3.3 Are Life
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible InstituteThe words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63b). What is life? And how can words be life?
This question is much easier to give an answer to than words are Spirit. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6a). Jesus, Himself in Person, is life. And, since Jesus, Himself in Person, is every word God speaks, we then understand that the idea of Words entering into us to be life can be speaking of nothing other than Christ in our hearts.
Jesus Alive. Christ lives in your hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17a).
Can you, by your intellect, by focusing all of your reasoning powers, all of your wise understanding, all of your experience in life, turn the words on the pages of the Bible into Christ living in your heart? No one ever has and no one ever will. It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. It is the Spirit who turns the words on the pages of the Bible into the Person of Jesus alive in your heart; the human intellect cannot do any such thing. And “Spirit” is not an idea or a form of mental interpretation, Spirit is a Person, an all-here-now Person.
A Religious Mind. What then do the words of the Bible create when they are written on the mind by human intellect and not on the heart by Spirit as Christ? The words of the Bible create only a religious mind, the very thing Jesus broke inside His disciples on that terrible day in which He spoke John 6:63. The words of the Bible, without the immediate and miraculous transference of the Holy Spirit from mental ideas into the writing of Jesus Himself in our hearts, cannot be God speaking to anyone, for God speaking is Jesus only. But that religious mind is death; here we want to know what Jesus meant when He said that the words He speaks into us are LIFE.
The Seed. In His parable on the sower sowing seed, Jesus indicated that the seed was planted in different types of soil. Some soil was too hard to receive the seed, other soil was too full of other strong plants, but some soil had been prepared and was ready for the seed. But then He said something strange. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty (Matthew 13:8). Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant by these three levels of bringing forth fruit? Then Luke adds these words of Jesus. Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11).
A Seed Brings Forth Life. Jesus said that the Words that He speaks, the word that He is, the all-speaking of God, are life, and He said that they are as a seed planted in the ground meant to bring forth many more seeds just like itself. That’s what a hundredfold means. A hundredfold means that the ground in which the seed was planted brought forth the full measure of potential that was in the original seed. “Words are life” and “words as seed” – are both indicating the same truth of God to us. A seed is that which brings forth life, first the plant, and then many more seeds just like the original seed. Christ, then, lives in our hearts as the Seed of God.
Christ in You. When Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you are life,” He meant Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). And when Paul said, Christ in you, the hope of glory, he meant Jesus Himself in Person.
It is the claim of Christianity that Jesus is real, that He is alive, and that He has taken up residence, for real and alive, in our hearts – the Person of Jesus. Now that, to me, is a big deal. There is another Person INSIDE of me, and His name is Jesus. “Hi, Jesus, how are You this morning?” And this Jesus, alive in me, is LIFE.
What Was the Difference? What was the difference between the eleven disciples whose hearts had been captured by Jesus and all the others who walked away? What happened inside of them through the devastating experience Jesus had just imposed on them, something that did not happen in any of the others?
It is Paul who gives us the exact understanding. That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God (Romans 3:19). All those who walked away knew what they knew; they knew what God is and what God expects; and they knew that Jesus was full of crap.
Mouths Tight Shut. The eleven, however, did something few humans ever do, they went silent before God. They shut their mouths. They did NOT know. And when Jesus required an answer from them, it was Peter who gave voice to the desperation in the hearts of eleven young men. “Your words, Jesus, are the only life we want.”
Most read the Bible so that they can know all about God. They will be quick to answer what any verse means, but more especially, what any verse does NOT mean. They take control of the Bible with their intellects; they know all about “God.”
Mary. Mary did not. When God spoke an impossible word to Mary, through His angel, a word that defied all human theology then and now, all human “knowing” about what God is, Mary did not raise all that knowledge as her defense against this word. Her question, “How can I bear a child if I have not slept with a man?” was not her questioning God, but God’s question in her heart, that God might speak the Spirit to Mary.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you (Luke 1:35). This statement is identical in meaning to Jesus words, The Spirit gives life – the words I speak are Spirit.
The Very Same Jesus. It is the claim of the Christian gospel that the very same Jesus who was conceived in Mary’s womb is the same Person who lives now for real, in all glory, in each one of our hearts. And it is the assertion of Jesus in John 6:63 that every word in the Bible, coming into us by the same Holy Spirit overshadowing us, becomes the same LIFE in us that was birthed in Mary. Is Jesus not Life? And does Jesus not reside in our hearts, the same Jesus conceived in Mary?
You might take note of the fact that I have opened to you a realm of reality that “the Bible” must become, that R.C. Sproul is not even aware exists.
Mary’s Response. How, then, does this work for us? How do the words of the Bible enter into us through Spirit to become the life of Jesus Himself living inside of us? The answer is the same as for Mary. Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to Your word” (Luke 1:38a).
You see, when we go silent before God, when we shut our mouths, when we stop all stupid and irrational claims that we “KNOW” what God has to mean by what He says, then we find ourselves in the same place as those desperate young men. And now we are free, for the first time, to respond to every Word God speaks in the same way that Mary responded.
Look at Me, God. “Look at me, God, I don’t know anything, except one thing; I know that I belong to You. I ask You, my Father, to cause every Word that You speak to become Jesus Himself alive inside of me in every way and to the full extent that You mean in speaking to me this particular word.”
Every verse, every word in the Bible.
To those who dwell only inside the immediate overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, this response to God makes perfect sense and is life and joy. To those who read the Bible only with their intellects, speaking these words to God in Person in response to every Bible verse is just gibberish.
The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.