The God Behind the Curtain

Let me ask you a question: What is the Word of God? Think you know? Well it's a trick question. Because the Word of God isn't a what. It's a who. It's Him. 

"In the Beginning was the Logos," says the poet-apostle, John the Beloved. "The Logos was with God. The Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made."

In making these claims, the poet-apostle is drawing on images ingrained in his religious and cultural psyche by two poets even more ancient that he. The author of Genesis 1, with his stirring recollection of the ruach (breath/wind/spirit) of Elohim nurturing the wild and waste of the primordial earth into a world that was ordered, functional, and good with every word that He breathed. And the author of Proverbs 8, who described the wisdom of God laboring alongside Him as an indispensable master workman when the foundations of the earth were laid.

Breath and Wisdom. Decree and Logic. Life and Truth. Bound together by a whirlwind of eternal divine love. No wonder John calls this originator and lover of mankind Logos. Our English Bible’s render it “Word,” but Logos fully expresses all these rich, ancient images, describing something that makes the abstract concrete, the invisible visible.

This Logos, who became flesh and tabernacled among us, was the fulfillment of all Israel’s (the people of God’s) hopes and dreams that one day Yahweh would permanently dwell in their midst. And He did so in the most shocking and unexpected way possible. By becoming a man. By entering this world through the womb of a most unremarkable woman in a most unremarkable place.

Until the Logos became flesh, no one had ever seen God. Didn’t Daniel? No. Didn’t Ezekiel? No. Didn’t Isaiah? No. Didn’t Moses? No, says John. All the burning bushes, all the wheels within wheels, all the shining thrones, all the thundering voices and smoking mountains, John tosses into the rubbish heap of a bygone era; a time when God hid behind veils, angels, and thick clouds.

Now that the true Light has come into the world, it is this Word, enfleshed in a man called Jesus of Nazareth, who has explained to us the Father. The Law (the written and spoken words) of God came through Moses, says John. But the fullness of Grace and Truth (not just grace, but grace and truth) could only come through a Word made Flesh. A Word we could touch, embrace, and share a meal with. Not a word we could only hear or read.

John is not alone in this shocking conclusion. Paul said that Jesus was the “image” (the icon) that makes the invisible God visible. Hebrews tells us how everything about the New Covenant is better than everything about the Old. And it begins right away by saying that Jesus is a better revelation than the Scriptures. God may at one time have spoken to us by the prophets, but now he has spoken through His Son. He (not the words spoken to the prophets) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. In one of John the Revelator’s final visions, Christ is seen on a white horse with a name written on his thigh and that name is “The Word of God.”

And what of Jesus Himself? To the Pharisees He says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

Even God Himself weighs in. On the Mount of Transfiguration, with Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) standing by, the Father “points” at Jesus and proclaims, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him. At Sinai, God said, “You only heard a voice, so make no image.” At Tabor, God said, “A voice isn’t enough; here’s an image I’ve made for you.”

Paul says that in the Scripture we find words of God that are useful for teaching, correction, and instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be made complete. Jesus did not change what the Scriptures were. But Paul doesn’t say that the Scriptures bestow upon you that “man of God” status. That’s something only the Word of God can do.

What are the Scriptures? They are exactly what Jesus said they are… words that testify of Him. But they manifestly are not the same as Him. He tells us to have faith in Him, not in them. And yet, like the Pharisees, we often confuse the two. Without meaning to, we may find ourselves placing our faith in the apparent certainty of our interpretation of Scripture rather than in the person of Jesus Christ. The Bible is absolutely essential, but isn’t everything. There is a way of reading it that enhances our relationship with Christ, and there is a way of reading it that keeps Jesus safely at a distance.

If we don’t learn to read it carefully, we may find God behind a curtain once again.