The book of Psalms begins with the law. Describing the blessed man, the psalm that opens and frames the entire book speaks of someone who delights in the law and meditates upon it day and night. In the psalms, we see something of the law internalized in song, which conscripts our will and affections and unites assemblies in common voice and expression. 

There has almost certainly never been a time when people read as much as we do today. Adding up all the time we spend reading books, magazines, social media, messages on our devices, or other such texts, we probably spend multiple hours of every week engaged in some sort of reading activity. Despite reading so much, however – or, perhaps, because we read so much – we are often careless and inattentive readers. Indeed, much of the writing we encounter is written for distracted and impatient casual readers, neither demanding nor rewarding close, sustained, and repeated attention.

But this is not what we want. And we know that. We remember, many of us, another kind of reading: the experience of closely reading, alone or with others, a text that seems infinite in its subtleties, meanings, and implications. This craving finds its satisfaction in our engagement with Holy Scripture.

Holy Scripture is not written as a text to be swiftly consumed and digested; you cannot “have read” Holy Scripture, but must always be in the process of reading, rereading, and chewing it over. The skills and habits this reading requires might not only be unfamiliar to many of us, but might often run against the grain of habits that have become second nature to us.

Holy Scripture, read appropriately, will form, not merely inform us. Our typical habits and practices of reading prepare us for texts that chiefly place themselves at our disposal: they are there for our entertainment, use, or information. While Holy Scripture does teach and equip us to read it properly, we must place ourselves at its disposal, approaching it on its own terms. Modern readers can lightly dispense with words, treating them chiefly as disposable vehicles for ideas or truths. Many Bible studies seek rapidly to move from reading the text to extracting the devotional nuggets, doctrines, or moral teachings within it, at which point the actual words of the text can be left behind. Yet Holy Scripture charges us differently, calling us to tarry with, memorize, chew over, and treasure its words. We are to read them publicly, teach them to our children, talk about them (Deut. 6:6–9). We are not to settle for the CliffsNotes.

After the public reading of Holy Scripture in worship, lectors in several Christian traditions will conclude with “this is the word of the Lord.” While this is a claim concerning authorship, perhaps akin to pronouncing “this is the word of Plato” after a reading of The Republic, Christian claims about the “word of the Lord” go beyond this. Hebrews 4:12, for instance, declares, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Likewise, 1 Peter 1:23 speaks of “the living and abiding word of God.”

This word of God is not lifeless text on a page, nor even a divinely inspired and thus uniquely reliable recounting of and reflection upon historical events and agents, like a conversation in some heavenly commentary box. Rather, it is a dynamic and powerful actor in history. Indeed, it is a primary actor both within the history it recounts and in the continuing life of the people of God.

It was by his powerful word that God created the heavens and the earth (Heb. 11:3); the story of creation is primarily a series of speech acts. The word of the Lord is also that which propels the story forward, in revelation and in prophecy. God’s providential purpose in history is expressed in terms of his effective word, as God assures his people in Isaiah 55:10–11:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

The Gospel of John begins with an astonishing passage concerning the Word (Greek Logos), by whom God created all things, identifying this figure with both God and with Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh. Through this passage, we move into an even more remarkable account of the lowercase word of God. The Word of God, in whom God acts and reveals himself, is ultimately none other than Jesus Christ. The creative words of Genesis 1 are grounded in this creative Word, the Lord’s effective judgments proclaimed by the prophets are none other than the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 19:10), and Christ still acts by his word in the power of his Spirit in his church. This disclosure should illumine our understanding of the word of God more broadly: in the final analysis the word of God reveals the Word of God, who manifests himself in this and acts through it.

Our understanding of what it means to read Holy Scripture should develop out of such a theological account of the word of God. When we attend to the word of the Lord, we are connected to the work of the Word of God in history. The incarnation – the Word become flesh – is the central truth around which all else must be drawn. When this truth is given its proper place, much else will come into focus.

Holy Scripture, and the history it recounts, is ordered in its entirety toward the Word taking on flesh. The incarnation of the Word in history is not merely about Jesus Christ as an individual, but includes the body in which he dwells by his Spirit, the church. It is Christians and the church that can be described as “a letter from Christ … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3). Holy Scripture recounts a redemptive historical movement from the word made stone in the gift of the law to the Word made flesh in the incarnation, and in the writing of the law on human hearts in the new covenant by Christ’s Spirit. In this movement, Holy Scripture itself is an actor; in reading and hearing it, the glory of Christ himself transforms us as the veil over our hearts is removed by the work of his Spirit (2 Cor. 3:12–18).

Looking beyond such a juxtaposition between the old and new covenants, much of Holy Scripture describes and effects a transformative movement from an external word of divine command to a word that takes on flesh and animates it by the Spirit of God.

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