Jesus himself is the way into our understanding of the Bible. After all, he is himself the center of the Bible’s message. All God’s purposes, from the beginning to the end, find their focus in him. He is the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15) and the lamb standing as if it were slain in the middle of the new creation (Rev. 5:6). The broad biblical-theological sweep from promise to fulfillment converges on him. 

People of the Book

Why do Christians take the Bible so seriously? Despite some variety in how they might frame their doctrine of Scripture, debates about its nature and function, and differences in their understanding of particular passages and what emphasis should be placed upon them, Christians have, right from the beginning, been “people of the book.” The Swiss theologian Karl Barth famously insisted, “Christianity has always been and only been a living religion when it is not ashamed to be actually and seriously a book-religion.”¹ Why is that so?

The first and most compelling reason for this is that Jesus, our Savior and Lord, had this attitude. He endorsed the Old Testament scriptures of his time. He appealed to them as the word of God as he taught his disciples, confounded those who opposed him, and explained why he had come and what he had come to do. He spoke of “the law, the prophets and the psalms” (Luke 24:44), alluding to the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible. He asked the Pharisees repeatedly, “Have you not read?” (Matt. 12, 19, 22). He insisted “it is written” (Matt. 4, 11, 21) and “the Scripture must be fulfilled” (Luke 22:37).

Yet Jesus also commissioned his apostles to take the gospel of the kingdom, the message of salvation accomplished with its attendant summons to repentance and faith, to all nations until the end of the age (Matt 24:14; 28:19–20). On the night he was betrayed, he prayed not only for them but for those who would believe in their word (John 17:20). He promised that the Spirit would remind them of all that he had taught them and give them the words to say when the time arose. They would be his authorized witnesses and their words would nourish the new communities that he would gather as the gospel was proclaimed. This gospel commission and the gift of the Spirit resulted in the New Testament, which from the beginning was read alongside the Old (Col. 4:16; 2 Pet. 3:15–16).

Jesus Is the Center

Jesus Christ himself stands uniquely at the center of the Christian doctrine of Scripture. It is not possible to follow Christ faithfully without turning your attention seriously to the Scriptures because that is precisely what he did. The suggestion of some that they follow Jesus not a book fails to pay careful attention to who Jesus is, what he said, and how he lived. Jesus positioned himself against the background of the Old Testament promises of God. He lived a perfect life of obedience to the will of God as revealed in the Old Testament. Yet we have access to his life, words, and work only through the testimony of his apostles, moved to write by the Spirit. He commissioned them to be his spokesmen, taking the gospel out from Jerusalem to Judaea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). That’s why we have the New Testament.

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