by Kevin Burton
What’s the Bible all about anyway? What am I supposed to make of all this? How do I read it?
What a foundational, fundamental question. It’s a wonder more people don’t talk about this.
Humanly speaking, the Bible is 66 books written by approximately 40 men over a period of 1500 years.
That’s a lot to get your arms and your mind wrapped around. But here’s the help you need: The Bible in its 66 books is actually one cohesive story. Most importantly, it is God-breathed. God Himself is the author of the Bible.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17 NASB).
If the Bible were not the word of the living God, its stories, history, principles and examples both positive and negative, may be of mild interest to you and me, but the book would hold no authority.
As the living word of God, the Bible is unlike any other book you will ever find on earth.
“Ultimately, above the human authors, the Bible was written by God. Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that the Bible was “breathed out” by God. God superintended the human authors of the Bible so that, while using their own writing styles and personalities, they still recorded exactly what God intended. The Bible was not dictated by God, but it was perfectly guided and entirely inspired by Him,” reads a passage on http://www.gotquestions.org.
What a service has been done by Our Daily Bread Ministries and author Kevin J. Vanhoozer in producing the booklet “What Every Christian Needs To Know About Reading The Bible.” The concise, 32-page Bible study tool landed in my mailbox this week.
In the booklet, Vanhoozer, a California-born theologian with a PhD from Cambridge University, boils the issue down to an accessible starting point. He answers a basic question about the Bible: what is this?
His first two chapter titles frame the answer: “What scripture is: A Word From Heaven for Citizens of Heaven” and “What scripture is About: One Holy Nation Under God.”
These two lines could serve as effective subtitles for the Bible.
In his fourth and final chapter, Vanhoozer talks about why we should read the Bible and read it correctly.
“All scripture is useful for training disciples in righteousness, — for being right with God and doing what is right,” Vanhoozer writes. “Both discipleship and heavenly citizenship depend on reading the Bible rightly.”
“We follow Jesus and therefore become disciples by inhabiting his story,” Vanhoozer writes. “To inhabit Jesus’s story means living in it in order to live it out. When we enter into the Biblical story, we learn how the kingdom of Heaven has come to earth in Jesus.”
“To understand the Bible means grasping that Jesus now reigns, not simply in the story of the Bible, but in and over the physical world. To be a disciple is to practice the presence of the kingdom that is in heaven here on earth.”
“John Calvin puts it beautifully,” Vanhoozer writes. “Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit. Readers are the pupils. What they are learning is wisdom-how to live in the world, along the grain of the creator’s intentions, to the glory of God.”
You will notice I skipped chapter three. In that chapter, which I hope to write about next week, you get five lessons for how to read scripture.
Both Vanhoozer in his booklet and I with Page 7, have short formats. We won’t come close to answering all the questions that honest minds could come up with while studying the Bible. But Vanhoozer’s discussions in chapter three will give further explanations for what exactly it is you are looking at when you look into the scriptures and how to follow the story.
In another passage from 2 Timothy, Paul exhorts his protégé to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15 KVJ).
I pray these tools will help both me and you, do just that.
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