God Is A Talker
This post is the second in a series on the Word of God. The first can be found here.
I said last time that "the Word of God" can be defined simply as "that which God says," or more generally, "God's self-expression." In order to understand what it means for God to express Himself, we need to know what and who God is. Let's think about that.
God is a person- actually, God is the Person. God is revealed throughout Scripture as having all the attributes we normally associate with persons. He has a will: what he does, he chooses to do. He is attracted by some things and repulsed by others. He hates falsehood and rejoices in truth. He loves what is right and is disgusted by what is wrong. He gets happy and sad, angry and content. Even His declaration that My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither My ways your ways (Isaiah 55:8), affirms that God has "thoughts" and "ways" like people do, even if they are very different from human thoughts and ways.
There are differences, of course. The Christian tradition, following Scripture, affirms that God is unchanging, and denies that God has "body, parts, or passions" (Article of Religion I). God is perfect, in the literal sense of "complete": nothing can be added to or taken away from God. He is all-powerful: nothing is too hard for Him. But basically, the God of Scripture acts the way we would expect any Person to act: he has a will, thoughts, feelings, opinions, desires, and so on.
Another attribute God shares with other persons is that God likes to talk. A lot. Like a lot a lot. In my family, we call someone whose mouth is open more often than it's shut "a talker." "I tried to leave the meeting, but man, that Joe is such a talker!" Our Husky puppy is the biggest talker I've ever seen (which by the way is really unusual for the breed): barks at anyone who goes within 20 feet of him, and howls (as he gets older, he's developing a really beautiful, chesty, lonesome kind of howl) at every car alarm or police siren that goes by.
God is definitely a talker. I've been reading through Leviticus over the past couple of weeks, and my gosh, the Dude just won't shut up! He just talks and talks and talks, Do this, don't do that, I am this, I am not that, et cetera. To be honest, I get pretty bored of it after a while. But ignoring my own fleshly weakness, the fact that God is a talker highlights another important attribute He shares with other persons: He is naturally self-expressive. Dennis Kinlaw writes (Let's Talk About Jesus, Chapter 3, p. 81):
Persons never come alone. The concept of the person as the autonomous individual whose identity is found in the self is an Enlightenment notion that finds no support in reality or in biblical thoughts....We moderns have an imperfect understanding of what it means to be a person. We do not understand that persons find themselves in their relationships; therefore, we do not understand what it means to be ourselves.
People are made for relationships. Insofar as a person exists, he wants to give that existence to others. In other words, he wants to express himself. Otherwise, why am I writing this? None of this is new information. I'm just rehashing stuff that's been talked about for the past four thousand years. But I've been reading about it, and thinking about it, and making it part of me, and it's really exciting, and I want to tell everyone how exciting it's been to learn about it. And I hope that someone will learn from it just like I've been learning. Is that selfish or wrong of me? I don't know, but this isn't a post on the spirituality of blogging (which, however, I would love to write someday). But the fact is, it's what I do. I also have a Twitter account, and a Facebook. I have friends I meet for lunch and dinner to talk to. I, as a person, have a built-in desire to express myself. And it seems from the account of Scripture that God has the same desire.
God is a person like other persons: most notably for our discussion, He has a desire to express Himself. But He is not exactly like other persons. Next time, we'll look at how He differs from other persons, and what that has to do with His Word.
I said last time that "the Word of God" can be defined simply as "that which God says," or more generally, "God's self-expression." In order to understand what it means for God to express Himself, we need to know what and who God is. Let's think about that.
God is a person- actually, God is the Person. God is revealed throughout Scripture as having all the attributes we normally associate with persons. He has a will: what he does, he chooses to do. He is attracted by some things and repulsed by others. He hates falsehood and rejoices in truth. He loves what is right and is disgusted by what is wrong. He gets happy and sad, angry and content. Even His declaration that My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither My ways your ways (Isaiah 55:8), affirms that God has "thoughts" and "ways" like people do, even if they are very different from human thoughts and ways.
There are differences, of course. The Christian tradition, following Scripture, affirms that God is unchanging, and denies that God has "body, parts, or passions" (Article of Religion I). God is perfect, in the literal sense of "complete": nothing can be added to or taken away from God. He is all-powerful: nothing is too hard for Him. But basically, the God of Scripture acts the way we would expect any Person to act: he has a will, thoughts, feelings, opinions, desires, and so on.
Another attribute God shares with other persons is that God likes to talk. A lot. Like a lot a lot. In my family, we call someone whose mouth is open more often than it's shut "a talker." "I tried to leave the meeting, but man, that Joe is such a talker!" Our Husky puppy is the biggest talker I've ever seen (which by the way is really unusual for the breed): barks at anyone who goes within 20 feet of him, and howls (as he gets older, he's developing a really beautiful, chesty, lonesome kind of howl) at every car alarm or police siren that goes by.
God is definitely a talker. I've been reading through Leviticus over the past couple of weeks, and my gosh, the Dude just won't shut up! He just talks and talks and talks, Do this, don't do that, I am this, I am not that, et cetera. To be honest, I get pretty bored of it after a while. But ignoring my own fleshly weakness, the fact that God is a talker highlights another important attribute He shares with other persons: He is naturally self-expressive. Dennis Kinlaw writes (Let's Talk About Jesus, Chapter 3, p. 81):
Persons never come alone. The concept of the person as the autonomous individual whose identity is found in the self is an Enlightenment notion that finds no support in reality or in biblical thoughts....We moderns have an imperfect understanding of what it means to be a person. We do not understand that persons find themselves in their relationships; therefore, we do not understand what it means to be ourselves.
People are made for relationships. Insofar as a person exists, he wants to give that existence to others. In other words, he wants to express himself. Otherwise, why am I writing this? None of this is new information. I'm just rehashing stuff that's been talked about for the past four thousand years. But I've been reading about it, and thinking about it, and making it part of me, and it's really exciting, and I want to tell everyone how exciting it's been to learn about it. And I hope that someone will learn from it just like I've been learning. Is that selfish or wrong of me? I don't know, but this isn't a post on the spirituality of blogging (which, however, I would love to write someday). But the fact is, it's what I do. I also have a Twitter account, and a Facebook. I have friends I meet for lunch and dinner to talk to. I, as a person, have a built-in desire to express myself. And it seems from the account of Scripture that God has the same desire.
God is a person like other persons: most notably for our discussion, He has a desire to express Himself. But He is not exactly like other persons. Next time, we'll look at how He differs from other persons, and what that has to do with His Word.