The Living and Active Word
Before We Gather by Zach Hicks
| Scripture
Read Hebrews 4:12-13
| Devotion
If you grew up in a church that taught you to memorize Scripture, chances are you memorized these verses. It’s a provocative passage. At first blush, when we hear that God’s Word is a sword, we think of it as a weapon for battle. And God’s Word certainly is a battle weapon. Ephesians 6:17 says so. But the sword as a weapon for battle is not the imagery being evoked here in Hebrews. God’s Word is being described as doing something different from slaying our enemies. It’s slaying us.
We have to remember that the epistle to the Hebrews is uniquely interested in preaching Jesus to Hebrew people – religious people steeped in the Old Testament and acquainted with relating to God through rituals like animal sacrifice. So when the author of this letter claims that the Word of God “divides joints and marrow,” we’re in sacrificial territory.
The other claim being made in this passage is that the Word is “living and active.” The Word itself, we could say, is a busy organism. And this is testified to all over Scripture. Psalm 147 sings that “his word runs swiftly” as God drops snow on the ground, and as he melts it (vv. 15-18). This psalm is merely relaying what we find in Genesis at creation: the Word of God does the work of God. When God says, “Let there be light,” there’s light (Gen. 1:3). John 1 helps us understand, further, that this busy activity of the Word is the activity of Christ himself. “The Word was God,” John declares (John 1:1). And other places like John 16 and 1 Corinthians 2 tell us that Jesus’ presence in his Word’s activity is specifically the presence of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8-11; 1 Cor. 2:6-16). Word-filled worship is Spirit-filled worship.
But what is the busy Word doing? The author of the letter to the Hebrews gives us the ominous picture: it’s cutting us up, like a sacrifice. The author explains that the Word does this by “discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). When the Word of God is doing God’s work on you in worship, you should feel an uncomfortable sense that God sees you – the real you, the true you, even the you that you tend to hide not only from others but also from yourself.
The Word does this by, in the words of Martin Luther, “calling a thing what it is.” It calls our sin what it is: wrong, rebellious, and worthy of God’s judgment. This kind of work is a killing kind of work. The busy Word comes at us to put our flesh to death – to take us to the end of ourselves, so that we give up all efforts to trust in ourselves not only for our salvation but for our daily walk with Jesus.
The living and active Word continually comes at us to cut us down to size and to shut down all operations that put us in the driver’s seat of our faith journey. Now let’s be clear: that’s not good news. That’s not pleasant. But it is, according to this passage, one very real way we know that God’s Word is doing its work.
Thankfully, there’s another activity of the Word which God intends to take place on the other side of all that destruction. Just as creation began with chaos and God spoke order, beauty, and life into it, so we too can begin to revive when we have reached the cha- otic end of ourselves. And God can, and does, speak order, beauty, and life through the living and active Word about Jesus Christ-the gospel. It’s why Paul says, in one of his more well-known worship passages, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” as you go about the activities and rituals of worship-teaching, admonish- ing, singing, thanking (Col. 3:16-17).
As worshipers, then, we should have an abiding prayer and an enduring practice. Our abiding prayer should be, “God, please unleash your Word to do the work that only your Word can do: bring us to the end of ourselves and give us new life in Jesus.” Our enduring practice should be to develop habits of listen- ing for and receiving that Word’s work. We should pay attention to the moments in the service-whether it’s in a song, a prayer, a Scripture reading, a sermon, or when we come to the table or witness a sister’s or brother’s baptism-when God is saying, “I see you… the real you.” Though it makes us squirm, we mustn’t run from it. We must confess. But we should also pay attention, in all those same places, for the other Word-the Word about Christ- that has the power to take slain sacrifices like us and resurrect them into new creations.
| Prayer
Aim your prayers in this direction:
- Pray boldly that in the upcoming service, God would unleash his Word to do his work of bringing you to the end of yourselves, and giving you new life in Jesus.
- Pray boldly for yourselves, and for your brothers and sisters, for open ears to hear that double-edged Word. Invite the Holy Spirit to make you receptive.
- Pray more broadly for those who plan and lead worship services, that God would be faithful to draw them, week in and week out, to saturate your worship services with the Scriptures that bring forth the living activity of the Word.