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Word, TheAid to Bible Understanding
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the practical wisdom of righteous ones, to get ready for Jehovah a prepared people.”—Luke 1:17.
The message of the good news from God’s Word the Bible should therefore not be underrated. These words are more powerful than any words men can devise or speak. The ancient Beroeans were commended for “carefully examining the Scriptures” to see whether what an apostle taught was correct. (Acts 17:11) God’s ministers, speaking God’s powerful Word, are energized and backed up by “power of holy spirit.”—Rom. 15:13, 19.
“THE WORD” AS A TITLE
In the Christian Greek Scriptures “the Word” (Gr., ho Loʹgos) also appears as a title. (John 1:1, 14; Rev. 19:13) The apostle John identified the one to whom this title belongs, namely, to Jesus, he being so designated not only during his ministry on earth as a perfect man, but also during his prehuman spirit existence as well as after his exaltation to heaven.
Regarding the Son’s prehuman existence, John says: “In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” (John 1:1, NW) The Authorized Version and the Douay Version read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This would make it appear that the Word was identical with Almighty God, while the former reading, in the New World Translation, indicates that the Word is not the God, Almighty God, but is a “mighty one,” a god. (Even the judges of ancient Israel, who wielded great power in the nation, were called “gods.” [Ps. 82:6; John 10:34, 35]) Actually, in the Greek text, the definite article ho, “the,” appears before the first “God,” but there is no article before the second.
Other modern translations aid in getting the proper view. The interlinear word-for-word reading of the Greek translation in the Emphatic Diaglott reads: “In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and a god was the Word.” The accompanying text of the Diaglott uses capital and small capital letters for the God, and initial capital and lowercase letters for the second appearance of “god” in the sentence: “In the Beginning was the LOGOS, and the LOGOS was with GOD, and the LOGOS was God.”
These renderings would support the fact that Jesus, being the Son of God and the one used by God in creating all other things (Col. 1:15-20), is indeed a “god,” a “mighty one,” and has the quality of mightiness, but is not the Almighty God. Other translations reflect this view. The New English Bible (1961) says: “And what God was, the Word was.” The Greek word translated “Word” is Loʹgos; and so Dr. James Moffatt’s New Translation of the Bible (1922) reads: “The Logos was divine.” The Complete Bible—An American Translation (Smith-Goodspeed) reads: “The Word was divine.” Other readings (by German translators) are: By Boehmer: “It was tightly bound up with God, yes, itself of divine being.” By Stage: “The Word was itself of divine being.” By Menge: “And God (= of divine being) the Word was.” By Pfaefflin: “And was of divine weightiness.” And by Thimme: “And God of a sort the Word was.” All these renderings highlight the quality of the Word, not his identity with his Father, the Almighty God. Being the Son of God (Jehovah), he would have the divine quality, for divine means ‘godlike.’—Col. 2:9; compare 2 Peter 1:4, where “divine nature” is promised to Christ’s joint heirs.
A translation by a former Roman Catholic priest, Johannes Greber (1937 ed.) renders the second appearance of the word “god” in the sentence as “a god.” And The Four Gospels—A New Translation, by Professor Charles Cutler Torrey (second ed., 1947), says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was god. When he was in the beginning with God all things were created through him; without him came no created thing into being.” (John 1:1-3) Note that what the Word is said to be is spelled without a capital initial letter, namely, “god.”
How “in the beginning with God”
This Word or Loʹgos was God’s only direct creation, the only-begotten son of God, and evidently the close associate of God to whom God was speaking when he said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26) Hence John continued, saying: “This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.”—John 1:2, 3.
Other scriptures plainly show that the Word was God’s agent through whom all other things came into existence. There is “one God the Father, out of whom all things are, . . . and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are.” (1 Cor. 8:6) The Word, God’s Son, was “the beginning of the creation by God,” otherwise described as “the first-born of all creation; because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and upon the earth.”—Rev. 3:14; Col. 1:15, 16.
Earthly ministry and heavenly glorification
In due time a change came about. John explains: “So the Word became flesh and resided among us [as the Lord Jesus Christ], and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs to an only-begotten son from a father.” (John 1:14) By becoming flesh the Word became visible, hearable, feelable to eyewitnesses on earth. In this way men of flesh could have direct contact and association with “the word of life,” which, John says, “was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have viewed attentively and our hands felt.”—1 John 1:1-3.
