Redemption Through the Word of God
In the previous chapter Dallas Willard helped us understand what a word is. Having come to understand how words, especially the word of God, function in reality, it is now time to learn how the word of God can be a redeeming force in one's life. We have seen this in Scripture through the lives of great ones who have come into contact with God's word. Such individuals seemed to live lives that were otherworldly. Not simply because they worked powerful miracles, but because they seemed to be living from a different reality altogether.
But it is not only the life of the individual that can be redeemed by the word of God, communities can also experience this redemption. Thus Willard says, "When faced with starvation, crime, economic disasters and difficulties, disease, loneliness, alienation and war, the church should be the certified authority the world looks to for answers on how to live."
But how? How can individuals and communities experience this redemption through the Word? Willard uses other passages to highlight the Word's means of accomplishing such redemption, but one that has been powerful in my life comes from Psalm 119:9-16:
"How can young people keep their way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments. I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth. I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
Did you notice how the word is given central focus in this passage? It is used as a guard, it is treasured, it is learned, it is declared, it is delighted in, it is meditated upon, it is fixated upon, it is memorized. What kind of life do you think one would have if this were true of them? Without a doubt they would, "be blameless and innocent... children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world... holding fast to the word of life" (Phil 2:15-16).
As Willard says, "it is through the action of the word of God upon us, throughout us and with us that we come to have the mind of Christ and thus to live fully in the kingdom of God." This is because the word of God is life (John 1:4). Thus, apart from the word of God, one does not have the power to live in the kingdom of God... not even a little bit. They are dead to it, and dead to God. And the only way for one to go from being dead to God's kingdom, to being alive to it, is by hearing the word of God.
He speaks, and listening to His voice, new life the dead receive. - O for a Thousand Tongues, by Charles Wesley
The story of Adam and Eve tells of a time when human beings were once alive to God. They once walked with God in the garden of Eden, just talking like good friends. Can you imagine it? But then, through their mistrust and pride, they died. "They became dead in relation to the realm of the Spirit—much as a kitten is dead to arithmetic." And they became fully alive to the flesh and its power. In order to once again become alive to God, human beings will have to receive the kind of life that is able to be in relation to God. John 3 calls this "being born from above." John 4 calls it receiving"a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." No matter the phraseology, the life is received from the word of God.
How then does the Word birth new life in a person? The illustration of a seed is helpful here. In Luke 8 Jesus tells his famous Parable of the Sower. You'll recall in that story that "the seed [being sown] is the word of God" (Luke 8:11). As the seed enters the soil it finds the possibility of growing roots, and bringing forth a new kind of life. "A new life," says Willard, "enters our personality and increasingly becomes our life as we learn to 'be guided by the Spirit.'" We must "learn to be guided by the Spirit," because our present dead state is used to being guided by the self. We are made up, as Luke 8:12-14 indicates, of different soil and grounds that make it hard for the word to have its intended effect. Therefore, we must continue allowing the word to cultivate the soil of our lives until we are transformed.
Willard uses the illustration of dirty laundry to make the point. "Just think for a moment about what happens when you wash a dirty shirt: the water and laundry soap move through the fibers of the shirt material and carry out the dirt lodged within those fibers." (In some washing machines this process is helped by a device called the agitator. This drives home the point of what is happening with emphasis!) "When we come to God, our minds and hearts are like that dirty shirt, cluttered with false beliefs and attitudes, deadly feelings, past deeds and misguided plans, hopes and fears." It is the word of God entering ones life that begins to agitate and shake loose the learned and deeply seated habits of sin, until they are washed away and replaced with habits of holiness.
He goes on to point out the extent of work that needs to be done in human lives. We have so imbibed the ways of the world that we cannot even see what is wrong with many of our practices. We are those who, "call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20). These ideas that govern our lives can only be changed as we "welcome with meekness the implanted word that has power to save your souls" (James 1:21).
This can happen because words, as we saw last chapter, are expressed thoughts and feelings. Thus, the received words of God are the thoughts and feelings of God coming in and overwhelming and overriding ours. "He washes our minds, and in the place of confusion and falsehood—or hatred, suspicion and fear, to speak of emotions—he brings clarity, truth, love, confidence and hopefulness."
As one hears the word of God in this way it leads them from a state of communication with God, which leads to communion with God, which, in turn, leads to union with God. Or, in other words, the process of receiving the word of God takes one from submitting their life and mind to the word of God, to their life being swallowed up in the life of Jesus Christ. " I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
This is the goal for every disciple of Jesus. It is to be unified with him so that his life is flowing unobstructed through our lives. The path toward such a life begins and continues by immersing ones life in God's word. It comes, as we saw earlier, by guarding, treasuring, learning, declaring, delighting in, meditating upon, being fixated with, and memorizing the word of God. Not, mind you, by reading through it from cover to cover, but by reading it so deeply that it has the chance to read you.
"Read," says Willard, "with a submissive attitude. Read with a readiness to surrender all you are... Study as intelligently as possible, with all available means, but never study merely to find the truth and especially not just to prove something. Subordinate you desire to find the truth to your desire to do it, to act it out!"
Willard provides a general train of development that might be helpful to those prepared to engage the word, and be engaged by it:
Information
Longing for it to be so
Affirmation that it must be so
Invocation to God to make it so
Appropriation by God's grace that it is so (This stage must not be forced or faked. It will be received as God moves into your life).
Perhaps you can start with these passages: Romans 5:10-11; 6:4, 8-11.
If you like you can use the method I adopted from Jeanne Guyon.