The Chapter 30 Diner (16)

 

 

“Do not add to His words, or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Proverbs 30:6.

 

As I pointed out in the previous post; 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.

 

I am a proponent of preaching through the books of the Bible; this is not the same as preaching through the Bible beginning with Genesis and concluding with Revelation. I believe it is pastorally important to expose congregations to various sections of the Bible on an ongoing basis to help them see the scope of Scripture, and in order to help them read and experience this scope themselves, in their marriages and families, and in their fellowship with other disciples. Above all, we want to see Jesus Christ throughout the Bible, not only prophetically in the predictive sense of that term, but sacramentally – we want to “see” and taste and receive His Presence throughout Scripture.

 

We ought to remember that the order of the Biblical books, while perhaps having a certain providence to them, is not sacred anymore than the insertion of chapters and verses in the Bible is sacred. At the same time, if we are going to teach the Bible as it was written then it seems that our primary model ought to be working through its books; seeking Christ, seeing the structure of the books, the Biblical context of the books, and honoring Biblical epistemology (see previous past), the Church, and submitting to the Holy Spirit.

Note that I included “the Church” above. I don’t for one moment believe that the idea of sola Scriptura means that we read, understand, and receive the Bible apart from the Church’s historical teaching. I used to think it did, in fact I functionally thought that sound theology began at the Reformation – I knew Church History in the sense that I knew much of the story of the Church in terms of dates and events, but I did not know the story of the Word of God in the Church.

 

An irony is that if we say “sola Scriptura” in isolation from the Church and think we are honoring the Reformation and its immediate successors, then we are mistaken. The Reformers were steeped in the Church Fathers, and, for example, we have quotations in Greek and Latin from Puritan pastors and writers who claimed descent from the Reformation. I have come to realize that if we are ignorant of the Fathers that we lack a context to appreciate much of what has been written in the Reformed or Lutheran or Anglican traditions. While we may disagree over Apostolic Succession in terms of bishops, we should not be so foolish as to discard the idea of Apostolic Succession in terms of Biblical interpretation.

 

The Bible belongs to the transcendent Church and not to me. I am not to own the Bible in a proprietary sense, the Bible is to possess and own me as a member of the Body of Christ, His Church.

 

In the Bible I find communion (koinonia) with the Trinity and with my brothers and sisters in Christ. In the Word we see Christ, we taste Christ, we embrace Christ…and are embraced by Christ. In the Word we breathe the atmosphere of the eternals, we are lifted up above the present age as we learn to live where we already are, in the heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 2:6). We set our minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1).

 

When Christ appears, Christ who is our life…a marvelous thing happens…we also appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4). C.S. Lewis in his essay The Weight of Glory, wrote that if we could really see the person standing next to us, that we would want to fall down and worship because we would see the glory of God in that person. Paul writes that Christ in us is our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

 

Seeing Christ is to be our daily experience, and as we see Christ then we are changed into His likeness from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; 1 John 3:1ff; Romans 12:1ff); we appear with Him in glory and we can see one another in that glory. We eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6), we partake of Him as our Way of Life.

 

If we are not seeing Christ throughout the Word then we are not far along on our journey of living in the Bible, we may have the raw material of Biblical knowledge, but until the Holy Spirit breathes on our understanding and enlivens our heart, until the Spirit of God reveals the things of God (1 Cor. 2), we are living far below our inheritance in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

To unpack a passage verse by verse without seeing Jesus Christ and communicating Jesus Christ is not the equivalent of teaching the Bible…at least not as the Word of God, for the Word of God is Jesus Christ. If we cannot see the portrait of Jesus Christ then are we really teaching and unveiling (by the Holy Spirit) the Word of God, are we not then either taking away or adding to God’s Word?

 

If the Word of God is not made “present” to us in our teaching, if Jesus is not touching us and we are not touching Jesus – individually and as His People – then what do we have? We commune with Christ and with one another (in and as Christ) as we receive His Word. Just as the Communion Table is more than an individual partaking (1 Cor. 10:14 – 17), just as we partake of Jesus Christ and of one another, and just as we receive Jesus Christ as a People at the Table – likewise do we experience His Word in this fashion as we partake of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:2 – 4).

 

Consider Isaiah 28:13, “So the word of Yahweh to them will be, Order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here a little there, that they may go and stumble backward, be broken, snared and taken captive.” As Edward D. Young writes in his commentary on this passage, “The nation received no coherent picture, did not understand his proclamation in its fulness.” Yet how many times have I heard well – meaning Christians quote this passage as an example of how we should read and teach the Bible!

 

Show me the painting and then we can examine the brush strokes. Show me the forest and then we can examine the trees. Show me Jesus Christ in His Word, by His Word, through His Word…and may we be transformed into His image by the Holy Spirit as we live in the Trinity as His People, as the sons and daughters of the Living God.