The Formidable Power We Wield
Words are powerful. Bombs and guns are deadly, but no machinery’s brute force can change an individual’s heart and mind the way that words can. There is nothing that matters so much in life, nothing with such eternal consequences, nothing that concerns peace, joy, and riches so dearly as the words one stakes one’s life upon, whether the words of man or the Word of God. But, even aside from cherishing God’s Word, Scripture does not take the power of words lightly, declaring in Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (ESV). Christians are constantly beset with a whirlwind of words and ideas, with people lashing out against one another and leveraging God’s gift of words to the detriment of their neighbors. What should be the Christian’s response? And, more fundamentally, what does the Bible say?
Being Wary of Ruinous Company
The preceding verse from Proverbs is well-known and oft quoted in the Bible-believing community. But how often do Christians pause and ponder the weightiness of those words: “death and life are in the power of the tongue”? These words are more than just poetic sound bites. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” This warning holds true whether applied to the people one associates with or to the ideas, expressed through words, of those associates. Notably, Paul prefaces this warning by saying “do not be deceived,” implying that we are easily deceived. We are not as strong as we would like to think. In the world of words, what the eyes and ears consume tremendously impacts belief and lifestyle.
Wisdom urges believers to understand the dangers and recognize the falsehoods embedded in pagan literature so they may not be deceived but discerning. Consider the words of the apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3:17: “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.” Grounded in truth, Christians must handle pagan texts with caution. Literature wields power that can be used for good or evil. It is like fire, the potency of which can be prudently harnessed, but which retains the potential of getting out of control, burning, destroying, and annihilating. It is dangerous to thoughtlessly play with the sparks of the spoken and written word.
Apples of Gold
But prudence does not necessitate complete withdrawal. It should grieve Christians to see God’s gift of words used in a manner that dishonors his name. God has not called his people to complacency but to wise action. The apostle Paul models this calling in Acts 17:16-34, which opens with Paul waiting in Athens for the arrival of Silas and Timothy. But as he waits, he is observant, and the passage indicates that “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols,” among these “an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god’” (Acts 17:16, 23). Paul could have launched into a quarrel over words or tried to impress his audience with his extensive understanding, but he instead chose to meet his audience where they were, using familiar words of pagan poets, demonstrating that “the work of the law is written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). It would not have been enough for Paul to settle with extrabiblical support, but this support serves as an excellent starting point for sorting out the wheat from the tares, showing how the God of the Bible is far greater than all that his audience could imagine or hope for.
Paul’s approach to literary works highlights their usefulness, not only when taken from Christian sources, but also, with discretion, from pagan sources. Through common grace, God gifts people in many different ways, and Christians can still glean from the skillful use of language unbelievers employ, even when there is strong disagreement over how and for what purpose that language should be employed. The early church fathers, such as Augustine in his work On Christian Teaching, compare a Christian’s proper use of pagan works to the Israelites plundering the wealth of the Egyptians in the Old Testament, not to endorse the philosophies of pagans, but to redeem their treasures for what God, the maker and bestower of these treasures, intended, that they might be “applied to their true function, that of preaching the gospel” (Augustine, On Christian Teaching, Book 2, Oxford University Press, EBSCOhost, 1999, 65). God is Lord over all — all peoples, all nations, all words and ideas. No words are too mighty for him, no ideas may threaten his rule, no rhetorical garb cloaking the passing idols of the ages can stand before him.
...In Settings of Silver
Moreover, when it comes to one’s duty towards others, the use of literature’s treasure trove can be persuasive. Literature allows the listener to experience what the speaker intends, aligning the audience with the speaker’s frame of reference. Coupling relevant literary insights with appropriate rhetorical execution is a powerful way to reach the heart. In the previously highlighted passage from Acts 17, Paul uses literature his audience would have been familiar with to reveal far greater truths about the awesome nature of God (Acts 17:18, 20, 28-29). Literature can be powerful in this way, for God has gifted even unbelievers with the power of language and some common understanding of truth. As the common idiom accurately expresses, “truth will out,” and it gleams beneath the surface of even the works of unbelievers, in a manner with which all can connect.
Life from Above
But although Paul logically analyzed and applied pagan literature, “some mocked,” and for others, Paul’s message only achieved the accolade of an intriguing speech (Acts 17:32). No matter how perfectly built an argument may be, no matter how eloquently presented, no matter how skillful the speaker or author may be, without the effectual working of God’s Spirit, the lament of the prophet Isaiah will be fulfilled. “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1). Again, in 1 Corinthians 3:14-18, Paul explains the spiritual blindness of those who hear the law preached but remain hardened, with “a veil [lying] . . . over their hearts,” for “only through Christ is it taken away;” only with Christ “there is freedom,” and only in Christ can one behold his glory. The unregenerate cannot know or even begin to want to know the beauty of God’s Word. Ephesians 2:1 poignantly describes the plight of every sinner outside of Christ — “dead in . . . trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Dead people cannot do anything to help themselves or to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Three times in the first eight verses of Ephesians 2 the apostle Paul stresses God’s grace as both the necessary and sufficient cause of salvation. As the theologian Jonathan Edwards explains, while the unbelieving soul may grasp the grammatical meaning or stylistic structure of God’s Word, such a one “conceives of no more than a man without the sense of tasting can conceive of the sweet taste of honey, or a man without the sense of hearing can conceive of the melody of a tune or a man born blind can have a notion of the beauty of the rainbow” (Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on Religious Affections, Monergism Books, 136). The sweetness of Gospel grace, the melody of God’s praise, the beauty of God’s name are incomparably great, and require an infinitely great God to reveal them.
Application
Only the grace of God can make the blind to see, the lame to walk, the sinner to serve the Lord. But, in his good will, God has ordained the means of storytelling — primarily through his Word, but also through the eye-opening embodiment of truth in lesser literature — to reveal himself to man. One of the most powerful examples of storytelling’s impact is recorded in 2 Samuel 12:1-7, when God sends the prophet Nathan to King David, after David’s grievous sins of murder and adultery. Nathan tells David a parable of a cruel man who spares his fattened sheep and kills his poor neighbor’s only precious little lamb. Impartially hearing this story, David’s wrath is kindled against this cruel man, and justly so. But reality is reflected more clearly through the parable than David could have guessed, and the conviction of God’s heavy hand on his soul when the crashing waves of realization wash over him unmask the true color of his sins.
Stories proliferate also in the Psalms, where small but powerful, story-laden metaphors seek to convey the awesome, transcendent, inscrutable nature of God. Psalm 18:1-2 is a beautiful example of this, as King David in ecstatic joy tries to express something beyond the power of words to express and the human mind to comprehend: “I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” No single metaphor is enough, so David lays one upon the other, proclaiming that God is his strength, his rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his salvation — his all. This beautiful use of storytelling is also abundantly manifested in the Gospels. Jesus frequently speaks to the crowds in parables, comparing the kingdom of God to things in the physical world that people can relate to and comprehend.
Proverbs 25:11 reminds believers that, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” This proverb is as applicable to the written as the spoken word. Storytelling has the power to grasp something that mere words cannot. Wielding this powerful weapon, Christians have the unique responsibility and privilege of cherishing, stewarding, reclaiming, and using words for the glory of God and the advancement of the kingdom of the Word (John 1:1).
