Note to Parents: At the end of the small group guide (linked below and on the Discipleship Book page), you will find a fun, interactive family lesson enabling you to teach your children what you’re learning about your identity in Christ.
The gospel of John opens with the declaration that Jesus existed before the world and spoke it into being as the very Word of God. “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,and his life brought light to everyone.” Jesus is the Word or voice of God, the visible manifestation of God’s voice and nature who brings life to everyone. We refer to scripture as the word of God, but Jesus is the Word who “became human and made his home among us” (John 1:14). This is why Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!” (John 5:39). Jesus is the Word who speaks throughout the entire Bible.
Everything in the Old Testament of the Bible points to Jesus’ identity and mission. When Jesus met with some men on a road to Emmaus after his resurrection, he explained how he is the fulfillment of scripture. The voice of God in scripture is the voice of Jesus, God’s Word, who spoke the world into being and then entered it to redeem it. When we read the story of God in the Bible, we’re always looking for Jesus and listening for Jesus to speak. The Bible tells the story of those who received the Word and carried the seed of faith as well as those who rejected the voice of God. If you’re not familiar with the Old Testament, here’s a little overview of humanity’s wrestle with God’s voice.
Adam and Eve were removed from the garden of Eden when they did not obey God’s voice and instead listened to the devil. The result of obeying Satan instead of God led to the earth becoming so corrupted that everything people thought and did was entirely evil. Awesome. Genesis 6 tells us that God wiped the earth clean and started over with the family of one righteous man, Noah, who listened to God. Even though the earth at the time had never encountered rain because it was watered by springs, Noah trusted God’s voice and built a giant boat called an ark to save his family and some of the animals from the flood. (And now you know why in every good movie the animals are always saved because they borrowed the plotline from God.) Salvation came to Noah’s family because Noah chose to obey God’s voice and trusted in God when his instructions made no sense. Noah points to Jesus, the one who saves us from judgment by inviting us into God’s family, just like Noah’s sons were saved because of Noah’s righteousness and their agreement to get on board.
Sometime later, God chose Abraham, who obeyed God’s voice to leave his family and go to a land God promised to give his descendants – only he didn’t have any children and was already 75 years old. God called Abraham righteous because when Abraham heard God’s instructions and crazy promises like having a child in old age, he believed them and acted upon them to the best of his understanding. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice the son whom he had said would receive the inheritance God promised Abraham, even though it didn’t make sense, Abraham obeyed. Hebrews 11:19 says Abraham reasoned that God would raise him from the dead which had never happened before. Instead, God sent a substitute sacrifice foreshadowing Jesus as our substitute sacrifice who would be raised from the dead. God tested Abraham to see if he would obey God’s instructions because he was planning to entrust his instructions (called Torah) to Abraham’s descendants, the nation of Israel.
When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, he brought them into the wilderness where he spoke to them from Mount Sinai. In the garden, Adam and Eve were given one command. On the mountain, God gave Israel 10 commands. He was about to take them into a “land flowing with milk and honey” – basically a new Eden that would cooperate with their efforts to cultivate it and where they would experience the joy of his presence with them. But to remain in the land and prosper, they needed to heed his voice and learn from him what goodness looks like as a family and nation. The people became so fearful when they heard God’s voice that they begged Moses to be their mediator and just tell them whatever God said. They rejected an invitation to intimacy with God in favor of human interpreters.
Israel rebelled and turned back to idolatry while Moses was doing his job and getting God’s instructions. (The name Israel, given by God to Abraham’s grandson, literally means to wrestle with God!) This was the beginning of a long cycle of rebellion against God that comprises the Old Testament, with some notable exceptions. The great heroes of the faith are always people who sought God’s voice and did whatever he said, which caused city walls to fall down just by marching around them and the destruction of an army by a worship team. The prophets trusted God’s voice and said what was unpopular as they called the nation to repent from evil and return to God’s instructions for right living outlined in Torah. When the people obeyed God, they were blessed, but when they worshipped other gods and did evil, they fell into ruin, just as God promised in Deuteronomy 28.
