The Bible teaches us that something deeper than the Bible makes it possible for the human heart to submit to the Bible. Therefore, how will we ever articulate and justify the goal to pursue something in the heart deeper than the Bible without using the Bible? This means that among our aspirations for Christian writing and preaching and teaching must be that we would handle the Bible in ways that make it likely for us to find in the Bible everything we need to find there in order to use the Bible rightly.

No matter which way my mind turns these days, I cannot escape the absolutely unique and essential role that the Bible plays in God’s purpose for the universe, and for history, and for the church, and for Christian schools, and for our personal lives, both now and in eternity.

Our way of thinking and feeling and acting toward the Bible, and with the Bible, and from the Bible is decisive in whether our lives, schools, and churches conform to God’s saving, Christ-exalting purposes for history and for all of creation.

Think of the staggering implications for the billions of people around the world, including most of the highest and lowest educated, most of the rich and most of the poor — people of every tongue and tribe and nation, men and women, young and old, who virtually never orient what they think or feel or do around what God has revealed in the Bible.

Without the Bible

This is staggering because, without rightly discerning what is revealed only in the Bible, we cannot know the most important realities in life.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the true nature of God and the beauty of his holiness.

Without the Bible, we cannot know that magnifying God’s glory is the ultimate purpose of the universe.

Without the Bible, we cannot know that the way God has appointed for his glory to be most fully magnified is through a people who are supremely and eternally happy in him.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the eternal divinity of Christ, the Son of God, and that all things were made through him and for him.

Without the Bible, we cannot know that all things that exist — from galaxies to molecules — are held in existence by the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God.

Without the Bible, we cannot know that the Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the unsearchable riches of Christ’s achievements on the cross — his propitiation of the wrath of God, his enduring the curse of the law, his bearing the condemnation of the elect, his becoming sin though he knew no sin, his bearing the weight of the iniquities of all his people, his purchasing forgiveness, acceptance, adoption, escape from hell, entrance into eternal life, and God’s yes to all the promises of Scripture for his people.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the way of salvation by grace through faith as a gift of God apart from works of the law.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the almighty power of the Holy Spirit raising us from spiritual death, and granting us new birth, and giving us new hearts, and sealing us for God’s possession through faith, and preserving us to the day of Christ and forever.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the true path of holiness and how the Holy Spirit by faith works in us the fruits of righteousness that come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the meaning of the church with Christ as the head of the body, and all the hosts of heaven watching as the wisdom of God is played out in the gathering of the redeemed from all the peoples of the world.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the meaning of marriage as a God-designed drama of the covenant love between Christ and his church.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the meaning of our own physical bodies as bought with Christ’s blood for the housing of the Spirit of God.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the dimensions of literature and art which approximate ultimate truth.

Without the Bible, we cannot know the source and goal of science.

And without the Bible, we cannot know how to love anyone fully — that is, in a way that does them everlasting good.

We can know none of these things in a saving way — that is, in a way that does anyone, ourselves or others, any lasting good — apart from rightly discerning what is revealed in the Bible. And therefore, all the aims of communication, apart from a right handling of the Bible, come to naught.

Therefore, more and more, it has seemed to me that the future God-glorifying faithfulness, and Spirit-dependent obedience, and Christ-exalting fruitfulness in our churches, and in our schools and institutions, and in our lives, depend on a certain way of thinking and feeling about the Bible.

So my ten aspirations for Christian communicators, whether pastors, preachers, writers, teachers, editors, parents, or friends, are all formulated in relation to that — our thinking and our feeling about the Bible.

Hearts That Hear

Someone may ask — indeed I ask — “But don’t deep heart realities of humility, and spiritual life, and submission to God, and sensitivity to spiritual reality precede and enable a right handling of the Bible? And shouldn’t that be the goal of Christian schools and ministries — to cultivate a kind of heart and mind that creates the humility and submissiveness that then is yielded to everything the Bible teaches?”

Certainly, we should have a commitment to those deeper realities. But here’s the catch: the only reason we know that such realities must exist before the Bible can be known and loved and handled as it ought to be is that the Bible teaches us that they must.

The Bible teaches us that something deeper than the Bible makes it possible for the human heart to submit to the Bible. Therefore, how will we ever articulate and justify the goal to pursue something in the heart deeper than the Bible without using the Bible?

This means that among our aspirations for Christian writing and preaching and teaching must be that we would handle the Bible in ways that make it likely for us to find in the Bible everything we need to find there in order to use the Bible rightly.

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