The glorified Lord Jesus Christ continues to carry the title “the Word,” as noted in Revelation 19:11-16. There in a vision of heaven John says he saw a white horse whose rider was called “Faithful and True,” “The Word of God,” and “upon his outer garment, even upon his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
Why God’s Son is entitled “the Word”
A title often describes the function served or the duty performed by the bearer. So it was with the title Kal Hatze, meaning “the voice or word of the king,” that was given an Abyssinian officer. Based on his travels from 1768 to 1773, James Bruce describes the duties of the Kal Hatze as follows. He stood by a window covered with a curtain through which, unseen inside, the king spoke to this officer. He then conveyed the message to the persons or party concerned. Thus the Kal Hatze acted as the word or voice of the Abyssinian king.
Recall, too, that God made Aaron the word or “mouth” of Moses, saying: “He must speak for you to the people; and it must occur that he will serve as a mouth to you, and you will serve as God to him.”—Ex. 4:16.
In a similar way God’s firstborn Son doubtless served as the Mouth or Spokesman for his Father, the great King of Eternity. He was God’s Word of communication for conveying information and instructions to the Creator’s other spirit and human sons. Prior to Jesus’ coming to earth, on many of the occasions when God communicated with humans it is reasonable to think he used the Word as his angelic mouthpiece. (Gen. 16:7-11; 22:11; 31:11; Ex. 3:2-5; Judg. 2:1-4; 6:11, 12; 13:3) Since the angel that guided the Israelites through the wilderness had ‘Jehovah’s name within him,’ he may have been God’s Son, the Word.—Ex. 23:20-23; see JESUS CHRIST (Prehuman Existence; Why called “the Word”; Jesus’ Godship).
Showing that Jesus continued to serve as his Father’s Spokesman or Word during his earthly ministry, he told his listeners: “I have not spoken out of my own impulse, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to tell and what to speak. . . . Therefore the things I speak, just as the Father has told me them, so I speak them.”—John 12:49, 50; 14:10; 7:16, 17.
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WorkAid to Bible Understanding
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WORK
The exercise of physical or mental effort to accomplish a purpose or to produce something; work is commended in the Scriptures. (Eccl. 5:18) It is a gift of God for man to eat, drink and “see good for all his hard work,” and it is the divine will that man “rejoice in his works.” (Eccl. 3:13, 22) Work was not first instituted in man’s case after he sinned, for Jehovah gave the perfect, sinless man and woman a work assignment when he commanded them to subdue the earth. (Gen. 1:28) However, vain work resulted from sin.—Gen. 3:19; compare Romans 8:20, 21.
Under the Mosaic law periods of rest from labor were decreed. The Israelites were not to work on the weekly sabbath day. (Ex. 20:8-11) Also, “no sort of laborious work” was to be done at times of holy convention.—Lev. 23:6-8, 21, 24, 25, 34-36.
JEHOVAH AND HIS SON ARE WORKERS
Jehovah is a worker whose works include such things as the heavens, the earth, animals and man. (Gen. 1:1; 2:1-3; Job 14:15; Ps. 8:3-8; 19:1; 104:24; 139:14) It is fitting to acknowledge the greatness of Jehovah’s works, extolling and thanking him for them. (Ps. 92:5; 107:15; 145:4-10; 150:2) God’s works are faithful and incomparable, are wrought in wisdom and are “truth and judgment.”—Ps. 33:4; 86:8; 104:24; 111:7.
Jehovah did a “great work” in effecting the Israelites’ deliverance from Egyptian bondage and enabling them to take possession of Canaan. (Judg. 2:7) His works sometimes involve the execution of divine judgment. (Jer. 50:25) Thus, through Isaiah, it was foretold: “For Jehovah will rise up . . . that he may work his work—his work is unusual.” (Isa. 28:21) Such an ‘unusual work’ took place in 607 B.C.E. and in 70 C.E., when Jehovah worked or brought about the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple.—Hab. 1:5-9; Acts 13:38-41; see POWER, POWERFUL WORKS.
Wisdom personified is represented as being beside Jehovah in creative work as his “master worker.” (Prov. 8:12, 22-31; compare John 1:1-3.) When on earth as a man, God’s wise Son, Jesus Christ, showed that he was a worker and that, though material creative works relating to the earth had concluded, Jehovah continued to work, for Jesus said: “My Father has kept working until now, and I keep working.” (John 5:17) To Jesus it was as nourishing, satisfying and refreshing as food to do the work he was assigned by Jehovah. (John 4:34; 5:36) Christ’s works were done in his Father’s name, and were from the Father and showed he was “in union with the Father.” (John 10:25, 32, 37, 38; 14:10, 11; 15:24; Acts 2:22) Jesus successfully finished his God-assigned work on earth.—John 17:4.
