Do we worship Jesus or the Bible?
You don't have to exist involved in a debate almost some contentious result, and what the Bible might say most it, for as well long before someone chimes up:
Sounds to me similar your worship the Bible! Shouldn't Christians worship Jesus?
The accusation is that, if you focus on what the Bible says, y'all are making the Bible your ultimate dominance instead of making Jesus your ultimate authority. At that place is a theological version of this statement and a applied version. The theological version is that it is Jesus, non the Bible, which is the 'Word of God'—near notably expressed (equally we will recollect this Christmas) in John 1. The Word became flesh and lived amidst us—but if we focus besides much on the Bible, we are in danger of turning the Discussion fabricated flesh back into a mere give-and-take again. Instead of incarnation we become guilty of decarnation, of turning God'due south word from something living and personal to something dry and propositional.
The more practical version observes what Jesus does with Scripture and what Scripture says about Jesus. On the one paw, Jesus appears quite happy to put the authorisation of his own words to a higher place the authority of the words of Scripture: 'You take heard it said…simply I say to yous…' (Matt 5.21–37). On the other, Jesus claims that the whole bespeak of the Scriptures is to point to him. 'You search the scriptures because you think that in them yous have life. But it is these that testify about me' (John v.39). In other words, if we get too obsessed with what the Scriptures say, it is like standing in front end of a signpost studying it rather than following where it is pointing.
A recent blog post put it like this:
Jesus is the thing. Scripture is the sign that points toward the thing. Scripture provides a series of portraits so that we will know the real matter when nosotros see information technology. The difference between scripture and Christ is the difference betwixt the carte and the food. The 1 describes the reality of the life-giving substance, the other is that life-giving substance.
It'southward worth pausing for a moment to consider these metaphors. If y'all are in a eating place, you would be foolish to call back that the menu could in any way attend you. And yet the experience of Christians is that reading Scripture is indeed nourishing. And there's a good reason for that—Jesus himself compares what God says in Scripture to food. 'People do non live on staff of life alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God' (Matt 4.iv) he says, citing the Sometime Testament scriptures as this word from God. Paradoxically, Jesus too describes himself every bit bread from heaven (John half-dozen.35), but mayhap this is the cardinal. When Jesus claims to exist God'due south word, he is not displacing Scripture, only identifying with it. Jesus claims to be 'the way, the truth and the life' (John 14.6) simply he also claims that 'the words I speak are spirit and life' (John 6.63). Jesus and his words offer the same thing.
Paul appears to support this identification. Scripture is 'God-breathed', carried on God'due south breath past his Spirit to us (2 Tim 3.16), simply every bit anyone's words are carried by the outflow of their breath (endeavor speaking whilst breathing in!) And nonetheless information technology is precisely studying these Scriptures which can deliver the experience of salvation through Jesus, if y'all read them aright (2 Tim 3.15). The writer to the Hebrews appears to contrast the fashion God has spoken in the past with the fashion God has spoken 'in these last days' through Jesus (Heb 1.ane–2). Only this cannot exist a dissimilarity of what is written with what has been incarnated; the only way we know of Jesus, his ministry building, his educational activity and the meaning of his life and death is through the scriptures of the new covenant. These verses looks less like a rejection of the written word than a instance for the extension of the written give-and-take to include the testimony to Jesus we discover in the gospels.
Perhaps this gets united states to the centre of the issue. When Jesus challenges the 'Jewish leaders' (John 5.16) almost the Scriptures which 'point to me', he highlights for us that they have two things earlier them: the Scriptures themselves, and Jesus who stands earlier them. We are non in the same position, since we practice not have the incarnated Give-and-take standing before u.s.a.. Instead nosotros take the testimony to Jesus in the gospels and messages. If nosotros believe in a cosmic Christ, asunder from history and accessible in some ethereal, mystical mode only, then the contrast with the Scriptures is one we could make. But if we believe in the historical Jesus, if we believe that the Word actually did go flesh, then it is focusing on these Scriptures that leads u.s. to Jesus. That is precisely why John subsequently makes this bespeak:
These are written that y'all may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John xx.31)
C S Lewis sums it up with characteristic clarity, in a letter to Mrs. Johnson, written on November eighth 1952:
It is Christ Himself, non the Bible, who is the truthful Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers volition bring united states of america to Him… We must not use the Bible (our ancestors too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and read without attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) tin be taken for use every bit weapons.
Notice Lewis careful qualification nighhowwe are to interpret as well aswhy we demand to interpret.
Contrasting Scripture and Jesus is as odd as contrasting what someone says with the person themselves. It is an imperfect analogy, but it would be very strange for me to say 'I don't need to listen carefully to what my wife says—after all, I married her and not her words!' This kind of imitation dichotomy actually separates who God is from what God says, and if we divide God in this fashion we are heading for problem—not least because the foundational conventionalities of Scripture is that 'God is ane' (Deut half-dozen.4).
Equally information technology turns out, this kind of division is very oft a prelude to then saying the Scripture is wrong, that it is an unreliable guide to what God says, and doesn't in fact tell u.s.a. the truth near God and Jesus. The question then follows: how do we know the truth? This then becomes a thing of individual discernment by individuals, who can inform us in their wisdom which aspects of Scripture are reliable and which are misleading, rather than a matter of the shared discernment of God's people past reading the Scriptures together. Instead of Scripture mediating the truth well-nigh Christ, the authoritative commentator does so. Expounding Scripture in a way which does not accord with the person of Jesus is as serious a trouble as expounding the person of Jesus in a style which does not accordance with Scripture.
Now, there is sometimes a trouble with Christians focusing on the propositional rather than the personal as they read. Simply the trouble here is non to exercise with separating Scripture from Jesus, but with reading Scripture poorly. Scripture, understood as God's words to u.s., is less a manual for living than the deed of communication of a loving father to his children, and we need to have is as such. It is given to u.s. not simply for data but for formation, to make us more than like Jesus. But if we want God to make united states more like Jesus by his Spirit, we need to focus more on what he has said in Scripture—not less.
A version of this article was first published on Christian Today on quaternary December 2015.
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