I recently wrote a bulletin article on the primacy of actions over mere talk. However, I prefaced that article by saying words alone are indeed powerful. Some might object to this. I have heard a well-meaning, Christian gentleman say in dissension, “If sermons and words could change the world, it would have happened long before now.” Well, sir, sermons and words have changed the world for both good and bad. On the day of Pentecost, it was a sermon delivered by Peter that convicted the hearts of three thousand people to turn to Christ. Conversely, the words of false teachers are of great danger to the church.

Furthermore, one need not look any further than the first page of the Bible to see the power of words. Unlike many ancient mythologies, the Bible does not report God fashioning the world through defeating some sort of primordial monster or through some great feat of physical strength. God creates the world through language. All that God needed to do was speak and reality was formed. Human words also have this capacity of altering or creating. In fact, true power lies within the language we use to see the world. For example, the world was a very different place before Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. The words in these books completely changed the way scientists and, eventually, the public looked at the world. Much of modern society has been impacted by these mere words. Words have power to change the world. Therefore, some groups are trying to change the terminology we use to talk about gender. They want our language to construct a (false) reality that reflects their ideas about gender. Words have power.

All this is to say how we need to be conscious of how language has power over us and vice versa. The Bible has the power to change lives and for us to see the world and history as God sees it. Our words have the power to shape the way people think and live. I hope that we can use this God-given power to God’s glory and try to construct God’s kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.