The Voice of Christ: Sweet and Salty by Brad Jersak

I was meditating on perceptions about God's voice that float around out there. To some, their experience of the prophetic message has been harsh, judgemental, and condemning. They relate strongly to wrath-of-God texts and visualize roaring, hairy prophets and flying spittle. Indeed, I’ve run into many a bleeding lamb who suffered abuse at the rod of messengers purporting to speak for God.

Others encounter a version of God's voice that seems too nice, continually evoking God’s love in syrupy forms that seem as banal as a “Precious Moments” figurine (and just as apt to sit dusty on a shelf). I received two emails this week that challenged me on that, warning me against hearing and teaching a sugar-coated version of Christ as we engage in “listening prayer.” As I’ve tried to discern the real issue in the company of some wise counsellors, what came was a balanced acknowledgement that the voice of Christ is both sweet and salty, but neither bitter nor sour (Rev. 10:10 notwithstanding).

I. The sweet voice of Christ: The voice of Christ is sweet like honey to our lips when / because:

    A. Its first and final concern is the testimony of the gospel [good news] of Jesus. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Rev. 19:10) The prophets themselves are to be ministers of the gospel / of reconciliation and regardless of the firmness of their [hopefully tearful] rebuke, we should always be able to hear in them an invitation of hope.

    B. Its tone should conform to the fruit of the Spirit. A word from the Spirit will be consistent with the fruit of the Spirit. So prophetic words (reporting God's voice) will sound like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal. 5) A prophetic word that is inconsistent with the character of Christ as expressed by the Holy Spirit should give us serious pause. Remember that the gift of prophecy without love is nothing... apart from the lovingkindness of God, ceases to be neither a gift nor a prophecy.

    C. Its function in the assembly will be for strengthening, comforting, and encouraging. (1 Cor. 14:3) It will edify (feed, nurture, uplift) the church (vs. 4-5). When a mature prophet with a track record of healing-love delivers a rebuke at the request of the elders that is one thing. But when in open assembly, all may prophesy in turn (vs. 31)... this openness is not a free for all, but done in an orderly way according to the parameters of love [not control] set by Paul (vv. 29-33). I see this modelled well in a good number of churches, such as the Gathering at Caronport, SK; all are welcome to share what God reveals to them during the service. Whatever verses 24-25 mean about the unbeliever being convinced and "judged" by all, we know that Paul is not talking about personal condemnation (Rom. 8:1) but about the felt sense of God's presence through the prophetic ministry. The unbeliever’s response is not, “Woe is me,” but rather, “God is here!”

    D. If in Christ there is no condemnation, this applies to the voice of God in our lives. To those who stand condemned, it comes as comforting balm, as good news, as a gentle brook. To the wayward it comes as kindness, tolerance, and patience (Rom. 2:4). It ends up being the grace of God that teaches us the “love-no’s” of God towards ungodliness (Titus 2:11-12).

    E. Specific to my own ministry with the broken, the prophetic word (both what I share and what the broken hear for themselves) comes softly and sweetly most often... like a feather rather than a hammer. Our model—and Christ’s own pattern—comes from Isaiah 42:1-7 and Isaiah 61. We especially take to heart this kind of prophetic ministry:

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. (Isa. 42:2)

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. (Isa. 61:1-3)

One important thing to note here is that NOT ONLY does the primary prophetic message come to the broken with and about the lovingkindness of God, BUT ALSO, the primary target recipients of the prophetic message ARE the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. I.e. Isaiah not only tells us the content and tone of prophetic utterance, but he also tells us to whom and for whom the New Covenant prophetic promises is mainly directed!

To summarize part 1, am I sugar-coating the voice of God when I hear his first and foremost and most prevalent message to be one of love? Only if the message of the healing, saving love of the God who IS love is honey on my lips (for the religious, it is not).  How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103).

II. The salty voice of Christ:

Having said all that about the sweetness of Christ’s voice, one runs into difficulty when you start actually reading the prophetic words of Jesus in the Gospels and in Revelation (even restricting ourselves to His words to the church in Rev. 2-3). Some of the words are very stern, and they did come through men (in Revelation, through John. in the Gospels, through Jesus the perfect New Testament man and prophet). These sombre warnings are described by analogy in Scripture as a hammer that breaks stone (Jer. 23:29), a consuming fire and earthquake (Heb. 12:25-29), and a sharp two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12-13). The prophetic word warns, corrects, confronts, calls to account, and rebukes. It lays bare secrets and even judges motives (back to 1 Cor. 14:24-25). And all this, ONLY in love and with NO condemnation?

As screenwriter and good friend, Andre Harden, put it as we hashed through this issue,

 To stick with the sugar-coating analogy, I hear you saying that the voice itself is honey, so there's no need to coat it to make it sweet or easier to swallow.  God's voice is inherently sweet, inherently digestible. I think you make a strong case for this, and that this is the best thing to believe about God's voice.

We do know his voice is not bitter. Nor is it sour. But is his voice as salty as it is sweet? 
It's tough to suggest that God's word is not also inherently salty, considering who he is and who we are. 

So is it a misdirection to equate love with sweetness, rather than thinking of love as a mixture of salt and sweet?  In either case the salt needs no coating—the sweetness will always be inherent, in the core of the taste. 

If God's voice is equally sweet and salty then I'd want to learn about it in a way that helped me understand that God's voice has these various functions and that they are also pleasant tastes.

