Tag Archives: the word of God

The Living Word: Insights from Hosea’s Prophetic Revelation

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Hosea 1:1 – “The word of the LORD that came to Hosea…”

It’s a simple phrase, easy to glide over: “The word of the LORD came to Hosea.” But the more you sit with it, the more wonder it holds. How did the Word come? Was it a voice Hosea could hear with his ears? A vision blazing across his mind? A sudden, irresistible impulse of the Spirit that left him trembling?

Scripture doesn’t tell us. And perhaps that’s intentional. Because what mattered most was not the manner of revelation, but its source. Hosea didn’t dream up his message or craft it out of religious insight. He received it. The word came to him.

The prophets were not spiritual inventors but faithful messengers. Whether God spoke by a voice, a vision, or a burning conviction, the result was the same: “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Calvin put it this way:

“The prophets did not speak at random, but as organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned to declare.”

That’s what we call inspiration—the Spirit of God superintending the words of men so that what they wrote was, in every part, the Word of God. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16). God didn’t simply whisper ideas and leave the prophets to fill in the rest. Nor did He bypass their minds and turn them into secretaries taking dictation. The miracle of inspiration is that the living God spoke His perfect Word through human voices—each shaped by its author’s time, place, and personality, yet free from error and filled with divine authority.

The Westminster Confession says it this way:

“The Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God… are therefore authentical.” (WCF 1.8)

In other words, when we open the Bible, we are not reading about the Word of God; we are hearing the Word of God.

And yet, if we’re honest, we don’t always hear it that way. We can open our Bibles and walk away unchanged. The words may sound no different than those on the morning news or a grocery list.

This is why the Reformers spoke not only of inspiration, but also of illumination. The same Spirit who once inspired the prophets must now illumine the hearts of hearers. The Westminster Confession explains:

“Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” (WCF 1.5)

Without that inward work, the Word remains a closed book. Jesus said as much when He told Nicodemus that unless one is born of the Spirit, he cannot even see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). The problem isn’t with the light of God’s Word, but with the blindness of our hearts.

When the Spirit opens our eyes, we begin to see that the Bible truly is what it has always been—the living and active Word of God. The change is not in the Word, but in us. The same Scriptures that once seemed distant or dull suddenly shine with divine truth. We no longer simply read them; they read us. They convict, comfort, direct, and delight. The same God who spoke to Hosea through revelation now speaks to His people through the written Word—and by His Spirit, that Word pierces to the division of soul and spirit (Heb. 4:12).

So when we read that “the word of the LORD came to Hosea,” we’re reminded that God still comes to His people by His Word. Not in fresh revelation—Scripture is complete and sufficient—but in fresh illumination. The Spirit still takes the inspired Word and presses it upon our hearts with divine power.

Every time you open your Bible, the living God is speaking. The question is not whether He will speak, but whether we will listen. And so we pray with Samuel, “Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.”

And if that sounds a bit too mystical, remember—it’s not that we wait for a new voice from heaven. We simply wait for the Spirit to make the written Word living in us. The word that came to Hosea still comes, by grace, to all who have ears to hear.

SDG

On Christian Freedom

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Continuing in the series of posts from Martin Luther as we celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I  share some highlights from Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian.  This treatise was dedicated to Pope Leo X, and was Luther’s final attempt to be reconcile to Rome.

One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ… Let us consider it certain and firmly established that the soul can do without anything except the Word of God and where that Word of God is missing there is no help at all for the soul.  If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks nothing, since it is the Word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and of every incalculable blessing. On the other hand, there is no more terrible disaster with which the wrath of God can afflict men than a famine of the hearing of his Word.

The Word of God cannot be received and cherished by any works whatever but only by faith. So [the soul] is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith. Wherefore it ought to be the first concern of every Christian to lay aside all confidence in works and increasingly to strengthen faith alone and through faith to grow in the knowledge, not of works, but of Christ Jesus, who suffered and rose for him. No other work makes a Christian.

To those who ask, “If faith does all things and is alone sufficient unto righteousness, why then are good works commanded?” Although a man is abundantly and sufficiently justified by faith inwardly, in his spirit, and so has all that he needs… yet he remains in this mortal life on earth.  In this life he must control his own body and have dealings with men.  Here the works begin, here a man cannot enjoy leisure; here he must indeed take care to discipline his body by fastings, watchings, labors, and other reasonable discipline and to subject it to the Spirit so that it will obey and conform to the inner man and faith and not revolt against faith and hinder the inner man, as it is the nature of the body to do if it is not held in check. Since by faith the soul is cleansed and made to love God, it desires that all things, and especially its own body, shall be purified so that all things may join with it in loving and praising God. Nevertheless the works themselves to not justify him before God, but he does the works out of spontaneous love in obedience to God and considers nothing except the approval of God, whom he would most scrupulously obey in all things.

The following statements are therefore true: “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works; evil works do not make a wicked man, but a wicked man does evil works.