Letting The Word Reign (September 2011)

Last month we saw God’s plan to use the imperfect perfectly shows His glory, and that brings us to our third possible response to the reality of sin in us–we can admit the sin and let God’s word reign in us. In the beginning, God created all that is with words (Gen 1:3) and is called the word, in John 1:1, that was both with God and became flesh in Jesus, as testified by John the Baptist (John 1:14-15). That same word of God came in the flesh to save the world through Him (John 3:17, 12:47-48) and yet, there it is in black and red, that word that the Word speaks is going to condemn those that don’t listen. Anyone else catch it? The word that became flesh convicts the world of its sin by His words, but through the Word’s -- through HIS -- death and resurrection He saves from sin and brings life. Does anyone else see how counter-cultural that is?

Letting God’s Word reign in us is letting Jesus reign in us. That means He’s in charge. It means that where God’s Word leads, we follow. Where the Word rebukes our behavior, speech, or life, we take it to heart and adjust accordingly. Where the Word instructs us for our benefit, we move and allow that Word to change us. When we ignore God, our tendency is to ignore ideas like sin. But when we admit this truth and let the redemptive person of Jesus change the way we see life, we learn that the same Word that condemns sin saves us through His death. Put God’s Word in the place of supremacy this month, and together we’ll look forward to learning how sin gets conquered the rest of this year.