Lux Lucet

Christians often refer to the Bible as the Word of God.  And that’s certainly appropriate, for that’s what the Bible claims to be:  God’s inspired verbal revelation.  At the same time the Bible describes Jesus Christ as God the Word,  “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn.1:1).  Is it merely an accident that the term ‘word’ is used of both the Bible and Christ, or is there some connection?  

Writing in his book The Johnanine Logos, Gordon Clark examines the apostle John’s use of the Greek word logos, famously translated ‘Word’ in the first verse of John’s Gospel as a name for Jesus.  Clark then looks at how John uses logos in the rest of his Gospel account and finds after quoting several examples that it always means, “an intelligible proposition [sentence].” So what is the connection between the Logos who is God in verse 1 and the logoi  [plural of logos] that are propositions (sentences) in the remainder of the book?  Clark writes,

The connection is this:  The Logos of verse 1 is the Wisdom of God.  To him his worshippers erected the architectural triumph Hagia Sophia, the church in Constantinople dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of God…Some of this wisdom is expressed in the propositions of the previous list [various verses from John’s Gospel that are said to be logoi].  They are the mind of Christ:  They are the very mind of Christ.  In them we grasp the Holy Wisdom of God.  Accordingly there is no great gap between the propositions alluded to and Christ himself.

The Scriptures are not merely black ink marks on white pages; they are the eternal thoughts of God.  Paul stated, “we have the mind of Christ” (1Cor.2:16).  Christians  have the mind of Christ by understanding and believing the words of Christ recorded in the Scriptures.  And not the words of Christ only, but all the words in all the Scriptures, for, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2Tim.3:16).  To know God the Word, we must be good students of the Word of God.