God designed us to prosper in an atmosphere of love and intimacy with him. His wisdom leads us to make good decisions that bless us mentally, emotionally, and physically. The Torah – which is often translated as the law – was a written set of instructions for how the people would prosper in relationship to God, to each other, and with the land. Moses tells the people that to choose obedience to God’s commands is to choose life…but they didn’t. And crashed hard. They rejected God as their King in favor of human leaders who led them into a divided nation. The northern tribes who retained the name Israel were scattered to the nations, whittling God’s chosen people down to the tribes of Benjamin, Levi, and King David’s tribe of Judah, who came to be known as the Jews.
God the Father put the Jews in a 70-year timeout in Babylon after warning them for centuries that he would pull the car over if they didn’t stop picking on each other in the back seat. After they felt the sting of discipline for worshiping other gods and were put back in the land, they recognized they hadn’t obeyed God’s laws. So they made the law their god. The teachers of religious law added even more laws – called the Mishnah – just to make sure nobody broke the law. God’s laws were good. Jesus said God’s laws were based on love for God and others. But the Pharisees took interpretation of the law to such extremes that the goodness of it was lost. Love was removed and replaced with fear and religious duty. The religious leaders heaped burdens on the people and did not represent God’s heart of mercy.
Then Jesus showed up as the living, breathing voice of God in the flesh. John 1:14 says that “the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.” The voice who started it all by speaking, “Let there be light,” came into the world as the Light to light it up with truth. God’s voice speaks life into the one who listens and eternal life into the one who receives Jesus as God’s Word. Jesus is the voice or Word of God who put on human flesh so we could not only hear God’s voice but see what his commands look like through a life lived in obedience to God. Jesus clarified the goodness of God’s laws and summed them up as love for God and others. He showed us why we should obey God – because he loves us and wants to love others through us. Receive the Word and you receive eternal life!
As the visible Word, Jesus demonstrated the heart of God’s commands by teaching us how to love our neighbor with compassion and love our enemy with mercy and forgiveness. He taught us how to overcome evil with good by trusting in God to provide both justice and our daily provision instead of seeking revenge or worshiping money. The best part is he lived it! The gospels reveal Jesus taking time for the lowly, preaching good news to the poor, healing the sick in compassion, trusting in God to provide basic needs like food and paying taxes, and forgiving those who crucified him. In Matthew 7:24 Jesus says, “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.” Jesus’ instructions are God’s building plans for how to build a good, solid life that lasts.
In John 10:30 Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.” What the Word said in the Old Testament Jesus practiced in the flesh. In Jesus, we see what love looks like: self-sacrifice. Now we get it. Now we understand why God’s laws are good because he’s teaching us to lay down selfishness for the good of others out of love and trust in God’s voice. Jesus demonstrates that the way of the Father is obedience to crazy-sounding commands like love your enemies and take up your cross to follow Jesus. But all who have this kind of crazy faith like Abraham and trust in God’s voice are considered righteous by God.
After setting Israel free from slavery to Pharoah, the Word of the Lord came down on Mount Sinai to set Israel free from bondage to sin by giving them his laws. The limitation of the law was that it couldn’t change people’s hearts. I remember when my son was a toddler and we told him not to touch something. He reached out for the object with his chubby little finger while saying, “Don’t touch.” When someone says no, our sinful nature says, “But I wanna!” So God promised a new covenant in which his Word would come to live inside us, cutting out our sinful nature as a spiritual circumcision. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God “is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires” (NIV). The word – scripture, in this context – is alive and powerful inside of us because it is the Spirit of God cutting off our sinful nature, conforming us to the person of Christ until we look like the Word in our flesh.
On the day of Pentecost, when the giving of the law at Mount Sinai is commemorated, God chose to once again come down. Only this time instead of giving a system of law written in stone, he gave us his Spirit in fulfillment of his promise in Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (NIV). The Spirit has come to live inside all who receive Christ as the fulfillment of the law so that we can be God’s people who hear and obey his voice. The Spirit helps us apply God’s words to our daily life so that we can love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. This is freedom! This is abundant life!
