In everyday life we take words and language for granted. Every baby learns the language from his or her parents, and we use it to communicate with others throughout our lives. Even when a person becomes handicapped, we all will try to communicate with some kind of language, like Braille or sign language or even touching the palm of the hand.
We were given the gift of language by God when he made us in his image. He made his creation by speaking (language), and Adam and Eve he made in his image so he could talk with them (Gen. 3:8) every day in the garden. John starts his Gospel by calling Jesus the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, English Standard Version).
We have a God who made us to talk to us, and he still communicates with us through his Word, the Bible. Every aspect of our relationship with the Trinity is based on language, even our very lives. Matthew 4:4 says: “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Our faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17).
Created Language Still Creates
The importance of language cannot be overstated. Just as God’s words created (living) physical things, so our words create spiritual things, like thought images and feelings in the mind of others. Our words create, therefore, and that’s why they are so important.
Just think of how words can hurt you, or how they can make you feel happy and make your day, or how they can be useful if the other person is explaining or describing something to you. Another example is covenants: saying “I do” in the marriage ceremony creates something! This is the creative power of words.
Therefore James emphasized how important it is to be careful with our words. He compares our tongue, our language ability, with a fire that can be deadly because it is affected by sin and cannot be tamed (James 3:8). “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God” (v. 9). How we should tame the tongue is well explained in Brian G. Najapfour’s The Gospel-Driven Tongue.
Even the simplest language is incredibly more complicated than what even the smartest animals could communicate. This is the creative power again. Just realize how we can go back in time, or to the future, in our language; how we construct complicated philosophical ideas or talk about science or machinery. This is a clear proof that animals and people do not have a common ancestor, as evolutionists would like us to believe.
How much God is involved with our language ability is clearly shown at Babel, where he confused the language, and at Pentecost, where he made the disciples speak different languages that they didn’t know before.
Language History
Linguists are the people who study languages. They classify the roughly seven thousand languages in the world in families and groups and are always looking for the single source of all the languages. This idea of a single source is interesting considering the evolutionist background of most linguists.
Another problem that these linguists have is the fact that the supposedly primitive people of three hundred thousand years ago already had well-developed languages. And although languages tend to become easier over time, many languages are still extremely complicated, so difficult, in fact, that only babies born in that language community are able to learn it. Many of these languages don’t even exist in writing and are only spoken and yet have remained so complicated through thousands of years. The language argument is rarely used in the creation-evolution debates, which is unfortunate.
Christians who believe the Bible know that the language ability was built in by God. Every baby can learn perfectly the language of his or her parents or of the community the child grows up in. This learning ability works well until about age ten. After that, you will need grammar books and do a lot of memorization in order to learn a new language. On top of that, you will have an accent that probably never goes away. This shows how amazing this language ability is that God created in every human being.

Language to Glorify God
God created Adam and Eve with an original language that was probably extremely complicated in order to communicate the most difficult concepts. God’s purpose was that humans would talk with and glorify him in this physical world.
Even after the fall, everybody understood each other almost perfectly, and science could take flight. But when humans decided to “make a name for ourselves” instead of glorifying God, as told in Genesis 11:6–7, God said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” And so the tower of Babel was never built, and many different language groups were created by God.
Some languages are tonal, having up to six different ways of saying the same word. Some languages have click sounds that nobody else can imitate. Some languages have no vowels or miss other parts that we think of as normal for a language. Some have only irregular verbs, and others have suffixes and/or affixes to every word. Yet within each language speaker group everybody can communicate everything that’s necessary for their culture and to glorify God.
The story of Babel explains how we have come to deal with so many different languages and why it is so easy to not understand each other and even be confused about our own language.
Language Corrupted for Evil
With our society mostly led by enemies of God, it is the intention to confuse the language as much as possible, giving different meanings to words, telling us which words to use or never use anymore, all in order to spoil God’s good creation. We need to be very aware of these attacks on the words (Word) and language and need to know what we can do to keep our language pure and use it to the glory of God at all times.
According to the Urban Dictionary, the word sin now means everything that may offend somebody else. Biblically it means everything that offends God, but God has been removed from the connotation (meaning) of this word. The word marriage is also being changed in dictionaries as meaning any two people who like each other and want to be married. And so it goes on and on.
Politicians will cater to the Christian public by using Christian words that have a different meaning to them. So don’t take them at their word. Literally! They will also make you use certain words in certain meanings, which they will call politically correct. Beware of this, too.
Other examples from society are words like “abortion.” Few words will reveal such polarized feelings for and against an issue. Therefore the word is mostly banned and replaced by euphemisms like “choice.”
The same for evolution. It is vital that we define terms. What exactly is being defended by those who claim to be pro-choice, or evolutionists?
