The Word of God (5)

Rhema

Fourth, the New Testament uses the Greek word rhema to express the idea of God’s dynamic, fresh, daily, in the moment communication with His children.  With rhema, there is no implication of content as there is with both graphe and logos.  Graphe is that which is written and, in the New Testament, refers generally to what we know as the Old Testament scriptures. Logos is the spoken or written account of the life and light of God in Jesus Christ.

In one sense, rhema is everything else God says – in our past, present and future.  God is the Eternal Word and there is no past, present and future with Him, only the ever-present.  That is why God is also the Living Word.  And since God has seen fit to sign off on all that Jesus accomplished in his thirty-something years on earth, Jesus himself is also the Eternal Word and the Living Word.  The very idea that the bible is the only trustworthy presentation of the word of God should set off every alarm we can imagine or invent.  God never said that; the bible itself nowhere says that; Jesus never said that; none of the apostles ever said that.  However, meddling humans with a felt need to control others often say it, and say it loudly.

I have identified 39 instances of rhema in the New Testament and in the list that follows, you can note the references and see the English word generally used to translate it.

• Matthew 12:36 - “Give account for every careless word...they have spoken”
• Matthew 26:75 - “Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken”
• Luke 3:2 - “the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the desert”
• Luke 4:4 - “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
• John 3:34 - “The One whom God has sent speaks the words of God”
• John 8:20 - “These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple”
• Acts 6:11 - “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses”
• Romans 10:8 - “But what does it say? ‘the word is near you; in your mouth and in your heart’.”
• Romans 10:17 - “So faith come by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ”
• Romans 10:18 - “Their voice has gone out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world”
• Ephesians 5:26 - “So that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word”
• Ephesians 6:17 - “Take…the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God”
• Hebrews 1:3 - “He…upholds all things by the word of his power”
• Hebrews 6:5 - “have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come”
• Hebrews 12:19 - “You have not come to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them”
• 1 Peter 1:25 - “But the word of the Lord endures forever, and this is the word which was preached to you”
• Mark 9:32; Luke 2:50; Luke 9:45; Luke 18:34 - “…didn’t understand what was said”
• Luke 1:38 - “May it be done to me according to your word”
• Luke 2:17 - “They spread the word concerning what had been told them”
• Luke 7:1 - “When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people…”
• Acts 2:14 - “Let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say”
• Acts 6:13 - “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place”
• Acts 11:16 - “And I remembered the word of the Lord”
• Acts 26:25 - “I am not out of my mind…I utter words of sober truth”
• Matthew 27:14 - “Jesus didn’t answer even one charge”
• 2 Corinthians 13:1 - “Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses”
• Luke 1:37 - “For nothing is impossible with God”
• Luke 1:65 - “throughout the hill country…people were talking about these things”
• Luke 2:15 - “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened”
• Luke 2:19 - “Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart”
• Luke 2:51 - “and his mother treasured all these things in her heart”
• Acts 5:32 - “And we are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit”
• Acts 13:42 - “the people invited them to speak further about these things…”
• 2 Corinthians 12:4 - “He heard inexpressible things…”
• Acts 11:14 - “he shall bring you a message through which you…will be saved”
• Hebrews 11:3 - “by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command”

Let me reiterate: the words underlined in these scriptures are all translations of the Greek word rhema.  Anyone translating or expounding them to mean the bible is lying and deceiving and giving clear evidence that he/she is a false shepherd like the ones described in Ezekiel 34.  Further, every time our English bibles speak of the ‘word of God’ or ‘God’s word’, it should be made abundantly clear which Greek word is being employed by translating it properly, even if all our English bibles do not go to that trouble.  It is not difficult to know and teach the truth.  God’s dear children deserve that much.

It is not at all difficult to see how we have been deceived for hundreds of years by pastors and preachers trying to convince us that every time an English bible says ‘word of God’ or ‘God’s word’ it means what we know as the bible.  First, it doesn’t!  Second, what it does mean should in point of fact teach us to not be so deceptive or stupid or gullible.

In my study of the New Testament, I have found 98 references to “word”.  Eleven of them are the Greek word rhema; 87 are logos.  In addition, there are a further 23 uses of the word rhema indicating on the one hand, poor bible translation and, on the other hand, a wealth of insight for the people of God – as I have indicated above.

Paul’s instruction to Timothy was to ‘handle accurately the word of truth’.  Unfortunately, we modern Westerners cannot even handle the bible (graphe) accurately, let alone the logos of God and the rhema of God.  But we aren’t quite done yet.

Cheers,
Kevin.