The Doctrine of the Word of God

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Titles

Part One: Orientation

1. The Personal Word Model
2. Lordship and the Word

Part Two: God’s Word in Modern Theology

3. Modern Views of Revelation
4. Revelation and Reason
5. Revelation and History
6. Revelation and Human Subjectivity
7. Revelation and God Himself

Part Three: The Nature of God’s Word

8. What is the Word of God?
9. God’s Word as His Controlling Power
10. God’s Word as His Meaningful Authority
11. God’s Word as His Personal Presence

Part Four: The Media of God’s Word

12. The Media of God’s Word
13. God’s Revelation Through Events
14. God’s Revelation Through Words: the Divine Voice
15. God’s Revelation Through Words: Prophets and Apostles
16. The Permanence of God’s Written Word
17. God’s Written Words in the Old Testament
18. Respect for God’s Written Words in the Old Testament
19. Jesus’ View of the Old Testament
20. The Apostles’ View of the Old Testament
21. The New Testament as God’s Written Words
22. The Canon of Scripture
23. The Inspiration of Scripture
24. The Content of Scripture
25. Scripture’s Authority, its Content and its Purpose
26. The Inerrancy of Scripture
27. The Phenomena of Scripture
28. Bible Problems
29. The Clarity of Scripture
30. The Necessity of Scripture
31. The Comprehensiveness of Scripture
32. The Sufficiency of Scripture
33. The Transmission of Scripture
34. Translations and Editions of Scripture
35. Teaching and Preaching
36. The Sacraments
37. Theology
38. Confessions, Creeds, Traditions
39. The Human Reception of Scripture
40. The Interpretation of Scripture
41. Assurance
42. Person-revelation: The Divine Witness
43. Human Beings as Revelation
44. Writing on the Heart
45 Summary and Organizational Reflections
46. Epilogue

9. God’s Word as His Controlling Power

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, nor 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] into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom. 4:17).

So, Scripture often extols the power of God’s word. Summarizing Gen. 1, Ps. 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 fast." Compare Ps. 148:5, John 1:3, 10, Heb. 1:2, 11:3, 2 Pet. 3:5-7.

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 Ps. 29 and to the words and commands of God in Ps. 147:15-18 and 148:7-8. God’s word governs providence as well as creation. Compare Gen. 1:9, 11, 22, 8:21-22, Job 37:12, Ps. 18:15, 33:11, 119:89-91, Matt. 8:27, Heb. 1:3, II Pet. 3.

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 (Ps. 46:6, Isa. 30:30-31, 66:6, Hos. 6:5, Joel 2:11, Amos 1:2). In 2 Pet. 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 (Ps. 18:7-8, 13-14, Job 41:19-21, Jer. 5:14, 20:9, 23:29). 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 Eph. 6:17.

But God’s word is also powerful to save, powerful in grace. In Gen. 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 Gen. 18:14: "nothing shall be impossible with God," literally, "no word (rhema) 1 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. (verse 8)

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 (Rom. 1:16, 1 Thess. 1:5, 2:13). 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, John 1:1), the gospel that brings death 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, judgments to the disobedient (Deut. 27-28). So the commandments of God have a double edge; they can be blessing (Ex. 20:12) or curse (verse 7). Obedience to God’s commands is the path of life (Deut 8:3, Lev. 18:5, Ps. 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 (Matt. 13:14-15, Mark 4:11-12, Luke 8: 10, John 12:37-40, Acts 28:26-28, Rom. 11 :8; compare John 15:22).

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. 3

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 Rom. 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 Gen.18:14 and Isa. 55:11. 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 Isa. 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 (II Chron. 6:15, compare Ezek.1:3, 3:22).

Notes:

1. In Greek, logos is a broader term than rhema, though both can be translated "word,. Logos can refer to an individual saying, as does rhema, but logos can also refer to a discourse, rationale, rational account, principle of rationality, etc.

2. Compare also Jer. 32:17, 27.

3. If we add God’s eternal plan to this list, we have a good summary of all the works of God reported in Scripture. God’s eternal plan is also an exercise of his word. It is the agreement between Father, Son, and Spirit, to carry out their program for creation, fall, and redemption. See Ps. 2:7-9, 110, Matt. 11:25-27, John 4:34, 5:19-30, 6:38, 17:1-26.