They’re not the same, of course. But neither are they completely separate—necessarily. The Word of God is eternal, immutable, omniscient and omnipotent—to pull out some of the big human words we often use to describe what we can only describe and never define. Our words—our human words? A dime a dozen, if you’re lucky. Professional writers don’t get much more than that for theirs, most of them. Most of our words are gone with the wind as soon as we say them—except, of course, for the words that hurt, which can linger long in our memories. And most of the words we write are soon fading off the page, deleted off the screen, shredded like garbage or quietly stored away in libraries and archives.
But not always. Sometimes the Word of God is couched and conveyed in the words of man, feeble and faint as they are. But only when the God Whose Word it is wishes, of course. We cannot create the Word of God as His Word created us and all our words. We have no hold on His Word except as He grants it—so that we may hear something of it, at least. And the words of man that sound the loudest and last the longest and possess the most power seem to be those that speak in some stuttering, sputtering, inarticulate way about that part of the Word of God that God has chosen to reveal.
The truth—God’s honest truth—is that God has chosen of His own free will to ensure that His Word and our words are never completely separate. His Word (in Its ultimate form) became human and spoke of God’s Word using human words. And God inspired people, before and since that unique Incarnation of His Word, to write words about God’s Word in ways that somehow seemed to bear something of the power and glory and truth of His Word in them, even though they were only our words—our human words.
Someone has said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Maybe this means that God can speak His Word accurately and faithfully in the woefully inadequate medium of human language, so that, sometimes, when all we think we hear is words—simple human words—that is not all we hear. Sometimes, we hear the Word of God in the words of man—just as God intends.
Al Hill 