Hearing and Understanding God’s Voice is Dependent on Our Oneness

God is not silent. He is always speaking, and has always spoken to humans. But the humans who recognize and understand his voice are members of his flock. And those who distance themselves from the flock, not living in unity, cannot accurately discern his voice.

God is not silent. He speaks, and has always spoken. I have written about God speaking, and about his breath, his speech, being fundamental to his nature, previously, see God is Spirit. For some particularly pointed scriptures about God’s speech and the Creation, see, Genesis 1 (fourteen times); John 1:1-5; Hebrews 11:3; Colossians 1:15-17. And he created humans able to speak, like him, and has always conversed with humans. See, for instance, Genesis 2:16, 18; Genesis 3:9-23; Genesis 4:6-15; Genesis 18; Exodus 20:18-20; Deuteronomy 18:15-22; John 6:63; John 14:25; John 16:12-15; John 18:37; and Hebrews 3:12-19 . Indeed, this very incomplete list of scripture references suggests that Ellul was correct in distinguishing the Bible, the “Word” of God, from the Quran, in that, while Islam sees its scriptures as a verbatim dictated copy of a “mother” document in heaven that excludes any possibility of dialog,

The Bible is above all, even almost exclusively, a book of history and stories. This story displays a remarkable peculiarity. It is a story of “God-with-man.” It is obviously not a story of God “in whom there are neither variations nor changes” (and if there were we would know nothing about it!), but a story of the relationship between God and humans. This relationship is subject to significant “events,” which occur because of humans, or because of God. The Bible traces a kind of pathway of God with humankind. That is, God lowers himself, from the outset , “ down ” to humans , to their level so as to be understood by them . He enters into dialogue with a person (even when he gives his “Commandments”); and he, the Transcendent One, cannot be fully grasped by humans; but he makes himself intelligible—hence the changes in his word, and in his decisions…

However , what is marvelous in this text, and shows precisely to what extent God has put himself within our reach, is that in reading this Scripture, the most ordinary, humble, or simple of people can also understand the truth therein. Experience has taught us that this over and over again. The wisest realize that the more they advance in this knowledge, the more space God opens up before them and the more God accompanies them in their personal and collective history.

He is the God who so loves his creature, whom he formed in his own image and likeness, and whose happiness and misfortune he shares. God changes? Absolutely not! He is Everything. Rather, it is the relationship he establishes with humankind that changes. The ultimate point of this “God-with-man” adventure is obviously the incarnation of Jesus Christ, which is not a radically new event, but which takes this companionship to the extreme, to the point of a henceforth inseparable union. Moreover God, the Free One par excellence, knows better than we do that love cannot be forced. The “commandment” “You shall love…” is certainly the introduction of a duty, but above all, it is a promise: the time will come when you will truly be able to love…

Moreover, the divergence is all the greater when we reflect that in one case God spoke and from then on was silent; while in the other, God continues to reveal himself , and to speak to the believer and to his church, throughout its history.

Jacques Ellul (B. MacKay, Tr.), Islam and Christianity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 34-36.

Thus, it should not surprise us that Jesus, during his earthly life as one of us, spoke of those who follow and come to know him having the continuing experience of “hearing” his “voice.” The key extended passage in which Jesus explained this was John 10:1-30, which is composed of four separate parables, or groups of metaphoric declarations, given on two different occasions, all of which are bound together by the overarching metaphor that those who follow Jesus are his “flock” of “sheep.” Three times in this discussion of his “flock,” Jesus states that his sheep “hear” his “voice” (vv. 3, 27), or “will hear” his “voice” (in the future, v. 16). He also says that the reason his sheep follow him is that they “know” his “voice” (v. 4). I will more fully analyze the language of these positive promises in the next several posts. For now, it is sufficient to say that they certainly do appear to promise that, in some real sense, people who believe and follow Jesus as a part of his “flock” will “hear” his “voice,” and will “know” that is Jesus–and not a thief–who is speaking to them.

