You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life. (John 5:39-40)I love my Bible. I have studied it for over 40 years now and am very acquainted with it. It is like an old friend that I talk to a lot.
I have a large print NIV, 1984 version because I do not like the newer one, and I read it a lot. I use it to preach from, too. Here lately I have been reading online out of the New Living Translation. It seems to strike a chord in me and I like it. I may even go to it as my regular translation.
There was a time, when I had my library, that I had almost fifty Bibles in it, as many different translations as I could get. I loved to check them out, to collect them, to find esoteric translations that no one else had. I even have a link on my browser’s toolbar that goes to a parallel Bible if I need it if I want to compare now.
But, as much as I love my Bible and know it and memorize it, it is just a book. It is not God. He gave it and I think that it is hard to have as good a relationship with him without knowing it intimately.
But it is not God.
The mistake we make is when we go to our Bible and forget the God behind it. It would be like my wife reading the letters I wrote to her before we were married professing my love, and forgetting me. The letters were good, yes, especially since I wrote them to her from Europe. But I am here now and she can talk to me.
In Jesus’ day, they had immersed themselves in the scriptures, which of course were the Old Testament, especially the first five books of the Old Testament. They had learned them and studied them, commented on them and assiduously kept them. They became the focal point of their faith.
Unfortunately, they rarely worshiped God, just his word.
Jesus told them that they search the Scriptures but miss the point. The point was that Jesus was coming. Now that he was here, those scriptures had fulfilled their purpose. But they would not see what was so obvious: the life he brought.
The Bible is useful. It is good and holy and I believe that it is inerrant. But it is useless without God. Without him, all it becomes is an ancient writing, on a par with Shakespeare or the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam or Socrates. It is not holy in and of itself. It is only holy when we allow God to speak through it.
Anybody can use it to show just about anything, if they take it out of context and, A Peter said, those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. (2 Peter 3:16-17).
We have to remember that people called on the name of God and knew God before the New Testament was complete. They knew him and understood him even during the Middle Ages when there was one translation, a Latin Bible chained to the pulpit of the church. So I know that God is big enough to work anyway.
But I have his written word now and I will use it and I will know it. And I will know him above all.
I have trouble understanding how someone can know the Bible and not know God, but I have seen it a number of times. Someone can quote great blocks of the Bible (many times the book of Revelation),yet not have the slightest idea of what it means.
It is the God behind the Bible that empowers the Bible in our lives. And it is Jesus who truly gives us life.
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