Jesus once said, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:10).
Notice what’s happening there. Jesus said it. He made a statement about seeing God the Father — using words.
‘Words are essential to God, and words make us human.’
Heard Before Seen
God and Jesus reveal themselves to sinful human beings not, first and foremost, by making themselves seen, but by making themselves heard and understood.
Telling us things by speaking to us in language we can comprehend is inherent to God creating fellowship — establishing contact, connection, communion, relationship, with individuals and with groups.
Talking, verbalising, using words, deploying language is fundamental to God’s communication with human beings. Indeed ‘it is perhaps the most significant form of his presence.’1Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 41.
And It Runs Both Ways
Words are also the God-given way human beings respond to God, by talking to him — and communicate with one another about God, by talking to each other about him and our relation to him.2Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 43.
So the traffic goes in both directions. In relating to us God speaks, and considers what we say in reply. In relating to God, human beings created in his likeness respond by listening and speaking, both to God and to one another about God.
‘In sum, the Bible not only presents us with a picture of God’s relationship to creation and to his people in which words are an absolutely crucial means of his presence and revelation, and are, by obvious implication, completely adequate for such purposes; it also shows us that words are a vital means of communicating the message of God from person to person. Moses preached; Elijah preached; the prophets, major and minor, preached; Christ preached; and Paul preached. Words are clearly the main means of so doing. Thus, any theology that claims to take the Bible as its authority must take the teaching of the Bible about words, and indeed the verbal form of the Bible itself, with utmost seriousness and thus see words as a normative and normal part of Christianity.’3Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45-46.
From Creation to New Creation
Words play a fundamental role in God’s ways with the world generally, and so with the good news of his saving work in Jesus Christ particularly.
The gospel’s nature is determined by the word-based, word-shaped, word-determined works of God in creation, revelation and salvation.
And at the final endpoint too, it is words God speaks that establish the perfect world: ‘And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true”’ (Rev 21:5).
What God says to us in and by his Word, at all junctures, shapes and defines both his relation to us and our knowledge of him.
Reality — human and Divine — is linguistically structured, determined by speech, because God is Word (John 1:1-18).
Words are essential to God, and words make us human.4Cf. Walter Stephens, How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now (John Hopkins University, 2023), opening chapter, and Part II, especially chapters 5 & 6.
Not Our Message to Improve
The good news is news from God — the coming of God himself, in Christ clothed with his gospel.
People are to preach and teach that good news. But the message they share is not, first of all, some heightened human message.
Its claims about Jesus’ identity and action, and the knowledge of God those claims generate, are first of all ‘a revelatory gift, an unveiling to us, rather than the product of human ingenuity or effort.’5Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747.
The gospel is God’s Word. Before it becomes ours to tell, it is Divine speech.
‘[P]reached in words as the Word of God,’6Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747. its content involves a series of assertions, propositions and statements that are Divinely derived. It is a verbal communication, a logos — a reason, or set of reasons — from the lips of Almighty God.
‘The revelation is not [merely] “Jesus Christ” but “Jesus is the Christ.” It is a revelatory proposition.’7Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 748.
Read that distinction slowly, because it’s precise. Not a person presented wordlessly for us to interpret however we like, but a claim about that person, which can be believed or disbelieved.
It is a message from the speaking God, who creates and restores interpersonal relationship — fellowship — with sinful human creatures by way of words.
Why Vagueness Won’t Do
The gospel centrally concerns the incarnation and activity of the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
‘Only clear verbal statements of the matter can bring the message home and frame the matter in such a way that responses can then be either those of faith or of unbelief.’8Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45.
That’s the practical upshot of everything above. If the gospel is God’s speech, then vagueness isn’t humility — it’s a failure to pass on what was given. A message that can’t be understood clearly enough to be either believed or rejected hasn’t been delivered.
Only ‘the word of the cross’ — the good news of Christ crucified and risen — carries and contains ‘the power of God’ to those ‘who are being saved’ (1 Cor 1:18; cf. v 21).
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- 1Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 41. ↩︎
- 2Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 43. ↩︎
- 3Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45-46. ↩︎
- 4Cf. Walter Stephens, How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now (John Hopkins University, 2023), opening chapter, and Part II, especially chapters 5 & 6. ↩︎
- 5Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747. ↩︎
- 6Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747. ↩︎
- 7Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 748. ↩︎
- 8Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45. ↩︎