God’s Word as His Controlling Power

When God speaks to us, he speaks as Lord, for that is his relation to us. We should therefore expect that his speech, like all his actions, will express his lordship attributes: his control, authority, and presence. Indeed it does.

We look first at the controlling power of his word. It is important that we understand God’s word not only as a communication of linguistic content to our minds, though it is that, but as a great power that makes things happen.

When God first utters his word in the first chapter of Genesis, he speaks not to rational beings, but to inanimate objects. And in the first instance, he addresses that object before it exists. He says, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), and light comes into existence. Such is the power of his word that he is able to “call [kalountos] into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17).

So Scripture often extols the power of God’s word. Summarizing Genesis 1, Psalm 33:6 and 9 say, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.…For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”

After God makes the world, he continues to govern it by the word of his power. Note what is ascribed to the “voice of the Lord” in Psalm 29 and to the words and commands of God in Psalms 147:15–18 and 148:7–8. God’s word governs providence as well as creation.

When God speaks to rational creatures, the word continues to be powerful. God’s word brings judgment on sinful people, and often the power of that judgment-word is palpable  In 2 Peter 3:5–7, the apostle compares the judgment of Noah’s flood with the original creation by the word of God. Just as God’s word was powerful enough to bring the world into being, so it will destroy all the works of wickedness. The fire of judgment is one that comes out of God’s mouth . Fire is God’s “answer” to unbelief (1 Kings 18:24). He answers with fire upon the sacrifice that stands in place of the sinner (1 Chron. 21:26). To change the metaphor, God’s word is the mighty sword (Isa. 49:2) or hammer (Jer. 23:29) that brings defeat to his enemies (Hos. 6:5). Compare Paul’s reference to the word of God as the “sword of the Spirit” in Ephesians 6:17.

But God’s word is also powerful to save, powerful in grace. In Genesis 18:14, after God has promised a miraculous child to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, he ascribes the miraculous power to his word. He asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord”—literally, “Is any word too wonderful for the Lord” In Luke 1:37, the angel Gabriel, having announced to the virgin Mary that she would bear the Messiah, echoes Genesis 18:14: “nothing will be impossible with God”—literally, “no word [rhema] will be impossible for God.”2

When a centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant, he tells Jesus not to come personally to his home, but only to “say the word” (Luke 7:7). He adds:

For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come,” and he comes; and to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it. (v. 8)

Indeed, Jesus does heal the servant from afar. And he comments, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (v. 9). What is remarkable about the centurion’s faith? Perhaps his request to “say the word” gives the answer. In Greek, this phrase is redundant, “speak with a word” (eipe logo). The unusual emphasis on the verbal nature of this healing indicates the centurion’s belief in the power of Jesus’ word to heal the servant.

And when the apostles bring the gospel of Christ to the world, they rejoice that it is not only a content, but also a power. Not only is it accompanied by signs of God’s power (Rom. 15:19), but the word itself changes hearts and strengthens believers (Rom. 16:25). It is the “word of life” (Phil. 2:16; see John 1:1), the gospel that brings life and immortality to light (2 Tim. 1:10).

So the word of God is powerful both in judgment and in blessing. These are the twin covenant sanctions. In the covenant, the Lord promises blessing to the obedient, judgment to the disobedient (Deut. 27–28). So the commandments of God have a double edge; they can be blessing (Ex. 20:12) or curse (v. 7). Obedience to God’s commands is the path of life (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 8:3; Pss. 19; 119:25, 50), but the commandments themselves can give opportunity for sin (Rom. 7:7–25). God tells Isaiah that his message will be mostly one of hardening and curse: “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed” (Isa. 6:10). God sends Isaiah to people who doubtless have already hardened their hearts against the Lord. But in this context it is Isaiah’s words, the words of God, that bring the hardening. Jesus and the apostles invoke the words of Isaiah 6 to characterize their own preaching.

