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The Bible is a story of love. It
tells about how God expressed His overflowing love through the
creation of this magnificent universe and all life in it. It tells
about how God blesses, sustains, teaches, corrects, redeems and leads
persons to His Kingdom of Love without violating their free will. This
supreme expression of God’s love, an outgoing love engaged in a
dramatic battle with evil for human souls, is Jesus Christ. As St.
John put it: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but
that the world might be saved through him” (John 3.16-17). Through
the Bible God tells each person: “I love you.” This is the central
message, the “Good News” of the Bible: God’s love for the world
and for each human being supremely expressed in Christ.
To take the Bible in hand is
also an act of love. What response is worthy of God’s love except
love? Only by love can each person be united with divine love and find
his or her way to the Kingdom of Love. Jesus said to His disciples:
“If a man 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” (John
14.24). If a believer loves the Lord, he or she will faithfully read
His Word, will come to know it and be eager to observe it. The fruit
of the believer’s labors is the gift of having the Father abide in
him through His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Church in all its worship,
teaching and life rests on the Bible. The Apostles, Church Fathers,
Saints and numerous great men of all time have built their lives on
the Bible. Through the Bible God asks each person: “Will you know My
will? Will you know My truth about yourself and life? Will you learn
of Me and from Me?” St. Kallistos of Constantinople has said that
Christians, as children of light, should be taught by God Himself and
have the truths of the Bible inscribed in their hearts in letters
brighter than flame and be guided by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Where God’s Word is earnestly
read and obeyed, new life takes hold by God's grace. This has been the
universal experience of Church Fathers, Saints and individual
Christians of all ages who were devoted Scripture readers. They
discovered the Bible as an unfailing source of wisdom, strength and
joy. They joyfully recognized that the prayerful reading of the Bible
is a spiritual encounter with God Himself.
The Bible is for every
Christian
In the great tradition of the
Orthodox Church the Bible is the central source of truth and the most
creative factor behind the worship, doctrine and practice of the
Church. It is also intended to inspire and strengthen the daily life
of the average Christian. St. Cyprian describes the Gospels as four
rivers within the Church which water fruitful trees — the faithful.
He views the New Testament as a fountain which provides a steady flow
of nourishment for the lives of Christian believers. The great Fathers
of the Church looked upon the Word of God as the primary teacher and
guide for life. They viewed the Bible as an ocean of divine mysteries
having inexhaustible breadth and astonishing depths, to strengthen us
in our weaknesses and to fire our souls with zeal of God.
St. John Chrysostom is a great
Father who held the truth of Scripture at the center of his life and
work. Chrysostom directed himself to ordinary Christians and sought to
anchor their lives on the Bible. He saw the Bible as a spiritual
weapon to combat the evil one, to struggle against the impulses of the
old Adam, and to life up men’s hearts from earth to heaven. His
chief pastoral resource was the Bible, especially the New Testament.
For many years he held Bible classes two or three times a week to
interpret the Scriptures to his flock. In his commentaries, which are
the abiding fruit of these classes, he constantly exhorts Christians
to be alert and watchful, to show zeal of inquiry and to devote
themselves to the study of the Bible. According to him ignorance of
the Bible is the main cause of evil in the world. Consequently, St.
Chrysostom counseled Christians to acquire the books of the New
Testament, to read especially the Gospels, and to take the truths of
the Bible wholly into themselves for they are medicines for the soul.
In more recent times, Father
Kosmas Aitolos, an itinerant preacher-monk and canonized Saint of the
Church, urged ordinary Christians to apply themselves to the reading
of the bible. His own ministry, resulting in a significant spiritual
awakening in northwestern Greece in the eighteenth century, was
significantly inspired by the reading of the Bible. Wherever he went,
St. Kosmas counseled the villagers to sit in groups of five or ten and
discuss the divine teachings of Scripture, and put them inside their
heart so that they might find eternal life.
The impact of the Bible as God’s
Word is well attested in the Orthodox tradition. Today we need to
recover that role of the bible as a spiritual resource for our daily
lives.
The Essential Content of
the Bible
The Bible has been called the
most unique book humankind has ever seen. Actually it is more than a
book. It is a whole library. The Old Testament contains forty-nine
books written over a period of many centuries prior to the birth of
Christ. Closely bound to the history of ancient Israel, the Old
Testament contains history, law, prophecy, psalms, wisdom and edifying
stories. The New Testament includes twenty-seven books written mostly
in the first century A.D. The New Testament gives an account of the
redeeming life and work of Jesus (Gospels), the origins and life of
the early Church (Acts of the Apostles and Letters), and ends with the
awesome book of Revelation which anticipates God’s final victory
over evil and the establishment of a new world. The Bible, therefore,
features a rich variety of books, authors and contents. Some of the
sacred authors remain anonymous. In certain instances books were
produced by a process of compilation, revision, or the merging of
several oral or written traditions.