Jesus said: “He that exercises faith in me, that one also will do the works that I do; and he will do works greater than these, because I am going my way to the Father.” (John 14:12) Evidently, Christ did not mean that his followers would do works of a more miraculous kind than he did, for there is no Biblical record that any of them performed a miracle surpassing that of Jesus in raising Lazarus who had been dead for four days. (John 11:38-44) But, since Jesus was going to the Father, and his followers would receive the holy spirit to be witnesses of him “both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the most distant part of the earth” (Acts 1:8), they would cover a greater area and work for a longer time than did Jesus, in this sense doing greater works than he did.
NECESSITY OF WORKING
Jesus Christ said that “the worker is worthy of his wages,” thereby indicating that those who labored in connection with spiritual matters would not lack necessities of life. (Luke 10:7) However, as the apostle Paul pointed out to the Thessalonians, the lazy person who refuses to work does not deserve to eat at the expense of others, but should learn to work with his hands to care for his needs. (1 Thess. 4:11; 2 Thess. 3:10, 12) Likewise, the stealer should “steal no more” but “do hard work.”—Eph. 4:28.
QUALITY OF THE WORK OF GOD’S SERVANTS
When doing any work, the servant of Jehovah should remember his relationship with God, doing everything “whole-souled as to Jehovah, and not to men.” (Col. 3:23) This calls for industriousness (Prov. 10:4; 13:4; 18:9), honesty and fidelity. Manifesting such traits brings glory to God, as evident from the admonition given to Christian slaves: “Let slaves be in subjection to their owners in all things, and please them well, not talking back, not committing theft, but exhibiting good fidelity to the full, so that they may adorn the teaching of our Savior, God, in all things.”—Titus 2:9, 10; Eph. 6:5-8; Heb. 13:18.
PROPER EVALUATION OF THINGS OBTAINED BY WORKING
Christians should appreciatively look to God for his blessing on their work and not be unduly anxious about their material needs. Jesus advised his followers to seek first the Kingdom. (Matt. 6:11, 25-33) He also urged: “Work, not for the food that perishes, but for the food that remains for life everlasting.” (John 6:27) Hence, God’s servants wisely keep the money and material things obtained by working in a position subordinate to the much more important spiritual riches. They also use material resources acquired by labor to advance spiritual interests, and they thus “make friends” with God and Christ.—Eccl. 7:12; Luke 12:15-21; 16:9.
IMPROPER WORKS TO BE AVOIDED
Jehovah determines which works are proper and which works are improper. He “will bring every sort of work into the judgment in relation to every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad.” (Eccl. 12:13, 14) God will also deal with each person according to that one’s work. (Ps. 62:12) This and especially love for Jehovah God are good reasons for shunning improper works and doing works that are pleasing in his sight.—1 John 5:3; Ps. 34:14; 97:10; Amos 5:14, 15.
To experience divine favor, Christians must avoid the “works of the flesh,” which include such things as fornication, loose conduct, idolatry, practice of spiritism, hatreds, fits of anger and drunken bouts. Such practices would bar one from inheriting God’s kingdom and are evidently included among the “unfruitful works that belong to the darkness,” works that result in no benefit.—Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:3-14; 1 Pet. 4:3; compare John 3:20, 21.
PROPER WORKS
Dependence upon Jehovah God is essential if one’s works are to succeed. (Ps. 127:1; Prov. 16:3) It is God who backs up and strengthens those who work at doing his will. (2 Cor. 4:7; Phil. 4:13) Whereas human living abounds with vain works (Eccl. 2:10, 11; see ECCLESIASTES), works relating to true worship are not in vain. Hebrew Christians were given the assurance: “God is not unrighteous so as to forget your work and the love you showed for his name, in that you have ministered to the holy ones and continue ministering.” (Heb. 6:10) Such work evidently included rendering material assistance or other kindnesses to those in need or to those experiencing suffering and persecution. (Compare Ephesians 4:28; Philippians 4:14-19; 1 Timothy 6:17, 18; James 1:27.) Other fine works are sharing in making disciples (Matt. 28:19, 20; 1 Cor. 3:9-15) and, in the case of men, serving as an overseer in a Christian congregation and teaching fellow believers.—1 Thess. 5:12, 13; 1 Tim. 3:1; 5:17.
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