What’s In A Word? We Had To Ask…

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

The Word of God, living and enduring…  Choice #1: Jesus.  Yes, it is like the questions that the ministers ask during the Children’s Time during worship, if you answer “Jesus”, you have about a 70-30 chance of getting it right. 

In this case, Jesus, the Word of God, lots of direct evidence from John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”  The gospel may or may not have been written down at this time, but I can see Peter and John and the others at a disciple’s reunion, maybe back in the Upper Room, swapping story and bottles of wine…remembering and reflecting on the Son of God they’d all been called to serve.

The Word of God, creative power of the Father who art in Heaven…  Genesis 1, to use the King James, God spake and it wath so… light, sky, land, animals, etc.  This is not so far from John 1, paralleling creation stories, the creative power of God coming in his voice, Jesus coming as the Voice of God. 

It is living and enduring.

The Word of God, wrapped up between the covers of the books found in the pews of our churches, broken into every Sunday for the sharing of Scripture.  The Word of God as our Bible, shared as the Word spoken to the congregation, by the power of the Holy Spirit, becoming a creative, transformative Word in the hearts of the listeners. 

Of course, what this Word has done is allowed us to be born anew.  Sounds like the creative power of God, taking us from the perishable to the imperishable.  But it is also Jesus, the Word of God, by whose death and resurrection we are born anew.  And we continue to know of it today because of the Word of God handed down to us as the Bible.

Confusing?  Of course.  Improbable?  Not at all.  The bible does not lock in vocabulary to the extent that we do in the literary analysis of the Scriptures.  Meanings can bleed into each other, providing a far richer set of possibilities to be imagined as we consider the living and enduring Word of God.