Whether you just gave your life to Christ, or you have been following Him for years, you need to know this: God gave us His word as a blueprint for our purpose and destiny. The Bible is far more than just a canon of events, with the right interpretation, the Bible actually starts to come to life. In the Book of Hebrews, Apostle Paul says that
“the word of God is living and powerful.”
Hebrews 4:12
Does this mean that the Word is literally going to jump off the page and grab you, or is the Bible referring to something deeper?
How can the WORD live in us?
According to John, the WORD was established in the beginning, and the WORD is Christ (Jn 1:1). If we look at the word for living, which is used in the book of Hebrews, we will see that it translates to the Greek word zaō, which according to the Thayer dictionary, speaks of “mortals or character,” “having vital power in itself and exerting the same upon the soul” or “endless in the kingdom of God.” Jesus Himself said that
“he who hears My Word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life.”
John 5:24
Meaning, the Word carries eternity within it, and gives that same life giving power to our souls.
God can come to be in the soul, and the soul emigrates to God. [1]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
Jesus taught about the Word like this: He said that “the seed is the word of God” and that the ground is symbolic of our heart (ref Lk 8:9-15). In Hebrew thought, our mind and heart are the same thing, and the mind can also symbolically represent a womb. God created man in His image (Gen 1:27); with just a word, God created the universe (Gen 1). Scripture tells us that our tongues contain the power of life or death (Pro 18:21).
Did you know that we create all the time and not even realize it?
When a thought or idea comes to our mind, we can carry it until our soul decides whether or not it wants to act out that thought or idea. For example, something as simple as going to the refrigerator and grabbing yourself a drink: the thought enters your mind but your soul decides whether or not it wants to birth out the action to get up, walk over, and grab one.
After His resurrection, one of the first things Yeshua did on the road to Emmaus was “He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:46). The word for opened is dianoigō in Greek and it speaks of “opening the womb.” The word understanding is nous, and it is the same word for mind. Even the ancient Hebrew Lexicon Bible Dictionary defines the word thought, as a “mental pregnancy,” or a “mental conception.”
“A pregnant woman is what the soul is called which has recently conceived the WORD of God. . . . The “formed infant” (cf. Exod 21:23 LXX) can be taken as the WORD of God in the heart of that soul which has received the grace of baptism.” [2]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
In Hebrew thought, there is a positive and negative to everything. Meaning there is a Word of God and a word of the enemy, or a seed from God and a seed from the enemy. This was prophesied in the Book of Genesis when God said that there would be enmity between the two seeds (ref Gen 3:15).
If we look at the word for seed, in the Greek, we will find that it actually translates to the word sperma, which speaks of “children, offspring”, ”divine energy of the Holy Spirit operating within the soul by which we are regenerated,” or “whatever possesses vital force or life giving power.” The WORD of God is alive, and has the ability to impregnate our inner man with the character of God.
“Just as the seed is formed and shaped in those with child, so is it in the soul which accepts the WORD: the conception of the WORD is gradually formed and shaped in it . . . . In his Epistle to Timothy Paul says that “women will be saved through bearing children, with modesty” (1 Tim 2:15). But who is this woman, if not the soul which conceived the divine Word of truth and brings forth good works which are like Christ?” [3]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
Apostle Paul, and Early Church Father Origen, taught that the woman in the Book of Timothy is actually symbolic of our soul; meaning our soul is feminine and the Spirit of God is masculine. Everything we see in the natural is designed and created in order to show us and teach us who we are. We know that the Lord speaks through parables, dark sayings, and enigmas (ref Mark 4:34). Paul calls the sacrifices that God commanded in the Old Testament to be but a mere “shadow of the good things to come”, but was it just sacrifices that contained a shadow, or is the whole Scripture filled with them (ref Heb 10:1)?
“Not just in Mary did his birth begin with an “overshadowing” (cf. Lk 1:35); but in you too, if you are worthy, is the WORD of God born.” [4]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
Was Mary giving birth to the Son of God one of these shadows? According to Origen, if we are found “worthy” we give birth to Christ; not in a literal sense, but when the WORD gets in a soul that is becoming pure, we birth the nature of Christ in our souls.
When we sow good seeds, the nature of God begins to grow in us. Our walk as Christians should be transformative. Paul says in the Book of Romans to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” and again in Corinthians states that we “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (ref Rom 12:2; 2 Co 3:18). There is a renewing into our original image that begins to happen when the Word opens up in us.
How does the Word open up?
In nature, when you look at a seed, you will find that it has two main parts: the outer and inner shell. In the same way, the Word of God is also like this. There is an outer and inner part of the Scriptures called the logos and the rhema. When we read the Scripture like a history book, we are reading the logos; but when we see that there are deeper mysteries inside, we are reading the rhema.
The Bible is filled with mysteries and symbolisms, and when Jesus taught, He actually concealed them within parables (ref Mat 13:11). The mysteries of the kingdom is the rhema, live giving, power of the Word, which is the character of God. When we sow the mysteries of Scripture into the lives of others, Christ is being formed in their hearts.
“Who are they “who sow” (cf. Mk 4:14)? Those who proclaim God’s WORD in the church. . . . To souls . . . they should entrust the secret mysteries, to them soak the WORD of God and the mysteries of faith. Or don’t you know that from this sowing of the seed of the WORD of God Christ is born in the hearts of the hearers? As the Apostle expresses it: “until Christ be formed in you” (Gal 4:19). . . . This is the child-bearing of saintly souls, these the conceiving and these the holy embraces which are right and fitting for the great high priest, Christ Jesus our Lord.” [5]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
But in order to birth the nature of Christ in our lives, our old nature has to die. The Apostle Paul says that “we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Co 4:11). Meaning the flesh, which is symbolic of our carnal, worldly desires, will now waste away, yet our “inward man is being renewed day by day” through the revelation (deeper understanding) of the Word of God. We put on our new man, which are the areas of our soul that have been transformed into the nature of God, through “knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Col 3:10).
The wisdom of God that is found in a mystery, makes us pure, holy, and blameless before the Lord (1 Co 2:7). While we are not perfected yet, Jesus tells us that we are to become just as His Father is in Heaven (Mat 5:47). When Paul writes to the Church of Corinth, he tells them that wisdom is spoken to those who are “mature,” which in the Greek is another word for “perfect” (1 Co 2:6). The Bride of Christ is to be presented as holy, blameless and perfect before the Lord (ref Rev 21:2).
So not only does the living Word birth the nature of Christ in us, but it perfects us into His image, so that we can become One with the One who gave us life.
“They who do not know the mystery of the virgin say to Jesus: “your brother” (Mk 3:32; Lk 8:20), for if they had known they would have believed in him. It is from doing the will of his Father in heaven that one becomes the brother or sister or mother of Jesus. When the wholly viriginal and uncorrupted soul, although not by nature a brother, etc., to Jesus, conceives of the Holy Spirit in order to give birth to the will of the Father, it becomes the “mother” of Jesus.” [6]
Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings
References:
1 – 6. Urs von Balthasar, Hans. Origen: Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings. The Catholic University of America, 2001