So there is a reason that we don’t move on to new perspectives on the Bible, because God gives us the perspective by giving us not only the right answers, but the right questions to ask. So we don’t need to change the emphasis to a new perspective, or seek to get our joy by following and obeying Christ. We follow and (imperfectly) obey Christ because of what He has done for us.
God doesn’t just leave us to speculate the proper perspective to have of the Bible. He teaches us what the point is by giving us the kinds of questions to ask:
- “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”(Luk 18:18)
- “What is the greatest commandment?”(Mat 22:36)
- “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”(John 6:28)
- “What must I do to be saved?”(Acts 16:30).
These questions are in the bible to teach us that these are the questions that Christ came to be answer to. In other words, we are taught a lot about what the bible is all about by the kinds of questions that God allows to be put in it. I would argue that they are questions that are at the heart of the human experience.
Questions 1-3 were asked before Christ had completed his work on earth. He came to accomplish 1 and 2, and so the answers to those are basically to personally perfectly obey the law of God (Mat 5:17;Gal 4:4-5). Calvin notes that the moral law is written on the conscience of mankind in creation, and so our confession states that God deals with all of Adams offspring in this way, by requiring perfect personal obedience from them with eternal life or death on the line (WCF 7.2)
Question 3:“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Everyone of Adam’s offspring wants to do some works for God and be approved by it. After all, Adam was made for works. Jesus answered the question this way: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.