Sounding Out God’s Words
Learning to Read the Language of Transformation
Since God is writing his letters of recommendation on the hearts of those who are now following Jesus, to be known and read by all, I have suggested that we learn to read this living language, not in words on paper but in real life changes that he graciously gives us.
We looked already at the ABCs of the language of changed lives. They are attitudes and assumptions toward life. I called them “pre-cognitive” because they are not defined in the minds of non-readers. But they are obviously there.
We looked at “humility,” “fear of God,” “repentance,” “faith,” “first love,” “freedom,” and “focus on eternal things.”
Sounding out words gives us understandable concepts
Any sense of vagueness or fogginess goes away when we have verbal symbols that can be clearly defined. Because God has revealed himself in many ways, including in words, we don’t have to take our chances by latching onto any “god” who happens along. We can truly know God, though not fully.
God’s words take us into the phase of actual theology. God’s people have wrestled with the explanations and definitions of God’s words for thousands of years. Some of our predecessors did theology better than some others. We have enough variety of opinions, as well as records of debates and disagreements, to be able to process lots of information.
We work on improving our understanding and correcting our “not-quite-right” ideas. As finite thinkers, we will never master infinity. We will always have more to learn. But we have started to read.
Some of the first words we learn to grasp are words about God’s character. Words about how he wants us to grow up into him.
Righteousness
We maybe should not start with a long word (?) But it is not abstract. This word means we have been wrong. God through the gospel is making us right again, to be right as he is right.
The Bible word for righteousness refers to a measuring stick or plumb-line that can be used to determine if something else is on the level and accurate. The key discovery about this word is that God does not merely find that people don’t measure up—and then discard us. Righteousness is his gift to those who are joined to Christ by faith.
Righteousness includes other teachings about justice and mercy, about faithfulness and treachery, about truth and falsehood, about blessing and cursing. Romans 1:16-17 tells us that in the gospel God reveals his righteousness that can be received by all who trust him. What a relief!
Knowledge of Good and Evil
Remember that tree in the Garden of Eden? God said eating it would result in death. It was not that he didn’t want us to know good from evil. Only, he wanted us to learn the distinctions from him. Adam and Eve decided to define good and evil on their own, independently from God’s own knowledge. Human knowledge (spiritually, morally, relationally, and righteously) has been messed up ever since. Our abilities in thinking were also corrupted by sin. It is part of our inheritance as sons and daughters of Adam.
Education does not fix it. Religion does not fix it. Getting older does not fix it. Threats of punishment do not fix it. Good intentions and resolutions do not fix it.
The true fix can be read in God’s people: out of humility, fear of God, repentance, and focus on eternal things, we allow God to renew our minds through the gospel. God replaces our stony heart with a heart of flesh. He writes his laws on our hearts and gives us the Holy Spirit to empower our minds from the inside, so that we can know, trust, and obey God.
Living by the Spirit, not the Flesh
What God wants to change in us is not merely our behavior. He wants to focus on who we can become. The future that God desires for us becomes inevitable because of his promises. Even though the benefits of faith seem impossible because of our weaknesses, he intends to transform us by changing who we are.
Humans have a tendency to trust our own faculties and strengths. This comes from attitudes like pride, fear of man, stubbornness, and self-centeredness (the exact opposites of God’s ABCs). We make up smart quips like, “The difficult we will do immediately. The impossible might take longer.”
Underline this: the sooner we learn that it is impossible to please God through the flesh, the sooner we can get on with actual spiritual growth. Jesus said in Matthew 26:41, “The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Perfecting our Conscience
God designed us to have a conscience as an inner compass to guide us in making righteous decisions. But just as the thinking, emoting, imagining, and communicating parts of our minds was damaged by sin, so was the deciding part. Our continuing sin further damages our consciences by reversing the values we hold, by learning to ignore the prompting of our conscience.
In Hebrews 9 and 10, we learn that our consciences have been both evil and impure. They are also juvenile. The compass doesn’t still point to true north. Christ’s sacrifice provides the cleansing, purifying, and perfecting of our consciences. This frees us from “dead works.”
Transformation is a maturation process over the rest of our lives. We need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in realigning our consciences with God’s knowledge of good and evil.
It is easy to see how dramatic the changes will be when God has written these words on our hearts. You can read them in the lives of your spiritual friends and see them in the characters of the good stories you read.
My early school literacy teaching was reading about Dick and Jane. (I am that old.) We spent days going over, “Run, Dick, run” and “See Spot run.”
Now, as I am learning to read God’s living letters, reading is more fun. I can still watch Dick and Jane run. But I can also see them (and Gary and Joey, Phil and Lisa, Mark and Julie, Tim and Linda, and others) mature into Christlikeness by the renewing of their minds. They are empowered by God on the inside to reflect the very image of God.
Next
I want to return to this topic of sounding out God’s words in my next article. I can’t cover all the delicious words that are legible within the circles of our fellowships. Besides, I can’t wait to get to the sentences of this spiritual language; that is where we understand our identity.