The Word

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 Corinthians 3:3-6

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Such confidence before God is ours through Christ. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God.

You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Romans 7:6

But now, having died to what bound us, we have been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

What we are going to establish in this post today is the importance of hearing His voice and obeying that voice versus reading the Bible and then extrapolating a way of life from its pages. Again we're gonna be diving into a very touchy subject so come in with an open mind. 

John established that Jesus is the Word of God. What do words do, what do they accomplish? They convert thoughts and ideas into an understandable formate for all to hear or read. Establishing that fact, then we can establish that words are spoken and are written for all to hear or see. A spoken word goes from lips to ears and are "in the moment" types of communications. Spoken words traditionally are for quick transfers of information from the speaker to the hearer. The hearer however, unless having had the spoken words repeated over and over, will forget a huge portion of those words over time. The written word however, can be copied, spread around, kept for long periods of time, studied and used to teach others by. 

Spoken words can have an advantage over written, in that spoken words can carry emotions and inflections with them to help convey the speaker's heart and passion for what they are saying. Written words do not have that ability. Written words take a lot of effort to convey the emotions of the writer. The emotions can also be misinterpreted by the reader as well.

So, where am I going with this? The Bible is a good tool for those just beginning the journey of being a Christian. It gives our way of life context and understanding like reading a car manual. With a car manual, you can figure out how to maintain the car, how to push, pull or turn things on the car to make it work but the manual is not going to teach you how to drive it. To do that, the manual is set aside and the driving must take place to fully understand how to drive it. Over time driving a car becomes an extension of who you are. It takes little effort but every once in a while you need to pull the manual out again to help with maintaining it.

As Christians, reading the Bible is the same. It gives you the fundamentals of who we are, where we came from and where we are going yet it cannot create the path itself. A map can show you a route. It can give you details but it cannot give you the experience of walking that path or driving that road. Unless you actually experience the route for yourself you'll never get the understanding. Pictures show a narrow field of view and can quite literally show a single flower. To the viewer of that photo, that flower is beautiful and serene and may give the viewer feelings of happiness. However, to experience that flower you must go where it is at to fully appreciate what it is. It may be one flower out of many or it could be the only one standing in a battle field full of dead soldiers. 

The Bible is like those examples, it's a great manual,  a great picture but to live that life it talks about takes the words off the page and into your heart. God says many times in the old testament that He was going to write the laws in our hearts. How is that accomplished? Through Him living in us!

When Christ came to die, He did so for two reasons. One, to reconcile us back to God by eradicating our sin in God's eyes. Two, by giving us the Holy Spirit so that the author of the Bible can live in us and fulfill His word through us.

This is where it gets dicey. Man, in his struggle to stay in control, wants to be forgiven yet also wants to live how he wants to live. Another words, get me out of jail so I can go back to being a bad person. Thanks for the get out of hell free card God but I got this. It may look like we know how to play the part of being a Christian,  after all, we have the manual to go by but unless those words on that page become a living way of life in us, it's not going to work and our lives reflect our own and not His.

99% of arguments and denominational differences come from separate interpretations of the written word. You can create any religion you want by taking separate passages and combining them together. It's like taking a picture of a beautiful house then photoshopping it out of its original spot in a desert and putting it on a seaside vista. To the viewer of that picture, the house has a great ocean view and the viewer will always believe that unless the person brings the truth to light. It takes the original photographer, explaining to the viewer, how the picture was before it was changed. Unless this happens, the viewer believes the lie, spreads the lie, would argue for the lie and may perhaps die for it.

As Christians we have become all too confused by all the pictures being presented to us. One preacher preaches this, another preaches the opposite. One teaches to distrust, another trust. One preaches hate, another love. Which picture is the truth. 

A cautionary tale from Israel's past may help you understand the gravity of the problem. The Israelites were freshly liberated from the Egyptians and God wanted for them all to come up on the mountain to receive His laws. They took one look at the cloud on the mountain top and they said no, Moses, you go up there for us. They feared for their lives and said if they went up there they would surely die. While he was gone, they invented a way to worship. Sound familiar.  

Today, we want Moses, our pastors and preachers, to go up to God and get that word and then deliver it to us. Yet if they go to the Bible and extrapolate their own version of truth from it, then you get a picture that has been changed by their interpretations.

I hope this all makes sense.

The author, the writer, the architect of the Bible, God, is the only one who can take that word and make it real in your heart. However, we must climb that mountain and receive it straight from Him. There doesn't need to be a middle man between you and God. We can't rely on written words without God speaking those words to us.

Even Jesus said you have no need for a man to teach you after He gave His disciples the Holy Spirit.

Use the Bible as a reference guide, listen to preaching with the Holy Spirit so He can filter truth from lies. Better still, build your relationship with the Holy Spirit, Jesus and God so they can feed you and guide you into their full unfiltered truth. Only then can we truly have the tools to walk the way Christ walked. 

To God be the Glory!