Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
(1 Thessalonians 2:9-13)
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I want us to hear the last few words of that passage again:
“And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”
OK. So what is this “word?” Let's be honest. In church, within the Christian faith, we use the phrase “the word of God” repeatedly, and we assume that we know what it means. It's the Bible, of course. Yes. In our context, in 2014, based on – well – about 1700 years of tradition, it's the Bible. Of course, we'd then have to get into a debate about what the Bible is. The three great divisions of Christianity (Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy) don't actually agree on what's in the Bible. We agree on the basis 66 books that Protestants accept, but the other two groups have books that we don't accept. So, even today, and even within the Christian family, to say that the word of God is the Bible leads to differences of opinion. For Paul, way back in the 1st century, it was more complicated still. What was the word of God for him? It wasn't the Bible, because the Bible didn't exist. It wasn't the Jewish Scriptures, because that's not what he's talking about in this passage. It was some other word. We have to figure it out from his perspective in order to really understand what he's saying. For Paul, the word wasn't so much about “the words” that were spoken. It's not about the content of what's said, it's about the nature of what's said and it's about the impact of what's said.
What Paul seems to be talking about is the “word” as it was originally meant to be. When I was in theological college, Gerald Sheppard, who was my Old Testament professor, suggested something that to some Protestants might be considered heresy. He said that in his view one of the things that has most weakened the church was the advent of pew Bibles, because it meant that all too often the people in the pews stopped truly hearing the word, and satisfied themselves with just reading along. His view was that the power of the word was in hearing it. It was hearing the word that had the real power to transform people. And Paul seemed to say the same thing. It was a powerful word, this “word of God” that Paul spoke of, and its impact came from people who heard it from Paul. The point wasn't that Paul spoke the word of God, the point was that the word of God was spoken, that it was heard, and that it changed the lives of those who heard it. It was itself a living word. As much as we think of the Bible as the word of God, the word of God has to be more than simply the words on a page. If we reduce the word of God to words on a page we empty it of its power. In fact, going back to what I said a couple of weeks ago, if we reduce the word of God to words on a page what we've done really is create an idol. The Bible has to push us beyond the Bible. The Bible has to draw us toward God, because the Bible isn't God. The Bible has to draw us toward Jesus, because Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God and of God's nature.
I suspect this is what Paul was getting at when he referred to the “word of God.” In a way, he was anticipating what John would write decades later, that “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God ... and the word became flesh.” When Paul says that the Thessalonians (and so many others over the course of his ministry) heard the word of God from him, he means that he had been given the privilege of introducing people to Jesus, who had the ability to change their lives. He did that by speaking, of course. So the word of God is literally a word – it's spoken, it's heard – but the word of God goes beyond the word that's spoken. The word of God is, in a literal sense, Jesus himself. What the Thessalonians actually did when they “received the word of God” was that they chose to believe in Jesus and to pattern their lives after him. They were introduced to Jesus by Paul; they came to know Jesus through Paul; they were changed by Jesus through hearing Paul. Matthew Henry wrote that “by its wonderful effects [God's Word] evidences itself to be the word of God.” Or, as Paul wrote, the word of God “encourages us, comforts us and urges us to live lives worthy of God.”
Paul is an interesting one to think about as we reflect on what, exactly, the word of God is and on what, exactly, it does. We now call Paul's letters the “word of God,” because we've put them in the Bible. Paul would never have been that bold. To him, the “word of God” was what he said to the churches he visited, not what he wrote to them. And, what he said to them was always about Jesus. It's why so many of his letters, I suspect, touch on what we might call moral issues, or behavioural issues. In his preaching, when he was face to face, Paul didn't consider these things important. All that mattered was Jesus, and so later, as time went by, some of the people he had introduced to Jesus started to wonder about their behaviour; they started concerning themselves with what was and what wasn't sin; with what acts were or weren't sinful; with what lifestyles God did or didn't approve of. And Paul tried to offer guidance, but I'm quite sure that Paul never believed that he was writing the “word of God.” He was writing his own letters to Christian communities that he had shared Jesus with – Jesus, who was the word of God, and who had the power to transform lives. That's what makes the word of God the word of God. It has the power to transform lives.
Two things happened when Paul preached to the Thessalonians: Paul was at work proclaiming the word to them, but it was God who was at work in them through what they were hearing. The truly proclaimed word of God witnesses to the nature and activity of God, revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and it encourages others to follow the path that he lays out before them. And how do we know if the 'word' is at work within us? We know because we'll start to live more and more like Jesus. The word will show itself in our lives by works that are expressions of our faith: by our willingness to accept a labour of love as our calling and to touch the lives of others by doing so. Just as God's power is shown in life-giving ways that offer life, love and dignity to all, the word of God should show itself in us in both the desire and willingness to engage in those same life giving ways that offer life, love and dignity to all.
Paul understood that if there was no love, there was no word of God present. Still today, if there is no love, there is no word of God present, no matter how much the Bible gets read – because all too often people choose to use the Bible in hateful and venomous ways toward those they disagree with. It becomes a hammer to hit people over the head with rather than a magnet to attract people to God. That's why the word of God has to be more than the Bible – because the Bible can be used in very unholy and and unloving and ungodlike ways. But the word of God is always about love, and the word of God is Jesus. It's about sharing the good news about Jesus and his way; it's about introducing people to Jesus and his way; it's about encouraging people to follow Jesus and his way.
The word of God is a powerful, life-giving and life-changing word. I want to end today with some words from Matthew Henry: “The words of men are frail and perishing, like themselves, and sometimes false, foolish, and fickle: but God’s word is holy, wise, just, and faithful; and, like its author, lives and abides for ever. Let us accordingly receive and regard it.”
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