Contending With Scripture

How are we to understand the two different genealogies in Matt.1:1-6 and Luke 3:32-35? How do we reconcile Mark 6:8-9 where Jesus tells his disciples to take a staff and sandals and in Matthew 10:9-10 where Jesus tells them not to take these things? Would Jesus original disciples care about such a minor discrepancy? Why do we care so much? Jesus teachings are the same in both accounts. The disciples were to put their trust only in God as they did mission work for Jesus.

          One of the most interesting sayings of Jesus is when the religious leaders who think they are contending for God’s Word and Jesus tells them without him, they can not know the Scriptures. The Scriptures are contending for Jesus. Jesus tells the religious leaders of his day that if they really believed what Moses wrote, they would believe in him (Jn.5:46).

          One of Jesus’ powerful words about himself and his relationship to Scripture is found in John 5:39.  Jesus says,

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness of me.”

The Bible does not save us, Jesus does. The Bible points to Jesus but when we confuse the written word with the Living Word, we make an idol out of the Bible. Jesus is the wisdom of God, not the Bible. Jesus is our Savior, not the Bible. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and we misinterpret the Bible if we think the Bible more points to itself than it does to Jesus.

          The Bible does not interpret the meaning of Jesus’ life, Jesus’ life interprets the meaning of the Bible. If we do not know how to read the Bible like Jesus did, then we will miss Jesus who is at the center of Scripture and holds all of the Scriptures together in him. Can we reorient Christians to say that Jesus is their authority rather than saying the Bible is their authority? The Bible only has authority as it relates to Jesus and his Holy Spirit that guides the interpreter. Have Christians unwittingly let the Bible trump Jesus words and actions rather than Jesus words and actions interpreting the rest of Scripture?

          The problem is not searching the Scriptures but searching the Scriptures by another tradition other than Jesus. Even the Scripture tradition of sola Scriptura (the Bible alone) can blind people or make them deaf to Jesus words. Knowing Scripture is not what saves us in the end, it is knowing Jesus who saves us. If the Scriptures are not transforming us into being more like Christ, then we are misreading the Bible. People get so caught up in being biblical when the real issue is we need to be more like Jesus.

          How many sermons and teachings do we need to hear that set one off course because they believe the perfect coming in 1 Corinthians 13:10 is the completed canon of Scripture which was not even finished at that time. The perfect is perfect love in this love chapter and perfect love is embodied in the person of Jesus when we see him face to face (1 Cor.13:12).

          How many times do people have to repeat the traditions of past generations that believe that Hebrews 1:3 “by the word of his power” is the completed canon of Scripture once again? Can we be like the religious leaders of Jesus day that miss the Living Word in our faulty interpretations of the written word? The whole book of Hebrews is about the supremacy of God’s son, not the supremacy of the Bible.

          Recently, someone told me in defending the Bible as the sole arbitrator of truth that we have to test all things by the Bible. What was the text to support his claim---1 John 4:1:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world.”

This person contended that the only way to test false spirits or falseness was by Scripture. I certainly do not think we should not test ideas or issues by Scripture but Psalm 119 would have been a whole book speaking about the power of God’s Word and God’s commandments.

The whole book of 1 John sets forth these tests like the confession of sin test, the love your neighbor test, the do not love the world test and so forth. Not one of the tests listed throughout this whole book is the completed written canonical Scriptures. These other tests bear good spiritual fruit of following Christ. How many people do we know on the other hand who have many verses of the Bible memorized and know the written word very well but do not show God’s character or Christ-likeness?

          The sad reality of our day with the predominance of science and scientific inquiry and study are Christians and skeptics are often playing by the same rules but coming up with different conclusions about faith, God, Jesus and the Scriptures. Study, reading, research are all fine but when we turn the miracles of Jesus into objective proofs which they are signs pointing to God’s kingdom, when we the Scriptures or the Gospels do not hold up to scientific precision and scrutiny, then people end up putting their faith in science over Scripture or Jesus. It is only by a personal encounter with the resurrected Lord and Jesus teaching us how to read the Scriptures with new heavenly lenses that we will begin to see ourselves, God, and the world with new transformed vision.