When the Spirit was poured out, he caused people to speak in other languages because the Word is not just for Israel anymore. Ephesians 2:14-15 explains that Christ “united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. 15 He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups.” Jesus declared in Matthew 5:17 that he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The law is good because it defines right from wrong. By fulfilling the sacrificial requirements, Jesus removed a “system of law” that was rigid, written in stone, and meant to govern Israel. Now everyone who repents of sin can be governed by the Spirit. “The mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6, NIV).
Like Abraham, all who are led by the Spirit follow the way of faith in God, obeying his voice. Like Israel in the wilderness, we are led by God’s presence as a community. 1 Corinthians 2:16 tells us that the Spirit gives us the mind of Christ so we can understand scripture. He transforms us from the inside out until we look like Christ. As all of us yield to the Spirit and obey his voice, the Word of God is, once again, made visible in the flesh through Spirit-filled believers.
Identity Puzzle Piece: Who are we in Christ, the Word of God who became flesh? The Body of Christ.
Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Just as Jesus represented the Father so we could see what he looks like, we are ambassadors of Jesus to a lost world so they can see what Jesus looks like through us. 1 Corinthians 12:27 declares, “All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” The words of God are written down in the Bible to instruct us, but the living Word continues to inhabit the earth by the Spirit of God who now lives inside each of us. Together, we demonstrate to the world who Jesus is by saying whatever the Spirit says and doing whatever God’s Spirit inside of us tells us to do. Like parts of a body, we all work together. This is how the Word is continually made flesh through the worldwide body of Christ, the family of believers called the church.
Christ, the Word, in Me: Ephesians 4:15 declares that those who are in Christ “will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.” The Spirit of Christ in me speaks truth and loves others. Jesus promised that we don’t have to worry about what we’ll say when we have an opportunity to bear witness to who he is, “For it is not you who will be speaking—it will be the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:20). Just as God’s Spirit spoke through the prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would tell us what to say. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. 14 He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me” (John 16:13-14). The Spirit speaks only what the Word tells him to say just as Jesus only said what the Father said. The Spirit and the Word do not contradict each other.
How does the Holy Spirit speak through us? It’s important to remember that we are active participants in the process. The Spirit often speaks through pictures or impressions that are like downloads which have to be opened in a word processor – through speaking or writing. Many people view the prophetic gift as transcribing God’s words but it’s actually more like translating another language into your language. We choose the words, so there’s room for error. This is why we need humility and discernment. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 teaches us to not despise prophecies but test them and hold onto what is good. We know it’s the Holy Spirit speaking when it sounds like the Word and points us to Christ. For “the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus” (Revelation 19:10). The Spirit’s words produce the fruit of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). An immature prophet may have immature fruit, but the Spirit will disciple us to speak the truth with the fruit of love.
God created the world by speaking it into existence and then created us in his image. This means that the words we speak carry the power of life when they are aligned to the will of God (see Proverbs 18:21). Jesus cursed a fig tree, and it immediately withered. When his disciples marveled at the authority of his words Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen” (Matthew 21:21). According to Jesus, those who speak by faith have authority in their words because we are declaring what the Word, Jesus, is saying. The more our words align with scripture, and we speak by faith in God who spoke the mountains into being, the more we will see mountains move!
Jesus promised, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! 8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father” (John 15:7-8). As we meditate on scripture, Jesus’ words remain in us. As they move into our flesh by applying scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we bear fruit. Not only that, we will also know how to pray according to God’s will because it is revealed in scripture. Romans 8:26 assures us that even when it’s not clear how to pray, the Spirit will intercede for us and help us because he is the Spirit of truth who knows the will of God. Jesus declared, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32, ESV).
Ephesians 6:17 describes the word of God as a sword the Spirit gives us to battle the demonic forces and evil spirits working against us. Just like a caddy chooses the right club to help you play golf, the Spirit knows the scripture you need for breakthrough. Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit “will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:26). The more scripture remains in us by spending time meditating on it and memorizing it, the more the Spirit can remind us of what we’ve read, equipping us with the sword we need for every occasion.