A Christian generally reads the
Old Testament in the light of the New Testament. The latter presents a
more unified vision centered on Jesus Christ. Thus the Letter to the
Hebrews aptly says: “In many and various ways God spoke of old...but
in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son whom he appointed the
heir of all things.” (Hebrews 1.1-2)
All the authors and books of the
Bible have one thing in common: they tell about God’s dealings with
His people. In various forms and ways they tell about God’s love for
the world. In varying degrees of clarity they tell about the truths of
God which are the basis of all life.
The Experience of God
What is the essential content at
which reading and studying the bible aim? It is the experience of
God by patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists and many other
less known righteous persons to whom God deigned to reveal Himself in
different ways and at various times. Studying the record of their
experience of God opens the believer to a similar spiritual experience
of God by the grace of the Holy Spirit. What the righteous said or
wrote about their life with God becomes a model, a guiding pattern,
for the believer’s search for personal knowledge of God today. The
experience of God by great men of faith and sacred authors in the
Bible offers luminous insights in five important areas: a) Who God is;
b) who we are as human beings; c) what life is; d) what God has done
for us; and e) how each human being should respond — with his or her
whole being — to God. The content of the Bible is not merely a
collection of different books, nor the accumulation of religious
customs and ideas, nor even a treasure chest of profound wisdom
illustrating great truths of human life. It is above all a personal
saving relationship, a mutual relationship of faith and love
between man and god, which is expressed through the record of
Scripture. The Christian best understands the Bible when he has in
view this relationship of actual persons to God, in which God reveals
Himself as a loving Father Who cares about each person as a father
cares about his son or daughter.
The purpose of God’s personal
revelation of Himself is to give life. The Bible is the record of how
God worked in people’s lives; how He changed them, how they yielded
to Him and became His instruments, or how they refused to yield to Him
and received judgment. Scripture should be looked at now simply as a
book of ideas but as the record of the personal activity of God —
His love, His forgiveness, His healing power, His redeeming judgment,
His sanctifying grace and His renewal of life. On man’s side the
bible is the story of man’s personal need for God, his lostness, his
yearning for true life, his rebelliousness and sinfulness, and his
incomparable greatness in his intrinsic destiny to be united with god.
Study of the Bible therefore aims not merely at historical knowledge
but also spiritual content, not only at information but also
inspiration, not only at religious wisdom but above all at a personal
relationship with God—which changed lives then and continues to
changes lives now.
The Gospel of Christ
Seen in this way, the skopos
(central aim) of the Bible is a saving proclamation. The heart of
Scripture is the Gospel: the Good News of what God has done for man.
The Bible is not a neutral book. It proclaims God’s great redemptive
acts and invites a response, not to itself as a sacred book but to
God. The center of God’s redemptive work is Jesus Christ. Every page
of the Bible either presupposes, anticipates, or proclaims the Good
News that God intervened in history to rescue humankind from a
distortion of life — fear, guilt, sin, corruption and death which
are the tools of demonic powers — and to give abundant life —
freedom, wholeness, hope, peace, joy and love. The supreme way by
which God renews the world is by the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. The essential content of the bible is therefore the
gospel of Christ. The central saving message of the Church from the
day of Pentecost has been Christ incarnate, crucified, buried and
risen. This is the Gospel which in the words of St. Paul is “the
power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1.16).
Study of the Bible is true to its subject matter when it concentrates
on the Gospel of Christ on which everything else rests — Church,
sacraments, prayer, priesthood and Christian life. When biblical study
seeks the saving message of Jesus Christ in Scripture then the Bible
truly becomes that which it is: the Word of God.
Biblical study is therefore
Christo-centric. The center of the Bible is Christ. He is “the Way
and the Truth and the Life” (John 14.6). In the saving message of
the Bible we have the written Word of God. In Christ we have the Word
Himself in person. He is the eternal Word of God Who reveals God
perfectly. He is the very Word of Life, Who has life from the Father,
and gives life. To use the phraseology of St. John, Christ is the Only
Begotten Son Who intimately knows the Father and makes Him known to
men (John 1.18). He is therefore the Teacher and the “Theologian”
(Theos-Logos). Christ is everywhere in and behind Scripture. The
Gospels directly proclaim His ministry. The Acts of the Apostles
record the story of the expansion of His church and the proclamation
of the gospel of Christ. The Epistles give testimony to the mind of
Christ expressed in those who write them and to His reign among those
who received the epistles. In the Apocalypse we have the faith and
hope of Christ’s final victory. In the Old Testament we have the
hidden work of Christ Who is revealed to patriarchs and prophets in
anticipation of His earthly ministry. Thus the whole of Scripture is a
kind of sacrament of Christ, in which the eternal Word becomes
incarnate and is humbly available to every person through human words.
This is the essential content, the precious pearl of biblical study:
Jesus Christ.
-excerpted from Bread for Life:
Reading the Bible
By Father Ted Stylianopoulos |
