Logos and Rhema

A while ago, my darling and I were having a discussion. I don’t know particularly how it happened, but conversation turned to the story of the water from the rock. It’s one of the most fascinating stories for me, although it’s pretty well dispersed. In Exodus something, when Israel was first out of Egypt, they came to a place where there was no water. So they complained, and threatened to kill Moses. Moses prayed, and God directed him to a rock, and said “hit it.” Moses strikes the rock and FWOOSH! out comes enough water for 600,000 fighting men and all their families.

One of the old, anti-miracle-ist explanations for this miracle was that the rock that Moses came to was actually a great side of a mountain. Probably the person who thought this explanation up was from the Appalachian Mountains, because you see it there all the time: The drift water from the previous snows isn’t held just in the surface of the mountain, but inside every crevice of the mountain. You can drive by and see little rivulets creeping out of every minor crack in the surface of the stone. So, our anti-miracle theory goes, God directed Moses to just such a mountain, that had a vast store of water inside of it somewhere, and Moses struck it and just the right place, and all that stored water of the ages comes rushing out—enough to feed 600,000 fighting men and all their families.

The only problem with this explanation is in Corinthians 10:16, which says that “the rock which followed them was Christ.” The image of a rock following someone pretty strongly implies that the Israelites treated that rock the same way they did the Manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the Ten Commandments, and every other physical manifestation of God’s supernatural grace for them: They picked it up and carried it around with them. Which means the rock would have had to have been pretty small. It couldn’t have been much bigger than the size of a watermelon.

And then the next time Israel was stuck in a corner of the desert with no natural source of water (which would be about Numbers 20), Moses prays again, and God says to speak to the rock. And Moses, because of the lovely mood he’s in, instead of speaking to the rock, he hits it, twice. And then there’s this big section where God tells Moses he won’t get to go into Canaan because he hit the rock instead of speaking to it.

OK. So what’s the big deal? I mean, of all the dumb things Moses has probably done wrong in 80-odd years, the thing that tops the cake and kicks him out of Canaan is hitting a rock with a stick. Ever hit a rock with a stick? Watch out! Actually, one explanation I’ve heard on this goes something along the lines of “Moses represented God as angry when he wasn’t,” which I guess is pretty bad. I mean, misrepresenting God, false prophecy, false teaching and all that. But I think it’s even more significant than that.

If you look at it with a little historical perspective, and remember what Jesus said about the whole Old Testament being a prophecy (c.f. “the law prophesied until John;” “not a jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled;” etc.), what you realize is that Moses screwed up what was supposed to be one of the most powerful symbols in the entire book. Remember, “the rock which followed them was Christ.” God only told Moses to strike the rock once. Jesus was crucified “Once for all” (It’s in Romans and it’s in Hebrews. Go look it up.) As a Christian, what is one of the worst things you can do, in regard to your sin? Isn’t it to try somehow to earn God’s salvation? Jesus was crucified once. There is no need for anyone to do it again. It would be an affront to God to attempt to do so, like attempting to pay for your birthday presents.

Strike the shepherd and the sheep are scattered.
Strike the rock and the waters come.
They struck my Lord and they brought salvation.
Could they have known what they had done?

Jesus was struck once for our salvation, and out of his side, like blood and water, came an unquenchable fountain of life. Moses struck a bolder and out came enough water for 600,000 fighting men, and their families (and their sheep, and their camels, and their donkeys…) From Jesus Christ flows an unquenchable flood that has watered people in the billions. He was struck once, and now all we have to do is speak to that rock to receive anew that fresh fountain of life.

---

Now that was pretty good, but I’m pretty sure I already knew most of it, though it had never quite before congealed so nicely. But what happened next was pretty amazing. I dropped my darling off for the night and headed home (that’s not the amazing part), when the Holy Spirit reminded me of another verse involving water (here it comes—this has totally revolutionized my life). The verse from Ephesians 5 pops into my mind, about husbands: “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water of the word.”

I’ve always liked that verse, because it describes the word of God as this cleansing agent that automatically draws you to holiness. I like verses like that. Like “Acknowledge God, and He will direct your path,” which had me chanting a mantra of “God I acknowledge you” for months every time I found my self going on the wrong path. I had in my mind somehow this idea, like in Psalm 119, where it says “because of Your word, I have more wisdom than my elders,” that if I just hid enough scripture in my heart, somehow those bible verses would work their way out in my life and actions, and I would be this super-righteous person. I hope you can recognize the wrong direction I’m going here. Crucifying again, making a mockery of Christ, and all that sort of thing. I had in my mind this nice little formula: Read bible, become holy. The only problem is that it never really has managed to work.

So, anyway, I’m driving home in the night and this verse pops into my head and the Holy Spirit says “What if that word there is Rhema instead of Logos?” I don’t remember if I stopped the car or not, but I do know I shouted “WHOA!!!” about as loud as I could. (I’m pretty sure all my windows were up.) Right about then 10,000 stones were falling into place.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, there are two Greek words in the New Testament that are translated into English as “word.” One is Logos, and the other is Rhema. Logos is pretty famous already, as it’s found in English words such as logic, and every word that ends in –ology. Logos is also pretty famous because John used it like crazy in the first chapter of his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Logos…” John probably knocked the socks off of some Greek philosophers with that one, since Plato had used Logos to describe both the very mind of God, and the absolute foundation of all reality. Pretty cool intro to have the absolute foundation of all reality to become flesh and dwell among you. In everyday Greek life, Logos just meant the written word. Logos means, ahem, pure text. Heh, heh. (woo. I made a funny!) Logos has the connotation of all that is orderly, organized, planned out, structured, prepared. (Which is to say that Logos signifies everything that I’m not—the great irony abounds.)

