God is a speaking God. He created the universe and continues to do all things through His speaking. Therefore, everyone who has been saved and who has His life should learn to speak for Him and to speak His word.
The greatest mystery in the universe is God. Where is this mystery opened and revealed to man? This mystery is opened and revealed to us in His Word. Hebrews 1 tells us that our God is a speaking God (vv. 1-2). The speaking of the human race came from His creation. He is a speaking God, and He is also the Word.
We have already seen that the Lord’s word is the Lord Himself, the Spirit, life, light, food, the seed of life, the rain that waters the seed, and the dew that moistens the plant. The Lord’s word is everything to us. The problem, however, is that we, the people of God, still have Satan and the flesh with us. Moreover, sometimes because we are confused, we mix up the spirit and the soul and are unable to discern one from the other. Therefore, God’s word is also a sharp sword which defeats Satan for us, divides our spirit from our soul, and deals with our flesh. Not only so, the word of God is like a big hammer carrying out a breaking work in us.
Now let us go a step further to see God’s desire, which is that man speak for Him. This matter sounds easy to understand, but it contains a biblical mystery. God shows us clearly in the Bible that His purpose in creating man was that man might speak for Him. Genesis 1:26 says, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” This was spoken during a council of the Divine Trinity to determine how to create man. The result was that God made man in His image. How did God create man in His image?
According to the inner-life people, image in Genesis 1:26 refers not to an outward form but to the attributes of God’s being such as love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Love, light, holiness, and righteousness are four exceedingly great items. If we carefully study the Ten Commandments (Exo. 20:3-17), the law decreed by God, we will discover that the crucial contents of these laws are these four items: love, light, holiness, and righteousness.
The law first talks about the holiness of God, then the righteousness of God, then the love of God, and finally the light of God. It seems that in the Ten Commandments we cannot find these four great items-holiness, righteousness, love, and light; nevertheless, these four matters are the very content of the Ten Commandments. From the outset, God prohibited the people from making idols and from bowing down to them; He also told them that they should not take the name of Jehovah in vain and that they should remember the Sabbath day so as to sanctify it (vv. 3-11). These four commandments show us that He is the holy God, the God who is sanctified, different from all other gods, transcendent, uncommon, and distinct from all things. Therefore, the first four commandments speak of God’s holiness; they were written according to God’s attribute of holiness.
We know that the kind of law a person makes always expresses the kind of person he is. A good person makes good laws, and a bad person makes bad laws. If bank robbers could make laws, they would surely legalize bank robbery. The reason our God established such holy laws is because He is holy. “Honor your father and your mother....You shall not kill” (vv. 12-13)-these commandments show us that God is love. “You shall not steal” (v. 15)-this speaks of God being righteous. “You shall not testify with false testimony against your neighbor” (v. 16)-this concerns God being light. People who lie are in darkness, and those who kill and do not honor their father and mother are without love.
If we analyze the Ten Commandments, we will see that their basic points are God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, God’s love, and God’s light. The fact that God created man in His image means that God made man according to what He is. God is holiness, righteousness, love, and light, and according to these items, God created man. Therefore, as those created by God, we also have these virtues in our nature. It is true that we are corrupt and fallen, that many evil things have been manifested through us from the time we were born to the time we have grown up, and that we have been affected by the filthiness of human society. Nevertheless, in our nature, in the depths of our being, we still have these four virtues. For example, when we love others, we feel very happy inside, and when we hate people, we feel ashamed. In the depths of man there is something of love. Furthermore, people like to do the things of light; even children are like this. No one likes to do the things of darkness. This proves that in man there is definitely the characteristic of God as light. God’s creation of man in the beginning was according to His love and His light.
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