We all have noticed how a word like “gender” is used to deny the God-given creation of male and female (Gen. 1:27). Now that we have an unlimited number of genders, the related language needs to be changed also. The pronouns (words for he, she, it) need to be changed, and the people with different genders demand to be addressed with newly invented pronouns.
It is true that words can get a new meaning over time, and new words can be invented for new things, but this needs to be an organic process, where the whole population can agree with the new word. Only then will it be used by so many people that it gets incorporated in the language. This is definitely not the case with the new pronouns. Pronouns are the words in a language that are usually considered the oldest, because there is no need for them to change. So if there is a small group of people who want to impose on everybody these new pronouns, they are in the process of attacking language itself. And this is an attack on God.
A new word is “woke,” meaning to be alert to injustice in society. I suggest (half seriously) that we give this word a new Christian meaning: being alert to injustice toward God. Then we are all suddenly woke! This is how it works.
Redeeming Language
Here I would like to introduce several illustrious theologians who decades ago warned about the extreme attack on words and language that’s going on today.
The first one is Francis A. Schaeffer, who was a missionary sent by his church in the United States to Switzerland, where he started a home mission called l’Abri (Shelter). During the 1960s and 1970s he received many young people in his house, where they had lengthy and deep discussions around the dinner table.
Consequently, communicating was extremely important to him, making sure that he and the other person would use the same meaning for certain words. The best way to do that, which is still valid for each of us, is to first take the time and trouble to listen to your hearer’s language. We need to define strictly the words we are using, as the concepts of these words have universally been changed. Once we have established a connection in language where we both know what we mean with certain words, we can communicate the gospel with them and explain the good news of Jesus the Christ.
Schaeffer was very good at pointing out the signs of the times, especially in his epic work How Should We Then Live? His work is prescient and still relevant in our time. For example, he used the phrase “age of fragmentation” for our time, and you need only to look at any television or screen to see what he saw coming. This fragmentation is also in words and language, both in written and spoken form. We need to realize that slogans, memes, or a Bible fragment will have its function but will never have the convincing power of a good conversation. In this age of societal fragmentation there is much loneliness, and many people would love for someone to take the time to talk to them, explaining the gospel message.
Concerned about the new theology in his time, Schaeffer wrote: “It should be obvious by this time that Christianity and the new theology have no relationship except the use of a common terminology with different meanings. When we visit a modern church, or see how traditional churches fall apart, we will notice it’s often about the not so subtle change in word meanings. The same words are still being used, but they have a completely different connotation now.”
This was the same reason why J. Gresham Machen started the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary in the 1930s and said, as quoted by John Piper: “Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms.”
For example the word love is thoroughly being misused, also in the church. The word hell has been put in the banned words area. The words faith and hope are separated from their biblical meaning. They are now just feel-good words. These are some obvious examples, but we should be alert for many more, as this is going on on a grand scale. Kevin De Young says in a blog post: “In short, words matter. It’s not alarmism to point out that indifference to words and definitions has often been one of the first steps to theological liberalism.”
Long before Schaeffer, Machen, Piper, and De Young, Paul warned the church. In 1 Timothy 6:4b–5 we read: “He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.” Note that the person who is fond of “quarrels about words” is the same person who is teaching “a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness” (v. 3).
John MacArthur adds: “Moreover, the Word of God properly taught is more exciting, relevant, timely and applicable to every heart and life than any substitute message of self-esteem, self-help or human motivation could ever be.” Again we find the same message already in the Bible in Psalm 1.
Sound doctrine is expressed in language, biblical language, words that Jesus spoke or words from inspired Bible writers. It’s up to us to be in the Word, be filled with “God speak,” and be extremely wary of word meanings that slip into our own language use. This is true for our person-to-person contacts in everyday life and for the doctrine taught in the church.
References
Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There
Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
John McWhorter, Language Families of the World, The Great Courses
Brian G. Najapfour, The Gospel-Driven Tongue; Lessons from James on Godly Conversation
John MacArthur, “A Famine of the Word of God.” Decision, October 2019
Kevin De Young, blog post, “Words, Labels and ‘Sexual Minorities,’” June 1, 2018
John Piper, “J. Gresham Machen’s Response to Modernism,” 1993 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, desiringgod.org
Annemarieke Ryskamp was born and raised in the Netherlands. She graduated with a master’s degree in Dutch Language and Literature from Utrecht University and worked for the Dutch l’Abri and as a secondary school teacher at United World College in Singapore. She was married to Dr. Richard Ryskamp and was widowed in 2015. They raised two sons who are both in graduate studies. The family are members of Dutton United Reformed Church in Dutton, MI.