The One Who is Called The Word

John 1:1–5

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

I think verse 5 bears emphasizing: "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." The light of Christ has indeed shone within the very pages of Islam's holiest document, The Qur'an. We continue today with Jesus Christ The (2) "Kalimatullah" كلمة الله Again, the Qur'an does not say what this means, Surah 4:171. In Surah 3:45 we find a supposed corroboration in Islam of The Annunciation (Luke 1:26) where the angels said to Mary "Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary". Of course, our Muslim friends affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ is "born of a virgin" and in that alone He is set apart. No other prophet or messenger of God is called His Word, not Moses (Musa), Abraham (Ibrahim), and not even Muhammad; only Adam is the apparent exception and Muslim scholars cling to two verses Surah 3:47 and 3:59 where essentially, it is because only Jesus is similar to Adam having no human father, but God as directly responsible for their being by the utterance of His mouth: "Lo! the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam, He created him from dust, then He said unto him, Be! and he is" (3:59). The problem here is that not even Adam is called The Word of God in the Qur'an and not even angels whom God created Himself out of nothing but only by verbal command. Jesus simply stands out in the Qur'an in this sense just as much as in the Bible. Isn't that amazing? Praise the Lord! Every prophet of God has been a messenger but only Jesus is the Word of God. And we find in the Bible when prophets speak from God, they introduce it first as not of their own but from God (i.e., "Thus says the Lord" in Old Testament passages), but there is something in the way historically that Jesus of Nazareth spoke with much authority as if spoken by God Himself. His teaching formula is different: firstly, (a) not quoting from revered rabbinic sources all the way to Moses, but to say as in the Sermon on the Mount something like "that is what you have been taught in the past, but this is what I say to you" like he is abolishing what has been given by God to Moses in the Old Testament, well almost (Matt 5:17); secondly, (b) His preface is historically unprecedented: "Truly, truly I say to you…" This expression is of radical authority. Here we depart not only with Islam but with Judaism as well, as orthodox Jewish writer Ahad ha' Am complains that "Israel cannot accept with religious enthusiasm, as the Word of God, the utterances of a man who speaks in his own name—not 'thus saith the Lord,' but 'I say unto you.' This 'I' is in itself sufficient to drive Judaism away from the Gentiles forever." It is remarkable that Muslims should consider and revere Jesus Christ alone as The Word of God. The very exceptional nature of the title, by which Jesus is distinguished from all others demands that there is some deeper significance behind it. This clearly shows that there is something about the person of Jesus that makes Him the Word of God in a way in which no other man or creature can compare. His ways of teaching, his exorcism, his claim to forgive sins, all of which led to his death sentence, all of which point to His divine authority more any other messenger of God but as God's special creation, nay, but His Son and even more radical, God Himself. He is The Word —the light and salvation (Psalm 27:1) also of our Muslim friends and we pray earnestly for Him to dissolve the darkness in their understanding.

Revelation 19:13

"He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God."

~16.01.2016