Everywhere in the Bible, God is knowable, and God is known because — and only because — he is pleased to give such knowledge to us.

Look at how many forms that giving takes.

‘God has truly revealed himself, in the Person of his incarnate Son.’

Every Available Channel

There are words — of blessing, command, warning, promise. Names: ‘Lord,’ ‘Yahweh,’ ‘Almighty,’ ‘Saviour,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ ‘Father,’ ‘Holy Spirit.’ Descriptions: goodness, justice, power, wisdom, faithfulness, love.

There are actions — communicating, creating, ruling, judging, saving — and explanations of them. Stories and histories, recounting significant persons and events in meaningful order. Statements and facts, known to be true on substantial evidence and eyewitness testimony. And writings — Scriptures, the written Word of God, inspired through the service of Prophets and Apostles, providing the permanent record of special Divine revelation.

The overall goal is knowledge: of God himself, and about us as unique individuals — physical, spiritual beings, each with an unceasing destiny bearing God’s image, in relationship to God and one another.¹For fuller discussion, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Nature of Revelation, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-nature-of-revelation/.

The gospel of Jesus embraces all of this. As breaking news from God, it is an act of God in revelation — words spoken and authored by God, giving definitive knowledge of him. Its purpose is the creation and restoration of fellowship between God and human beings, which is why the Christian message carries life-transforming power, delivering us from sin through the kind of personal knowledge that leads to eternal life.

The Central Claim

As the written and preached gospel makes known the character and identity of God,²Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Zondervan, 2016), 68. it takes in the whole scope of history (Acts 13:16-41; 17:22-31).

The heart of its message is what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ by death and resurrection. Its core claim regards the universal Lordship of Jesus — presented in hundreds of New Testament passages as the gospel’s central concern.

That Lordship includes his full Deity, Pre-existence and Creatorship (John 1:1-3; Heb 1:2-3). It is cosmic and eternal, a Kingdom ranging across all realms of reality — every part of space, every moment of time, every element in heaven and earth.

And fundamentally, that dominion is for our salvation. Jesus has come to us in our rebellious blindness and hatred of God, to show us our true condition and give us true light and life.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1:1-5).

Here’s the Radical Bit

At this point the gospel teaches us something that deserves careful attention: Jesus Christ is himself, fundamentally, the revelation of God.³Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for much help with the development of the following paragraphs.

God himself, in the Person of his incarnate Son, has revealed himself to us.

The radical nature of that needs appreciating. Generally we tend to think of a divinity being revealed by some secondary process. Islam, for example, says the Koran is the revelation of God — which is why its Arabic language cannot really be translated and still be termed ‘revelation.’

The Christian Scriptures teach something different. God has truly revealed himself, in the Person of his incarnate Son.

Yet as Calvin acutely pointed out, we know no Christ except ‘Christ clad with his own promises,’ ‘clothed with his gospel’⁴John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.9.3 and 3.2.6, ed. F. L. Battles, 426 and 548. — that is, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

God Is His Word

Scripture teaches us that God is his Word.

Not merely that God is faithful to his word, though that’s true. But that the very being of God is Word — and that Word has come to us, revealing God’s true nature and intentions.

Which changes what happens when we receive it. We don’t only ‘hear’ with our ears or ‘read’ with our minds — we have a direct, not indirect, relationship with God himself in his own being. We may truly call upon him as he is in himself, Father, and truly be related to him as his children.⁵As discussed elsewhere, we are arguing that ‘Father’ does not just refer only to the Person of God the Father but to the very Being of God. We must recognise that the Son proceeds not only from the ‘Person’ of the Father, but from the ‘Being’ of the Father in which the Son and the Holy Spirit each share. ‘Father’ refers to the whole of God, to God’s very Being. For Biblical arguments, see T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 137-141, 157-159, 204-221.

In Christ, our mediated relationship with God is not secondary or at a distance but direct and real. By grace, in Christ, we are not metaphorically children of God. We really are.

Reading John 1 Slowly

How do we arrive at that conclusion — that God’s revelation is Jesus Christ, that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Word to us?

Start with John 1:1: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

John is teaching us that the written and preached gospel is not an email dispatched at a distance by an impersonal heavenly member of staff. It is God our Father speaking directly and personally to us in and through his Son incarnate, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (v 14).

The last verse of John’s introduction sums it up: ‘No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known’ (John 1:18, NIV).

But ‘Word’ here doesn’t refer only to the words God speaks to us. In verses 1-4 the ‘beginning’ John refers to is the act of creation. God was present there before creation; he did it all, by his Word. ‘In the beginning was the Word.’

And the last part of verse 1 stresses that this Word is God himself: ‘The Word was God.’ In the Greek, the past tense of the verb to be ‘expresses continuous timeless existence.’⁶Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), paragraph 15260.

Then, especially in light of our sinful blindness, verses 4-18 emphasise that this Word, Jesus Christ, comes to us as God’s self-revelation — enlightening us, revealing who God is (our Creator and Father) and who we truly are (blind sinners needing salvation).

Hebrews Says the Same

‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Heb 1:1-3).

Note the contrast the writer draws. Previously God spoke by the prophets — through intermediaries. Now he has spoken by his Son, who is himself God, and who is himself God’s revelation to us.

The medium and the message are the same person.

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• 1
  For fuller discussion, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Nature of Revelation, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-nature-of-revelation/. ↩︎
• 2
  Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Zondervan, 2016), 68. ↩︎
• 3
  Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for much help with the development of the following paragraphs. ↩︎
• 4
  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.9.3 and 3.2.6, ed. F. L. Battles, 426 and 548. ↩︎
• 5
  As discussed elsewhere, we are arguing that ‘Father’ does not just refer only to the Person of God the Father but to the very Being of God. We must recognise that the Son proceeds not only from the ‘Person’ of the Father, but from the ‘Being’ of the Father in which the Son and the Holy Spirit each share. ‘Father’ refers to the whole of God, to God’s very Being. For Biblical arguments, see T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 137-141, 157-159, 204-221. ↩︎
• 6
  Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), paragraph 15260. ↩︎