The power of the word brings wonderful blessings to those who hear in faith, with a disposition to obey. But it hardens those who hear it with indifference, resistance, rebellion. In considering this biblical teaching, I often warn my seminary students to pay heed to what God is telling us here. For seminarians typically spend two or more years intensively studying Scripture. It is so important that they hear in faith, lest the Word actually harden their hearts and become a fire of judgment to them. God’s Word never leaves us the same. We hear it for better or worse. So we should never hear or read God’s Word merely as an academic exercise. We must ask God to open our hearts, that the Word may be written on them as well as in our heads.

So God accomplishes all his works by his powerful word: creation, providence, judgment, grace.

The power of the word is the power of God’s Spirit (1 Thess. 1:5), though the Spirit is not always mentioned in contexts that speak of the word’s power (as 1 Thess. 2:13). That is to say that the power of the word is personal, not impersonal. So when the word of the gospel leads one hearer to faith and hardens another, that is God’s sovereign decision. The difference is not that some hearers are better able to resist God’s word than others, as some Lutherans have claimed. That would mean that the word, like an impersonal force of electricity or gravity, works uniformly on everyone, and that the only differences in response come from those who hear. Scripture, however, teaches that God himself determines who will respond favorably to his word. That is Paul’s argument in Romans 9:1–28.

To say this is not to say that the word is powerful only when the Spirit accompanies it and is powerless otherwise. The word is never powerless, as we have seen from Genesis 18:14 and Isaiah 55:11. That implies that the word is never without the power of the Spirit. But sometimes that power effects a blessing, sometimes a curse, depending on God’s sovereign intent.

How powerful is the power of the word? The power of God’s word is nothing less than his own omnipotence. As we saw earlier, no word of God is too hard for him to accomplish. In Isaiah 55:11, we read, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” What God says with his mouth he fulfills with his hand (2 Chron. 6:15; cf. Ezek. 1:3; 3:22).

God’s Word as His Meaningful Authority

The second of the lordship attributes is divine authority. As I indicated in chapters 1 and 2, God’s word expresses that authority that is unique to God, his ultimate authority. As we saw in chapter 1, the authority of language is its capacity to create obligations in the hearer. God’s language is authoritative not only in telling us what to believe and do, but in directing our emotions, our preoccupations, our priorities, our joys and sorrows. That is to say, God’s words are authoritative in all the ways that language can be authoritative, and their authority is ultimate.

Authority is a function of the meaning of language. Here it is important to observe that God’s word is not only powerful, but also meaningful. The power of language is what it does; meaning is what it says. Of course, saying is one kind of doing, so meaning is one of the powers of language. But it plays such an important role among the powers of language that it deserves special attention.

In the history of liberal theology, we may observe that the “older liberalism” (Albrecht Ritschl, Adolf von Harnack, Wilhelm Herrmann) saw the words of Scripture as meaningful, but without divine power. They were merely words of men, to be examined and evaluated like any other words of men. In neoorthodoxy (Karl Barth, Emil Brunner—even Rudolf Bultmann) there was a greater understanding of the Word as a divine power, but a denial that the Word was meaningful language. The same power-centered view of God’s Word can be found among some disciples of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd.

In traditional theology, and in Scripture itself, God’s word is both powerful and meaningful. We have seen Bible references to its power. But Scripture also regards God’s word as having meaningful content. The word is never a blind force. When God creates the world by the word of his power, he not only makes things happen. He commands them to happen by intelligible speech, giving names to things that interpret their function. In Genesis 1:5, 8, and 10, God “calls” (qara’) things by names: Day, Night, Heaven, Earth, Seas. (Cf. Ps. 147:4; Isa. 40:26.) In the remaining verses of Genesis 1, he determines, in other language, the nature and function of each created thing, and by the word good he evaluates the work of his hands. In verses 27–28 he defines by his word the nature and task of mankind.

Note also that in 2:19 God gives an analogous task to Adam, to give names to the animals, as God has already given names to the things in creation. In the ancient world, a name was not merely an arbitrary label. God asked Adam to create a system of meaningful words that would indicate the nature and characteristics of the animals.

In chapter 9, we saw how the powerful word of God accomplishes all of God’s actions. Not only do his words accompany what he does; they empower everything he does. Whatever God does, he does by his word; whatever God does, the word does. Now, we should note that all these words constitute meaningful communication. Everything God does is informed by his wisdom (Ps. 104:24). So the world as a whole is meaningful, its meaning determined by God’s plan.

