The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"The Glorious Synthesis"
To born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, "the Word" has a dual connotation, or, a glorious synthesis.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… the Word was made flesh" (John 1:1; 14).
"They received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Act 17:11).
"The Word" is both personal - the Lord Jesus Christ - and propositional - the Bible. We cannot rightly know one without the other. We must worship God "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). The living Word leads us to the written Word, which in turn directs us to the living Word. Or, the written Word lead us to the living Word, who in turn directs us to the written Word.
"I am the light of the world" (John 8:12).
"Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by Thy name, O LORD God of hosts" (Jeremiah 15:16).
Unless providentially hindered, our walk with God must include Scriptural reading, pondering, trust, and application. We will go astray otherwise without the lamp that enlightens our path. Do we know our Lord as He is, and understand His way as He administers His presence and executes His working? The Bible confirms and/or corrects us as it reveals God as He is, His hand as it works, and whether or not we are responding to Him in truth and reality. "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" (Psalm 119:105).
Our walk with God also involves the Lord Jesus, known by faith in our present existence, but known nonetheless in living, personal terms. God gave Himself to us when we trusted Him, in the living presence of His Son. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6). We exist for relationship and fellowship with our Heavenly Father. He dwells with and within us through Christ, ever abiding nearer than our next breath. He also dwells within the pages of Scripture, whose words must be illuminated by the Savior no less than when shining into the two who walked with Him after His resurrection. "And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" (Luke 24:32). The living Word shines in the written Word as a Face glimmers amid its facts.
We come to the Bible through Christ. We come to Christ through the Bible. Spirit and truth. Life and light. The personal and the propositional. The Word of God in the Savior and the Scriptures. However we term the glorious synthesis, we must establish and expect that God will meet us in both necessary administrations of Himself to our hearts and minds. We cannot know Him rightly apart from the Bible. We cannot respond to the Bible rightly apart from Christ. All believers must devote ourselves to the Word of God, knowing Him along the pathways of our lives as He walks with and within us, and in the pages of our Bibles as He works in us by His words.
"In Thy light shall we see light."
(Psalm 36:9)
Weekly Memory Verse
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
(Galatians 5:25)
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