Recovering Sacred Language

How Vocabulary Shapes Theology and Imagination

 There is a quiet erosion taking place in much of modern Christianity, not first in doctrine, but in language. Words once considered holy, weighty, and formative have gradually disappeared from the vocabulary of the Body of Christ. In their place has emerged a flattened, therapeutic, and often consumer-driven dialect that may still speak about the Lord, but rarely speaks with the weightiness due His name.

This loss is not simply stylistic. Vocabulary shapes theology, and theology shapes worldview and imagination. The words a people use determine what they are capable of perceiving. When sacred language disappears, sacred consciousness is likely to follow.

If we consider the cultural tensions surrounding language in the past decade, we can see clearly how vocabulary is often used to shape perception and social imagination. Words have been redefined and reapplied in an effort to influence how people engage with a preferred understanding of reality. Yet changing language does not change reality itself; it changes how reality is labeled, perceived, and interpreted. 

Scripture consistently reveals that the Lord forms His people through words. Creation itself begins with divine speech: “And God said…” (Gen. 1:3). Israel’s covenant life was sustained through commanded remembrance, liturgical repetition, blessing, proclamation, and prayer. The prophets spoke with sanctified vocabulary because they inhabited a sanctified vision of reality. Likewise, the Apostles did not just teach concepts; they handed down a pattern of speech, a holy grammar by which the ekklesia learned to know the Lord, to see themselves, and to see the world.

The decline of sacred language within worship, teaching, and fellowship therefore signals more than cultural adaptation. It reveals a deeper theological shift.

Words Carry Worldviews

Every vocabulary carries an entire worldview within it. Certain words create categories through which people interpret reality. Remove the words, and eventually the realities themselves begin to fade from consciousness.

Marshall McLuhan, a communication theorist and Catholic convert, famously observed that “the medium is the message.”[1] His insight helps explain why modern religious vocabulary matters so deeply. When the language of the ekklesia becomes therapeutic, consumeristic, or entertainment-driven, it is not just changing style; it is reshaping how the faithful perceive the Gospel itself. In time, the medium begins discipling, and reshaping the message itself.

Consider how rarely many modern congregations now speak naturally of holiness, repentance, covenant, sanctification, reverence, fear of the Lord, consecration, glory, sin, obedience, communion, sacrifice, priesthood, and kingdom. These biblical terms are increasingly replaced with the language of inspiration, fulfillment, empowerment, relevance, positivity, life enhancement, personal growth, and intentionality. The shift appears subtle, but it fundamentally changes the imagination of the faithful and how they interact with the surrounding world. One vocabulary produces worshipers who stand before a consuming fire. The other produces consumers seeking spiritual enrichment.

Sacred language does not exist just to sound ancient or formal. It exists because holy realities require language capable of bearing holy weight. When Isaiah encounters the Lord high and lifted up, he does not say, “I feel spiritually inspired.” He cries, “Woe is me!” (Isa. 6:5). After Messiah fills Peter’s nets in Luke 5:8, his response is not “awesome!” Rather, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” The vocabulary of Scripture emerges from encounters with transcendence. Modern reductionistic language that influences so much of society often emerges from marketing, psychology, or entertainment culture. Sadly, this has been the case in the Church. The difference is profound. We, as leaders, dare not reduce the vocabulary of the Kingdom of God. 

The Therapeutic Reduction of the Faith

One of the defining features of modern religious language is its therapeutic orientation. Sin becomes brokenness. Repentance becomes healing. Conviction becomes discomfort. Salvation becomes self-improvement. Worship becomes inspiration. The Cross becomes a symbol of personal value rather than atonement and reconciliation.

Certainly, the Gospel does heal the brokenhearted. Scripture itself speaks tenderly of restoration and comfort. But when therapeutic language replaces covenantal and sacrificial language entirely, Christianity slowly ceases to sound apostolic. This is important considering the words of the apostle Paul, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19-20). 

A Church that loses the vocabulary of holiness will eventually lose the pursuit of holiness itself. Language trains desire. It forms expectation. It teaches the faithful what kind of covenant Lord they are approaching and what kind of people they are called to become.

If worship is consistently described primarily as “an experience,” then worshipers will evaluate church the same way consumers evaluate products in the service industry. If the church becomes inclined to consumer preference, it risks prioritizing the customer satisfaction caught up in the slogan that “the customer is always right.” If salvation is presented primarily as “living your best life,” suffering and martyrdom become unintelligible categories. If the Kingdom is reduced to vague positivity, spiritual warfare and costly obedience disappear from view. Words disciple people. 

Sacred Language Creates Sacred Imagination

The biblical imagination is profoundly liturgical and symbolic. Scripture forms people through repeated phrases, covenantal patterns, poetic images, and sacred terminology. The Lord did not merely give Israel information; He gave them a sanctified vocabulary. Words such as holy, clean, unclean, blessing, inheritance, remembrance, covenant, altar, priest, sacrifice, and glory created a world in which every act of life could be interpreted in relation to Him.

