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The Word of God as Key to Christian Worship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Peter Katz
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Extract

In a service of the right kind God speaks to the congregation, and the Holy Spirit opens the hearts and lips of the congregation to reply. The means by which the inscrutable God comes out of the ‘Light unapproachable’ is His ‘Word’. It has been the will of God to limit His self-revelation to mediation through the ‘Word’. This self-revealing ‘Word’ makes itself known in two ways:

Firstly, God became man in Christ. He has thus entered our field of vision. From Christ's words and acts and from His character discernible behind them, the Father's nature, heart and will towards us are discerned, so far as such discernment is given to man. Christ is that aspect of God which is turned towards us. He reflects the rays of God, so far as human eyes can bear their light. As making known God's heart and will, Christ is therefore in a special sense ‘God's Word’. To describe Christ as the Word of God is to give a fully adequate picture. It is as the Eternal Word of God that the Risen Lord is in the midst of His faithful.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1952 , pp. 139 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1952

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References

page 145 note 1 An innocent parallel is offered by the late J. L. Garvin. Whenever he wished to set into relief the highlights of his articles he took to the Bible—not only to the particular colour of the AV language, but to actual Bible quotations. In doing this he hardly ever retained their original setting, but applied them to whatever he might be discussing. In the Biography which was published soon after Garvin's death the same device is applied to describing his own activities. But elsewhere in British journalism it seems to die out.