THE WORD OF CHRIST

Wednesday 2 October

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 (NKJV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16 (NKJV)

Although many don’t know it, you can have a lot of Bible knowledge and not be rich in the word of Christ. What does it mean to be rich in the word of Christ? The answer lies in looking at the Greek word logos. The logic of God. You can summarise logos as God’s way of thinking or God’s thinking pattern.

Jesus was the living logos i.e. the living Word. He was the manifestation of God’s thoughts, ideas, character, logic, etc. Jesus oneness with God was His claim to know what the heart of the Father was concerning man.

He was in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18) which is why John says the Word was with God and He was God. It shows the unity that the Word and the Father had in the same way that your words, thoughts, ideas, character logic are the imprint of who you are as a person.

‘Let the logos of Christ dwell in you richly’ is telling us the scriptures that concern the revelation of Christ is what we should be zeroing in on and discarding the rest. Why? Because only these scriptures or the revelation of these scriptures contain God’s thinking pattern concerning Christ and the gospel of His redemptive work.

For example when Jesus met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He only expounded on the scriptures from Genesis to Malachi about ‘the things concerning Himself’. They reported after his exegesis ‘Didn’t our hearts burn when He opened to us the scriptures’. Jesus only enriched their understanding in the word of Christ. Nothing else.

Why did Jesus leave out anything that was not related to Him? Because He is the personification of the scriptures and every other ideology that is inconsistent with His character and nature was done away with.

Take the Old Testament law for example. It was abolished because it couldn’t be in effect and a new will or testament be implemented at the same time. You can’t have a country run by two different constitutions. To do so would cause mass chaos and confusion. You always use the newly installed one while referring to the pertinent articles of the first.

The writings of the apostles in the New Testament are the revelation of the scriptures in the Old Testament through the enlightenment of the Spirit. You can’t have a mixture of old and new, law and grace. If you operate this way you will only have dead religion and not the word of Christ.

If however we let the logos of God or God’s thinking pattern dwell richly in us, we will have ‘the mind of Christ’(1 Corinthians 2:16b). God is so gracious. This simply means we can always know what His thoughts are concerning every situation and circumstance!

APPLICATION

Give time to read and study God’s word particularly the New Testament, which will reveal the concealed mysteries of the Old Testament concerning Christ.