The Most Important functional Word in Every Language?

[HKHaugan]

WORD!

That’s right, Word. Word is the basic tool of communication. It carries everything we are, our identity, our meaning, our purpose and actually reflects the image of God in us. Please bear with me as I make my plea for the importance of this word.

The spoken word is more than a sound wave that hits our ear. If you really think about it every word has a cause in its use. It’s conveying something intentional. The one using a word is sending a message from the inner self. As it crosses the space between the sender and receiver it’s what happens after it travels that inflicts a response. And that response is a mentally processed, heart evaluated, spirit acting reality of what is inside the responder.

Everything in our being is saying something. Even if there is not a verbal response we say ‘his silence said it all’ or ‘I could tell by his body language.’ We think in words and even when we don’t seem to have enough vocabulary and are ‘lost for words’ we still try to think of a way to communicate what is inside of us.

Words can be hurtful, loving, inciting, dramatic, passionate, insulting, encouraging and emotional. We might even say that ‘a man of few words’ may actually be saying more. The fact is that words are not only important they are vital, alive and carry intense force.

I am not trying to be dramatic or even poetic here. What got me on this track was John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” Different from the other Gospels John begins his by quoting the first four words of Genesis. He apparently wants to impress upon the reader that the heart of being human is being an image of God the Communicator. He is the One who initiated communication, the One who desires to communicate, the One who by nature is interpersonal. We are images of the Communicator.

Think about Jesus being the Word of God. It wasn’t just the words He was saying, it was Him. What he said He was and what He said He says now and forever. This is why Jesus says in John 14 that He is the way, the truth and the life. What Jesus was saying here is that His way of being a person, His way of thinking, His way of acting is speaking, is the language of the Spirit of God. That language can be conveyed in human words to plant the deeper spiritual language of character, of behavior, that marks us as more than flesh and blood beings. There is a way of being a person ‘that speaks volumes.’ He is that Word Person, that way of being a person that is the model for all persons.

What a personal relationship with Him guarantees is that we can become like Him, not the same, but like Him. When we say ‘like Him’ I am referring to the creative way he engages people, gets them to think about who and what they really are, challenges them to be more than what their culture leads them to be and simply just to be caring, honest and open with everyone. I am also referring to the confidence with which He stood in the face of His enemies and His final death on the Cross. He was a picture of faith, of belief and of trust in His Father. He was a person who never flinched, who took opposition as an opportunity and gave His all at every moment.

Now everything Jesus thought was and is the truth. The ideas, the principles about life and behavior and attitude carry the power of a living mind, the mind of God. When Jesus said He was the truth it was all about the content of His thinking. His conceptual approach gave us the structure to organize our minds to be like His mind, not the same, but like. ‘Like’ means He wants us to experience what it is ‘like’ to be creative ‘like’ Him, to be personal ‘like’ Him, in our relationships and with the physical resources we have been given. The word ‘like’ is that we can be a ‘word’ ‘like’ Him from the moment we accept Him as our personal Lord because everyone in Christ is a new creation.

We were created to experience His uniqueness. Our name is our ‘word.’ If I give you my ‘word’ I am giving you myself. Each of us is given the gift of uniqueness. As we have said before there is no one who has been or ever will be the same as us. We are historically unique and in God eternally unique. So truth if more than just words it is a living mind at work, the mind of God as seen in Jesus.

The way of Jesus, the truth of Jesus brings us to the life of Jesus. His life is the life of the Holy Spirit. Jesus received, perceived and conceived the work of God and acted every bit of that in faith. Faith was the life He lived in the Spirit. John goes to great lengths in Chapters 14-16 to explain and demonstrate the power of the Holy Spirit as the life in Him and the eternal life He grants through faith in Him. The prompting, guiding, challenging, loving, thinking movement of God in the hearts of believers is available to everyone who is willing to let Jesus be the Lord of their lives. The Holy Spirit is the life of God. The life of God for us comes through belief, trust and faith experienced as we embrace Jesus and let Him embrace us. Being an image of God can only finds its fulfillment in that embrace and ultimately, deep within, that is our personal desire.

All of this, the way the truth and the life of Jesus holds the meaning and significance of being “the Word made flesh.” Everything about Jesus spoke and continues to speak. From Genesis through Revelation He is the living reality appearing throughout.

His Word, Holy Scripture, is not just a verbal assembly of ethics and stories with moral lessons. They are far more. They are the seeds planted in the fields of our mind to be watered by trust within the heart and then by faith to bear fruit in and through our spirit. It is through His Spirit that the words come alive in us.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn.1:14).”