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CHRIST THE LIVING WORD

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 3.

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CHRIST THE LIVING WORD.

By C. P. Bollman

In the first chapter of the Gospel by John, we are told that “in the beginning was the Word,” that “the Word was with God,” and that “the Word was God.” By this Word “all things were made,” “and without him was not anything made that was made.” That this Word was Christ we learn from verse 14, wherein it is declared that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”
The writer used to wonder why the Son of God was called the Word. A word is an expression of a thought, and how, thought I, can one in human form be denominated the Word. But it is all plain now; he is called the word because he is the expression of the thought of the Father.
God has revealed himself to man in various ways; first in creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” But fallen man failed to read aright the character and will of the Creator, in the earth, the sea, the sky, or even in the vast expanse of the heavens set with blazing suns, garnished with twinkling stars, and beautified with habitable planets destined to be the homes of holy, happy beings who should “know God and enjoy him forever.” “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
And then God gave up some to these delusions, but not all; he spoke by prophets, giving his written word—the Scriptures, concerning which the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
This written word revealed the same God whose glory the heavens so eloquently proclaim. The entrance of sin had, it is true, given occasion for an expression of love and mercy not easily discernible in the material creation, but it was simply the unfolding of the divine character; the same benevolence which planted a garden in Eden and beautified it with everything pleasant to the eye, and enriched it with every tree the fruit of which was pleasant to the taste and good for food, moved God to give “his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
But centuries of sin and alienation from God had so blunted the finer sensibilities of man, had so blinded his spiritual sight, that even God’s written word did not enable him to comprehend the depth of the divine love, the beauty of the divine character, the breadth of the divine law, the purpose of the divine Being; and then God spoke “unto us by his Son,” not merely as he had spoken by the prophets, but by him and in him; for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” and as the poet has expressed it,
“In his life the law appears drawn out in living characters.”
“The Word,” God’s will, his purpose, his thought concerning us, “was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory;” that is, in Christ, and nowhere else, man sees revealed the perfect righteousness, the matchless benevolence, the boundless love of the infinite Creator of the universe.
God is just what he is. The name which he proclaimed before Moses (Ex. 33:19 and 34:5, 6) was simply a description of his character. In Christ that character found perfect expression. And as that character is formed within us, we are “made partakers of the divine nature,” and our experience is expressed by Gal. 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), and as “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17), and since Christ is the Word made flesh, to receive the word is to receive Christ; for it is when we abide in him and his words abide in us (John 15:7), we have fellowship with him.
When about to leave the disciples the Saviour said: “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings; and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” And that word brought home to the consciousness by the Spirit of God, received not as the word of man but as the word of God, “which effectually worketh,” is the real presence of Christ; it is Christ within the hope of glory. May God help us to cherish his word.
C. P. BOLLMAN.