Jesus, the Word, shows us God

God wanted to show us what He is like, and in what image we were made, and He did so not by sending a book but by sending Jesus.

“It is Christ himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to him.” – C.S. Lewis

The Bible points to Jesus

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” (Heb. 4:12).

I have always believed that this verse refers to the Bible, but it doesn’t. Although the Bible contains the words of God, the person of Jesus Christ is primarily the Word. We see this in the following verses:

“And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” (4:13-14).

Jesus Christ, is the Word which is living and powerful! And that’s how Jesus could give this shocking statement:

“You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. Also you do not have His word remaining in you, because you do not believe Him whom He sent. You examine the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is those very Scriptures that testify about Me,” (John 5:36-39).

In other words Jesus said that if we see Scripture, instead of Jesus, then we will not hear God’s voice. It is possible, then, to study the Bible our whole lives without once hearing the Father or knowing the Word – Jesus Christ. Thus Scripture is only read as the “inspired word of God” insofar as we behold the One to whom it points. And to speak of the Bible as “inspired” is to affirm its role as a witness to the Word and his gospel. And if we don’t read the Bible as a revelation of the gospel, then we don’t read it as Holy Scripture. Because the Scriptures are a testimony to the living Word, (John 1:1-18). Hence salvation is not in the Bible, it is in the person it points to; the words of eternal life are specifically the words of Jesus, (John 6:67-68).

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. The Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you,” (John 16:12-14).

What God wanted to tell us could not be contained in a book. In fact, John thought that “not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written,” if everything about Jesus would have been written down, (John 21:25). So God said what He wanted to say about Himself in a person named Jesus. Note that Jesus didn’t say, “the Bible will lead you into all the truth.” But that the Holy Spirit would lead them into “all the truth,” which is the full revelation of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Full Revelation of God

The Biblical authors before Jesus awaited the full revelation of God in Christ. And so any Scripture that claims to reveal God but which doesn’t align with the revelation we have received in Christ, must therefore bow to God incarnate. For “no man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him,” (John 1:18). Only with the incarnation of Christ, then, do we reach the final and perfect revelation of God. “If you have seen me,” said Jesus, “you have seen the Father,” (John 14:9).

And so the other New Testament writers attest to this. Jesus is “Immanuel – God with us.” (Matt 1:23). He is “the image of the invisible God,” (Col. 1:15). “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead,” (Col. 2:9). The “Word” that Phillip preached was Christ, (Acts 8:4-5). Nathaniel found “Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote” about, (John 1:45). The sword that came out of Jesus’ mouth, was symbolic according to John the Revelator, of Christ Himself who's the Word of God, (Rev. 19:13-15). The Bereans “received the Word” and “searched the Scriptures” to find the Word therein, (Acts 17:11).

God spoke to us in the past through prophets who had seen glimpses of God, such as Moses for example who only saw the Lord’s back but never saw His face, (Ex. 33:22-23). But now God speaks to us by His Son, the very face of God, who “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact image of His nature,” (Heb. 1:3). Like Father, like Son – Jesus showed us what God is like. This is something that the prophets tried to do, but could never do, even though how hard they tried or how close they came to showing us. Therefore, Christ should always have the final word, if anything in the Bible seems to contradict what Jesus taught us about God.

To see Jesus as the final authority is not equivalent to having a low view of the Bible, but rather of having a high Christology. Peter had to learn the hard way at the Mount of Transfiguration. He treated Moses, Elijah & Jesus as equals. God rebuked him, “this is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” And many Christians unfortunately still treat the Bible and Jesus the same way. They think the Bible is a flat text, where every passage carries the same weight, when Jesus is the final spokesperson on God’s behalf.