For purposes of this post, what is important is Jesus’ indication that our ability to hear his voice is dependent on being a part of his flock. It is not something that is available to us purely in isolation, without reference to the flock. To see this, it is first necessary to go back to the previous chapter, John 9, from which the first scene in John 10 immediately develops. In John 9, Jesus heals–on the Sabbath–a man who was born blind, putting mud on his eyes and telling him to go wash it off in the Pool of Siloam. When the man washes off the mud, he can see, but Jesus is gone. When the Pharisses learn of the healing, in violation of their interpretation of the Sabbath, they interrogate the man and his parents, who both confirm that he was born blind but now can see. The man then tells them that it was Jesus who healed him, and refuses to recant his testimony that Jesus is “a prophet.” For this, the Pharisees exclude the man from the synagogue, putting him outside the acceptable community. The grounds for his exclusion were that he insulted their intelligence, claiming to know that Jesus was a prophet when he was obviously unqualified to know anything about God: “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” John 9:34.

Shortly after this, Jesus finds the man again in the crowd. At that point, the man who can now see has this conversation with Jesus:

[Jesus] said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

John 9:35-39.

But the Pharisees in the crowd took exception to this statement that impled that they were blind:

Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?”

John 9:40.

Jesus used the metaphors of the flock, the sheepfold and the shepherd at the beginning of John 10 to answer the Pharisees’ question–explaining how it was they could be spiritually blind, while the man he had healed, though disqualified in their eyes by being “born entirely in sins,” could now see. The explanation is that the man was following Jesus, as one of his flock, and so could hear his voice. On the other hand, the Pharisees who were accusing him were “not of my sheep.” John 10:26. Jesus even states the direction of causality to be the reverse of what the Pharisees would have thought–and we often think. Jesus did not say that the Pharisees were not his sheep BECAUSE they did not believe. He said they did not believe BECAUSE they were not of his sheep. And, because they were trying to lead–to shepherd–God’s people without being his sheep, who could hear his voice, they were the “thieves and robbers” Jesus spoke of in verses 1 and 7.

So, the person who hears God’s voice is the person who is a member of his flock. It certainly appears, at a minimum, that only those in Jesus’ flock can hear God’s voice and understand it correctly–though I am reminded of the “prophecy” (John called it that) of Caiaphas, as High Priest, that Jesus had to die for the people (a true prophecy that the unbelieving prophet misunderstood, to his own condemnation!) See, John 11:49-51. But, returning to the main point, if only members of Jesus’ flock can hear Jesus’ voice correctly, simple logic (modus tollens) says that those who are not able to recognize the shepherd’s voice or understand what they hear correctly are those who are not a part of his flock.

Thus, failure to walk in unity with our brothers and sisters, as a part of the flock, results in inability to understand the things of God. In distancing ourselves from the flock, we will also have distanced ourselves from the shepherd and his voice. Other scriptures also state or imply this. We have been given the Spirit of God so that we may understand what God has freely given us.¹ The person without the Spirit cannot understand the things of God, because they are discerned only through the Spirit.² Yet it is this same Spirit that makes us into one Body.^3,4 Thus, it is not surprising that the outward sign of carnality in the church is that there is envying, strife and division among us. Carnal Christians, who are characterized by disunity, cannot stand solid teaching—the “meat” of the Word—but must be fed only milk, like babies.⁵ False teachers are a step beyond carnal Christians in their insensitivity to the things of God. Though they profess to know God, false teachers deny Him, teaching for their own financial gain things that lead others away from the truth.^6,7 On the far end of the spectrum of disunity are those among us whose lives are dominated by hatred. Anyone who hates his brother is in darkness, John wrote, walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him.⁸ Refusal to live in oneness with our brothers, in any degree, blinds us to the things of God and keeps us from hearing his voice clearly until we repent.