There are many teachers I respect, read, and listen to who seem to have much more to offer than I could ever learn. One such man is a professor at Wheaton College, Dr. Jerry Root. I met him while I was working at Hume Lake Christian Camps some four years ago. I’ve had the opportunity to attend a number of his lectures since then (both at Hume and at Biola) and every time he amazes me. What’s odd about this is that every time I see him he tells the same stories. It seems like countless times that I’ve heard about when he first learned the meaning of “portion,” or his discussion with a professor over dinner in Oxford about how faith in humanity can let us down, or his son’s disappointment over the completion of a play he acted in. The truth is, if I knew Jerry were coming to speak next week, and he was only going to tell these same stories all over again, I would still drop everything and go. Jerry has a way of reaching in and grabbing my heart and mind together in a way no one else ever has. As he would put it, he doesn’t want to stand in front and tell us things, he wants to step to the side and show them to us. He doesn’t just speak of God’s glory and majesty; he points to God and pushes us closer to Him. I could go one, but I have a different point to this post than how much I love Dr. Root.

 

One of Jerry’s teachings that are often repeated, for good reason, is the distinction he makes between sure words and last words. All of us speak sure words, but none of us will ever speak a last word. What you are reading right now is a post on a blog- this is a sure word. It is a true statement concerning the object, but there are many more truths not conveyed by the statement. I could say that the name of the blog you’re reading is The A-Team Blog, or that the author of the post is Murdock, or that Murdock’s real name is Roger. All of these are sure words, in that they tell us something about the post, but yet there’s still much more. I could start to describe the history of how I came to begin blogging, or how blogs came about in the first place, or how the Internet was not actually invented by Al Gore. Still more could be said. In final analysis, I can say no last word about this post. There is no sentence, paragraph, book, or other compilation of words I can utter that could fully describe this post.

 

Why is this? There are a number of factors, like time, resources, etc. But there is one especially necessary restraint upon me to do so. I lack omniscience. There’s no way I can know everything there is to know about this post, that is, to have a last word about it. There is, however, someone who is not limited in this way. God is omniscient. Since God knows all He has the last word; He is the last Word. It’s not that last words don’t exist; it’s that they are bound up in the incomprehensibility of God.

 

Does a lack of last words produce a lack of certainty? No. You can be certain you’re reading this post right now; regardless of the number of sure words or lack of last words you have about it. Since I can have no last word, should I cease pursuit of knowledge? Far from it. We are to learn as many sure words as possible, since knowing more about God will bring us closer to Him. As J.P. Moreland often says, our goals as learners, and I would argue as Christ’s ambassadors, is to believe as many true things as possible while disregarding as many false things as possible. It is with a fuller breadth of sure words with which we will come to worship God in spirit and in truth.