Similarly, when God speaks to rational beings (himself, angels, humans), his word conveys meaning. In his word, he expresses his wisdom, knowledge, desires, intentions, love, grace. That meaning is authoritative. When God shares his love with us, we have the obligation to treasure it. When he questions us, we should answer. When he expresses his grace, we are obligated to trust it. When he tells us his desires, we should conform our lives to them. When he shares with us his knowledge and intentions, we ought to believe that they are true.

In chapter 1, I showed how the whole course of the biblical narrative is structured as a dialogue: God speaks, man responds. The course of subsequent history is the result of man’s response to God’s word. When man disobeys, there is curse. When he obeys, there is blessing. So biblical history is covenantal. The covenant Lord sets forth his will, and history describes the covenantal sanctions.

So every page of the Bible teaches or illustrates the authority of God’s word. Everything that human beings do or say is a response to God’s word or a consequence of their response. Let us look at some examples in a brief survey of redemptive history.

ADAM AND EVE

In Genesis 1:28, the first recorded experience of the first human beings was that of listening to God’s word. In that experience, they learned their fundamental task as human beings, the task of filling and subduing the whole earth. In Genesis 2:16–17, God supplies food for Adam, authorizing him to eat of every tree in the garden. But he adds a negative command, that Adam is not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The narrative in chapter 3 of Genesis underscores the centrality of the word of God. A talking serpent enters a dialogue with the woman. Aesop’s fables, of course, are full of talking animals, but these are rare in Scripture. God had told Eve, along with Adam, to have dominion over the lower creation (1:28), not to listen to the word of an animal as if it were God’s. Satan, speaking through the serpent (Rev. 12:9), here sought precisely to overturn the system of authority that God had instituted. Instead of God’s having the supreme authority, then man, then wife, then the animal creation, Satan the talking animal wanted to rule over the wife, who would rule her husband, who would seek to overturn the authority of God. We see this in the aftermath (Gen. 3:8–13) in which Eve blames the serpent, Adam blames the woman, and both implicitly blame the providence of God.

The contest is precisely between two words claiming supreme authority: God’s and Satan’s. Satan’s attack is precisely on the word that God had spoken. He questions whether God had uttered such a word (3:1), and then, assuming that God had spoken it, Satan contradicts it (3:4–5).

Adam and Eve had no third authority to arbitrate the dispute. They had no means, scientific, philosophical, or religious, to test whether God or Satan was telling the truth. In effect, what happened was that they trusted their own word, their own judgment, as if it were divine. This is the origin of the autonomous rationality that we discussed in chapters 3–7. But clearly the text condemns such autonomy. What Adam and Eve should have done was to accept the naked word of God—without verification from any other source—even though it was contradicted by another source claiming expertise.

In the narrative, God’s word prevails, for human disobedience brings death on the first couple and on the whole creation (vv. 14–19). God imposes the wages of sin. But amazingly, he also proclaims his grace, for he says that a descendant of Eve will one day crush the head of the serpent (v. 15). This is the first intimation in Scripture of Messiah’s coming, and it also implies that the physical death that the first couple deserves will not be immediate. They will live to reproduce and enjoy the fruits of their labors, albeit with pain and suffering.

Adam and Eve have no reason to expect such grace, except by the word of God. As with the original prohibition, there was no verification. In their own wisdom, Adam and Eve could not possibly have determined that God would show grace to them; in fact, they had every reason to doubt that. Nor could they possibly have guessed that the Messiah would come many centuries later to redeem them.

But this time, they believed—without verifying, without testing, without trying to evaluate God’s word by their autonomous judgment. Adam named his wife Eve, “life” (v. 20). He might have named her Death, given her role in the narrative to this point. But he believed God, whose word said that she would bring forth life, children to till the earth and to bring forth the messianic line. When Eve bore the first child, she named him Cain, saying: “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (4:1). In the birth of Cain, she believed, according to God’s word of promise, that God was fulfilling his plan to redeem the earth through a seed of the woman.

