The Oxygen of the Word of God

What do a deep-sea diver, an astronaut on a spacewalk, and a mountain climber on top of Mount Everest have in common?

They all need oxygen to survive and they are all in a hostile environment that will kill them.

In mountain climbing, once you ascend to 25,000 feet you are in a special zone – it’s the death zone – your body starts to die, your systems start to shut down. Using oxygen in the death zone does not stop your body from dying, from shutting down – it only slows the process. You can only stay in the death zone for so long.

Now let’s go back to our astronaut, mountain climber, and deep-sea diver – what do they have in common with a Christian? A Christian is also in a death zone – the world.

But now I’ll ask, what is it that they do not have in common with a Christian? They know they need help, they know they need oxygen to survive – the average Christian doesn’t know that he or she needs the oxygen of the Word of God to survive in this world; we may say we do, but our actions deny it.

Consider Paul’s words to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:12 – 4:5)

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Note that the immediate context of 3:14 – 17 is false teaching and what our response ought to be to it; how we should engage false teaching, how we should live and suffer, and how we should be grounded in God’s Word. Christ in His Word is our center of gravity.

We are called to live in a mansion with 66 rooms. We are called to breathe the Word of God, to speak the Word of God, to allow the Word of God to form us into the image of Jesus Christ – individually and collectively.

If the Bible is not forming our thoughts then the world and sin are forming our thoughts. If the Bible is not directing our decisions, then the world and sin are directing our decisions. It’s really that simple (Romans 12:1-2).

As Craig A. Carter has written, “Nothing is more fundamental to the Christian life than reading the text of Scripture and submitting one’s life to the One who speaks His Word through the human words of the inspired text.”

Carter also writes, “If reading in faith is how we become Christians, reading without faith is how we become [functional] atheists. So the stakes are high.”

Are we living as people of the Living Word? Or are we counted among those who “will not endure sound doctrine”? What does the evidence of our lives demonstrate? The life of our church?

Is the Word of God our oxygen?