Return and Remain in the Molding of Scripture: A Burden and a Plea

With a deep sense of humility and dependency upon the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of every believer, I write to express a great burden that God has troubled me with in the last couple of days, and to encourage all who would call upon the name of Christ to take a moment of personal examination.  Upon my return home, itself a missionary endeavor, I have discovered a profound movement away from the Bible as the ultimate, and authoritative food for the daily sustenance of the Christian, and thus violently severed from the tasks, words, thoughts, and breaths of the day.  Whether this is intentional, the fruit of actual unbelief, or the resultant of biblical sloth, I do not know; nor do I know whether this is the fruit of poor and unfaithful ministry, or the sin of the individual who shuns biblical and spiritual disciplinary responsibility, or a mixture of both.  It appears that one Christian has known nothing different but a segmented Christian life, the Bible for church but not for life; another would readily cast it aside for the undiscerning and unwise intake of ungodly teachings, though it seems they perceive it not; another speaks of searching for a church that preaches the deep things of the Bible, hungry for spiritual food but he has not found it.  Others give no thought to it; still others consider it a taxing thing to reflect or to meditate upon God’s Word as if it were not God’s Word, but rather the dull musings of a long outdated, wordy treatise on a subject or an object that were of only temporal importance and no true relevance.  I wonder, I sit perplexed at how this could be so, realizing the apathy of my own affections.  

So it is with a heavy heart that I write, dear church, the Bible is the womb from which we were born, the revelation of the living God to sinful man regarding Himself, His gospel, and the means of salvation, namely, Jesus Christ, and how we – being regenerated – should live on the basis of this union with Jesus Christ.  The nature of this inconsistency is, perhaps, better apprehended by the thought of non-existence, that is, the hypothetical thought that the Bible had never existed or that God would in a day take it away from the church – what then?  We would be in utter lostness, depravity of being, hellish carnality, loving torment, having the knowledge of nothing salvific in nature, none of the beauties of God, of His Christ, of the being of the world, of creational order, of reconciliation with God.  No one would be saved.  The Bible is an indescribable mercy of God unto man.  How would we be shaped without it?  Oh church, why this abnormal Christianity?  Our Lord, the Word which put on flesh, studied the Scriptures, loved and lived in the Scriptures, fulfilled the Scriptures.  How, then, can we not live in and by these objective words of truth?  How can this not be the basis, the foundation, the center, the standard of everything we think, say, do, breathe?  How can the Bible not be the vitality of our relationship with Christ?  Indeed, if we do not cast ourselves here moment by moment, we shall surely fall into great terrors and deceptions and falsehoods.  Our blood must be Bibline.  

The insanity of this current plight may be illustrated by marriage:  one says that he is married; this implies a kind of relationship; but if this same one, having told you that they were married then continues to say that they never talk with one another, they never eat with one another, nor sleep, nor dream one with the other, nor love, or care for the maintenance of their marriage, then one would rightly conclude that the notion supplied that these two people are married would be insane – there is no relationship, no vitality, no life, no communication, no maintenance, no marriage.  The Bible is the Word of God to us about Himself and our relationship to Him – to set this aside, and never to feast upon its inexhaustible richness, is to become like many who having been professed Christians for 65 years can yet say “I have never read or heard that before,” as a recent loved one told me after reading Scripture with them – it was in Romans!  It was never intended by God that one, having been converted, should remain forever in a spiritually adolescent state, and yet the appearance of contemporary evangelicalism evidences an almost unfathomable infancy in the sweet wonders of God’s revelation to man.  The Bible points us to Christ (John 5:37-40) – how can any man say with confidence that he is a Christian, or (if he truly be saved) without conviction – “I have not read my Bible even this day,” not this week, not month, nor year, “but even this day!”  If you are not steadfast and mighty in the Scriptures, then you are not steadfast and mighty in Christ, for the Scriptures bear witness of Christ, and Christ is the Word of God.  How then can you say, “I believe,” or “I know Him,” when, like the “married man”, you have no true relationship with Him?  It is eternal insanity!

Personally, I have been crushed with burden and conviction by the thoughts of such abnormal Christianity – even on my part.  The Christian is only as solid as He is steadfast in the Scriptures; only as sensitive to God, separated unto God, intimate with Jesus, wise, discerning, bold in this generation as He is daily yearning, praying through, meeting with God in, reflecting upon, applying to life, memorizing, singing, ministering with, living, breathing, suffering, toiling, dying in the everlasting Word of God alone.  There is a molding that is the Word of God; let us return to it and remain in it that our being may truly take its form in every conceivable way, for therein we shall be approved before God, overflowing with true joy, the production of God’s grace in our Lord, the Word, Jesus Christ.  “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” (Jn 14:23-24a).  “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected” (1 Jn 2:4-5).  Let us be mindful of these essential realities.

Father in heaven, pour out your grace and mercy upon your church; incline our hearts to You, and to Your Word that we may be so full of Christ that we overflow with a truly Christian, and holistic life informed by and conformed to the reality of You concealed and exploding therein.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.