March 27, 2000
TOGETHER:
The Bible, a living book,
reveals God's work in world
___Why is the Bible a living book? Why does the Bible brim over with new truth, encouragement and guidance almost every time you read it? Why is it so in tune with your life needs that you can read the same passage when you are 20 and again at 60 and be stirred at yet another level of spiritual searching?
___The first answer is that it is God's book, inspired by the Holy Spirit to convey God's truth and wisdom to the human family.
CHARLES WADE
Executive Firector, BGCT Executive Board
___It is in the most profound sense the Owner's Manual. Wise people read the directions (2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Psalm 119:11).
___Another answer is that it is the record of God's work in the world as he has revealed himself to people in his public acts. For example, the book of Exodus is the inspired report of what God did when he set the people of Israel free from Egyptian bondage by way of Moses' leadership through the Red Sea. The miracle came first, then the understanding of the meaning of the miracle, then the reporting of the miracle. All of that is God's doing in partnership with human faith, obedience and personality.
___Then, as you hear or read the report, there stirs within the divine hope, the Holy Spirit calling us to walk with God out of our places of bondage and into the Promised Land. Thus, the work of God comes full circle: What he began with the people of the Covenant, he continues with us. That which is old becomes new in our hearts.
___Or take the Gospels as they tell the story of Jesus--his life in word, emotions and deed. We are drawn in, and we want to follow him. The power of the written word, the Bible, comes from the power of the living Word, Jesus (John 1:1,14). To say it another way, we do not have a need for new books of Scripture or a new revelation from God, because there is nothing more to report about the life and work of Jesus. There can never be a revelation that supercedes Jesus. He is God's full revelation of himself to the human family (Colossians 1:19). We can carefully, prayerfully increase our skills in interpreting the Scripture before us, and thus go deeper into the meaning of the life and work of Christ, but God has given us the base text, the essential data, in the Scriptures as they speak of Jesus our Lord. In some divine way, every part of the Bible points to the miracle of God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ.
___Martin Marty, in his newsletter on religion and culture, Context, quotes writer Thomas Cahill about the amazing literary quality of the Gospels. "What especially makes the Gospels--from a literary point of view--work like no others is that they are about a good human being. As every writer knows, such a creature is all but impossible to capture on the page, and there are exceedingly few figures in all of literature who are both good and memorable.
___"Yet the evangelists ... whose Greek was often odd or imprecise, and who were not practiced writers of any sort, these four succeeded where almost all others failed. To a writer's eyes, this feat is a miracle just a little short of raising the dead."
___Look at Jesus in this amazing book and know how much ...
___We are loved.
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