Many of the blog posts here have
been devoted to proving that Jesus and his first century followers changed the
meaning of the phrase word of God from Torah to gospel. Jesus taught a uniquely
redemptive purpose to the scripture. This is plainly proclaimed in John 5:39-40
and Luke 24:27; 43-45. In the past, I have issued a challenge, to take all of the
verses in the New Testament with the phrase word of God in them, and to
substitute either scripture or gospel in place of the phrase. When one does
that it is easy to see that their meaning in using the phrase was gospel or
Jesus the living gospel and not scripture. Again, please do not think that I am
downplaying the scripture or its inspired status. I am not. I am rather showing
the extent that Jesus taught his followers to go to in emphasizing and
underscoring the redemptive purpose of the scripture.
With this in mind let’s turn our
attention to Romans 10:17. In the KJV it reads, “faith cometh by hearing and
hearing by the word of God.” So then, let me ask the question; did Paul mean
that faith cometh by hearing scripture or gospel? Well, when you look at it in
context it becomes rather obvious that he meant the gospel. The sentence could
easily be stated that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the gospel of
Christ.
Let’s take a look at this verse in
some of the new versions of the scripture.
NASB “Rom
10:17
So faith comes from hearing, and
hearing by the word of Christ.”
HCSB “So
faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the
message
about Christ.”
ESV “So
faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
Why is that
so? The answer is that there are a number of original Greek texts from which
the translations are made, and further there are many variations within those
texts. Some say word of God and some say word of Christ. The Byzantine Text or
Textus Receptus which the KJV was translated from says word of God, but the Westcott
Hort and the Nestle-Aland say word of Christ.
The Greek is as follows: It is the rhematos christou (word of Christ) or
the (rhematos theou) the word of God.
When one
realizes that the first century apostles meant the gospel or the word of Christ
when they wrote word of God it becomes less of a problem. The newer versions
call it the word of Christ because the translating scholars believe that it is
far more likely that the original scripture had the word of Christ in Romans
10:17. I believe that the original text could have had the word of God there
but I have proven beyond doubt that in most cases in the New Testament, and in
ALL cases from the book of Acts forward they meant gospel or Jesus the living
gospel when they wrote the phrase word of God.
It does
have interesting implications that go against the common explanation of this
verse. Faith does not come from hearing just any ole scripture passage. Faith
comes by hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Since rhematos (a variation of
rhema) more rightly means spoken word, it would suggest that faith cometh by
hearing the spoken word of Christ.
