Christ present in the preached word

the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)...Jesus is Lord

(Romans 10:6-9)

Paul is arguing that by faith we find Christ present in the preached word we hear from our pastors, evangelists and missionaries. So Christ is not a distant goal to be attained to, or in the first instance somebody who has walked the way of the perfect life for you to follow, instead he is here for us to confess and call upon and be saved. If we have a preacher, Christ is never distant, but in our hearts, and because he cannot be contained we find him overflowing our hearts through our mouths.

Paul used Deuteronomy 30 "the word is near you," just this way. Moses' original use of this word concerned the law, and he thought it meant there was no longer any need to go find the law in a voyage over the sea or going down to the depths since now it had come near in the tablets of stone. But for Paul [...] "up" and "down" describe Christ's ascent into heaven and descent into hell. this is the crucial matter of the presence of Christ around which all of Lutheran theology circulates. Descent into hell is legally inappropriate for the infinite God, and ascent into heaven is impossible for a finite man. The communication of attributes nevertheless accomplished both at once. Christ's ascent into heaven is normally taken as "escape" or absence, consequently whenever Christ's presence is considered following his "humiliation" (as theology calls Christ's descent) and his "exaltation" (to the right hand of the Father) it is spiritualized in a pagan sense. Christ's body is removed from his presence, and more importantly, God himself is removed from the word that is preached... Where is Christ now?... where Moses law once was: "the word is near you... that is, the word we preach" (Romans 10:8)

(pp. 226-227, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

For more on the preached word try Glen Scrivener's seminars.

The three forms of the word of God

I have heard there are three forms of the word of God and Glen recently mentioned it may originate with Barth/Luther. Barth certainly popularized the classification. There is a hierarchy, but they are all bound together. The three forms are:

1. the Personal/Eternal Word of God - Jesus Christ;
2. the Spoken word - the present proclamation in preached words and sacramental words;
3. the Written word - the Bible.

They are linked as:

• The Father speaks the Personal Word
• the Personal Word speaks the Spoken word (either directly or by his Spirit indwelt ambassadors)
• the Spoken word is recorded in the Written word
• the Written word serves the Spoken word by ensuring it continues to be heard
• the Spoken word serves the Personal Word by ensuring he continues to be heard
• the Personal Word serves the Father by ensuring he is heard

On the way from the Father each form of the word is Spirit-breathed by means of the previous, and on the way back to the Father serves the glorification of the latter by the Spirit.

Martin Luther on the Word of God

David Lotz, in his brilliant essay "The Proclamation of the Word in Luther’s Thought", makes 13 points about Luther's understanding of the Word of God and its proclamation (all points are quotations and italics are original):

1. For Luther the “Word of God” is first and foremost God himself, since God is Deus loquens, the God who speaks.
2. Holy Scripture shows that God’s Word also takes the form of concrete historical acts of redemption and revelation, since according to the Hebrew idiom a word (dabar) is also a deed.
3. All God’s words and works find their ultimate purpose and meaning in the incarnate Word. Yet even God’s speaking and acting in Christ would remain meaningless and ineffectual without the oral witness to the Word made flesh, namely, the apostolic preaching or publishing of Christ to the world, the gospel or “good news” of Christ as “God for us.”
4. The Word of God as gospel is found throughout the Old Testament, chiefly in the form of promises of the coming Christ, but no less in God’s gracious dealings with his covenant people for the sake of the coming Christ.
5. The Old Testament Scriptures are precious because they are “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies” (LW 35.236). Thus the gospel is at once contained and concealed in the Old Testament, and this “manger” remains shrouded in darkness unless illumined by the “star of Bethlehem,” namely, “the new light, preaching and the gospel, oral and public preaching,” whereby the living voice “produce[s] in speech and hearing what prior to this lay hidden in the letter and in secret vision” (LW 52.205).
6. The Holy Scriptures are, for Luther, rightly understood when they are seen as the record of past proclamation, and are rightly used when the preaching there recorded is continuously transposed into the modality of present proclamation.
7. The Holy Scriptures are justly called Word of God, the written Word, because they have God the Holy Spirit as their ultimate author: the prophets and apostles all spoke and wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit. Yet the Scriptures are Word of God in a secondary or derivative sense because they always point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ
8. The preceding considerations clearly show that for Luther the Word of God as gospel, the oral proclamation of Christ and his benefits, is the basic form of the Word.
9. The preached Word as gospel is the basic form of the Word of God and the creator of the church because it is nothing less than the real presence of the exalted Christ. The gospel is “of Christ” not only because true evangelical preaching has Christ as its object, but above all because the risen Christ himself is the acting subject of this proclamation.
10. To say that the gospel is the real presence of the exalted Christ is to say that salvation is a present event of preaching, and is thus a “Word event.”
11. Central to [the "Word event"] is the assertion that faith in the gospel effects a personal union between Christ and the Christian, and that this union is the sole ground of the believer’s acceptance before God.
12. The preached Word that is the occasion of salvation is the Word of law and gospel... the gospel must be preached together with the law.
13. The church is the daughter of the Word and the creation of the gospel.

The power of speech

With a prayer you fed the hungry
With a word You calmed the sea;
Yet how silently You suffered
That the guilty may go free

God does everything through his Word. By his Word he creates out of nothing and reduces evil powers to the nothing from which they came.

Jesus exercised his power over creation and evil through various miracles simply by speaking. At his words demons obey, waves obey and the human body obeys (even when dead).

But for us he stopped speaking... and the waves crashed over him as a result.

But...

"With a shout you rose victorious"

("You're the Word of God the Father" by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty)

A few random thoughts on God's Word

God's word is personal:

• The speaker is a person - the Father
• The content is a person - the Son
• The hearers are people - the church past and present

It is tempting to forget who is addressing us, and treat it merely as the opinion of another human.

It is tempting to forget that it is all about Christ, his person and work. We can think that it is all about me and meeting my felt needs, a rule-book, or about an irrelevant religion of a dead people.

It is tempting to forget that it is meant to be spoken to people. If it is not applied to individuals then it is not doing what it is meant to.

God's word is an arrow:

• It has a target: God's Word is addressed to us
• It will impact: God's Word is powerful and does what it says

It is tempting to treat God's Word as an object to be 'engaged' with. It is, but it is also a moving object that is 'engaging' us.

It is also tempting to treat God's Word as for someone else (either the sinner sat next to me in church who needs rebuking, the saint who we think deserves to be loved by God, or an ancient nation long past). It is for them, but it is also for us.