Crossroad Bible Study

At Babel, men were trying to be united under their own strength, working together to achieve their own goals by their own power. What they were doing almost sounds good: they were working together in unity. But it was their purpose that was evil: glorifying themselves rather than God.

And so God introduced a language barrier into all of mankind, so that we couldn’t work together. It seems like this would hold true to this day. Certainly we still have language barriers, but with new technology, all of mankind is getting closer together. Globalization is bringing us back to the times before the Tower of Babel, when all humanity could cooperatively work together for one goal.

But without Christ, how can we escape the same outcome that occurred at the Tower of Babel? If we bring unity and peace to the world, can we escape the pride and arrogance of that early civilization? Everything may seem to be good, but be tainted by our desires to glorify ourselves rather than God. It seems as if any attempts to unify all of humanity should be brought to ruin by God because of our sinful pride.

But Christ has changed all of that, and saved us from our sin and pride. Shortly after Christ’s ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, and reversed the power of the curse at Babel. “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak… When this sound was heard, the multitude came together, and were bewildered, because everyone heard them speaking in his own language.” (Acts 2:4-6).

At Babel, everyone spoke the same language, but God caused them all to speak different languages so that they couldn’t understand each other. But Acts 2 is a reversal of Babel, because everyone spoke different languages, yet they somehow could all understand each other.

In Christ, our sin and pride are overcome, and we can truly seek to glorify God rather than ourselves, so that with his Holy Spirit, we can unite the world to glorify God.