. Their justification for their view was to quote John 1:1 “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” In essence they were attempting to make Scripture equal to God in authority. The problem as I see it is twofold, first this idea is rejected in Scripture itself which portrays Jesus and his message as God’s living word so to elevate Scripture to this level is to misread Scripture itself and second this idea becomes a smokescreen for justifying our own vision of reality which belittles Jesus and his vision of reality.

To show my first point, a quick word search of the Bible (I like Bible Gateway for this) will show that “word” is never used of Scripture. The idea of God’s word is used in three ways, the message given to a prophet, Jesus the incarnate word, and the message of Jesus as proclaimed by his followers. The first of these categories is somewhat self explanatory since it is the prophet making the claim that God has spoken to them and will speak through them. The other categories are reserved for Jesus as God’s incarnate word. The Christian message is that Jesus has a unique relationship with God and a unique claim on our lives and part of the way we identify this is by the title God’s Logos or word. This title stems from the fact that Genesis 1 describes God as speaking the world into existence, which gives a God’s word a position of power as the creative activity. The Bible seeks to elevate Jesus to this place of honor, therefore the New Testament reserves the idea of Go’s Word for Jesus and the message he proclaimed.

One might be tempted to think, as those I had the conversation with did, that Jesus’ message can be equated to the Bible. But this is not true, because as 1 Timothy 4:5 reminds us, there are elements of the Scripture that interpreted outside of Jesus can be applied in very harmful ways. If the Bible were the word of God and the ultimate authority in the way that some claim then there is no arguing with interpretations because that Divine word can say only one thing and it cannot be opposed. And this is precisely what many who teach this seem to be banking on, they teach the Bible through their own lens and use this doctrine to squash any completing claims.

Now, yes the Bible has authority and a very special place in the life of the Christian and yes we need to be careful about how we interpret it because left to our own we can go in wild directions. But when we elevate the Bible to the level the Bible reserves for Jesus we are not truly reading it nor do allow ourselves the opportunity to let Jesus’ teachings shape the way we interpret the Scriptures, which is exactly what 1 Timothy is trying to teach us. We are seeing this play out in many different ways, but for me it is most notable in the growing Christian Nationalist movement. The individuals who are supporting this doctrine only seem to cite Jesus in Matthew 28:19 where they misapply the idea of “nations” and then they retreat to various Old Testament teachings about the Israel without ever asking, “how do Jesus’ teachings apply to this idea”. There are a variety of other issues where this same dynamic applies and it is possible to completely misinterpret scripture while still trying to filter it through Jesus. But overall if we start from the idea that Jesus is the Word of God and then move to the rest of Christian tradition as interpretation of that Word we will be far better off than if we hold to a different starting point.