Embracing four often-overlooked biblical principles
Last night’s Hunter Moon was the brightest supermoon we’ll see all year. It comes at the same time a comet discovered only last year is visible after sunset. Meanwhile, strong storms on our Sun may temporarily disrupt power and communications on our planet and spacecraft in orbit.
From above us to below us: Scientists have discovered animals beneath the ocean floor. Since only 26.1 percent of the global seafloor has been mapped, who knows what else lies down there?
For those with eyes to see and minds to think, every dimension of our universe demonstrates our Creator’s magnificence and humanity’s finitude. Consider a few examples:
- Around ten billion trillion people could fit inside the Earth.
- Around 1,300,000 Earths could fit inside the Sun. (Our planet is about the size of an average sunspot.)
- Our Sun is just one of two hundred billion trillion stars in the observable universe.
- End to end, the blood vessels in your body would stretch more than twice the distance around the world.
- One trillion atoms could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.
I could go on. And our God made all of that.
As we’re exploring the significance and urgency of biblical truth this week, consider this amazing fact: The omnipotent Creator of the universe wrote a book. And just as amazing: He wants us to be empowered and transformed by its truth.
What does this mean in practical terms? Consider four often-overlooked, interrelated principles.
The word leads to the Word
When I taught biblical interpretation as a seminary professor, I emphasized the “Christocentric” principle: The word of God ultimately exists to lead us to the Son of God. For example, John wrote his Gospel “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
If we read, teach, and preach the Bible as an end rather than as a means, we frustrate the Spirit’s purpose behind its inspiration, illumination, and application today. St. Ignatius, the second-century bishop of Antioch, wrote a letter in which he warned: “Be deaf when anyone preaches to you without mentioning Jesus Christ. … Flee from these preachers, these wicked offshoots that bear deadly fruit, one taste of which is fatal.”
If you do not experience Christ whenever you read the Bible, you have not fully read the Bible.
What happens to us must happen through us
For a variety of reasons, I believe the Bible to be the true, trustworthy, and authoritative word, as I explain here. But there’s a caveat: You and I must act biblically for the Bible to fulfill its transforming purpose in our lives.
The fifth-century Gallic monk Vincent of Lérins compared our spiritual growth to our physical growth: as our bodies mature, they are still our bodies. If they become something else, “the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled.”
In the same way, he urged, “We should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching.” When we do, this doctrine changes our lives and our world.
The Bible is unique among the world’s books in that its intended purpose is only fully accomplished in us if it is accomplished through us. The person who hears God’s word “and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25).
Will you be blessed in your “doing” today?
Breathe out to breathe in
A vital way to obey God’s word is by leading others to obey God’s word.
St. Gregory the Great, who served as pope from 590 to his death in 604, lamented that “compelled by the urgency of these barbarous times,” he and other Christian leaders “accept the duties of office, but by our actions, we show that we are attentive to other things.” For example, “Those who have been entrusted to us abandon God, and we are silent. They fall into sin, and we do not extend a hand of rebuke.”
Gregory then asks, “How can we who neglect ourselves be able to correct someone else? We are wrapped up in worldly concerns, and the more we devote ourselves to external things, the more insensitive we become in spirit.”
Obedience to Scripture requires us to help others obey Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16–17). We must breathe out to breathe in.
Light a candle that “shall never be put out”
In unbiblical times, biblical fidelity is dangerous (cf. John 15:20). In our post-Christian and even anti-Christian culture, we can measure the depth of our obedience to Scripture by its cost in our personal and public lives.
Yesterday marked the anniversary of the martyrdoms of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer. The Church of England bishops were burned at the stake in 1555 for refusing to renounce their commitment to the absolute authority of the Bible.
A third Protestant leader, Thomas Cranmer, recanted his faith, only to disavow his recantation and reaffirm his belief in the supremacy of Scripture. When he went to his death in 1556, he first held the hand with which he signed his false recantations into the flame until it was consumed.
I will always remember my first visit to the Martyrs’ Memorial at Oxford University, where its three statues depict Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer near the place of their deaths. Here I recalled Bishop Latimer’s last words:
“Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
When last did it cost you something significant to “light such a candle”?
What price will you pay to light another today?
Thursday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Many people do not want absolutes in doctrine and ethics, simply because absolute truths and standards demand absolute acceptance and obedience.” —John MacArthur
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