The Word of God Is Living and Active

Heb 4:12

1.  The Word of God is alive. At the first he tells us that God’s vehicle of communication with the human race (see Jer. 4:10 and Luke 2:35) is instinct with the life of the living God who utters it. Notice the comparable terminology used by Stephen in Acts 7:38: logia zonta “living oracles.”

2.  The Word of God is powerful. This word (enesgēs) active, shows that there is a dynamic quality to the Word of God. It ac- complishes things. A thing may be alive but dormant, but the na- ture of the true life is that it springs into activity and challenges on every front those who fall short of its standards. The Word of God, in its intellectual and moral demands, pursues men and cries out for personal decision to be made in response to its exhorta- tions. No doubt the writer is especially thinking of the ever present character of the spiritual challenge he just culled from his reading of Psalm 95. After so many years on the pages of an ancient book, still it was powerful enough to challenge and confront men of this writer’s own generation.

3.  The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. At this juncture the author has in mind the deep penetration of a razor sharp blade into the vitals of a victim. Such a blade severs tissue, releases a river of blood, slices through muscle, pierces bone and sinew, and in the end steals away the life of one whose body is pen- etrated by such an unsparing edged metal weapon. The divine Word is not merely described in this verse as a sharp sword, but as sharper than the sharpest sword. The word for two-edged (distomos), “two- mouthed,” is from classical usage (cf. distomon ziphos in Euripides, Helena 983), even though the idea is also found in the Old Testament (cf. Judg. 3:16; Psa. 149:6; Prov. 5:4) as well as the Apocrypha (Sir. 21:3). The concept is also found elsewhere in the New Testament (Rev. 1:16; 2:12; 19:15).

4.   The Word of God pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow. His point is that the Word of God probes into the inmost recesses of our spiritual being and brings the subconscious motives to light. The idea of dividing asunder the soul and spirit and separation of joints and mar- row carries with it the notion of killing a victim so that soul and spirit are divided, then dividing the corpse into its several parts. This, however, is not intended to describe the actual killing of a sacrificial victim and severing its parts; rather, it speaks spiritually of the subtle articulations by the Divine Word of the spiritual be- ing and the revelation of what lies hidden deep within. Paul says elsewhere that the Lord “will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts” (1 Cor. 4:5). This passage describes the same process exactly.

5.  The Word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart of man. God’s Word is filled with diagnostic percep- tion that picks up inconsistencies of motivation between things as close as soul and spirit, joints and marrow. No smoothing over with outward actions can hide from God the real purpose or intent of the heart. We may appear to be utterly sincere before other hu- man beings, but God knows the heart, and he knows if there is an ulterior motive hidden within. God’s Word is like a two-edged sword, sharp as a scalpel, discerning every twist and turn of the human mind. That is the essence of the writer’s meaning here.