I remember a time when money was tight and I was trying to decide if I should eat the gluten free muffins I made for my family, since I didn’t need expensive gluten free food. I asked the Holy Spirit what I should do and heard him say, “Do not muzzle and ox while it is treading out the grain.” Um, okay. I looked up this command from Torah in Deuteronomy 25:4 and asked the Holy Spirit to explain it to me. The heart of this command is that those who work to feed us should also get to eat the food they help prepare, which Paul applied to God’s workers in 1 Corinthians 9:9. Later, when I catered a teen banquet at church, I asked the youth pastor for permission to get enough food to feed the parents who were serving the food. I came in under budget, had food leftover, and the youth pastor commented that he usually doesn’t get to eat at events. I responded, “Do not muzzle and ox while it is treading out the grain!”
All of God’s commands are loving toward us and others, which is why we desire to hear God’s voice. The words of scripture are written on the hearts of those who remain in Christ so he can express his holy love through us, his body. As we listen to the Holy Spirit and obey Jesus’ commands, the Word is once again made visible in our flesh.
Identity Declaration: I am a witness of Jesus, the Word of God, who is alive in me. As part of the body of Christ, I invite Jesus to express his nature and speak through me. I am led by God’s voice to speak the truth in love. I remain in God’s Word which dwells in me by his Spirit who empowers me to speak life.
Reflection: How can I love others as Christ the Word has loved me, speaking the truth in love?
The Word Remaining in Me:
- Read John 1:1-18 and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus as the Word made flesh to you.
- Read Hebrews 4:12. How is the word of God from scripture and any word the Spirit speaks to you individually like a sword which, in the context above, resembles a surgeon’s scalpel? How do you respond when you read something in scripture that “cuts” because it is revealing something in your soul that is not of the Spirit? How is Jesus both the surgeon who cuts and exposes as well as the healer who binds up wounds? (Hint: Jesus, the Word, is truth.)
- Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God. If all scripture is “God-breathed,” how does this scripture help you understand the Spirit’s activity in your life? In this verse, scripture refers to the Old Testament. All of the Bible – not just the New Testament – is used by the Spirit to equip us. Ask the Holy Spirit to begin revealing to you how the Old Testament all pointed to Christ, just like Jesus did on the road to Emmaus for his followers. He will!
- Read John 8:28 and John 14:10. What do these statements reveal about Jesus, the Word of God? In John 12:49 Jesus says the Father has told him what to say and how to say it. Now read what Jesus says about us in Matthew 10:19-20. Do you believe the Word speaks through you, his body?
Remaining in Love: One of the most powerful ways to renew our mind is to personalize and pray the scriptures. Praying scripture helps us to pray for ourselves and others with faith instead of fear. You can find helpful scriptures to memorize and pray at the end of each chapter. Ask the Holy Spirit to highlight a scripture for you to memorize or choose one from the list below, then pray that scripture throughout the next week. Believe that the words you speak by faith move mountains when you speak according to the Word!
Bonus Online Content
Click here for a PDF of the Small Group Discussion Guide and Fun, Interactive Family Lesson
Worshiping From Your Identity in Christ, the Word:
- Click here to worship Jesus, the Word who is a lamp to our feet (“Holy and Anointed One” by Jesus Image)
- Click here to worship as one who is led by the Spirit’s voice (“Spirit Lead Me” by Michael Ketterer and Influence Music)
- Click here to worship Jesus as the Word from the beginning (“What a Beautiful Name” by Hillsong Worship)
Identity Scriptures to Memorize and Pray:
Father, I do not live by bread alone but by your word. Jesus, help me put your words into practice, for they give me wisdom for a solid life. May your words remain in me as I remain in you so that my prayers will align to your will. Holy Spirit, help me to speak the truth in love as the body of Christ so that Christ may be magnified through me.
“People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24).
“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” (John 15:7).
“We will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).
“This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words” (1 Corinthians 2:13, NIV).
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