Why read? Of course, you might be asking yourself why you take up your valuable time to read these scatterbrained words here, but that's not the point I want to make. The big question I have, that we will be looking at over the next number of posts, is simple. Why do we read the Bible?
As we dive into this topic, there is something that I believe we should be clear about up front. There is not one and only one proper, correct answer to this. In fact, as we work our way through this series of posts, one thing I hope you come to realize is that God has given us His Word, and that Word does a variety of things to us as we engage that Word. But today, I think it might be helpful to start with one very basic thing.
We read the Bible in order to know who Jesus is, and that He is the Christ/Messiah. In John 5:39, Jesus is quoted as saying, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me..." At the end of his Gospel account, in John 20:31, John reiterates this point. "...these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
We Christians read the Bible because it tells us about Jesus. That goes for the Old Testament as for the New. We see in the Old how God prepared the way, and how the themes of God all come together in Jesus, in what He did, and in what that means for us. Jesus is the heart and soul of the Bible. We cannot truly understand the Bible if we do not understand Jesus, and we simply do not understand Jesus if we do not understand the Bible.
But even in that, there's more to it. We don't read merely to know who Jesus is. As John points out, what we read about Jesus is to guide us to believe in who He is, and in what He has done for us. We could know who Jesus is, but if we don't believe in what Jesus has done and continues to do for us, we actually haven't gained anything. Knowledge is okay, but faith takes precedence.
Of course, we'll hit on these keys again. But as we start off today, we do so remembering that one of the many reasons we read the Bible is to know and to believe in Jesus.
As we dive into this topic, there is something that I believe we should be clear about up front. There is not one and only one proper, correct answer to this. In fact, as we work our way through this series of posts, one thing I hope you come to realize is that God has given us His Word, and that Word does a variety of things to us as we engage that Word. But today, I think it might be helpful to start with one very basic thing.
We read the Bible in order to know who Jesus is, and that He is the Christ/Messiah. In John 5:39, Jesus is quoted as saying, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me..." At the end of his Gospel account, in John 20:31, John reiterates this point. "...these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
We Christians read the Bible because it tells us about Jesus. That goes for the Old Testament as for the New. We see in the Old how God prepared the way, and how the themes of God all come together in Jesus, in what He did, and in what that means for us. Jesus is the heart and soul of the Bible. We cannot truly understand the Bible if we do not understand Jesus, and we simply do not understand Jesus if we do not understand the Bible.
But even in that, there's more to it. We don't read merely to know who Jesus is. As John points out, what we read about Jesus is to guide us to believe in who He is, and in what He has done for us. We could know who Jesus is, but if we don't believe in what Jesus has done and continues to do for us, we actually haven't gained anything. Knowledge is okay, but faith takes precedence.
Of course, we'll hit on these keys again. But as we start off today, we do so remembering that one of the many reasons we read the Bible is to know and to believe in Jesus.
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