“…How are we supposed to help
rightly other Christians who are experiencing troubles and temptation if not
with God’s own Word? All our own words quickly fail. However, those who “like
the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what
is old” (Matt. 13:52) – who can speak out of the abundance of God’s Word the
wealth of instructions, admonitions, and comforting words from the Scriptures…We
will stop here. “From childhood you have known the sacred writings that are
able to instruct you for salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015
(Reader’s Edition), pages 36-37.
“We will stop here.”
Bonhoeffer isn’t finished with discussing the role of God’s Word in Life Together, but it is as if in his admonition
to: read the Word, know the Word, live the Word, speak the Word to one another;
that he feels he must stop when he could go on forever with exhortation after
exhortation – for he sees the healthy survival of the church contingent on the
church knowing the Word of God. He wants Christians to know the Law and
Prophets and Psalms and the Gospel and Epistles so that they may range from one
to the other to the other as in a great palace with interconnecting stairways
and hallways – bringing forth what is “new and what is old”.
Bonhoeffer writes, “All our
own words quickly fail.” I’m not sure that’s true today, so accustomed have we
become to our own words, our own viewpoints, our psychology, our self-focused therapeutic
ministry, our franchised way of thinking and practice. If one practice or line
of thought fails we develop another, then another, then another. We do not
cling to the Word expecting to encounter Jesus Christ, we do not run to the
Word as if it were a great shelter in a land of destruction, we do not drink
from the Word as if it is the one spring of pure water in which we find healing
and wholeness and reconciliation. We do not insist that all thinking and
practice find its foundation and trajectory and goal in the Word of God. We do
not see the bankruptcy and futility of our own words.
If we speak our own words to
others in need then it becomes our responsibility to produce results for the
words are ours and not God’s. However, if we speak the Word of God to others
then we can trust that God’s Word will accomplish that which God desires – and while
it may not accomplish what we desire, we can trust that God’s Word will not
return to God void (Isaiah 55:11). Is the work our work or God’s work?
There is an error in Christian
thinking today about God’s Word; we think that because people do not know the
Word that we should not speak the Word – whether to believer or unbeliever. We
think that because people do not view the Bible as God’s authority that we
should not speak it. This is an example of what occurs when we depart from the
Bible into the world of sociology and psychology and marketing. We have
convinced ourselves not to share the very thing which gives life and light, the
very thing which can break through the barriers of darkness and blindness and
ignorance, the very thing which can enliven a seared conscience and heal a
broken heart. We have bought into the lie of the Garden that God’s Word is irrelevant
– “Has God really said?”
We like this thinking because it
absolves us of knowing the Word; why know something that is irrelevant? We can
mask our ignorance because we are not expected to know the Bible. We have the Word of all Authority, the Word of
all healing, the Word of deliverance and salvation – the very Word of Jesus Christ…and
we think it is irrelevant and that we need to provide replacements for it in
order to help others. We are really evading responsibility for speaking the
Word of God as disciples – we are no longer disciples, we are now all sociologists
and therapists. Pastors no longer care for souls, they care for feelings. Perhaps
we should call pastors and elders hospice workers, for many are simply
providing palliative care to their congregations. Thank God for those faithful pastors
and elders and seminary professors who remain faithful to the Word of God, who
are building an ark in Christ for their people – shall we count ourselves among
them?
Well, as Bonhoeffer wrote, “We
will stop here.”
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