The Grace of Scripture
The 20 th-century pastor and author A. W. Tozer famously wrote, “What comes into our minds after we take into consideration God is a very powerful factor about us. . . . Worship is pure or base because the worshiper entertains excessive or low ideas of God.” The form of our worship and the course of our lives are dictated by our sense of what God is like. This conviction led Tozer to conclude that “essentially the most portentous reality about any man is just not what he at a given time could say or do, however what he in his deep coronary heart conceives God to be like.”1
I’ve usually questioned if what Tozer mentioned about our view of God is equally true concerning our view of Scripture, God’s phrase. What comes into our minds after we take into consideration the Bible?
Think about you might be taking part in a type of phrase video games that requires you to provide one-word clues to explain one thing. The phrase Bible comes up on the subsequent card. Assuming that you may’t use a synonym like Scripture, what different phrases would you utilize to explain it? Fact? Revelation? Rulebook? Regulation? All legitimate descriptions. I’m wondering, nonetheless, if the phrase present could be the primary, second, or third factor that involves thoughts for many people. Definitely, most of us would affirm that Scripture is a present—and we could extremely esteem it—however present would doubtless not be the primary phrase affiliation our minds would make. But making that affiliation is incalculably essential if we’re going to method God’s phrase rightly.
Twenty heat, partaking readings, primarily based totally on Psalm 119, encourage common meditation on God’s presents in Scripture—together with blessedness, hope, and peace—in addition to warnings and knowledge that convey repentance.
I believe that one of many fundamental causes we typically have issue placing God’s phrase into observe or submitting to it joyfully is that we don’t imagine—in our coronary heart of hearts— that it’s good for us. If the Bible is one way or the other repressive or oppressive, why would we undergo its methods (particularly if it really does make life tougher)? Behind our hesitancy concerning Scripture is commonly a cautious, although neither malicious nor brazen, mistrust of God’s goodness. However even when our belief in God seems comparatively intact, we will nonetheless discover ourselves proof against Scripture’s knowledge and calls for. We miss out on it as a present to embrace, because the grace of God itself and never merely a method of grace. We query if there may be actually a short- or long-term benefit to following God’s sometimes-peculiar methods. And so we cease wanting giving ourselves over totally to Scripture’s educating and, maybe, choose and select the weather of it that we, in our restricted knowledge, see as making sense. In doing this, we lower ourselves off from the fullness of the grace that’s Scripture—a grace that’s manifold, wealthy, life-giving, and satisfying.
What comes into our minds after we take into consideration God’s phrase could show to be a very powerful factor about us.
The Theme of Our Tune
The easy affirmation of the goodness of God’s phrase has been the chorus of God’s folks all through the generations. The psalmist writes,
Flip away the reproach that I dread,
in your guidelines are good. (Ps. 119:39)
What underlies this affirmation is the essential perception that God is a form ruler who offers good guidelines. As God and his phrase are inseparable (one thing we are going to come again to shortly), so the goodness of God and the goodness of Scripture are intertwined.
At the start of two Peter, we see the gorgeous connection between the goodness of God and the present of his phrase. Peter begins, “His divine energy has given us every little thing required for all times and godliness by the information of him who referred to as us by his personal glory and goodness” (2 Pet. 1:3 CSB). God, within the particular person of Jesus himself, has outfitted us with every little thing we have to reside godly lives, however entry to those sources comes solely by understanding him. He calls us into this data out of his personal glory and goodness. Peter continues, “By these he has given us very nice and treasured guarantees” (2 Pet. 1:4a CSB). Animated by that very same glory and goodness, Jesus gave us the guarantees of his phrase. In different phrases, the Scriptures are an overflow of God’s goodness and gracious disposition towards us. The “nice and treasured guarantees” have a aim: “in order that by them it’s possible you’ll share within the divine nature, escaping the corruption that’s on this planet” (2 Pet. 1:4b). God wishes that we should always mirror him—“share within the divine nature”— and that is for our final and everlasting good. To satisfy that aim, he gave us the Scriptures and its many guarantees. The goodness of God is expressed within the present of Scripture.
John Calvin, after a cautious exposition of how God reveals himself in creation, turns his consideration to the Scriptures. He observes that whereas creation actually does furnish us with a information of God, “it’s needful that one other and higher assist be added to direct us aright to the very Creator of the universe.” God gave us the “privilege” of his phrase in order that he would possibly “turn into recognized unto salvation” and in order that we may be gathered “extra carefully and intimately to himself.” This, Calvin poetically concludes, “is a particular present, the place God, to instruct the church, not merely makes use of mute academics [i.e., the created order] but in addition opens his personal most hallowed lips.”2 Creation is a present, and God’s self-disclosure in creation is a present. However the higher grace is God opening his “hallowed lips” in Scripture to convey us right into a clear-eyed information of him. Scripture is the present of clear sight to those that are largely blind.
