The answer which would most commonly and almost unthinkingly be given
is, I suppose, the Scriptures; but while this is on the whole true, it
is to be noted that the expression employed here properly means a word
spoken, and not the written record. Both in the Old and in the New
Testaments the word of God means more than the Bible; it is the
authentic utterance of His will in all shapes and applying to all the
facts of His creation. In the Old Testament 'God said' is the expression
in the first chapter of Genesis for the forthputting of the divine
energy in the act of creation, and long ages after that divine poem of
creation was written a psalmist re-echoed the thought when he said 'For
ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens. Thou hast established
the earth and it abideth.'
But, further, the expression designates the specific messages which
prophets and others received. These are not in the Old Testament spoken
of as a unity: they are individual words rather than a word. Each of
them is a manifestation of the divine will and purpose; many of them are
commandments; some of them are warnings; and all, in some measure,
reveal the divine nature.
That self-revelation of God reaches for us in this life its permanent
climax, when He who 'at sundry times and in divers manner spake unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a
Son.' Jesus is the personal 'word of God' though that name by which He
is designated in the New Testament is a different expression from that
employed in our text, and connotes a whole series of different ideas.
The early Christian teachers and apostles had no hesitation in taking
that sacred name--the word of the Lord--to describe the message which
they spoke. One of their earliest prayers when they were left alone was,
that with all boldness they might speak Thy word; and throughout the
whole of the Acts of the Apostles the preached Gospel is designated as
the word of God, even as Peter in his epistle quotes one of the noblest
of the Old Testament sayings, and declares that the 'word of the Lord'
which 'abideth for ever' is 'the word which by the gospel is preached
unto you.'
Clearly, then, Paul here is exhorting the Ephesian Christians, most of
whom probably were entirely ignorant of the Old Testament, to use the
spoken words which they had heard from him and other preachers of the
Gospel as the sword of the Spirit. Since he is evidently referring to
Christian teaching, it is obvious that he regards the old and the new as
one whole, that to him the proclamation of Jesus was the perfection of
what had been spoken by prophets and psalmists. He claims for his
message and his brethren's the same place and dignity that belonged to
the former messengers of the divine will. He asserts, and all the more
strongly, because it is an assertion by implication only, that the same
Spirit which moved in the prophets and saints of former days is moving
in the preachers of the Gospel, and that their message has a wider
sweep, a deeper content, and a more radiant light than that which had
been delivered in the past. The word of the Lord had of old partially
declared God's nature and His will: the word of God which Paul preached
was in his judgment the complete revelation of God's loving heart, the
complete exhibition to men of God's commandments of old; longing eyes
had seen a coming day and been glad and confidently foretold it, now the
message was 'the coming one has come.'
It is as the record and vehicle of that spoken Gospel, as well as of its
earlier premonitions, that the Bible has come to be called the word of
God, and the name is true in that He speaks in this book. But much harm
has resulted from the appropriation of the name exclusively to the book,
and the forgetfulness that a vehicle is one thing and that which it
carries quite another.