Christ in Scripture

I'd like your insight on Christ's role as "the Word." I'm confused about this aspect of God's character. Is Christ the one who speaks when God speaks? For instance, was it Christ acting as the Word who spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden? Was Christ the Word that Moses heard from the burning bush?

This is one that may be a little more than what can be handled in the confines of a blog post. But I won't let that stop me from trying. We know that the Old Testament Scriptures point to Christ. After Jesus' resurrection one of the things that he does for the disciples is to open the Scriptures to them. In other places he talks about fulfilling the Scriptures. So this is nothing new. Now where that is seen exactly will always be surrounded by debate.

One idea is that the Angel of the LORD that we see from time to time is the pre-incarnate Christ. This is because the Angel will often speak in words that only God would say; words that would be inappropriate for an angel to speak. This would be like what we see in the burning bush. St. Paul identifies the rock that follows the Israelites in the wilderness as the presence of Christ. Now that one is a little beyond me to fully understand, but St. Paul knows better than I do, so I am willing to trust him on that one.

Now when you get to the prophets, and the Word of the Lord appears to so and so. Well that certainly could be another pre-incarnate Christ. But you want to be careful to understand the context of these writings and be aware that we are not adding to them things that were never intended to be a part of the text.

John's understanding of the "word" in John 1:1 has with it a certain context. It is with that context that he is writing. I am not saying that there is no correlation. There ultimately probably is, but we must always be careful as we do that.

Luther described the Scriptures as the cradle that holds Christ. That is ultimately what is important. All Scripture ultimately points us to Christ. All Scripture shows us him and the work that he did in order for us to have salvation. So in others words, it is all good.