Rhema means the spoken word. Theologically, Rhema would be prophecy: the word of God for now, that still small voice, the inner light, His work in your life—every aspect of God moving in your life that does not directly involve the book. Rhema connotes something lively, something powerful, something fluid, something flexible…like water.

Again, I hope you can see where I’m going with this. If Jesus himself is Logos, which is the scripture, and he is also “the rock which followed them,” something very stable, what could that water from the rock be but the very rhema-word of God?

OK. Back to Ephesians. “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church … with the washing of the water of the word.” Do you see how the image changes? Before I had Jesus scrubbing his bride with the sound and unchanging scriptures. Now I’ve got him veritably flooding her with a fountain of cleansing… words.

What sort of words to you suppose Jesus is using, to wash over his bride? I’ll give you a hint: probably not many of them start with the word “woe.” Jesus himself said he came to save the world, not to condemn it. His purpose is to sanctify the church, to make her holy, and as I’ve pointed out before, to be Holy is not “to be a better person” or to change who you are, rather it is to become more distinctly who you already are. So the rock of our salvation is constantly pouring out the living water, which washes away all the things in our environment that have tried to change us. He’s saying, “Your feet aren’t dirty, that dirt isn’t part of who you are. Here, let me show you what beautiful feet you have. There, isn’t that good news?”

That’s a pretty powerful image, just as an injunction for husbands in regards to their wives. The manner in which we are supposed to demonstrate our love is not by brandishing them about with the order and understanding of heaven, but rather through life giving words. Not only that, but our words are supposed to be used to define our loved one’s very nature. Do you love the way her not-quite-long-enough hair gets tousled around and curls behind her ears in her frustration? Tell her. That’s who she is. Do you love the way she can put the fear of God and hell in any man, woman or child who comes near to hurting her children? Tell her. That’s who she is. Does her worrying about the future disturb you? Wash off those worries and remind her: that’s not who she is. If the rhema is the prophetic word, then it’s important to remember that to prophesy is to speak “edification and exhortation and comfort.” If it isn’t edifying, it probably isn’t rhema.

But it doesn’t stop in the natural. Husbands and wives are called to be a to the world of Christ and the church. If it’s powerful when a husband washes over his wife with the water of the word, how much more when Christ washes us?

---

Can we go back for a minute to that whole “water from the rock” thing? The thing that always bothered me when I was in my “read the bible and you’ll become holy” phase, was that I couldn’t quite understand the exact mechanism by which me reading my bible was going to miraculously produce a holy life and a better relationship with the living God. This Rhema and Logos bit really clears a lot of that up for me.

Let me just run through a couple of metaphors, and we’ll see how many of them I can mix in a single paragraph. Jesus is the “rock which followed them.” He is also the “manna from heaven.” In communion, or the Passover feast, “this bread is [his] body,” and the wine is his blood. But if the blood of Christ is the fountain of our salvation, then his blood is also the water from the rock. So, the solid rock is the Logos, and the flowing water is the Rhema.

So there’s a very interesting irony in the fact that, when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, the first thing he said was to turn stones into bread, since both stones and bread can be said to represent the logos of God. Fittingly, Jesus replies that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Want to guess which Greek word here is translated “word”? Would you believe… rhema? Which makes it pretty clear to me that Jesus was saying that the text is not enough alone, but it must supplemented by the daily specific direction of the Holy Spirit. You might say that logos, the rock, is like vitamins (life-minerals), and that some vitamins must be dissolved in water before we can use them (other vitamins must be dissolved in oil, but I’m not even going to try to make a distinction here between the symbol of oil for the Holy Spirit, and the symbol of water for the Holy Spirit). It’s also interesting to point out that both the bread (logos) and the wine (rhema) are present at communion.

So, no matter how you look at it, you need both the scriptures (logos), and the Holy Spirit’s daily leading (rhema).

But how do we get from the text to revelation, from Logos to rhema? I mean, the text is already sitting right in front of me. But how can I be assured of God speaking through it to me on a daily basis? Where is this unending flood that is supposed to be coming out, washing over me, making me holy and reminding me of who I am? This is probably going to be a no-brainer for you, but it came as a huge… erm, rhema to me.

In John 4:10, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Duh. Ask! Moses struck the rock when he should have spoken to it, a horrible crime against the revelation that God was trying to demonstrate: if we would just keep on asking, he would give us so many good things. “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” If we would just speak to him, asking him for revelation from his word, then He (the Logos himself, Jesus) would give himself up for us, washing us with the living water we need.

One last point, and then I think I’m done: In James it says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” Would you like to take a guess which “word” is used here? That’s right friend, rhema. I always thought that was a nice injunction to adhere to the bible, even though the metaphor made absolutely no sense. What does what you look like have to do with following orders? I thought it meant that a person who reads the bible, but then doesn’t adhere to it, is deceived. Well, yeah, but then we’re all deceived, and in a very general sense. But since it’s rhema that James is talking about, it starts to fall into place. Jesus washes us with the rhema and lifts away the conforming influence of our environment. The rhema renews our mind and reminds us of who we are. But if I get a revelation from God that I am a person who draws near to Him, and who asks for revelation from his word, and I don’t immediately draw near to God and ask for revelation, then I have forgotten who I am. I’m just not acting like myself at all. The rhema reminds us of who we are (in Christ, I guess I should say), and if we immediately go off acting like somebody else, then we are exactly like a person who looks in the mirror, sees that he’s a man, and then turns away and starts looking for an appropriate evening gown.

It simply isn’t him.