THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 27: Communication
The Word Before the Words
How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly.

Anchor: Spoken To Before Speaking

The herald announces the order of it first, because the order is the whole lesson. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1, paraphrase). Speech does not begin with man. It begins with God, and man speaks only because he has first been spoken to. The mouth opens second. The ear opens first.

The world reads communication and builds the opposite order. Communication is the key to success, the world says, and the tips follow the count: understand your audience, adapt your tone, match the setting, listen with respect, show empathy, watch your body language, stay calm in a difficult conversation. None of the observations are false. The order is upside down.

A communication built on technique is a performance, and a performance always keeps an audience. Did the message land? Was I understood? Was I respected? The man who spoke well reads the nod as proof that he matters. The man who spoke badly reads the silence as proof that he does not. The conversation that was meant to join two people becomes a trial, and every word becomes evidence entered for or against the speaker.

Apart from Christ, speech itself becomes use. The man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and so he turns to his own words to supply what only God gives: a life that holds. His speech becomes a tool for getting what he needs. He flatters to be liked, and the flattery hollows the listener. He argues to win, and the winning costs him the neighbor. He stays silent to stay safe, and the silence starves the room. A word chased as proof always becomes a verdict, and the verdict always lands on someone.

Scripture bears witness to how old this is. The connectors reveal the movement: the Word is given, the words are seized for a name, and the speech is scattered.

Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth (Gen 11:4, paraphrase). The tower rises on that sentence. Speech is gathered into one project, and the project is a name for man. The confusion follows the seizure: the language is confounded, and the builders can no longer understand one another's speech (Gen 11:7, paraphrase). The scattering is not a punishment laid on top of the project. It is what speech becomes when it serves a name of its own making. Words that were given to answer God are spent on advertising man, and the advertisement cannot hold. The mouth that talks to itself cannot talk to its neighbor.

The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness (James 3:6, paraphrase). Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Prov 18:21, paraphrase). Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45, paraphrase). The thread runs straight: the mouth does not invent what it says. It spends what the heart holds. A heart alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) spends words anxiously, defensively, and always for himself. No technique reaches that deep. A man can learn the tone, master the setting, and polish the body language, and still speak from a heart that is using the listener. The audience was never the problem. The heart was.

The answer is not better technique. The answer is a Word given before the words.

God, having spoken in times past, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son (Heb 1:1-2, paraphrase). The speaking has a direction: from God to man, first. And the Word that is spoken is not a message about life. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14, paraphrase). The speaking took a body, a mouth, a voice, hands that touched and ears that heard. The man spoken to by this Word is no longer speaking into a void, waiting for the listener's face to tell him whether he exists. He has already been heard by God, before he said a word. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8, paraphrase). The answer was given while the other side had nothing to offer.

Then comes the reversal of Babel, and it is a gift, not a technique. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:4, paraphrase). The crowd hears, each in his own language, the mighty works of God (Acts 2:11, paraphrase). The words carry a work already done, and the hearing is the miracle: a scattered people, hearing one work, in many tongues.

In Christ, communication is given, then lived.

The man hears that he has been spoken to before he speaks, and the hearing itself is the gift — God gives hearing, and God gives growth. The verdict was given at the cross, before the sentence began. And that frees the mouth in both directions.

Listening, in this order, is not a technique for making the speaker feel heard. It is receiving, because the listener has already been heard by God. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger (James 1:19, paraphrase). The quickness to hear is not a strategy. It is the shape of a man who does not need the conversation to prove him. He can hear the whole sentence, even the sentence he disagrees with, because the disagreement is not a threat to a life already held.

Speaking, in this order, is not negotiation over the impression. It is speech that tells the truth without demanding a verdict, because the verdict has already been given. Speaking the truth in love (Eph 4:15, paraphrase). Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Eph 4:29, paraphrase). The measure is grace to the hearer, not victory for the speaker. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt (Col 4:6, paraphrase). The gracious word does not flatter, and it does not wound to win. It gives.

Communication Reaches the Day

Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and communication is bodily through and through — the breath that carries the word, the mouth that forms it, the ear that receives it, the face that answers it, the hand that steadies a trembling voice. Christ supplies this life more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase), and the abundance is not a technique for better conversations. It is a Word already spoken, showing itself in the body.

The world's program counts the conversation: the audience read, the tone matched, the empathy shown, the body language managed, the calm kept. Apart from Christ, the count is the verdict: the man who is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) treats even his speech as a work to perform, and so his words become another place where he is cut off from life.

In Christ, communication is a gift already held and already being given. The listening given without keeping score, because the listener has already been heard by God. The truth spoken without demanding agreement, because the speaker's standing does not ride on the answer. The silence kept without fear, because the quiet man is already spoken to. The word offered as grace to the hearer, because the speaker's own word was grace first. The body does what a held creature does: opening its mouth in a shape given to it, not purchasing a shape withheld from it. The conversation does not make the man acceptable before God. It receives a life already given in Christ.

That is life, supplied more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase): a man whose words are no longer a performance to keep, whose listener is no longer a judge to manage, whose hearing, speaking, and silence are a Word Christ has spoken, received in Christ, and turned toward the neighbor, in Christ.