“Do not add to His
words, or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Proverbs 30:6.
What does this
verse mean? Can we associate this verse with Revelation 22:18-19?
“I testify to
everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to
them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if
anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take
away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written
in this book.” Rev. 22:18-19.
While the
context of Revelation 22:18-19 is, of course, Revelation; and while the “prophecy”
it refers to, in its immediate context, is the book of Revelation; it is
natural to apply these two verses to the entire Bible. While their position in
the conclusion of the Bible makes this application quite natural, even if
Revelation were positioned elsewhere in the order of Biblical books, it would
still be natural and appropriate to see these two verses as applying to the
entire Bible – for the entire Bible is a prophecy in that it is God speaking
forth and revealing Himself; prophecy being a forthtelling and a foretelling.
Agur tells us
that we should not add to the words of God, every word of God being tested. If
we do add to God's words, Agur says that He will reprove us and we will be found
liars.
What does this
mean? What are the words of God? What is the Word of God that we should not add
to?
Now I suppose
that our typical response is that we should not add to the Bible, that we should
not consider any other writing on the same level as the Bible, and I agree with
this; but is this all that Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18-19 mean?
Is it enough to
say, “I believe the Bible is God’s Word and there is nothing else on the same
level as the Bible”? Is it enough to say this if we are misrepresenting the
Bible? If we are misrepresenting what the Bible says, then are we not either adding
to the Word of God or taking away from His Word? Consider that we can misrepresent
the Bible by either omission or commission. That is, we can either use the
words of the Bible to teach what is not in the Bible, or we can omit to teach elements
of the Bible.
Not adding to
the Word of God nor taking away from the Word of God is more than saying, “I
believe the Bible is the Word of God and that nothing else written or verbally said
is on the same level as the Bible.” We can mouth these words while functionally
denying them. We can deceive ourselves and others into thinking that we are not
adding to or taking away from God’s Word, when in practice we are doing one or
the other or both.
What is one to
do? What is a congregation to do?
To begin with,
the Bible reveals Jesus Christ, and whatever passage we are working through, our
desire ought to be to see Jesus Christ; as Augustine points out repeatedly in
his expositions on the Psalms, sometimes we see the Head, sometimes we see His
Body, sometimes we see the Head and the Body. Jesus’ unveiling of Himself to His
disciples in Luke 24, both on the road to Emmaus and in the Upper Room, through
the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, ought to be an example and challenge
in our own understanding and teaching of Scripture. If we aren’t seeing and
teaching Jesus Christ then we aren’t “seeing” the Bible, for Jesus Christ is
the Testimony of Scripture (John 5:39).
The Scriptures
are Christological and sacramental, we partake of Jesus Christ when the Holy
Spirit opens us to the Bible and the Bible to us.
We need the
anointing of the Holy Spirit to see Christ in the Bible and the Bible in
Christ. We cannot know the things of God without the Spirit of God, nor can we
communicate the Bible to others without the Holy Spirit (see John chapters 13 –
17; 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16; Acts 1:7-8). As Jesus says in John 6:63, “It is
the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken
to you are spirit and life.”
We’ll pick this
back up in the next post.
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