Do Actions Really Speak “Louder” Than Words??!! – Part 4

In this post, I’ll be dealing with a few verses which might give the idea of “actions speaking louder than words”.

First 1Peter 3:1 which says “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.” From this verse, people tend to infer that “actions speak louder than words” because it says “they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives.” But on careful analysis of the verse one might find that the husbands “do not believe in word”. This implies that a verbal presentation of the Gospel has already been done and that the husbands have not believed in “the word”. So now the wife keeps her actions in accordance to what her husband has already heard about, so that her actions don’t contradict her faith. So the verse is not saying “don’t preach but live it out” but rather “practice what you’ve preached”.

Next we’ll go on to the word “witness”. The greek word for witness is “martus” pronounced as mar’-toos from which we get the English word “Martyr”. The word witness has been used in the bible in 3 ways (click on the link to see more). One is in a legal sense, as in where a person is called to a courtroom to testify (in words not actions) what he has seen or heard. The other way is in the manner of seeing some event (I witnessed the race, etc.). The third form in which it is used is in an ethical sense as in a person who undergoes a violent death because of what he had believed. In the above three ways, the first and the third usage use the word as a noun whereas the second is a verb.

So when Jesus said “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” he meant verbal proclamation of the Gospel (first usage) and that you will have to die for me (third usage), because the usage is a noun here. There is no indication whatsoever to say that Jesus wanted the disciples to use non-verbal means of communication to proclaim the Gospel.

One may quote Matthew 5:16 where Jesus says “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” to say that people may look at our deeds and come to accept the Gospel, that is, without preaching it with words. Now such an interpretation has some problems. One is that the inference is not a necessary implication of the verse. That is, whether these deeds were preceeded by verbal proclamation or not is not mentioned in this context. So we cannot conclude that preaching is necessary (or not necessary) from this passage alone.

Since we affirm the coherence of the Scriptures, we turn to other scriptural passages for the answer. Reading Romans 10:14 and 17 it is evident that people cannot believe if they have not heard and they cannot hear if someone has not preached to them and also that faith comes by hearing the message. Now we cannot infer that the preaching mentioned here is non-verbal means of communication (actions) because, then the passage would have read “seen” instead of “heard”. Since we can “hear” only words (or sounds), it necessarily follows that the preach in this context refers to preaching with words (verbal proclamation) and not non-verbal means.

Therefore we can conclude that the people in Matthew 5:16 were able to praise God because they have already heard (by verbal proclamation) about Him. Moreover considering the depraved nature of man (Romans 1) because of which

1)he “doesn’t glorify God nor gives thanks to God” for what is plainly revealed in nature about God

2)he suppresses the truth about God by his wickedness

it only makes sense to suggest that unbelievers will do the same to the “righteous deeds of men”, and if at all they can glorify God for their actions, it presupposes a verbal proclamation of Gospel in conjunction with a convicting work of the Holy Spirit as stated in Romans 10.

More in the next post.