‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
12th teaching
10.22.2012
“Jesus Christ and Holy
Scripture”
Last week we looked at the Contents of Holy Scripture. We
discovered that Jesus Christ is the central figure of the Bible. He forms its
main subject. He said that all Scripture testified or witnessed of Himself (John 5:39). Elsewhere, in Hebrews 10:7, we’re told that the
volume of the book was written of Him. Thus we learned that what the main theme
of the Bible is: Jesus Christ and the
salvation provided through Him.
This theme is true of all the Bible, all of its parts, all
of its books. The Old Testament looked forward to the promise and coming of
Jesus Christ. The New Testament looks backward at the life and death of Jesus
Christ. It all fits together. And like we said, this sheds new light on how we
ought to read the Bible: not merely as a collection of sayings and stories, but
as one cohesive story in which Jesus Christ is revealed as the Son of God and
the Savior of the world.
*Tonight, we’re
going to zoom in on the main subject of the Bible. We’re going to take a closer
look at Jesus, specifically His relationship with the Bible. Tonight’s study
will serve as a bridge between Bibliology and Theology Proper; we’ll be going
from studying God’s Word to studying God as He is revealed in His Word, and a
very good way of getting from the one topic to the other is by examining Jesus
Christ. He is the link not only between God and man but between God and His
Word.
There’s 2 points we’ll look at tonight:
1. Jesus
and the Bible reveal God
2. Jesus
and the Bible are called God’s Word
1.
Jesus and the Bible reveal God
Our first point ought to take us back to the third part of
our introduction to systematic theology. Anyone remember? What were the three
parts of the introduction, the Prolegomena? God’s existence. God’s actions.
God’s revelations.
God’s revelations are our point of interest here. Remember
that God has revealed Himself to mankind. There was no effort on man’s part nor
anything man could ever do to understand God or discover things about God which
God had not revealed in the first place.
God, being what He is, by very nature, is unreachable and
beyond our physical and mental capacities. Unless God has made Himself known to
us, we would know nothing about Him at all. But God has revealed Himself in two
ways. What two revelations does God use to reveal Himself to mankind?
The General Revelation in nature and the Special Revelation
in Scripture. The General Revelation broadly reveals general attributes and
characteristics of God through nature and creation. Romans 1:20 says “For since
the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and divine
nature…”. The invisible attributes of God were revealed through nature. What
are some things which the General Revelation reveals about God?
On the flip side, the Special Revelation reveals specific
things about God in the Scriptures of the Bible: that He has a Son, that He has
a redemptive plan, that He has a future in store for us, that He has specific
words for us, etc. These are specific and special things that we can only find
out from the Bible.
So the Bible, uniquely above all other books, reveals
specific things about God. This book is the primary means of God revealing
special things about Himself. And in the Bible’s revelation of God, we are told
that Jesus even more specifically reveals God.
Turn to Hebrews
1:1-3.
It is funny that today there are so many “religious” people
and circles interested in hearing from God vocally or they’re interested in
making men out to be prophets, all as if they need to hear something more from
God. But God has said it all.
God once spoke to His people through the prophets. Now He
has spoken to man through His Son. The words of the prophets revealed God. The
words of the Son reveal God. But it is more than just that. Our Father is
revealed through Christ in more than just the words He said. Prophets are no
longer needed. It’s not that God can’t
speak to you and I vocally, it’s that He doesn’t need to necessarily. God has said it all, specifically in His Word
and even more specifically in His Son.
v.3 says that
Jesus is the brightness of God’s glory
and the express image of God’s person.
These phrases sound like a lot of religious words. I think
we sometimes turn our ears off to the more “religious” sounding phrases of the
Bible. But let’s examine these closely. They’re pretty incredible statements.
A. Jesus is the brightness of
God’s glory.
