Sometimes I meet people who say “the Bible isn’t the word of God, Jesus is the Word of God.”
There’s a grain of truth to this view. The Bible itself calls Jesus the Word (John 1:1). And Jesus did teach that the whole of Scripture points to him (Luke 24:25-27). Reading it isn’t an end in itself, and if we study the Scriptures diligently but don’t come to Jesus, we remain lost (John 5:39-40).
But saying Jesus is the Word of God instead of the Bible fails to match up to what Jesus himself taught about Scripture. Not only did Jesus refer to Scripture as ‘the word of God’ (e.g. Mark 7:13), he also treated it as such. He settles theological debates by appealing to Scripture (e.g. Matt 22:31), judges ethical controversies using Scripture (e.g. Matt 19:4-6) and views it as his life’s mission to fulfil Scripture (e.g. Luke 22:37).
Jesus and the Bible are inseparable – we can’t have one without the other. Jesus points us to Scripture and Scripture points us to Jesus.
Ed