Throughout Scripture, seasons of renewal were consistently accompanied by the recovery of sacred speech. When the Book of the Torah was rediscovered in the days of Josiah (2 Kings 22–23), covenant language and practice returned to the nation. Israel once again spoke of obedience, Passover, holiness, and the commandments of the Lord. Likewise, after the exile, Ezra and Nehemiah gathered the people for the public reading of the Torah, and renewal emerged through restored proclamation, repentance, blessing, and covenantal remembrance (Neh. 8).

The same pattern continued throughout Church history. The early Church developed a distinctly sacred vocabulary shaped by the Gospel itself: words such as Eucharist, Gospel, Kingdom, grace, baptism, martyr, and communion formed a people whose imagination stood apart from pagan Rome. During the Protestant Reformation, the recovery of biblical language became central to renewal. Terms such as justification, grace, repentance, faith, and covenant returned to the center of preaching and worship. The Great Awakenings likewise restored urgent language concerning sin, conversion, salvation, holiness, and eternity.

Further, the modern Messianic movement, for all its varied expressions, has also reflected this pattern by recovering biblical and Hebrew terminology, words such as Torah, Shalom, Yeshua, Shabbat, Ruach, and Messiah, which have helped restore a more covenantal, Hebraic, and scripturally rooted imagination within the movement’s worship and discipleship practices.

Revival movements did not just recover religious emotion; they recovered theological speech. Dr. Walter Ong, S.J., recognized that spoken language profoundly shapes humanity’s perception of reality.[2] In biblical faith, sacred words were never treated as mere data, but as living vessels of memory, reverence, covenant, and divine encounter. 

Sacred language disciples the faithful because it teaches them to perceive layers of meaning beyond the immediate and material. It cultivates reverence. It restores mystery and majesty. It trains the heart to recognize the presence of the Lord in ordinary life.

Modern secular culture, by contrast, tends to flatten language into functionality. Everything must be immediate, accessible, simplified, and emotionally digestible. But the Kingdom of God cannot be fully communicated through the vocabulary of consumer modernity. Some realities must be entered into before they can be understood, as the children of Israel responded to Moses in Exodus 24:7, נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע/na'aseh v'nishmah, “we will do and we will hear,” that is, “we will do and we will understand.”  

This is why historic Christian worship developed liturgical rhythms, congregational prayers, Psalms, creeds, and sacramental language. These were not intended as empty formalities. They were mechanisms of formation. The Church learned to speak rightly so that she might learn to see rightly.

The Loss of Reverence

Perhaps nowhere is the collapse of sacred language more visible than in the disappearance of reverence. Modern Western culture prizes familiarity and casualness above awe. The Lord is frequently spoken of casually, informally, and sentimentally. While intimacy with Him is indeed a glorious truth of the Gospel, biblical intimacy never abolishes holy fear. The same John who reclined upon Messiah’s breast (Jn. 13:23) also fell at His feet “as though dead” when he beheld Him glorified (Rev. 1:17).

Sacred language helps preserve a sense of transcendence. It reminds the ekklesia that the Lord is not merely affirming, therapeutic, or useful. He is holy. The vocabulary of reverence guards the soul against reducing the Living God to an extension of the self.

This does not require artificial religiosity, legalistic application, or archaic speech for its own sake. Sacred language is not about sounding theatrical or inaccessible. Rather, it is about recovering words that remind the Church she stands continually before eternity. There is a difference between clarity and triviality. Much of modern communication aims to make everything and everyone casual. Yet Scripture often does the opposite: it lifts the hearer upward into mystery, majesty, and holy seriousness.

Recovering Sacred Speech

The recovery of sacred language must begin first among leaders, teachers, and worshipers who understand that words are not neutral. Pastors shape the imagination of congregations every week through the vocabulary they normalize. This does not mean speaking in unintelligible jargon or imitating older eras artificially. It means intentionally restoring biblical categories to the center of Christian speech, while not getting lost in “Christianese.”

The Church should once again speak naturally about: holiness, repentance, covenant, discipleship, obedience, sanctification, the fear of the Lord, the Kingdom of God, the glory of Christ, resurrection, eternity. Families should recover practices of blessing, prayer, Scripture reading, and liturgical memory within the home. Worship should contain language weighty enough to form reverence rather than simply generating an emotional atmosphere. The goal is not nostalgia. It is renewal.

Throughout biblical and Church history, genuine renewal has consistently involved the recovery of sacred speech, language shaped once again by Scripture, reverence, repentance, holiness, and the reality of the Lord. When the Church renews her language, she often renews her imagination as well. Simply: language reveals what a people truly worship.

Conclusion

The Church cannot preserve theological depth while surrendering theological vocabulary. Sacred language is not ornamental decoration placed upon faith; it is one of the primary vessels through which the faith is transmitted. When sacred words disappear, sacred realities eventually become difficult to imagine. And when imagination collapses, biblical conviction soon follows.

The recovery of sacred language is therefore not about becoming more religious in appearance. It is about recovering a vision of the Lord large enough to command reverence, obedience, wonder, and worship. Ultimately, the words of the Church should sound as though they come from another Kingdom, because we are citizens of His Kingdom.

In the service of Messiah and His Church,
Bishop Justin D. Elwell
Restoration Fellowship International

[1] Marshall McLuhan; Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1964; https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf; accessed May 24, 2026. 

[2] Ong, Walter; Orality and Literacy; 1982.