When God’s Son eventually enters into human history as the God-man, he lives by God’s Word (Matt. 4:4), keeps God’s Word (John 8:55), and preaches God’s Word (Mark 2:2).
The Father gave Jesus words, Jesus gave them to his followers, and his followers received them (John 17:8).
Jesus’ words are inseparable from his person and thus can be identified as having divine attributes. [Jesus frequently refers to who he is and what he says as a package deal: “me and my words,” e.g., Mark 8:38; Luke 6:47; John 12:48; 14:24.] To be ashamed of Christ’s words is on the same level as being ashamed of Christ himself (Luke 9:26).
His words are eternal: unlike heaven and earth, Christ’s words will remain forever (Matt. 24:35).
They have power: Jesus could cast out spirits with “a word” (Matt. 8:16); he merely had to “say the word” and someone could be healed (Matt. 8:8).
Jesus’ words are “spirit and life,” “the words of eternal life” (John 6:63, 68).
Jesus’ words dwell or abide in those who are united to Christ and abiding in him (John 8:31; John 15:7; Col. 3:16).
Only those who hear and keep Jesus’ word receive blessing and eternal life (Luke 11:28; John 5:24; 8:47, 52).
Those who heard him were “amazed at his words” (Mark 10:24), hanging on every word and marveling at his gracious speech (Luke 19:48; 4:22).
They recognized that his words possessed a unique authority (Luke 4:32).
But Jesus critiqued those who used the words of their prayers to conceal the hypocrisy of their hearts, heaping up “empty phrases” and wanting to be “heard for their many words” (Matt. 6:7).
He accused them of using their traditions to make “void the word of God” (Matt. 15:6).
His own words found no place in their hearts—some couldn’t bear to hear his words, and some heard his words but refused to keep them (John 8:37, 43; 14:24). In response, Jesus’ enemies “plotted how to entangle him in his talk” (Matt. 22:15).
Jesus warned that how one hears and responds to Jesus’ words reveals the ultimate dividing line within salvation history: on the day of judgment we will each give an account “for every careless word,” being either justified or condemned by our words (Matt. 12:36–37), for “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (Matt. 15:18).
If you hear and practice Christ’s words, you are like a wise man building a house on a rock-solid foundation that can remain standing even during a torrential storm. But hearing Christ’s words and failing to do them is like building a house on sand, which will crumble to the ground in the midst of the storm (Matt. 7:24–26).
Tomorrow we’ll briefly survey the relationship of words to the gospel.
[Adapted from Justin Taylor, “Introduction,” The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), pp. 16-17.]
