The Authority of God’s Word
An important question is “What is authoritative?” For a scientist, experiments are authoritative. For a pharmaceutical company, double-blind tests are authoritative. For students, the teacher is authoritative. For legal proceedings, the ruling of the court is authoritative. In many arenas of life, we need to know where final authority lies. Several United States Presidents have had signs on their desks that read “The buck stops here.”
What is authoritative for religious belief? The church has answered the question in various ways. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, there were three authoritative sources: the Bible, church tradition, and the pope. These three, ideally, worked together. The Bible was God’s word. Church tradition gave reliable interpretations of scripture. In cases of controversy, the pope discerned the will of God and gave a final, authoritative interpretation.
The Protestant reformers thought this method had not proved reliable, however. Church councils, in addition to popes, had made errors in interpretation. Once those errors were established as “precedent,” it was hard to overturn them. This led, they thought, to many misjudgments in interpretation. The reformers thought it was better to go “back to the basics.” The best method was to let scripture alone be authoritative. It was up to both individuals and the church at-large to wrestle with scripture in order to discern God’s will.
God’s Word comes in two forms: the incarnate and written Word. It is through these two sources that we find the clearest revelation of God’s glory. The Bible is God’s written word. Jesus Christ is God’s incarnate Word. When referring to Christ, Word is capitalized. This is the usage found at the beginning of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
What is the incarnate Word? He is the Son of God who eternally proceeded from the Father as the full expression of his nature. How was Christ the full expression of God’s nature? Because he was and is fully God. Jesus said to Philip, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). To see and know Jesus Christ is to see and know God. In Christ, we know and experience the full nature of God in all his wisdom, grace, mercy, and love.
What is the benefit of knowing the incarnate Word? Through him we have access to all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. In him, God comes alive to us and in us. In him, we have salvation and eternal life. In him, there is forgiveness for sin. That Jesus Christ is the gateway to all the treasures of God reminds us to seek after him. A secular world looks to many sources in its attempts to find life and meaning. They all fail and fall short. Jesus Christ is the pathway that leads to God’s great grace and all his treasures. Christ’s wisdom and authority never fail us or lead us astray.