The writer of the Hebrews used the Greek word apaugasma, which we translate as brightness. The Greek word is a compound
word. It comes from two other words which mean to shine and away. A literal
meaning would be an off flash, a beam
of light that shone away from an object of light. You could use the word apaugasma to refer to sunlight, it is an
off-shining, the shining forth of sunlight from the Sun. Thus Jesus Christ is
the shining forth of God’s glory. You can’t look at the sun but you can look at
sunlight. So too, God cannot be seen as invisible spirit; but Jesus Christ is
the shining forth of God’s glory.
B. Jesus is the express image of
God’s person.
The original Greek word for the English phrase express image is the word charakter. It sounds and looks a lot
like the English word character! It
meant a representation, an engraving, or a stamped figure or copy.
It’s a word that meant the likeness of someone in something else. A perfect
example would be all the sculptures of ancient Greece. You could have a
sculpture of yourself and it would have your likeness. It would be a copy of
your image, not in flesh but in stone. So too, Jesus Christ is the express
image of God, a copy in the flesh of what God is in the spirit. Jesus Christ
came in the likeness of God.
Another passage on this same concept is II Corinthians 4:3-6. The knowledge of
God is found in the face of Christ. David Guzik in his commentary writes “God
has given us a display, a picture, a representation of His glory: His Son,
Jesus Christ.”
Also, Colossians
1:15 says that Christ “is the image
of the invisible God...”
So clear and so perfect is this representation, this copy
of God in the form of His Son that Jesus Christ could say in John 14:9 “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show me
the Father’?”
And this isn’t just a New Testament concept, lest anyone is
tempted to think so. No, even the prophet Isaiah foresaw the express image of
God in Christ. It’s hinted at in the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6. This has always been seen as a Messianic prophecy, a
promise of the coming Christ, and yet it says “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government
will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The Child to be born,
obviously Jesus Christ, would be the express image of the Everlasting Father.
He would reveal God to man.
In the Gospel according to John, 1:18 we read “No one has seen
God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He
has declared Him.”
This is really a summary of all we’ve been talking about.
The Son has declared, has revealed to mankind the invisible God. The Son has
revealed the Father. And specially, the death of the Son has revealed the heart
of the Father. Jesus is the shining forth, the effulgence of God’s glory and
the exact copy of God’s person. His words and His life and His death revealed
God.
Now that we’re in John
chapter 1, we can camp here and jump to our next point:
2.
Jesus and the Bible are called
the Word of God
We have already seen in our
studies that the Bible is undeniably the Word of God. But in this passage
before us, Jesus is called the Word that was God.
Let’s read John 1:1-18.
There’s tremendous scope in this short passage. John goes
back further in the life of Christ than the other gospels did. John went
further back than Christ’s baptism, further back than Christ’s virgin birth,
further back than even the promises of Christ’s birth. John went back to the
beginning of the world.
There we’re told about this subject called simply the Word.
John uses the Greek word Logos. We’ll
talk about the Logos and what it
means in a moment. But first, notice five
things we’re told about the Logos
in the first three verses of John 1.
1. In
the beginning was the Word
We’re told that the Word was
already there. This being called Logos
had pre-existence before the world was made. The Logos wasn’t made in the beginning. It was already there. It simply
was. Therefore, the Logos is from
eternity past, just like God.
2. The
Word was God
There’s no mumbo-jumbo
spirituality here. This nothing inherently mysterious about the identity of the
Logos. We’re told plainly that the Logos was God. Don’t be taken in by any
Watchtower translation by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is zero evidence that
this Scripture should be translated the
Word was A god. No Greek scholar has ever admitted that this is even a
possible translation. Even the scholar quoted in defense of the Watchtower
translation, Dr. Westcott, demanded that his name be removed from Watchtower
literature because even he disagreed with their translation and didn’t want his
name to be used in defense of it. Another Greek scholar, Dr. Kaufman, said that
the Watchtower translators show “an abysmal ignorance of the basic tenets of
Greek grammar in their mistranslation of John 1:1”. Don’t be fooled. The Word
was God.
3. The
Word was with God
While the Word was God, it is
also true that the Word was with God.
The Logos is a Being which is both
God and distinct from God at the same time. The Logos is a distinct Person from God the Father and, as other
Scriptures reveal, from God the Holy Spirit. While the Logos is equally God, the Logos
is also distinct as a separate Person.
