Hebrews 1:1-13
Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning, and it will all belong to the Son at the end. This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what he says—powerful words! MSG
If the average Christian were to be asked about the Word of God what would come to their minds? Many of us would think of our bibles, the book from which passages are read on Sunday morning, which upon conclusion, the pastor adds his period, “And this is the word of God. Amen” However, the bible itself testifies that the Word of God is infinitely more than the book. This Word has never been confined by cowhide, ink or language.
The Word was at the beginning and Jesus was that Word. The cosmos (not just the spec that is earth) was created by Him and for Him. Independent from them, He created time and space and then entered into them. It was as if He created the stage and then stepped out upon it, saying, in perfect humility, “I am the origin and the glue that holds your reality together. I am the ointment that heals this sin-scarred planet. Believe in me and become a co-heir of all that is mine.”
Let’s shift for a moment from The Word to words in general and their value to our worship. In Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy – Discovering Our Hidden Life In God, he talks about the perpetual “dumbing down” our image of God has experienced over time due to language. He asks us to compare our contemporary description of God to one offered one hundred years ago by Adam Clarke: For Clarke, God is;
….the eternal, independent, and self existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence; he who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he has made; illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only by himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and from his infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, and rich and kind.
Willard acknowledges that those words are hard slogging for modern readers but adds, still “we can all appreciate what a vast difference it would make in anyone’s life to actually believe in such a God as Clarke’s words portray.” To emphasize his point Willard says that we might describe God as love “but this proves to be very different from forcing a bedraggled (dumbed-down) human version of “love” into a mental blank where God is supposed to be, and then identifying God as that.” As we drag shrunken discounted ideas of God into that place reserved for him and try to worship, it is not too surprising that the results would be lukewarm.
But even Adam Clarke’s words, as useful, eloquent and accurate as they maybe do not even get us close to fully describing The Word of God. And just as importantly, they are not our words. We must develop and express our own language with God. Hopefully, it will be for us as it was for the psalmists who found their own tongues, with voice and pen, animating their own worship to God.
We are the most fortunate of people since most recently God has revealed himself in His Son and this Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. I have a fair inventory of words that I can draw from in my envisioning of God and I believe it is a tremendous aid in my worship of Him but more importantly to me is that God is my Father on earth as He is in heaven. When my mind is confronted with one the myriad doctrinal controversies, I will often simply pass it through my father-filter and see what comes out there other end. My point is that while vocabulary is wonderful, most importantly we need to stay focused on Jesus, the eternal Word of God, who is an exact representation of the Father. He who has seen the Son has seen the Father.
Father, restore an image of Your transcendent glory to our hearts. Delivers us from every debased notion lodged in our brains. May we bow to the mystery and the majesty of the Word of God acknowledging His central place in all that was and is and is to come. Amen