77. Whether or not the Word is the Word depends on our comprehension of it - that is, on how we understand it. If we do not understand it, we may of course call it “the Word, ” but for us it is not the Word.

The Word is truth depending on how it is understood, for the Word can be nontruth - it can be distorted. The Word is spirit and life depending on how we understand it, for the letter is dead if it is not understood.

Since we gain truth and life depending on how we understand the Word, we also gain faith and love depending on how we understand it, because its truth yields faith and its life yields love.

Since the church exists by means of its faith and love and is only as good as its faith and love, it follows that a church exists by means of its understanding of the Word and is only as good as its understanding of the Word. A church is worthy if it is focused on genuine truths, unworthy if it is not focused on genuine truths, and ruined if it is focused on distorted truths.

3006. These are the things that angels perceive when the names Jesus Christ are used, and the things that are meant by its being said that in no other name is there salvation, and by what the Lord stated so many times concerning His name, as in John,

Whatever you ask in My name, I will do. John 14:13-14.

In the same gospel,

These things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John 20:31.

And elsewhere. 'His name' means everything in its entirety by which the Lord is worshipped, and so the essential nature of all worship and doctrine, see 2724. Here therefore the good of love and charity is meant when joined to the truth of faith, which constitutes the fabric of doctrine and worship in their entirety.