Two Questions to Greatly Help You Understand and Live What the Bible Teaches
For many years of my Christian life, I did not ask two questions of the Bible text that I should have. It did not matter whether I was studying the text for myself; preparing a Bible study; or preaching, it often did not occur to me to consciously ask these two questions, and then spend time thinking and praying through how to answer the questions. This was a mistake. I should have listened to Jesus.
Why do I say that I should have listened to Jesus? What did He tell me, and you, to do? Let's think about two stories about Jesus.
In two of the resurrection appearances in Luke, Jesus teaches how His life, death and resurrection relate to the Old Testament.
In the first story, the resurrected Jesus is walking with two of his disciples, one named Cleopas and the other is unnamed. They are walking to Emmaus, and the two disciples are grieving both the death of Jesus and the troubling news that His grave was empty and no one can find the body. Jesus says to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning Himself." (Luke 24:25-27 NIV). It is the subject of another blog, but in this story, the resurrected Jesus walked with them and he was not recognized until towards the end, when their eyes were opened. The story finishes with the disciples exclaiming, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us." (see Luke 24:13-35 for the story).
In the second story, Luke 24:36-49, the eleven remaining Apostles and a group of disciples are in a room. Peter and others have seen Jesus alive, so the room is buzzing. Then Jesus appears among them, proving that He is resurrected. First using a phrase to show that He means all of the Old Testament, He then says that He has fulfilled the Bible, and that the message of the whole Old Testament is that, "...The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." (Luke 24:46b-47 NIV).
In both of these cases Jesus is not just saying that He fulfilled specific Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah. He makes a bigger claim, that the whole Old Testament is ultimately about who He is and what He accomplished for sinners in His life, death and resurrection. To be clear, He is not just claiming that when taken as a whole, the Old Testament is about who He is and what it is that He accomplished. He is saying that the whole Old Testament, including the bits and pieces that make up the whole, are about who He is and what He accomplished for sinners.
It is the subject of another blog to establish this, but Christians have always understood that Jesus' words not only look back on the Old Testament, but forward to the New Testament. This means that the gospel, the good news of who Jesus is and what He accomplished on the cross, is the central truth of all of the Bible, and of every bit that makes up the whole Bible. He is the interpretive key to Scripture.
So when you study the Bible, you need to read the text carefully, understanding the words, the genre, the context, and the flow of the text. But then you need to ask these two questions. Sometimes one will be more appropriate, sometimes the other, and sometimes both will be very fruitful.
The first question. How does this Bible text help you to understand the Gospel better?
The second question. How does the Gospel help you to understand this Bible text better?
A couple of concluding points.
First, these questions protect you from an "oil and water" reading of the Bible. Oil and water do not mix. They stay separate. You can easily drift into reading the Bible in an oil and water way. This text is about the gospel. This text is about morals. This text is about the second coming. This text is about prayer. But then the gospel is just one "topic," so to speak, and the person and work of Jesus is cut-off from most of the Bible. This is not how Jesus tells you to understand the Bible.
Second, these questions protect you against legalism. If the gospel is just one topic among many, then when you come to a text about discipleship or virtue, you can easily drift into thinking that you become a Christian by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but you grow by your own effort. This is not how Jesus tells you to understand the Bible.
Third, these questions protect you against "moral therapeutic deism," another form of legalism. Like legalism, you become a Christian one way, but you live and grow as a Christian another way. In a sense, legalism is "moral religious deism." In moral therapeutic deism, rather than following moralistic rules, you end up following moralistic therapies to grow. You are saved by grace, but you live and grow by your own efforts in following therapeutic rules. This is not how Jesus tells you to understand the Bible.
Fourth, the failure to ask these two questions can lead to the gospel staying small, and even shrinking smaller, in your mind and heart. It is not unusual to hear pastors preach a moralistic or therapeutic sermon. If they are an evangelical, they know they have to tell people the gospel in their sermon. So at the end, they parachute in their one standard way of expressing the gospel. Now, it is always better to do this than say nothing about the gospel, but the effect is that you only hear one explanation of the gospel. But there are a rich range of biblical images that communicate who Jesus is and what He accomplished for you on the cross, images of: slavery and redemption, death and life, lost and found, doomed and saved, guilt and forgiveness, powerlessness and power bestowed, the orphan and adoption, exculded and included, doomed and destined, unrighteous and imputed righteousness, naked and clothed, hopeless to eternal hope, unclean and clean - there are more.
Fifth, you will probably find asking these two questions very hard at first. I do not say this to depress you, but to prepare you and encourage you. Remember what Jesus tells you in the two stories from Luke 24! He wants you to know Him better. He wants you to have a deeper, broader, richer, higher, fuller understanding of who He is and what He accomplished for you on the cross. He wants to deliver you from legalism and mere religion to the riches of His grace and the hope of glory. To ask for His help, and the help of the Holy Spirit in thinking through these questions is to ask according to His gracious will and loving purposes for you.
Brothers and sisters, pray for each other. Pray for your Pastor. Pray for me, that we will ask and learn to wisely discern the biblical answer to the questions, "How does this Bible text help you to understand the Gospel better?" and, "How does the Gospel help you to understand this Bible text better?"
AUTHOR
Canon George Sinclair
George is the rector of Church of the Messiah in Ottawa, Ontario, Chair of our Biblically Grounded ministry priority, and Principal of Ryle Seminary.