The Word

One of the titles given in the New Testament for the Savior is The Word.  John the Revelator used a variation on this name a few different times in his writings.  The most famous of course is in the first chapter of John, where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).  In the JST we get a little bit different language, but the name for Christ is the same: “For in the beginning was the Word, even the Son, who is made flesh, and sent unto us by the will of the Father” (JST John 1:16). 

In the beginning of his epistles John used another variation on the name, saying, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).  In the book of Revelation we find a third mention of Christ as the Word from John: “And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13).  So Christ is the Word, the Word of Life, and the Word of God in John’s writings.  I don’t know that I grasp all the reasons behind the metaphor, but perhaps one way to understand it is that because Christ always follows the word of His Father perfectly, He is the embodiment of the words that come from God.  Because He does “always those things that please” His Father, Christ’s life is the perfect example of living the word of God.  And so He is the personification of God’s word.

                With this metaphor in mind, I think it brings new meaning to some of the scriptural passages that speak about the word of God.  For example, Nephi wrote, “Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough!” (2 Nephi 28:29).  But understanding that Christ is a representation of the word of God, we can perhaps rephrase the condemnation to be “Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received Christ, and we need no more Christ, for we have enough.”  In other words, we are condemned if we accept what we Christ taught in the past without accepting how He wants us to live in the present.  Another example from Nephi’s words comes in his admonitions to his brothers as he explained the rod of iron: “And I said unto them that it was the word of God; and whoso would hearken unto the word of God, and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish” (1 Nephi 15:24).  We can likewise think of the iron rod as Christ Himself—the Word—and the message becomes that whosoever will hearken unto Christ and hold fast to Him will never perish.  Another common phrase in the scriptures about the word of God is the notion of “preaching the word of God.”  For example, when Alma and his brethren started teaching the Zoramites we read that they “began to preach the word of God unto the people” (Alma 32:1).  But what was the essence of their message?  It was simply that “the word is in Christ unto salvation” (Alma 34:6).  In other words, when we preach the word of God, we are really just preaching the Word of God.

                There are surely other instances in the scriptures where we can replace the “word” or the “word of God” with Christ.  He is the epitome of the word of God because He gave us the words of the scriptures and He has perfectly obeyed the words of His Father.  As we learn in the Doctrine and Covenants, “In the beginning the Word was, for he was the Word, even the messenger of salvation” (D&C 93:8).