Living word
Most Bible students will be quite familiar with this verse from the letter to the Hebrews:
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. (Hebrews 4:12)
This is a profound statement, and there are multiple levels of meaning here. A couple that are readily seen:
The “word of God” is the message from Him delivered through inspired writers—what we call the Bible. Many passages support this use of the phrase “word of God.” The Bible isn’t just literature, or a philosophy, or a record of what ancient believers thought and did—although it is all those things. It isn’t just words. It has been given life, as it were, to function on its own, and the concepts it conveys are penetrating. It cuts through our mental defenses, our self-image, our arrogance, our ignorance, our aspirations, our assumptions. It cuts us open and shows us what we truly are.
The “word of God” is Jesus Christ. (John 1:14, Revelation 19:13) To him has been given the power and the authority to judge, to figuratively cut us open and reveal what is in us, and reward each one accordingly. (John 2:24-25 & 5:22-29, Matthew 16:27, Romans 2:16 and many others)
I’d like to suggest an additional level. The writer says the word is living and active. On this level, I suggest he states the intended situation—the word is intended to be alive, ought to be alive. How?
Perhaps it has happened to you. You hear a speaker or read something that makes a passage of scripture come alive. You see it in a whole new way, you can picture in your mind what it was like when it was being lived. It isn’t any longer just words on a page; you can visualize the people involved, you can hear and smell and feel it. It can happen all on your own, you read a passage and this time for whatever reason it comes alive. I’ve found this happens most often when I read a passage from a Bible version other than the one I usually use. A fresh phrasing can revitalize what I had been only reading over.
Is it possible to intentionally cause a passage to come alive, rather than it happening unexpectedly? I think so. We can determine, before we start reading, that we are going to read with a sense of expectancy. How did it feel to be there? Was it joyful, terrifying, calming, exciting? It’s easiest to do this with the narrative bits, the accounts of what real people were experiencing at the time. But it’s also possible with the other bits—a prophet seeing a vision, an apostle sitting down to write an admonishing letter, a poet putting into words the wonder, the agony, the guilt, the confidence, the longing—and all the other feelings we experience. In our own mind, the word of God can be alive, and when it is, it’s active, it penetrates to our heart.
I think this is what Peter was talking about when he wrote:
You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. (1 Peter 1:23)
When the word of God, the gospel, is alive in our minds, it changes us—and not in a small way! It causes us to be born again. Have you thought of what that phrase means? What a radical change it expresses? We aren’t born again, unless the word is alive for us. And when it is, it becomes a living force within us. Besides being living, Peter says, it’s abiding. Living, dwelling, inside us. The word of God, alive because it’s living in us.
The Bible is the living word of God. Jesus Christ is the living word of God. And it is His intention that you and I become His living word too.
Love, Paul