The most rewarding and enjoyable exercise for the Christian is the reading (or receiving) of Holy Scripture. It is the transmission of truth from the mind of God to the mind of the believer. It is divine speech that penetrates to the heart disclosing God’s wonderful wisdom in tones of righteousness, trustworthiness, and love. The mind is informed, the understanding illuminated, and the spirit entranced. The Bible is utterly captivating as it reveals God and interprets the self as it is seen by him. Our sin and separation from him are discerned with convicting clarity and the solution to the profound disorder of our nature is presented alluringly in the description and narrative of the Lord Jesus Christ. Never are two entities so well met as the soul of man and the Spirit of God in the message of Scripture. The cleansing, cravings, and completion of the human soul are accomplished in union with him. He is the consummation of our best desires bestowed to us through inward grace. Nothing can equal the encounter and communion with Christ facilitated by the Word of God. Those who discard or deride Scripture have never felt the presence and the power of the Saviour disclosed in the meditation and exposition of the Bible. They may stare at and study its print, but to the proud and rebellious the inner voice has never spoken. The meaning of the Holy Book has never been sensed. The sighs of the Beloved over the souls of the elect have never been heard. The cross has never denounced their sin nor delighted their heart with the pulse of the divine love that endured so much for the restoration of beings to reunion with him. The pages that tell us so much of the God who is alive are dead to them and confirmatory of their ultimate death should they fail to repent. Scripture throbs with life. Its words are electrifying. Its tidings both alarm and attract. We begin with a sample of its content and are satiated with its generous supply of food for the soul. The veracity and sufficiency of Scripture have to be proven through personal experience that is granted by God. The non-participant in grace can never grasp by reason or rumination the grip of the Bible upon the mind of the regenerate. Until seized by grace Scripture to the natural man is a foreign language from a faraway world of which he has no conception. He may lift the cover and look over the leaves of the Book of God but the grammar of grace will elude him until heaven’s unbidden mercy makes him teachable. Scholarship alone cannot search out the truth of Scripture, no, not until it is united with sanctity that is granted to the humble (1 Corinthians chs 1&2). The eyes of education and human acumen fail to see what is in the Bible until the Spirit moistens the eyes of the soul and opens them to the light (John 9:6). The truth then leaps out to teach the mind and charm the imagination with treasures of wisdom too sublime to relate with adequate eloquence. The beauty of redeeming love is too infinite and intricate to describe. We stammer and stumble over the things of God and merely distribute disjointed clues the Spirit enables the chosen to gather to the good of their souls.
The Bible is to be read intelligently, attentively, and prayerfully with total dependence upon the Holy Spirit for understanding. Because the Spirit speaks personally to the believer the word from history is also contemporary. The past illuminates the present because the salvific promises and deeds recorded in Scripture are repeated in fresh ways in every generation, addressing the needs, crises, and cries of the people of God. They are paradigmatic of the continuous involvement of God in the welfare of those who trust in him. God’s ongoing acts of mercy, not necessarily identical to foregoing instances of deliverance, are indicative of his faithfulness and commitment to his own. They create confidence and expectancy. They are the vital themes of our conversations with God and give shape and orthodoxy to our requests. Our talks with and petitions to the Lord arise from Scripture as we match it to our circumstances and desires, and our growing knowledge of Scripture acquaints us with the usage of the language of heaven. The Bible trains the mind to think in God’s terms. The volume of unchangeable truth becomes the flexible medium of communication with God as Scripture is adapted to spiritual maturity and a realization of the possibilities open to us. What God has done for others he may do for us. We negotiate, argue, advance his God-given grounds for prayers of faith, and patiently await the outworking of his sovereign will, for he invites us “to reason together”. With perceptions he may also grant promptings and influences that open us to his “present” word of grace and guidance. Over-rigid rules of interpretation are set aside. The Bible is not a static word, a mere text book communicating cerebral knowledge alone, but a message he breathes into us as a friend beside us, as a witness inside us.
