Food For Your Soul
by Reverend Hubermann Larose
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The Word Incarnate and The Word Inscripturated
(John 1:1-4, 14; 2 Peter 1:21)
December is the Month of the Nativity; but it is also for many the International Month of the Bible. So we celebrate in this same month the Word incarnate and the Word inscripturated.
The words “inscripturated” and “inscripturation” are not in the dictionaries. They were coined after the words “incarnate” and “incarnation” (from ecclesiastical Latin incarnatus and incarnatio, two terms that refer to the coming in flesh of the Son of God). “Inscripturated” and “inscripturation” are formed out of the Latin particle “in” (meaning “into”) and “Scriptura” (meaning “Scripture” or “the Bible”)
The expression “Word inscripturated” is the counterpart of “Word incarnate”; for, as Jesus Christ is the Word of expressed in the life of a man, so is the Bible (or Scripture) the Word of God expressed in the pages of a book.
That invites naturally to a parallel between these two Words: the “Word incarnate” and the “Word inscripturated”, Christ and Scripture. We will limit ourselves to three points of comparison:
FIRSTLY, the same name is given to Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture; they both are called “the Word of God”. This name is explicitly given to Jesus Christ in the Prologue of John’s Gospel (1:1-4, 14), and the apostle Paul gives thanks to God in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 concerning the Christians in Thessalonica who received his preaching and teaching (which will become part of the New Testament books) not as “the word of men,” but as the “Word of God.”
Jesus himself established a close relationship between the “Word incarnate” and the “Word inscripturated”, when he says in John 12:48, “He who rejects me, and does not receive my words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.” To reject the Word that is preached (the same that has become “Word inscripturated” today) is to reject the “Word incarnate”, and such a rejection will bring condemnation to those who will be found guilty of it.
SECONDLY, the Holy Spirit is the Agent of both the conception of the “Word incarnate” and the inspiration of the “Word inscripturated.” When Mary asked the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”, the angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:34-35)
So Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, then a virgin. In the same way, the Holy Spirit has, as it were, “conceived” the Word of God in the mind of the authors of Scriptures. The apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God”. The Greek word is θέοπνευστος; it means literally “coming out of God’s breath”. (In Job 33:4, “the breath of the Almighty” is another name for the “Holy Spirit.”) The apostle Peter gives a precision as to the fact that the Holy Spirit is the person in the Holy Trinity who is responsible for the inspiration of Scripture: “holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21)
So, in both cases, the Holy Spirit is the Agent of the incarnation and of the inscripturation of the Word of God.
THIRDLY, the incarnation has resulted in the union of two natures in the same person, Jesus Christ. The inspiration has resulted in a similar union in the same book, the Bible. The union of the divine and the human has taken place in the conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb as this is the case in the inspiration of the eternal Word of God in the mind of the authors of the bible. With respect to that union, Jesus Christ is at the same time God and man, and the Bible is at the same time the word of men and the Word of God.
Jesus’ humanity was a veil that concealed his divine glory to the eyes of men. The apostle Paul says, concerning the rulers of this world, that they did not know the wisdom of God, “for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor. 2:8) By the same token, the obvious human character of the Bible has kept the unbelievers from acknowledging its divine inspiration. The unbelievers in Jesus’ time used his humanity to deny his deity. They adopted this line of reasoning: “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” (Mat. 13:55-56) People follow the same line of reasoning concerning the Bible: “We know the cousins of this book; they are called Koran, Veda, etc. Are not Moses and Isaiah, Paul and Peter its authors? Those are fallible and limited men as we are.”
The union of the two natures made Jesus Christ a man like an ordinary man in every aspect (except for sin), but, at the same time, radically different from men, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9) In the same way, the union of the divine and the human makes the Bible look like any other book (it is made like them with paper and ink), but it’s so different from them, because in its page are expressed in human language the unfathomable thoughts of the Most High. The Bible—we must concede—is to be approached in the same way as an ordinary book: literary, grammatical analysis and else… But, beyond the letters, beyond the parchment, beyond the paper, beyond the ink, beyond the words that are part of the human vocabulary (and, by the way, they reflect the cultures from which they originated), the message of the Bible has an origin in none other than God.
The union of the divine and the human is a stumbling block for the unbelievers. This is true for both Christ and the Scripture. Old Simeon (Luke 2:34) said concerning Jesus that he was “this child destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against. (The Greek word means “contradiction.”) So many contradictions, indeed, about Jesus: “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Mat. 16: 14) “…the people were divided because of Jesus.” (John 7:43) So many contradictions also that some people claim they have found in the Bible!
The person of Christ will always be a mystery for us, and rightly so! The incarnation of the Word of God is a mystery that we will never understand fully. Paul exclaimed: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory!” (1 Tim. 3:16) Is there a greater mystery, indeed, than the Lord of glory becoming a man? All the heresies that have come down the pike concerning Jesus Christ (Arianism, Ebionis, Monophysism, etc.) are human efforts to grasp what is by its very nature a divine mystery.
In the same way, the Bible will remain a book in which there are “some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16)
But how should we deal with the contradictions we may find either in the person of Jesus Christ or in the Scripture? Take up the attitude of the author of Psalm 131 who says in verses 1 and 2: “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.” Or we could remind ourselves the word of Deut. 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children, that we may follow them.”
We must do whatever is clearly revealed in the Scripture concerning Jesus Christ. Thankfully everything that is essential to our eternal salvation is crystal clear. The rest belongs to the Lord, and someday, we will know as we have been known. For the time being, let’s walk in the light that we have been provided with, in the hope of the plain light of God’s presence.
Hubermann Larose
Associate Pastor
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