NOAH

The story of Noah, too, begins with God’s favor (6:8) and with God’s word (6:13–22). The science of meteorology being what it was at the time, Noah had no way of confirming the unlikely possibility that God would send a flood to destroy humanity. Nor would his human wisdom alone have motivated him to construct a large boat in the desert. Still, against the objections of unbelief, “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him” (v. 22; cf. 7:5, 9). The word of God was enough.

The NT teaches that the last days of our present age will be like the days of Noah. People will be carrying on their daily work and recreations without any attention to God’s warnings (Matt. 24:37–39). These will be “swept away.” But those who hear and obey Jesus’ warnings will be ready for the new deluge (vv. 43–44).

Hebrews 11:7 commends Noah’s faith as a model of Christian faith: he was “warned by God concerning events as yet unseen” and responded to God’s word “in reverent fear.” Indeed, he not only obeyed God’s word, but also proclaimed it to others (2 Peter 2:5).

ABRAHAM

Of all characters in the OT, Abraham is the chief NT model of saving faith (Rom. 4:1–25; Gal. 3:6–9; Heb. 11:8–19; James 2:21–24). What was the object of his faith? The word of God. The narrative begins with God’s telling him to leave Ur, his home city, and go to another land (Gen. 12:1). God promises blessing to him (vv. 2–3), but as with Adam and Noah, Abraham has no independent means to test whether God is telling the truth. He must simply accept God’s word for God’s word’s sake.

Later, God tells him that he and his wife Sarah will have a son (Gen. 17:15–21), but that promise is unfulfilled until Abraham is over a hundred years old and his wife is well past the age of childbearing. In this case, not only is there no independent means of verification, but all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Everybody knows that old men and women don’t have babies. Sarah laughed at the very thought (18:12–15).

Abraham’s record of trusting God was not spotless; note the episodes in 12:10–20 and 16:1–16. But Paul presents the broader picture in Romans 4:16–25:

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Abraham believed the word of God, even though in doing so he had to believe that God could raise the dead. So should our faith be, says Paul, a faith in God’s promise, regardless of those who say that Jesus’ resurrection is impossible.

In fact, God did give a son to Abraham and Sarah, and his name, Isaac (“laughter”), mocked Sarah’s mockery. But later, God again spoke to Abraham, telling him to take this very son, the son of the promise, to a mountain in the land of Moriah to offer him as a sacrifice (Gen. 22). In this case, too, Abraham had no independent way of verifying whether he should do this, and indeed he may well have seen it as violating God’s own moral law. Even more seriously, if Isaac were to die, it would seem, God could not fulfill his promise of blessing the world through Isaac’s descendants. So Abraham might have seen this commandment as contradicting God’s own previous words.

Yet somehow God identified himself to Abraham as the one who was speaking (cf. my discussion in chapter 1), and so Abraham had no choice but to do what God told him, whatever might be the result. As we know, it was a test, and Isaac did not die. God provided a substitute, foreshadowing the work of Christ (Gen. 22:11–14). James says that Abraham’s obedience in this test completed his faith (James 2:22). The letter to the Hebrews says, “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb. 11:19)—another example of Abraham’s resurrection faith.

So God tested Abraham’s faith in regard to both the promises of the covenant: land and seed. He trusted God’s promise of land, even though he owned no part of the land of promise. He trusted God’s promise of seed, even though God himself appeared to threaten that promise.

JESUS

I will discuss Moses with the prophets and apostles at a later point. Of course, they, too, received a word from God that required absolute obedience. But we need to look at Jesus here and now, for he is not only a recipient of the word, but the Lord who speaks.

Since Jesus is both perfect God and perfect man, he is both the most authoritative speaker and the most faithful hearer of the word of God. As a human hearer, he speaks just what his Father teaches him (John 8:28; 10:18; 12:49–50; 14:10; 15:15). He does not question, contradict, or hesitate.

