Did the word of God originate with you?

I was deeply encouraged and also deeply challenged as I prepared on Acts 2 recently. Encouraged about the power of the gospel and challenged about my cultural-ethnic pride.

First it was deeply encouraging.

We have good news that crosses every language barrier

the wonders of God (Acts 2:11)

That’s the good news – the wonders of God – not the wonders of humanity, not the wonders of human potential, not the wonders of our cleverness and goodness and impressiveness – No – the wonders of who God is and what God has done – that is the good news. That God is nothing like most people think he is – he is a wonderful God, Father, Son and Spirit, overflowing love and goodness and kindness and humility – a love which caused God the Father to send God the Son to rescue people who hate him, rescue them from death and darkness and hell at incredible cost, by going through hell instead of sinners.

Compare the apocalyptic passage from Joel (quoted at Acts 2:19-20) with Peter’s sermon interpreting it and we see that the ‘signs and wonders’ of God are seen most wonderfully at the Cross: as the Son of God bleeds and the sun is turned to darkness and the fire of God’s wrath falls on Jesus.

That is the good news and it is for all nations.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven (Acts 2:5)

Of course ‘nation’ here doesn’t mean nation states in the modern sense but people groups, cultural groups, language groups.  These are religiously Jewish people – they’re “God-fearing Jews” – but they are not all ethnically Jewish – some are Gentiles – “…both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs…” (v11). And whether or not they are ethnically Jewish, they have all sorts of native languages – “Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites etc.” (v8-9). So even if they were Jews in the sense that they could trace their heritage back to Abraham, their birth language, their mother tongue was Coptic or Berber or Arabic or Latin or Punic or one of many regional dialects and variations on those languages.

And those languages expressed cultures, expressed identity. In the ancient world nationhood and ethnicity was not so much about geography or genetics, it was about your language. Were you a Latin speaker or a ‘Barbarian’? Were you a Hebrew speaker or a Greek speaker? (cf. Acts 6:1; 21:37-22:2)

Even today, your language is a hugely important part of who you – your identity, your culture. Why are the Welsh so keen to hold onto the Welsh language? Why do the French love speaking French and the Kikuyu love speaking Kikuyu? Because language is central to culture and identity and peoplehood. Even within the company of English speakers we listen to someone’s accent, their dialect, the sort of words they use – and we have a good idea whether they are coming from geographically and socially. And that divides us, language and dialect and culture divides the world. Us versus Them.

And this is the amazing thing:

each of us hears them in our native language! (Acts 2:8)

This a huge moment in history! Thousands of years before, at the tower of Babel God had confused the speech of humanity so that people couldn’t understand each other, there was a division of the nations and scattering – but now you have a gathering of people from every nation and there is confusion because they can understand. It’s not a complete reversal of Babel – it’s the overcoming of Babel. The language barriers that divided people are being overcome. Nothing is going to stand in the way of Jesus gathering his people from all nations.

we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues! (Acts 2:11)

The writings of many other religions cannot be translated. It is believed that ‘God’ only speaks to people in Arabic or Sanskrit. But we have a message about God that can be spoken truly and faithfully in every language and dialect under heaven. That is very exciting!

An Argentinian brother recently explained this point so well. He said,

It’s great to know we have a God who speaks and understands every language (video).

The New Testament was not written in English. I sometimes forget that. But we have it now in our own heart language. And today all over the world people are reading the New Testament in French and Portuguese and Korean and Mandarin and they will be truly hearing the Word of God in their own languages.

We have a good news which is translatable. This is why the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators is so important – getting the word of God into the heart language of the 1.5 billion people who are still waiting for a translation.

And that will happen. God is saying very clearly at Pentecost – I will get my Word to the ends of the earth, every language barrier will be overcome, Jesus will have an inheritance of nations, there is no culture which is impervious to the gospel.

That is deeply encouraging. We have good news which speaks into every culture, is relevant to every culture, saves sinners from every culture, every ethnicity, every class, every educational background, people from every town and street can hear the wonders of God and become part of that great gathering of people from every tribe and language and people and nation under King Jesus.

And deeply challenging

At the same time I find Acts 2 very humbling as a UK-born white Anglo-Saxon middle class English speaker – because it reminds me that the good news is not essentially an English thing. It didn’t start with us. We have no more claim on the gospel than Chinese Christians or Kenyan Christians or Brazilian Christians. We are part of a multi-lingual church where no culture or nationality has a natural right to rule or lead. Where we are just one of hundreds of languages into which the gospel has gone.

 

We need to hear the words of Paul:

Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? (1 Cor. 14:36)

No. Jesus did not speak English – I need to remind myself of that! The apostles did not speak or write in English. For the first few hundred years of the Christian era the language of Christian worship, theology, leadership, devotion and discussion was Greek. Then for over a thousand years it was Latin (along with Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic). Why would we as English speakers in the western world think we have some natural right to lead the church?

Is it because we have control of the vast majority of financial resources? I hope not. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Do we really think they are ‘ours’ to deploy with a multitude of strings attached? Of course there are issues of stewardship and corruption. We don’t want to be unwise and send resources to fund charlatans and crooks or distort local dynamics or undermine local structures. But there are also issues of trust and prejudice. Do we really trust our brothers and sisters of other cultures as we trust ourselves and those of the same culture as us? Do we trust that they are genuinely born again by the Spirit of God and could actually be godlier, smarter, sounder, less culturally captive than us?

Is it because we think of ourselves as having a wealth of theological resources? Well again, “What do you have that you did not receive?” The western theological tradition stands on the shoulders of Augustine and the Fathers. And anything true and useful that they and we have found is a gift of the Spirit. And what about the work of the Spirit in his church throughout the world? Has the Lord only given the theological resources to the Western church and left the rest of the church bereft of insight? No. Of course there is much false teaching in the majority world but there is also great depth to be found. The idea that the western church is narrow and deep and the majority church a mile wide and an inch deep is wrong on both counts. Certainly there is an important role for the Western church to play and we don’t want to run into theological relativism or naively embrace every ‘minority theology’ or ‘black theology’ with a patronising reverse racism. But we must also accept that the West (as every culture) does have serious blind-spots and errors and that other cultures will see things in the Bible that we have missed or misunderstood because of our cultural glasses.

Acts 2 is wonderfully encouraging but at the same time deeply challenging and humbling. The gospel has gone out to every nation and now we are equals around the table of grace. 

We are not all the same. We have different strengths and weaknesses and we will need to help each other in different ways, but we are equals, none with the right to take leadership of the global church. Christ is our head and governor and we are simply receivers of his gracious word.

the diversity and egalitarianism at the heart of the Pentecost narrative might renew and even diversify evangelical churches and leadership (Amos Yong)