Running on a treadmill is a perfect time to “read” audio books. Recently I began using my thrice-weekly interval training sessions in just this way. For me, these sixteen minute episodes are the ideal time to listen to the Bible while pounding down my blood pressure and cholesterol.
Last Saturday I spent my sixteen minutes (25 minutes counting warm up and cool down) listening to 1 Corinthians. I love the idea of experiencing the New Testament the same way that Jesus’ followers did in the first century: by having it read aloud.
Then right in the middle of chapter 4 I got a surprise. The narrator read verse 10 in the English Standard Version: “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.”
I knew the context here. The Apostle Paul is rebuking the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth for their judgmental and superior attitudes. Despite their many faults and failings, they regarded themselves as spiritually sophisticated, which only proved their immaturity. Compared to the sacrificial life of the Apostle, the Corinthians lived like corrupt children.
My surprise was not in the words of verse 10 but in the narrator’s tone of voice.
Anyone who has studied this text for even a little while knows that Paul is making his point by stating it in reverse, a classic definition of irony. So when he writes “you are wise in Christ,” the narrator’s intonation makes those words mean, “you are unwise in Christ.”
I was prepared for that, but not for hearing the irony carried in an actual human voice rather than supplied by the echo chamber of my own head.
Even at 7 miles per hour this startling moment clarified just how alive the Scriptures really are. Dead words cannot be enlivened by influences like irony any more than a brick can be made to taste like steak by adding the right seasonings.
God’s Word is made up of God’s words and they are “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12 ESV)
Language itself is a gift from God. So in a sense, the Scriptures are one gift (revelation) delivered in another (language). Discerning what God is speaking to us in the Bible requires understanding its content, but also appreciating how language functions as a vehicle for the substance of the message. That’s why irony matters. And that’s why the Bible is a living document, because both its Author and its delivery system (language) are alive.
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