Christians rightly acknowledge, extol, and even write hymns in regards to the goodness of God within the present of Scripture! The early twentieth century noticed various such hymns written by evangelicals. For instance, the second stanza of “Oh, Great Phrase!” declares,
Oh, fantastic, fantastic Phrase of the Lord!
The lamp that our Father above
So kindly has lighted to show us the best way
That results in the arms of his love!3
And one other hymn, referring to Scripture, exclaims,
There Thy holy will we learn,
There upon Thy grace we feed;
There discover steerage for our approach,
And correction after we stray.4
Discover the frequent themes of those songs. The fantastic phrase of the Lord was given out of God’s kindness and mercy to steer us to his arms of affection. By his good phrase, we feed on his grace. The phrase resounds with the loving coronary heart of God. The giving of Scripture is the grace of God in concrete kind. This, amongst different issues, has at all times been a theme of our music as God’s folks.
God is current wherever and every time his phrase is learn, spoken, prayed, or sung.
God’s Loving Verbal Presence
In lauding and praising the Scriptures, are we giving to a e book the distinction attributable to God alone? Are we committing bibliolatry, the supposed idolizing of the Bible? These questions have already been answered to a point, however they’re value addressing extra particularly. Maybe the place to start is Scripture, listening to the best way it speaks of itself and following the connections it makes between God and his phrase.
In a music searching for God’s safety from his enemies, the psalmist writes,
In God, whose phrase I reward,
within the Lord, whose phrase I reward,
in God I belief; I shall not be afraid. (Ps. 56:10–11)
On the floor, this can be a very odd and sudden coupling of things. “When I’m afraid, I put my belief in God,” says the psalmist. To this point, so good. However fairly than extolling the Lord who has delivered him, he repeats 3 times, “I reward God’s phrase!” (Ps. 56:4, 10 [2x]). Scripture clearly encourages, maybe summons, us to reward God’s phrase. The query turns into, “How can we do that in a approach that at all times honors the Lord?”
Once we affirm that Scripture is the phrase of God, we’re saying that every time Scripture speaks, God speaks. When Scripture speaks a phrase of consolation, God is talking that phrase of consolation. When the Bible proclaims God’s guarantees, we imagine that God himself is proclaiming these phrases of promise. God is current wherever and every time his phrase is learn, spoken, prayed, or sung. However his presence is neither bodily nor mystical; fairly, his presence is verbal however no much less actual.
Think about receiving a letter from a beloved one who’s hundreds of miles away. Whereas he’s nowhere close to you bodily, each sentence of his letter makes him current to you. And his presence is neither merely imaginary nor within the type of recollections that the letter evokes. As a substitute, as a result of the letter is an expression of himself—his coronary heart, his humor, his issues—you might be interacting with him as you learn. The letter is an extension of him.
Or think about waking as much as a notice on the kitchen desk that reads, “Please take out the trash,” written by your mom. On the threat of asking an apparent query, “Who’s issuing the command?” Definitely, it’s not the notice itself commanding you to do your chore. Fairly, there’s a particular person chatting with you, making her presence felt within the type of a scribbled-down notice. To ignore her instruction could be to ignore her.
In the same approach, Scripture, as an articulate, clear, deliberate, and ample letter or notice from God, is an extension of himself into our time and area and circumstance. Subsequently, as one author places it, “To come across the phrases of Scripture is to come across God in motion.”5 Or as Augustine counsels, “Deal with the scripture of God because the face of God.”6 God and his phrase are inseparable. That is why it’s completely acceptable to sing love songs and hymns to God’s phrase. God and his phrase collectively are our crown, our distinctive glory as his folks. Can we imagine this?
Notes:
- A. W. Tozer, The Data of the Holy (Lutterworth, 2022), 1.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Faith, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics 20–21 (Westminster John Knox, 2006), 1.6.1 (1:70).
- Fanny Crosby, “Oh, Great Phrase!” (1887). Public area.
- H. F. Lyte, “Nicely Thy Works Proclaim Thee” (1911). Public area.
- Timothy Ward, Phrases of Life: Scripture because the Residing and Lively Phrase of God (IVP Educational, 2009), 48.
- Augustine, “Sermon 22.7,” in The Works of Saint Augustine, half 3, Homilies, vol. 2, Sermons 20–50 on the Previous Testomony, trans. Edmund Hill (New Metropolis Press, 2009), 46.
This text is customized from The Goodness of God within the Present of Scripture: 20 Meditations by Uche Anizor.
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