Kevin DeYoung on why 'words' are rightly and properly at the heart of our worship and walk...
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2009/11/04/why-so-many-words-in-worship/
In a similar & overlapping vein here are the 10 reasons we cite in the GV Preaching Course for the centrality of 'Word Ministry'...
1. God primarily reveals Himself / makes Himself known through His Word (i.e. His words communicated).
Thus even where God reveals Himself in ‘act’ we nevertheless only understand those acts through ‘word’ witnesses (e.g. our knowledge of Jesus’ life is through the written word accounts of the apostolic witness).
(Hb 1:1-2; Jn 20:31; ‘The Word of the Lord came to…’, ‘God spoke to….’ etc.)
2. God acts/works through words.
e.g. Genesis 1 is prototypical here: God speaks and brings creation from nothing, light from darkness, life from deadness, order from chaos etc.
(Ezk 37:1-10; Acts 6:7, 12:24, 13:49, 19:20; Hb 1:3, 4:12; 1 Pet 3:5,7)
3. God is distinct from his Word in His being (i.e. ontologically) but not in how He is savingly known (i.e. epistemologically).
That is, a saving knowledge of God is not divisible from knowing His Word.
(Gen 15:1,4; 1 Sam 3:21; Jn 3:34, 4:41, 6:68; Acts 20:32)
4. God inspired the written Word of Scripture.
Thus what the Bible says – God says.
(2 Tim 3:16; Hb 3:7; 2 Pt 1:21)
5. God’s Word is the means through which God brings people to salvation (applied by the Holy Spirit).
(Jam 1:18; 1 Pt 1:23, Mk 4, Jn 5:24; Jn 6:68; Eph 1:13)
6. God’s Word is the means of sustaining new life and transforming His people (applied by the Holy Spirit).
(Jn 17:6,17; 1 Cor 15:2; Php 2:15-16; Col 5:16, Titus 2:1-5; Jam 1:21-23; 1 Jn 2:5; Rev 1:2-3.)
7. God’s relationship with His people is by covenant - that is, it is essentially promissory and thus established in words.
(Gen 12:1-3;Titus 1:1-3; Ps 119:74, 130:5)
8. God’s authority is exercised through His Word.
(‘Thus says the Lord’, Ex 20:1ff; Dt 18:19; Josh 23:6; Mt 7:26; Mk 8:38)
9. The Gospel is a message to be communicated – a message that must be heard (read) and understood to be effective.
(Romans 10:14,17; Col 1:5-6; 1 Th 2:13; 2 Cor 2:13)
10. Teaching the Word is the key task of God’s servants.
(Acts 6:2, 20:17-32; 2 Tim 2:15, 4:1-5; Hb 13:7)
3 comments:
Andy
Your focus on word based ministry is commendable and I thought the justification based on the preaching course was excellent.
I would be very interested in hearing your full understanding of point three as this is something I have often pondered [and often failed to resolve].
3. God is distinct from his Word in His being (i.e. ontologically) but not in how He is savingly known (i.e. epistemologically).
If it is not God as He is in His Being that we know savingly in His word then we have come to know something less than God. The theology of being as developed by Aquinas seems to create an unknowable God. Analogical arguments fail to bridge this gap. Does scripture teach that God cannot be truly known [as He is in Himself] or God cannot be fully known?
Does the incarnation bridge this gap so that we come to know God as He is in His ‘logos’ – the word incarnate? Does scripture take us beyond itself to an encounter with God as He is in Christ? Is it this encounter with Christ [which is grounded in scripture] that saves?
An unknowable God remains an unknown God if we do not know Him ontologically. Should we inscribe ‘to an unknowable God’ on the front of our Bibles?
I am not trying to be controversial or critical – I ask this as a genuine question.
Thanks Donald
Good points - I suppose my distinction between God Himself (ontology) and how we can know about God (our epistemology) was in part to preempt the accusation, often levelled at evangelicals, of being essentially 'Bible Worshippers' or Biblists. Thus I wanted to recognise that knowing God's words were not the same as knowing God Himself (e.g. the difference between reading a book of Churchill quotes and actually knowing him personally). So I was anxious to avoid that confusion (as the Pharisees didn't - Jn 5:39). But to stress that God's Word cannot be bypassed in knowing him - thus any mystical notions of knowing God savingly in the absence of knowledge (His Word) are totally unbliblical.
So it only by understanding and believing in God's Word that we enter into a relationship with Christ. God gives the Spirit (of relationship, inner witness, love etc) to those who believe - in what? - in God's Word. All that I'm sure we agree.
On the point of whether God's Word gives us full knowledge of God - my view would be 'no' - but it gives us a full saving knowledge of God, i.e. Scripture gives us sufficient knowledge to enter into a saving relationship with Him. That said, I think it is Rahner's maxim, that 'the immanent must be consistent with the ecomomic'(Rahner uses immanent in the sense of 'transcendent'!?). Thus what we don't know about God will never contradict what we do know about him - so his revealed goodness could never be contradicted by some unrevealed evil.
So God is knowable in every way that matters to us - and where He is not knowable to us - that knowledge would never conflict with what we do know aboout him.
Sorry if I missed your point on this - but hope that might answer some of the q's you raise.
It's a good question? How can we have true knowledge of God if it is not full knowledge? Are there aspects of God's personality that we do not know and if so then surely we do not know him 'truly'?
I think I would wish to answer that in one sense we not only know him truly but fully. However, by 'fully' I mean that all that is essential to who God is, is revealed in Christ. He that has seen the Son has seen the Father.
Yet I would add that to know fully in the above sense is not to know exhaustively. I know that God is wise but I have not plumbed the depth of that wisdom. At best I have scraped the surface. Similarly, I know God is creative but the present creation only gives me an inkling as to how creative he really is. Only an eternal new creation will gradually unfold to my (still limited faculties) more and more of what God's wisdom and power is like. However, even then, as these are revealed in exhaustless different ways none will surpass or more accurately reveal the blend of that wisdom and power and we may add holiness, grace, love... than does the redemption of the cross.
Thus we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Yet, we see now but through a glass darkly... then face to face.
The paradox is expressed in our hymnody:
'True image of the infinite, whose essence is concealed'
The profundity of it all is furthered when we recognise that biblical knowledge is experiential; it is knowldege of relationship. Such is our sin that what we 'know'(theoretically) we don't really 'know'experientially.
We should remember too that when we think we 'know' we are probably revealing we don't really know, especially if there is a sense of superiority in our knowledge. True knowledge is love filled.
1Co 8:1 Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." This "knowledge" puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
and
1Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
I find this latter sense of knowing God, and the only true biblical sense, especially difficult. In its light I know God only very little.
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