But he is also the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1, 14). As I argued in chapter 7, the fact that Jesus is the Word does not detract at all from the authority of God’s personal words to human beings. In fact, Jesus himself, as the Word of God, brings verbal testimony to the truth (John 18:37). He presents this testimony as the reason why he came into the world. His mission was revelatory: to follow Moses’ revelation of the law with a revelation of grace and truth (John 1:17). He has made the Father known to us (v. 18; cf. Matt. 11:27). His mission is not merely revelatory. He came to accomplish redemption, not just to tell us about it. But his redemptive act reveals his grace, and the revelation of his grace interprets the redemptive act. Revelation and redemption are two aspects of—two perspectives on—his ministry to us.

Jesus’ personal words are of utmost importance to the message of the NT. There is no trace of any development from a word-centered revelation in the OT to a nonverbal revelation in the NT. Quite to the contrary. Jesus’ personal words are crucial to his ministry. In the community of his disciples, his word is the supreme criterion of discipleship. Jesus teaches that calling him Lord is meaningless unless we do the will of his Father (Matt. 7:21–23). The will of his Father is to be found in the law of Moses (Matt. 5:17–20), and also in Jesus’ own words (7:24–29). Those who hear Jesus’ words and do them will be like the wise man who built his house on the rock. Those who do not hear and obey will be like the fool who built his house on sand.

When he returns in glory, Jesus will be ashamed of those who have been ashamed of him—notably those who have been ashamed of his words (Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26). His mother and brothers are those who “hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21).

The Gospel of John, which begins by identifying Jesus with the Word of God, is, of the four, the most preoccupied with the importance of the words of Jesus. In John 6:63, Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Five verses later, Peter asks, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

In John 8:47, Jesus identifies his own teaching with the “words of God” and insists that anyone who is “of God” will hear and obey them.

John 12:47–50 is remarkable:

If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.

Note here (1) the equation between rejecting Jesus and rejecting his words (v. 48), (2) the word of Jesus (particularly in contrast with his personal presence during his earthly ministry) as the judge of men (v. 48), (3) the determination of Jesus’ words by the Father, both in content (“what to say”) and in form (“what to speak”) (v. 49), and (4) the commandment of the Father (both his commands in general and his commands given to Jesus specifically) as the means and substance of eternal life (v. 50).

Some lessons from John 12: (1) If we are critical of Jesus’ words, we may not appeal beyond them (neoorthodox fashion!) to Jesus himself (vv. 48–49). (2) We may not appeal to the substance or content of Jesus’ words, beyond the forms in which they are presented (v. 49). (3) We may not claim eternal life while rejecting the demand of Jesus’ words upon us (v. 50).

It is also the Johannine literature that identifies most clearly our love for Christ as his disciples with our obedience to his commands. See John 14:15, 21, 23; 15:7, 10, 14; 17:6, 17; 1 John 2:3–5; 3:22; 5:2–3; 2 John 6. John’s visions of Revelation identify God’s people as those who “keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17; see 14:12).

Paul refers less often to the words Jesus spoke in his earthly ministry, more often, understandably, to his own apostolic revelation. But note Luke’s account of his message to the Ephesian elders at Acts 20:35. And in 1 Timothy 6:3–4, Paul follows Jesus himself in making agreement with Jesus’ words a test of fellowship: “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.”

To hear the words of Jesus, then, is the same as hearing the words of the Father. We are to hear the words of Jesus as Abraham heard the words of Yahweh, as words of supreme authority. We are not in any position to find fault with the words of Jesus. They rather create obligations on our part: to hear, believe, obey, meditate, rejoice, mourn—whatever the words may demand of us.

God’s Word as His Personal Presence

The third of the lordship attributes is the divine presence. Because God is Lord, he lives in and with his creation. Indeed, he chooses people to encounter his presence in a special measure. So Israel is his special people, and he is their God. In the tabernacle and temple, he is literally “God with them.” His Son is named Immanuel, “God with us” as he takes on human form and takes the place of sinners before God’s judgment. And his Spirit dwells with us and in us as his temple.

We have seen that in his word, God speaks as Lord. His word is his controlling power and his meaningful authority. Should we see the word also as God’s personal presence? I believe so.