4. He
was in the beginning with God
To further clarify this Being
called the Logos, the Scripture uses
masculine pronouns in reference to the Logos.
In other words, the Logos is a He. It
is a Him.
5. All
things were made through Him
The Logos took part in the Creation of the world. Scripture elsewhere
testifies of this. Col 1:16-17, “For by Him all things were created that are
in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and
for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them
by the breath of His mouth.” And what do we see in the actual account of
Creation? In Genesis 1, God said ‘Let there be light’. God spoke
words to create the world. God used the Word, the Logos, to create.
We know that the Logos
was God, was a distinct Person of God, was in the beginning with God and that
the Logos created all things. In John 1:14, we’re told that the Logos became flesh and dwelt on earth.
We know that the Logos is a name for
Jesus Christ before He came in the flesh.
But where does John get off using this weird word Logos to describe the Son of God
anyways? Wouldn’t he have been clearer if He had just substituted the words Son
of God instead of Logos? I mean, what does Logos
really mean anyway?
Well, it meant a lot to the people of John’s time.
The term Logos was
first used as a technical term by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535-475BC).
Heraclitus interestingly was known as the Weeping Philosopher because of his
lonely life and contempt for humanity. But he believed that there was some kind
of order to the changing chaos of the universe, and he used the word Logos to define the plan or formula of
the universe. Exactly what he meant by
His usage of the word Logos is unclear. But he first coined
the word as a philosophical term.
Following Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher Aristotle
(384-322BC) took a shot at the word Logos.
He believed it was what enabled human beings to act as no other animals could
act. It what made it possible for humans to explain reasonably and argue
reasonably. To Aristotle, Logos sort
of embodied reason.
After Aristotle, a group of philosophers known as the
Stoics arose in Athens. They were founded by a Greek named Zeno of Citium. They
believed that man needed to develop self-control to overcome destructive
emotions. That’s how we get our English word stoic today.
The Stoics took the word Logos to mean Fate or a
Universal Reason. The Logos to them
was a spiritual principle which filled the whole universe and gave life to it.
But the Stoics blended the concept of God with the concept of the Logos. To them, the universe was God.
Now the apostle John steps into the scene. Much had been
said already about this concept of the Logos.
The philosophical world had argued that the Logos
might be reason, that it might be within humans, that it might be what made the
world, that it might even be God.
John takes their concept of the Logos and gives it reality by applying the term to Christ, who is
God, who did create the worlds, who dwells within the hearts of believers and
who is reasonable. But John takes that a step further. John makes the term Logos personable, and I’m sure this
caught a lot of people’s attention in his day, because he said that this
mystical Logos became a man, became
flesh, and dwelt among men, and in fact died for the crimes of men against God.
*In conclusion: there are even more ways in which Jesus and
the Bible are similar. They both reveal God and they both are called the Word,
but consider a few more similarities.
Jesus Christ lived a sinless and morally perfect life. He
knew no sin (II Cor 5:21). So too,
the original inspired text of the Bible had no error in it. Both Jesus and the
Bible were without error.
Jesus Christ when He was buried did not experience
biological decomposition. He did not see corruption (Psa 16:10). Just as Christ’s body did not corrupt in the grave, so
too the Bible has not been corrupted over the centuries. A comparison of early
manuscripts and late manuscripts proves that.
Jesus Christ is the promised Savior. The Bible promises the
Savior.
One thing to note though is a major difference between
Jesus and the Bible: while Scripture clearly declares that Jesus is God, Jesus
never said that the Bible is God. Jesus should be worshiped and adored as the
Savior, the Redeemer and God Most High, but the Bible should not be worshiped
in the same way. The Bible should have your attention, your devotion and your
honor, but it is not God.
*Next week: Theology Proper. We’ve seen just how the Bible
reveals Christ and how Christ reveals God. We’ve zoomed in on the main subject
of the Bible. Next it’s time to look at just who it reveals. Next week: who
this God is anyway.
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