THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
There is a well-known maxim that says the medium is the message. It’s slightly exaggerated, of course, but it nevertheless contains a powerful, biblical truth. The medium, in our case a pastor or a Christian embodies to a certain degree the message he or she proclaims, so that the medium influences how the message is perceived.
Weight loss commercials especially employ this principle by having a well-known celebrity, like Marie Osmond, who has lost, say 50 lbs. using their product, promote its obvious benefits. In this case, Marie Osmond is not simply an objective, neutral spokesperson; rather she embodies the very message she delivers, lending greater credence to her sales pitch.
Sometimes we refer to this as “incarnational communication.” The supreme example is the birth of God’s one and only Son, which we call the incarnation. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We could loosely paraphrase this verse: God’s Message took on flesh and blood. Here, we can say quite literally that “the medium is the message.” Only Jesus perfectly, flawlessly, and beautifully manifests in his person the message of God. Jesus’ words, emotions and deeds never contradicted or compromised the truth he proclaimed. In fact, everything he ever said, felt or did only served to reinforce his teaching and the revelation of God’s character.
So, for instance, when Jesus performed his first sign by turning water into wine, among other things, he demonstrated that God is a joyful God, who is in favor of wedding celebrations. When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, because he knew of the impending destruction (which came in A. D. 70), he confirmed God’s brokenness over a rebellious and stubborn people. At the healing of the man with a withered hand, we witness the tender-hearted compassion of the Father. Jesus’ life always corresponded perfectly with the truth he preached.
However, for any minister or Christian “the medium is the message” is a terrifying thought, since we know all too well that a gulf exists between the glorious message found in God’s Word and the reality of that message in our lives.
Nevertheless, “the medium is the message” cannot be avoided. When I was a seminary student, I recall listening to the opening prayer of a pastor before his sermon. He asked God “to get his personality out of the way.” I know what he was trying to say. His concern was that people only see Jesus. But he was actually praying for the impossible. Philip Brooks’ classic definition on preaching says, “Preaching is God’s truth communicated through human personality.” This is an inescapable category. There simply is no other type of preaching. Applying this to lay people, we could say that “witnessing is God’s gospel communicated through their personality.”
Thus, who we are as preachers and Christians is not to be passed over lightly. When God’s truth is communicated through our personality, our character, we invariably magnify or mute the message. We either lend credibility to the message or we undermine it. In Titus 2:4-5, the apostle Paul gave instructions to older women to train “young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Paul also instructed the slaves of his day, with commands that apply to most employees. “Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (vv. 9-10). Repeatedly, Paul encourages Christians to live godly lives, so that the medium will not desecrate the message, but rather beautify it, thereby making it more enticing.
What J. I. Packer says of the preacher is equally relevant to the lay person: “How to communicate the reality of the God of Scripture across the temporal and cultural gap that separates our world from the world of the Bible has exercised many contemporary minds. It is not always noticed that God provides much of the answer to this perplexity in the person of the preacher, who is called to be a living advertisement for the relevance and power of what he proclaims” (The Preacher and Preaching, ed., Samuel T. Logan, Jr., p. 17).
Similarly, Robert Murray M’Cheyne once said famously, “It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister [or lay person, we could add] is an [awesome] weapon in the hand of God.”
Copyright 2025,
Copyright 2025, By Every Word Foundation