From language to life …

Have you ever given thought to the brilliant idea of God to reveal Himself to us in a masterpiece of a book (the Bible)?

Abraham Herschel has thought about it, and here’s what he penned in “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”:

“Some people may wonder: why was the light of God given in the form of language? How is it conceivable that the divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? This question betrays the sin of our age: to treat lightly the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit. What else in the world is as capable of bringing man and man together over the distances in space and in time?

“Of all things on earth, words alone never die. They have so little matter and so much meaning … God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power, and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hyphens between heaven and earth. What other medium could have been employed to convey the divine? Pictures enameled on the moon? Statues hewn out of the Rockies?”

As Christians, we study the Word of God in part to learn to speak a new language, and for that language to become more than words but the new reality of our lives. Just as it is essential for a baby born into the world to learn how to speak so through language he can connect with others in the world around him, so, too, we as reborn followers of Jesus need to learn to speak the language of the kingdom we have been reborn into.

Neil Olcott once told a story that highlights the importance of understanding, speaking, and acting from the language of where we are:

A new missionary recruit went to Venezuela for the first time. He was struggling with the language and didn’t understand a whole lot of what was going on. Intending to visit one of the local churches, he got lost, but he eventually got back on track and found the place. Having arrived late, the church was already packed. The only pew left was the one on the front row.

So as not to make a fool of himself, he decided to pick someone out of the crowd to imitate. He chose to follow the man sitting next to him on the front pew. As they sang, the man clapped his hands, so the missionary recruit clapped too. When the man stood up to pray, the missionary recruit stood up too. When the man sat down, he sat down.

When the man held the cup and bread for the Lord’s Supper, he held the cup and bread. During the preaching, the recruit didn’t understand a thing. He just sat there and tried to look just like that man in the front pew. Then he perceived that the preacher was giving announcements. People clapped, so he looked to see if the man was clapping. He was, and so the recruit clapped too.

Then the preacher said some words that he didn’t understand and he saw the man next to him stand up. So he stood up too. Suddenly a hush fell over the entire congregation. A few people gasped. He looked around and saw that nobody else was standing. So he sat down.

After the service ended, the preacher stood at the door shaking the hands of those who were leaving. When the missionary recruit stretched out his hand to greet the preacher, the preacher said, in English, “I take it you don’t speak Spanish.”

The missionary recruit replied, “No, I don’t. It’s that obvious?”

“Well, yes,” said the preacher. “I announced that the Acosta family had a newborn baby boy, and would the proud father please stand up.”

Language is more than words, they reveal who we are because they come from the treasury of our hearts:

“A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart,” Luke 6:45.

So, being born again into the kingdom of God, we’ve a new language to learn, both to speak and to live, and there are some key components to that:

Learning to speak truth. Jesus said of Himself, “… I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), so to be a follower of Jesus we, also, must speak and live the truth that is of Christ.

The Apostle Paul exhorts us to truth when he wrote, “Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church,” Ephesians 4:15.

Learning to speak in love. As quoted above, Paul exhorts us not only to speak truth, but to do so in love. He would highlight the overwhelming value of love flavoring the language of our words and our lives on many occasions, one of the best known being in 1 Corinthians 13, which begins with this: “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

The Apostle Peter would emphasize how love must be the language of our lives: “You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart,” 1 Peter 1:22.

Learning to speak in faith. The average person living in the 21st century lives a fear-based life. But a follower of Jesus Christ lives an extraordinary life because it’s a life of faith rather than fear:

“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. Abel’s offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts. Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith. It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying —’he disappeared, because God took him.’ For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him,” Hebrews 11:1-6.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we live by believing and not by seeing,” so learning to speak, and live, in faith is a key component to the language and life of Jesus’ disciples.

Learning to speak graciously. This key component to the language and lives of Jesus followers seems to be lost on many who profess to be Christians. Just a cursory scroll through social media sites reveals many who profess to be disciples of Jesus, but whose language (both in words and behavior) is anything but gracious.

But here’s the thing, scripture makes it abundantly clear that God is gracious. For example:

“The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion,” Psalm 116:5.

As His children, we’re to reflect the gracious character of God, in both our language and our lives:

“Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone,” Colossians 4:6.

“Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them,” Ephesians 4:29.

“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,” Colossians 3:12.

“Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you,” Ephesians 4:32.

Learning the language and life of a holy person.
“Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord,” Hebrews 12:14.

“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God,” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

“So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, ‘You must be holy because I am holy,'” 1 Peter 1:13-16.

Learning to speak from a new standard, that of righteousness. The King we serve is righteous, and following in His footsteps means to speak and live a righteous life:

“Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God,” 1 John 3:7-10.

Okay, so there are important things we, as Christians, need to learn to speak and live the language of the kingdom of God But just as a newborn baby isn’t born with perfectly developed and impeccable language skills, so, too, the child of God has to develop his new language, both spoken and lived.

That process is called discipleship, and Stuart Strachan, Jr., tells a story of language development:

Following Jesus is like learning a language through immersion.

The third way people learn is by immersion. This is, of course, when someone is put into an environment and they learn things simply by picking them up through their observations, what they see, hear, and so on.

Immersion, as many of us know with languages, is one of the fastest ways to learn. Watching a toddler learn to talk is perhaps one of the most enjoyable, often amusing ways to watch someone learn through immersion.

A toddler starts with sheer gibberish, right? I mean when words start coming out of their mouth you’re thrilled as a parent, but you have no idea what they are saying … and then after some time, actual words start to emerge … but it’s still a process right, sometimes the words make sense, and other times they make sense to just the toddler speaking them.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

Learning to speak is worth doing, even if toddlers do it badly at first.

Sometimes you don’t even know if their words have any meaning, or whether the toddler is just working their vocal chords. Just in this past year our son Jack has been in the immersion process of learning English.

One of the words he would say all the time was “Mino.” We really liked the word, it was cute, and he sounded cute saying it. But of course we thought it was just gibberish, until one day when Colleen realized a “mino” was a tomato.

And I’ll never forget when he started saying tomato, okay, let’s be honest, “mato,” because for Jack any word with more than two syllables gets cut off at the beginning.

So avocado is “cado,” motorcycle is “cycle,” etc. And so Jack, after day in and day out of hearing his parents, you all, our family and friends, continues to develop his language skills. What started as gibberish has gradually began to sound like modern English.

Just in the last few months Jack has started to string sentences together, even if he’s not quite sure what he is saying. We’ll say “good night Jack” and he’ll say “good night Jack” or I love you Jack and he’ll say I love you Jack.

So he’s getting it, but it’s a process and that’s how learning through immersion works. And the same goes for discipleship.

How is your discipleship experience of learning to speak and live the language of the kingdom of God coming along?

Scotty