Some of the freshness of the divine word has been stultified by the rigidity of the artificial rules of Biblical science, more commonly known as Biblical Criticism. Academic aids to the understanding of the Bible are very useful and corrective of harmful subjectivity. We have to pay heed as much as possible to historical context, cultural background, and issues or provenance. We need to be aware of literary genres within the sacred text whilst always acknowledging that the overriding purpose of Scripture is to awaken us to our lost condition in sin, and to acquaint us with the Saviour. But Biblical science is of two kinds according to two approaches – reverent or rebellious – and there is a variety of Biblical scholarship that is disbelieving, unwarrantably subjective, and dangerous. It advances a mood of scepticism that pious and thorough Biblical investigation renders indefensible. It usually crops up as a challenging new discovery but proves to be recycled error refuted over and over again by the faithful theologians and teachers of the church dating back to the Fathers who successfully dealt with so called “modern” questions and difficulties in their own time. Whilst much contemporary study deals with the origin, authorship, and character of “units” of Scripture, the Spirit (Author of Scripture) gives us liberty to sweep over, and plumb, the depths of the entirety of God’s revelation relating the parts of Scripture to the overall whole in accord with the intent of the ultimate Mind who composed it. Because God is effecting a plan that is consistent and which culminates in Christ Jesus there is a measure of allegory (spiritual application once outlawed) permitted, avoiding excess, that sweetens the word with intimations of Jesus and his saving activity, and this brings his touch to the individual soul in its personal devotions. Jesus whispers his love to the reader with pertinency, as well as proclaiming the facts of his compassionate assignment on our behalf. The trip-wires in Bible study that ought to sound an alarm to us are scepticism and superstition. The unbelief that isolates us from God and which diminishes his greatness and goodness, and repudiates the truth of his revelation, will fatally wound the soul. The superstition that recites the Scripture mantra-like as if it were a magical charm or always confirmatory of personal impulse and volition is a selfish domination of the word that closes access to its true meaning and holy power. The Bible affords deliverance from self, its rebellion, egotism, and illusions. The Bible comforts and corrects. We do not depart from the inspired word, its sensible meaning, and the word is to dwell in us richly.
The Bible is to be read intelligently, attentively, and prayerfully with total dependence upon the Holy Spirit for understanding. Because the Spirit speaks personally to the believer the word from history is also contemporary. The past illuminates the present because the salvific promises and deeds recorded in Scripture are repeated in fresh ways in every generation, addressing the needs, crises, and cries of the people of God. They are paradigmatic of the continuous involvement of God in the welfare of those who trust in him. God’s ongoing acts of mercy, not necessarily identical to foregoing instances of deliverance, are indicative of his faithfulness and commitment to his own. They create confidence and expectancy. They are the vital themes of our conversations with God and give shape and orthodoxy to our requests. Our talks with and petitions to the Lord arise from Scripture as we match it to our circumstances and desires, and our growing knowledge of Scripture acquaints us with the usage of the language of heaven. The Bible trains the mind to think in God’s terms. The volume of unchangeable truth becomes the flexible medium of communication with God as Scripture is adapted to spiritual maturity and a realization of the possibilities open to us. What God has done for others he may do for us. We negotiate, argue, advance his God-given grounds for prayers of faith, and patiently await the outworking of his sovereign will, for he invites us “to reason together”. With perceptions he may also grant promptings and influences that open us to his “present” word of grace and guidance. Over-rigid rules of interpretation are set aside. The Bible is not a static word, a mere text book communicating cerebral knowledge alone, but a message he breathes into us as a friend beside us, as a witness inside us.
Some of the freshness of the divine word has been stultified by the rigidity of the artificial rules of Biblical science, more commonly known as Biblical Criticism. Academic aids to the understanding of the Bible are very useful and corrective of harmful subjectivity. We have to pay heed as much as possible to historical context, cultural background, and issues or provenance. We need to be aware of literary genres within the sacred text whilst always acknowledging that the overriding purpose of Scripture is to awaken us to our lost condition in sin, and to acquaint us with the Saviour. But Biblical science is of two kinds according to two approaches – reverent or rebellious – and there is a variety of Biblical scholarship that is disbelieving, unwarrantably subjective, and dangerous. It advances a mood of scepticism that pious and thorough Biblical investigation renders indefensible. It usually crops up as a challenging new discovery but proves to be recycled error refuted over and over again by the faithful theologians and teachers of the church dating back to the Fathers who successfully dealt with so called “modern” questions and difficulties in their own time. Whilst much contemporary study deals with the origin, authorship, and character of “units” of Scripture, the Spirit (Author of Scripture) gives us liberty to sweep over, and plumb, the depths of the entirety of God’s revelation relating the parts of Scripture to the overall whole in accord with the intent of the ultimate Mind who composed it. Because God is effecting a plan that is consistent and which culminates in Christ Jesus there is a measure of allegory (spiritual application once outlawed) permitted, avoiding excess, that sweetens the word with intimations of Jesus and his saving activity, and this brings his touch to the individual soul in its personal devotions. Jesus whispers his love to the reader with pertinency, as well as proclaiming the facts of his compassionate assignment on our behalf. The trip-wires in Bible study that ought to sound an alarm to us are scepticism and superstition. The unbelief that isolates us from God and which diminishes his greatness and goodness, and repudiates the truth of his revelation, will fatally wound the soul. The superstition that recites the Scripture mantra-like as if it were a magical charm or always confirmatory of personal impulse and volition is a selfish domination of the word that closes access to its true meaning and holy power. The Bible affords deliverance from self, its rebellion, egotism, and illusions. The Bible comforts and corrects. We do not depart from the inspired word, its sensible meaning, and the word is to dwell in us richly.
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