Meditation on the Text of the Week

If God Speaks, Those Who Hear Will Live Forever

But know this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
I Peter 1: 20, 21

At no time in the entirety of human history was man ever able to exist or to function apart from God. For all that is not God lives and moves and has its being in God. Human autonomy is, therefore, the most grotesque and asinine of myths.

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve had their existence structured not only by the laws, patterns, and institutions of creation itself, but by the Words of God. Perfect, sinless man could neither exist nor function apart from the Living God speaking to him. Thus, God's revealing Himself to man via human language is intrinsic to human existence itself. This will continue to be true for all eternity.

After Adam's sin, God spoke to man again. The very fact of God speaking again to our first parents after their sin in itself brings hope that salvation may actually yet come to the human race. Utter devastation as the due punishment for sin—death—was all that was now “owed” Adam and Eve as a result of their high handed rebellion against their Creator. If God continued to speak to man after the Fall it gives reason to hope that somehow man's sin was not to be the end of mankind. It leads us to believe that God is not finished with us.

God's speaking to mankind via human language (that is, so we, the finite can know truthfully and meaningfully something of God) after the Fall implies that man's career is not over, since from the very beginning of his existence that same word was given to Adam to structure, shape, and make his existence meaningful.

If God continues to speak, salvation and redemption is necessarily implied. If God does not speak, but remains silent, death and damnation is certain and irrevocable.

Thus, if any human being, regardless of class, creed, race, or people-group, is to have any hope of salvation, of deliverance from the guilt of sin, God must speak to him—in human language. Now this does not mean that God must speak to each individual individualistically—that is, with a message in human language that is individual and distinct to each person. Such an idea would make a nonsense of the unity of the human race. But it does mean that God must speak, and that man must hear. Without this, there is no hope of salvation or redemption of anyone.

God has spoken. He spoke to Adam and Eve after their sin—and therefore also to all people who are descended from them. He also spoke to Israel, and therefore also to all people, since Israel was a kingdom of priests—representing all mankind before God. Lastly, and finally, and completely He spoke in and through and by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then He finished speaking—for nothing more needed to be said. Nothing more could be said, for the works of salvation and redemption were completed in Christ and finished by Christ.

Our text tells us how—the medium—by which God has spoken to us. He spoke to us via the “forthtellings” or prophecies of Scripture. For Scripture, while human, is not man speaking to man—but none other than God Himself speaking to man. That is what our text asserts. Peter says that no prophecy (including his own) ever came by means of human design, invention, will, or act. While it uses human language embedded into human history and culture it is not itself human, but divine—just as when God spoke to Adam in the Garden, the words were human words, human syntax, human language so that humans could understand, but the words were God's, the content and meaning of the words were divine. It was indeed God speaking to man.

And that is precisely what Peter tells us about the Scripture. Men and their language were agents, but they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, such that when they spoke, the source and content of their declarations was not them, but the Holy Spirit, so that their words were the words of God Himself.

But that is just part of the “equation.” If man is to be redeemed, God must first of all speak to him. And He has. God has spoken. His words and acts are now indelibly part of human history and of humanity. His revelation can never be taken away, removed, or eradicated—just as Messiah's work of atonement for the sins of His people cannot be undone, removed, or reversed. But to be redeemed, not only must God speak, but man—each individual—must hear what God has spoken. Only if man hears can he then believe in God and in His Christ, and in believing have eternal life.

Man can only hear when God's Spirit unblocks his ears, so that when he hears and reads the words of Scripture he knows for certain that he is hearing and reading the very words of the Living God. That is why one person will read a passage and it will remain dark and vain to him; while another will read exactly the same passage, and he will believe for the first time, and unto death, that he has read the very words of God Himself. It is God who converts the soul, making wise the simple. It is the Spirit who comes out of nowhere regenerating the deadened heart and mind so that he hears God speaking in the Scripture.

Without God speaking to us, we perish. If God were to speak, and we were to hear and believe, we would live forever. God has spoken, and by His grace, His elect are made to hear and believe. To Him alone be all glory, praise and honour.