Dr Paul Allen

One of the many statements that the Bible makes concerning itself is that it is a living Word. In Philippians 2:16 Paul calls it the “word of life.” Hebrews 4:12 says, “The word of God is living and powerful.”  Here in 1 Peter 1:23, it is “the word of God which lives and abides forever.” There are no more significant statements that refer to the Bible than these. It is through this living Word that we are born again and made alive spiritually. And it is through the living Word that we grow up into Christ. The Word of God Is Alive and Produces Life The Word of God is the only thing we know of, apart from the Trinity itself, that is alive in an eternal sense. In the world around us the things we call “living” are really dying. What we call “the land of the living” is probably better called “the land of the dying” because wherever you look, death is doing its work of decay and destruction. In the final analysis, death is the monarch of this world. Against this background of ...

For by him all things were created. [Col. 1:16a] The word for God in Genesis 1:1 and the Old Testament is elohim, the plural of the Hebrew el. The verb create is singular, however, so we cannot translate the verse, “the gods created.” Rather, the plural elohim refers to a singular Being. Because elohim is used, however, many expositors have believed this a cloaked reference to the Trinity. The Bible makes it clear that all three Persons of the Godhead were involved in creation, so it is felt that the use of a plural word here and elsewhere in the Old Testament hints at the tri-unity of God. We cannot be dogmatic about this, however, since in Hebrew the plural form is often a plural of majesty, as when a king uses we to refer to himself. Christians often believe that creation was the work exclusively of the Father, that redemption was accomplished only through the activities of the Son Jesus Christ, and sanctification is the work of the Spirit alone. Actually, all three Persons are...