The Word Among Us
“May we desire for Him to dwell within. May we desire for Him to whisper truth into our hearts as He lives there within. And may it utterly change us from the inside out.”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:1 and 1:14 ESV)
The Word- He spoke all of existence into place. The Word is living, breathing, active and sharp, dwelling among us, dwelling within us. It is one of the primary ways God communicates with us, and it is how John best introduces Jesus to us. It is God Himself, present in the beginning of time, creating life and light- God’s spoken words now fulfilled on earth in the form of man.
I have always loved the way John pens this description for Jesus in his first chapter. Of all the ways he could have described the Messiah after spending years in ministry with Him, John uses “the Word.” Why? John refers to himself as the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” and he found that the only way he could possibly attempt to define Jesus was in this way. I love the simplicity of it, but I also recognize the implications of his choice here.
Over the course of humanity, God spoke to His people in several ways. Sometimes He spoke through personal revelation, and sometimes He spoke through the prophets. He foretold the coming Messiah beginning in Genesis. I can’t imagine the way people must have hungered to hear from Him- to just receive a word from Him. They didn’t have the privilege of holding it in their hands in the way we do now. Jesus was the visual fulfillment of the foreshadowed words spoken across the centuries before His birth. Can you imagine the way John and the other disciples must have felt once they realized they were in the presence of the One fulfilling prophecy- the Word incarnate? There with them. Here with us. How I want this same awe and wonder.
Jesus is the Word, the final Word, the end, and the beginning. I often find my heart overwhelmed with the thought of God coming here to dwell among us. I just can’t get over it. He came in the form of man to remain here for a time, and He now dwells within our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit. When Paul urges the Colossians to “let the word of Christ dwell richly among you,” I am reminded that I am to let Jesus dwell within my heart, along with all of the words recorded for us in holy scripture.
Words are so powerful. We use them to build, to tear down, to teach, to express our love, our sorrow, our anger. They can be weaponized, and they can be instruments of healing. What did our God use to create the heavens and the earth? He could have blazoned a supernatural display of spectacular proportions across the expanse (and really, He did). He could have fashioned it all with His hands. Instead, He simply speaks and all of creation forms at His command (Genesis 1: 3). In his infinite power, God spoke everything out of nothing. God then used spoken language to interact with his creation, to express love for them, to reprimand and convict them, to call forth leaders for His people, to summon them back to His heart when they failed, to forgive them.
How fitting that our Savior takes on the name of Word thousands of years later. Didn’t He arrive to accomplish all this and more? Didn’t He come as a display of the Father’s love? To convict us of our sin? To call out leaders? To draw us to the Father’s heart? To offer full and total forgiveness? Jesus, The Word. May we desire for Him to dwell within. May we desire for Him to whisper truth into our hearts as He lives there within. And may it utterly change us from the inside out.