From a general theological perspective, this conclusion is unavoidable. God’s speech is, as we have seen, a necessary divine attribute, so that wherever God is, his word is. We have also seen that Word is a title of the second person of the Trinity, and whenever one divine person acts in the world, the other two persons act together with him. God is the word, and the word is God. So we conclude that wherever God is, the word is, and wherever the word is, God is. Whenever God speaks, he himself is there with us.

The same conclusion follows from God’s attribute of omnipresence. Since God is everywhere, God and his word are always near to us.

But the presence of God in the word is not only a deduction from broader theological principles. Scripture is often very specific about it.

GOD’S NEARNESS TO HIS PEOPLE IS THE NEARNESS OF HIS WORDS

In Deuteronomy 4:7–8, God says that he is especially near to Israel and connects that nearness with the rightness of his statutes:

For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

Deuteronomy 30:11–14, then, speaks of the nearness of the word to Israel in the same terms as God’s own nearness:

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

In Romans, Paul quotes this Deuteronomy passage, with some adjustments. Here, the nearness of the commandments in Deuteronomy becomes the nearness of Christ, particularly in the gospel message:

But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim). (Rom. 10:6–8)

WHERE THE WORD IS, THERE IS GOD’S SPIRIT

In many biblical texts we see the word accompanied by the Spirit, and vice versa. In Genesis 1:2, God’s Spirit hovers over the waters as God prepares to create all things by his word. Psalm 33:6 couples God’s “word” and “breath” as the sources of creation. God’s breath is his Spirit. Cf. Isa. 34:16; 59:21. Jesus says his words are both Spirit and life (John 6:63).

In John 16:13, Jesus says that the Spirit will “speak” to bring the disciples into all the truth. Throughout the book of Acts (note, e.g., 2:1–4), when the Spirit falls upon people, they often begin to speak of Jesus. In 1 Thessalonians 1:5, Paul couples word and Spirit as factors that are always equally present when people receive the gospel in faith. Negatively: in 2 Thessalonians 2:2, Paul tells people to ignore either a false word or a false spirit, suggesting that Satan’s counterfeit words also come with a counterfeit spirit.

Scripture also connects the written Word of God to the Spirit. Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that Scripture is theopneustos, “God-breathed,” again invoking God’s Spirit-breath as the source of the Word. Similarly, 2 Peter 1:21 indicates that the written Word has come about by the Spirit’s direction of the human writers.

GOD PERFORMS ALL HIS ACTIONS THROUGH SPEECH

In chapter 9, I noted that all of God’s works could be summarized thus: his eternal plan, creation, providence, judgment, grace. In that context I indicated how all these actions reveal his controlling power. But of course, where God’s power is, his authority and presence are there, too. We considered in chapter 10 the inseparability of his power and authority. Now we should note the inseparability of both of these from his personal presence.

Since God is not a physical being, his presence with us is different from the presence of a physical object or person. With a physical being it is possible to measure its distance from us, but that is not possible with God. How, then, could we judge when a nonphysical person is present with us? Such a person, evidently, is present wherever he can exercise his controlling power, and wherever he can enforce his authoritative commands. But God, of course, exercises his power and authority throughout the universe; so he is present everywhere.

So if God performs all his actions by powerful and authoritative speech, then his speech is never separated from his personal presence.

GOD IS DISTINGUISHED FROM ALL OTHER GODS BECAUSE HE IS THE GOD WHO SPEAKS

Idols are “dumb” or “mute” (1 Cor. 12:2). Cf. Pss. 115:5–7; 135:16; Hab. 2:18–20. In 1 Kings 18:24–35, the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal concerns which deity will “answer.” God’s answer, of course, is by fire. Speaking is unique to God, an attribute that distinguishes what he is from all other supposed gods.

THE PERSONS OF THE TRINITY ARE DISTINGUISHED FROM ONE ANOTHER IN SCRIPTURE ACCORDING TO THEIR ROLE IN THE DIVINE SPEECH

This is not the only scriptural way of representing the Trinitarian distinctions, but it is one significant way: The Father exerts his lordship through speech. The Son is the Word spoken (John 1:1; Rom. 10:6–8 [cf. Deut. 30:11–14]; Heb. 1:1–3; 1 John 1:1–3; Rev. 3:14; 19:13). The Spirit is the powerful breath that drives the word along to accomplish its purpose (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6; 1 Thess. 1:5; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). I will later refer to this pattern as the linguistic model of the Trinity. So in still another way we see that God’s speech is inseparable from his Trinitarian being.

