Making sense of the Bible

What’s the Bible about? How do we make sense of it? How do we know we understand what we are reading?

After all, it’s the world’s number one bestselling book of all time. And many people claim it as the source for all sorts of ideas, beliefs and instruction (even if many of these are often contradictory).

"You diligently study the Scriptures," Jesus told the Pharisees, "because you think that by them you possess eternal life." Absolutely right! They diligently pored over words, expressions, sentences; they counted individual letters to make sure the copies they made were accurate, they debated meanings and interpretations. Because they believed they had in their hands nothing less than the words of life. A common saying was "More Torah, more life". So it was to be handled carefully, diligently, as befitted this wonderful treasure.

Then Jesus dropped the bombshell. The shocker. The cognitive crunch, the surprising intellectual slap.

"These are the Scriptures that testify about me," he said. What? Preposterous! Impossible! Unheard of! Not tradition! Scripture was about a multitude of things. So many items, so much to debate, so much history, law, story, poetry, song. How could it be about a person? Let alone a carpenter’s son!

And he wasn’t finished – "yet you refuse to come to me to have life."1 The Scriptures were about him? And to have life, you have to come to him? Life – eternal life – was connected with a person, with coming into connection with that person?

The Scriptures were about someone? Preposterous! Impossible! Unheard of! Not tradition!

One can understand the confusion, distress, and indeed anger and conflict experienced by the original audience as Jesus said this. Just as well it’s been cleared up for Christians, then. Or not, as a quick check of the Christian landscape might reveal.

Let’s hear it again from Eugene Peterson’s "The Message": "You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want."

Hhhmm. Reading the Bible is a good thing. Studying it diligently is to be encouraged. Yet...Yet according to Jesus, it is possible to read it, study it, and miss the point. And the point is...him. It’s all about him. He’s the centre of it all, the fulfilment of it all, the reason and meaning of it all. If we don’t read it all through him, we are very likely to misread it. If we replace him as the centre of it all – even if we replace him with something valuable and important – we will definitely get off-centre (eccentric) and risk misconstruing and misusing the text. And, sadly, there are many examples of argument, division, hatred and even killing in the name of a misused text .

Jesus is not just another voice among all the other voices. He is not just one more point of view. He is the voice through which we make sense of all the other voices, accounts, stories, and perspectives. His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension are the focus through which we understand all of the other material.

In the context of this statement by Jesus, he has just healed an invalid at the pool of Bethesda, which happens to be surrounded by five covered colonnades. The response to this? Appreciation, support, gratitude? No. The response is that people want to kill him – because the healing took place on the Sabbath. Then things get worse. Jesus tells them that "My Father is always at his works to this very day, and I, too, am working." The audience didn’t miss what he was saying. Impossible! Unheard of! "Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father making himself equal with God", the writer John tells us.2

Jesus was challenging them, telling them that they were not to judge him by the Sabbath, but that they were to judge the Sabbath by him. But, even more shocking and astonishing, and they got the message loud and clear – he was calling God his personal Father!3 He was saying that in him, the divine had come to earth. Now that was just too much to contemplate.

And so he then goes on to tell them, as we have seen, that the Scriptures are about him, and that life is only found in relationship, fellowship, communion with him. Instead of responding to that invitation of fellowship, they killed him.

We read the Bible, and study it. However we don’t worship the Bible, we worship the one whom the Bible is about – Jesus Christ. In coming into fellowship with him, he takes us into fellowship with the Father, which is life and love. We read the Bible as God intended it to be read – in and through Jesus Christ.

for more information on how to make the most of your Bible reading, you can sign up for the Ambassador College of Christian Ministry online class "Jesus and the Gospels". Or you can arrange for the class, seminars or training sessions to come to your congregation. Please contact info@ambascol.org or telephone 07 5553 6000.

Mission and National Director John McLean