To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 3:3 “You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Have you ever played the telephone game where a message is sent by whispering in the ear of the person next to you who then whispers in the ear of the next and so on?  It’s usually pretty fascinating to see how the message changes as it is passed along.  Often the form of the message at the end of the line of people has little resemblance to what it was at the start.  So, does the same hold true for the Word of God?  How do we know that the message we have is the message God originally gave? 

I’m sure you’ve heard the argument that the Bible is full of errors because it’s been passed down from one person to another through the centuries.  Well, one could go into a historical discussion about the ways we have of knowing that the words we have in our Bible today are nearly identical to those in the original manuscripts.  And there is other evidence for authenticity, such as a study of fulfilled prophecies and in particular the hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  But perhaps the clearest evidence of the authenticity of the Word of God is the effect of its message on the lives of the men and women who have read and believed it. 

In the passage above, Paul is speaking to the Corinthian church about the validation of his message.  Paul had been accused by false teachers of being a false teacher. Just like so many today question the reliability and validity of the words of Scripture, so the words of the teachings of the apostles were opposed by false teachers from the earliest days of the church.  So, what does Paul turn to as a proof that his message had been the truth, the actual words of God given through him?  His answer was the effects of that message on the people who had heard it. He speaks of the impact of that message on the hearts of the Corinthian believers, hearts that had been transformed and lives turned upside down as result. Rather than just words written by pen and ink to be read like any other literature, the words he had preached had proven to be “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).  The Corinthians’ transformed lives were a testament to the validity of the message they had heard, so much so that their very lives became a letter from Christ to others who knew them. 

So, if you know Christ, do you realize that your life is meant to be a letter written by Jesus to the world in which you live.  Our lives should be a testimony to the truthfulness and power of the Word by which we were saved.  It shouldn’t be a different message from the one we heard, something like a garbled message that comes from the telephone game.  No, if God’s Word has truly found residence in our hearts, it will show. Others will be able to “read” that message when they hear our words and watch our actions and reactions. 

May God help us to live lives that commend the message we have heard to others.  You see, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), but often that “hearing” is not just the words read from a page, but the witness we demonstrate as a result of the effect God’s true Word has had on us.