Yes. The Word of the Lord can be salty; and eventually ALL are “a salted with fire” (Mark 9:49) But this salt is also a word of love from an adoring Father who is committed to train us and heal us. As the author of Hebrews said,

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (Heb. 12:7-13)

This can come in many forms, including various hardships. Some people's understanding of love is that it punishes and hurts. They believe, "If i love you i will confront you in love which means accuse and judge you--make all my suspicions into condemnations. I hit you because i love you. If i didn't love you, I would just let you get away with it.” That is how many people go through this world. Yet in this passage, each manifestation of God’s discipline is for training [not punishment] and again, it strengthens and heals us in our shortcomings and weakness. Even as God shakes down and consumes all that is combustible (the world, the flesh, the devil), His plan for us is not to topple or harm us (Jer. 29), but to make sturdy our feeble knees and redeem our broken lives. Therefore, see that you do not refuse Him who speaks (Heb. 12:25)… it’s all a function of Christ’s voice.

For those who've read Can You Hear Me? and still wonder if I know only the sweet voice of Jesus, I would recommend a closer reading of Fear No Evil and my articles on www.clarion-journal.ca. I'm not shy about the “salting” of the Word of the Lord—of wielding the hammer, the fire, and the sword of the Word. I regularly confront, correct, and rebuke—sometimes not in love, sometimes blundering into condemnation. But usually with fear and trembling; always with a prayerful ear to heaven's voice. Even the introduction to Can You Hear Me? is very much a rebuke-via-confession in which Jesus speaks critically of all those who live at the tree of knowledge: "You have a form of godliness but deny it's power" and "You seek the Scriptures thinking that in them, you will find life. But I tell you, you have never heard the voice of my Father." Not much sugar there... perhaps some smelling salts, though. For other examples of rebuke by confession, cf. Jeremiah 20, Daniel 9, and Brita Miko's Die With Me: Pickton, Jesus, and Me.

This brings up the question, if the broken most often experience Christ’s words as sweet like honey, to whom does he pour out the salt. I am aware there is a both/and at work in all of us. Nevertheless, without a doubt, Christ often spoke to the “religious people” with one sort of voice and to “sinners” in another kind of voice. This is very specific in the Gospels. I believed He deeply loved the priests, the scribes and Pharisees, and the teachers of the Law. But to those of us who lead and teach and shepherd--who bear power and knowledge and the ability to use or abuse it—the words of Christ can sting. One of my friends, a seminary professor, once said that Jesus had said to him (more than once) "get behind me, Satan."  Shocking! Difficult to process. But for him to hear that word and have it bear good fruit (and it did), my friend must beware of taking permission to use that word against someone else. E.g. “Well, it straightened me out; it will straighten you out, too.” Thankfully, my friend is wiser than that. He would not use that Word indiscriminately. The point is that there is a time and place for such harsh rebukes. If you sense the need to deliver such a message, I would recommend that you expunge any personal need (or glee! I’ve seen it) to share it through fasting and prayer until you don’t want to bring it—in fact, until you cannot bring it without a cry for mercy on behalf of the recipient and yourself (since you’ll be judged with the identical measure, even when you have God’s permission). 

As I reflect on the biblical prophets, Jeremiah 23 and 28 come to mind: dire warnings about those prophets who bring good news of peace when in fact the storms of God are on their way. Yet Jeremiah himself comes with the good news of the New Covenant—some promises in chapters 31-33 are so great that even the New Testament doesn't echo them. More importantly, one needs to look at Jesus' own prophetic words to examine their intensity and indignation at times. The very One who shattered judgement and condemnation on the Cross was not shy about brandishing words of woe and doom.

How does that work?  How does the church wield a sword that won't break a reed? How does a consuming fire not snuff a wick? How does an earthquake not topple the weak-kneed? How do we carry the responsibility of the all-powerful voice of God without nullifying it through lack of love and the bitterness of our own personal anger? These are questions we need to grapple with in an era where the prophetic voices have often sounded particularly mean (projecting their own self-hatred in words allegedly from God that slapped down already wounded people) or nauseatingly syrupy... more like candy-floss than honey. Somehow, I look to Andre’s observation that the truth-in-love prophetic voice of Christ is both sweet and salty, but neither bitter nor sour.

As often happens lately, I end with a proposal that seeks to answer this quandary in Jesus' own distillation of the prophetic tradition: the Beatitudes. (For the best work I've seen on this, cf. Ron Dart's, The Beatitudes: When Mountain Meets Valley ). Those few simple verses clearly show us the content, tone, and fruit of the true prophets' ministry. They model the Word of the Lord as the coming together of honey to the lips and salt to the soul, both mercy and justice complementing and highlighting each other… like saltwater taffy. I close with that text in Ron’s own translation:

Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them.

 

“The Divine Life is for those who die to the demands of the ego.

Such people will inhabit the  Kingdom of Heaven.

The Divine Life is for those who have lived through tragedy and suffering.

Such people will be comforted at a deep level.

 

The Divine Life is for those who bring their passions under control for goodness.

It is such people that will inherit the earth.

 

The Divine Life is for those who hunger and thirst for justice.

Such people will be fed to the full.

 

The Divine Life is offered to those who are gracious and merciful.

Such people will be treated in a merciful and gracious manner.

 

The Divine Life is offered to those whose Home is clean on the inside.

Such people will know the very presence of God and see his face.

 

The Divine Life is offered to those who are Makers and Creators of Peace.

Such people will be called the children of God.

 

The Divine Life is known by those who are persecuted for seeking Justice.

Such people will know what it means to live in the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

The Divine Life is known by those who are mistreated and misunderstood in their passion for justice. They will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. The prophets were treated this way in the past.” (Matt. 5:1-12 Ron Dart)

 
bj