Stolen Words

When familiar words slowly begin to mean something else.

This is one of those things I’ve been quietly thinking about for a long time. Not in an angry or finger-pointing way, but more with this strange sense of wondering. How familiar words can slowly drift into completely different meanings depending on who is using them.

I used these same words too.

Back in my New Age years and during my time with A Course in Miracles, they sounded beautiful and safe to me. Christ. Holy Spirit. Love. Salvation. Deep, comforting words. But somewhere along the way, they also started slipping away from what they originally meant.

Back then, Christ was not Jesus. It was more like a universal consciousness or some kind of inner light. The Holy Spirit was not a person, but intuition or my own inner voice. Love became a feeling, a warm vibration, acceptance without truth. Sin was seen as an illusion, something that did not really exist. Salvation meant awakening, realization, leveling up spiritually.

I’m not saying this to accuse anyone. I’m saying it because this is genuinely how I used to think. At the time it felt logical, even comforting. I didn’t have to face sin. I didn’t have to face the cross. I didn’t have to admit how broken I actually was. In a strange way, everything already seemed fine.

But eventually I started noticing that these same words meant something entirely different in the Bible. Not slightly different. Fundamentally different.

Christ was not an energy or force. He was a person. Jesus, the Son of God.

The Holy Spirit was not my own voice, but God’s Spirit, and He did not always say the things I wanted to hear.

Love was not just a feeling. It was love that cost something.

Sin was not an illusion either. It was real. Real enough to break me and separate me from God.

And salvation was not an insight I could achieve on my own. It was a gift. Something I could never earn.

None of this became clear overnight. And it definitely did not happen because I suddenly became certain about everything. I’m still unfinished. Still learning. Still unsure about many things.

But one thing I’ve started to understand is that words are not neutral. They have roots. And when words are pulled away from those roots, they slowly begin to mean something else entirely.

These words have started opening up to me in a new way now. Not because I became wiser or better than anyone else. The Bible simply began shaping how I understand them. I no longer measure them through my own thoughts and feelings, but through God’s Word.

And honestly, I’m still on the journey myself. The words have found their place, but I’m still learning what it means to actually live rooted in them.

I still use these same words today. Christ. Holy Spirit. Love. Salvation.

But now I use them in their original meaning. In the sense that they do not rise from man, but from God. I’m no longer reshaping them to fit myself. I’m letting them reshape me instead.

There is one verse that has taught me a lot about this:

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
(John 14:6, NKJV)