THE SPEECH OF GOD HAS DIVINE ATTRIBUTES

These include righteousness (Ps. 119:7), faithfulness (119:86), wonderfulness (119:129), uprightness (119:137), purity (119:40), truth (119:142; John 17:17), eternality (Ps. 119:89, 160), omnipotence (Gen. 18:14; Isa. 55:11; Luke 1:37), perfection (Ps. 19:7ff.). These attributes are not merely the attributes of something in creation, such as human faithfulness, righteousness, or truth. Clearly, in context these passages are saying that the words of God are different from merely human words because they embody the unique qualities of God’s own nature.

THE WORD DOES THINGS THAT ONLY GOD CAN DO

In Hebrews 4:12–13, the author says:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Verse 12 speaks of the word of God discerning the most hidden aspects of our being. That clearly is something that only God can do. Verse 13 seems to mark a transition from talking about the word to talking about God. But there is no grammatical indication of a change to a new subject. In both verses the author speaks of the powers of the word, and in both the powers of God. There is no distinction between one and the other. What the word does, God does, and vice versa. So the word not only has distinctively divine attributes, but also performs distinctively divine acts.

THE WORD OF GOD IS AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP

The psalmists view the words of God with religious reverence and awe, attitudes appropriate only to an encounter with God himself. The psalmist trembles with godly fear (Ps. 119:120; cf. Isa. 66:5), stands in awe of God’s words (Ps. 119:161), and rejoices in them (v. 162). He lifts his hands to God’s commandments (v. 48). He exalts and praises not only God himself, but also his “name” (Pss. 9:2; 34:3; 68:4). He gives thanks to God’s name (Ps. 138:2). He praises God’s word in Psalm 56:4, 10. This is extraordinary, since Scripture uniformly considers it idolatrous to worship anything other than God. But to praise or fear God’s word is not idolatrous. To praise God’s word is to praise God himself.

Does this worship justify “bibliolatry”? The Bible, as we will see later, is God’s word in a finite medium. It may be paper and ink, or parchment, or audiotape or a CD-ROM. The medium is not divine, but creaturely. We should not worship the created medium; that would be idolatry. But through the created medium, we receive the authentic word of God, and that word of God should be treasured as if God were speaking it with his own lips. It should be received with absolute trust, obedience, and, yes, worship.

Opponents of evangelicalism commonly say that it is idolatrous to accept any human word as having divine authority. Scripture, however, teaches that we should accept the divine-human words on its pages precisely as God’s own. Evangelicals are often too sensitive to the charge of bibliolatry. That charge is illegitimate, and it should not motivate evangelicals to water down their view of Scripture.

FINALLY, THE WORD IS GOD

John 1:1 comes right out and says this, together with other passages we have mentioned that correlate God’s word with Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1–3; 1 John 1:1–3; Rev. 3:14; 19:13). We are inclined to focus on the Christology of John 1:1–14 and thus to take it as identifying Jesus Christ with the word of God and therefore with God. But we should also note the fact that this verse identifies God with the creative word of Genesis 1. We have seen that in Genesis 1, God creates all things by his word. When John’s Gospel starts “In the beginning,” any Jewish reader would have caught the allusion back to Genesis 1:1. John 1:1–14 is about that word, the word that created all things. The allusion becomes more obvious in verse 3: “All things were made through him [i.e., through the word], and without him was not any thing made that was made.” So when verse 1 says that “the Word was God,” it indicates not only the deity of Christ, but also the deity of the creative word. So the passage teaches not only an identity between God and Christ, but a threefold identity, between God, Christ, and the creative word.

So the word is God. When we encounter the word of God, we encounter God. When we encounter God, we encounter his word. We cannot encounter God without the word, or the word without God. God’s word and his personal presence are inseparable. His word, indeed, is his personal presence. Whenever God’s Word is spoken, read, or heard, God himself is there.