The Living Word

Jesus is the Word made flesh through whom the glory of God is revealed, the same Word by which God created all things.

The Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the ‘Logos’, the “Word” through which God made the Universe. This theme is prominent in John, and it builds on ideas from the Hebrew Bible about how God created the world, and especially life, through His spoken Word. Jesus of Nazareth is the complete living expression of that creative word.

In his words and deeds, Jesus radiates the truth, grace, and nature of God. Though abandoned by his friends and put to death by his enemies, the Father vindicated him by raising Christ from the dead and installing him as the Lord and Messiah.

In every sense, Jesus is the living and life-giving Word of God.  What is truly revolutionary in the Gospel of John is the claim that this “Word became flesh” in Jesus, a man from the insignificant village of Nazareth.

[Alpine Stream - Photo by Johannes Plenio (Munich) on Unsplash]

The Psalmist wrote, “By the word of Yahweh were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth <…> For he spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” - (Psalm 33:6-9). This same idea is expressed elsewhere in the New Testament. For example:

• “By faith, we understand the ages to have been fitted together by declaration of God” – (Hebrews 11:3).

• “For this they forget willingly that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God” – (2 Peter 3:5).

The opening clause of the Gospel of John echoes the first words of the Book of Genesis, as does the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Church of Corinth:

• “In the beginning, God made the Heavens and the Earth. <…> And God said, Let there be light, and there was light” – (Genesis 1:1-3).

• “In the beginning was the Logos. <…> All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men” – (John 1:1-4, alluding to Genesis 1:1).

• “Seeing it is God who said, Light will shine out of darkness, who illuminated our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” – (2 Corinthians 4:6. Note the allusion to Genesis 1:3).

God created all things through His spoken word, His utterance. We meet this same divine word face-to-face in the flesh and blood man from Nazareth. “In him, the Word became flesh,” thereby revealing the glory of God for us to see in Christ:

• “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. And we beheld his glory, glory as of the only born from a Father, full of grace and truth” – (John 1:1-14).

• “Many parts and many ways of old, God, having spoken to the fathers in the prophets, upon the end of these days, has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages, who being the eradiated brightness of his glory, and the precise impress of his essence, and upholding all things by the utterance of his power, having achieved the purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” – (Hebrews 1:1-3. Verbal allusions to Leviticus 16:16, Psalm 110:1).

John uses the word ‘flesh’ in the same manner as the Hebrew Bible. The term refers to man in his weakened and mortal state. Jesus was a genuine human being who participated in the same mortality as the rest of humanity, only without sin. He is the ‘Logos’, the Word of the Living God, and we find this idea expressed throughout the New Testament. For example:

• “Since the children are partners in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death, he might bring to nothing him who possessed the tyranny of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to slavery. <…> Wherefore, he was obligated in all things to be made like his brethren that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God” – (Hebrews 2:14-18).

• “For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” - *(Hebrews 4:15.  Compare Philippians 2:7-8).

This is why the words of Jesus are living and life-giving. They determine whether we receive everlasting life and the gift of the Spirit. He was not just another philosopher or religious leader. In his teachings and actions, men heard and saw the creative word of God in action.

Jesus is the reigning Messiah who provides everlasting life to his followers and pours out the gift of the Holy Spirit on his Church. It is the Spirit of God that generates life, and Christ is the exalted Lord who alone has the authority to grant the Spirit to whomever he desires:

• “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he will” – (John 5:21).

• “It is the spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit, and they are life” – (John 6:63).

• “This Jesus did God raise up, of which we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this, which you see and hear” – (Acts 2:32-33).

Jesus is the ultimate expression of the Father. Just as God “makes alive,” so “the Son makes alive whom he wills,” imparting life where there was none.

THE SOURCE OF LIFE

The words of Jesus give life. This theme is developed further in John’s Gospel:

• “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he will” – (John 5:21).

• “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even though he dies, he will live” – (John 11:25).

• “I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in the darkness, but he shall have the light of the life” – (John 8:12).

Those of us who heed his words will inherit everlasting life. As Jesus declared, “He who hears my word and believes in Him who sent me, he has everlasting life, and has passed from death to life.” Every man who “keeps my word will not see death,” and those who are his true disciples will “abide in his word” - (John 5:24, 5:38, 8:31, 51).

Moreover, the ‘Logos’, the Word made flesh, is “full of grace and truth.” Not just more truth or the reaffirmation of the Mosaic Law, but something far beyond anything that came before. The Law was “given through Moses, however, grace and truth came to be through Jesus” – (John 1:17).

• “No man has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him” – (John 1:18).

• “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knows who the Son is, except the Father; and who the Father is, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him” - (Luke 10:22).

The fullness of God is revealed in His Son, and to us by the Son. The Father is not known apart from Jesus:

• “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me. From now on, you know him and have seen him” - (John 14:6-7).

Jesus did not identify himself as the Father. God is manifested fully in his life, words, and acts of mercy; therefore, if anyone has seen or heard Christ, he has seen the Father. Only in the Nazarene can we begin to understand the nature of the Living God.

There is no third way. All that God did in the past was in preparation for His complete revelation in His Son, the Living and Life-Giving Word. As Paul wrote to the Colossians, Jesus is the one in whom “all the fullness dwells bodily.” He truly is the Word of Life.

[NOTE: Text printed in small capital letters represents quotations and allusions of Old Testament passages]

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SEE ALSO:

• The Greater Moses - (Jesus is the Greater Moses who interprets the Law and the Prophets and brings God’s promises to fulfillment)

• Salvation for All - (Jesus dispatched his disciples to announce his Lordship and salvation to the uttermost parts of the Earth)

• La Palabra Viviente - (Jesús es la Palabra hecha carne en quien se revela la gloria de Dios, la Palabra misma por la cual Dios creó todas las cosas)