Reading the Bible Supernaturally (eBook)

Introduction

This is a book about what it means to read the Bible supernaturally. I know that sounds strange. If there is anything obvious about you and me, it is that we are natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. We are not angels or demons; and we are certainly not God. But if the Bible is what it claims to be—namely, inspired by God—then it has a supernatural origin. And what I will try to show is that such a book calls for more than your natural kind of reading. Not less. But more. In fact, it calls for the very best of natural reading. But also for more—something beyond what is merely human.

As with all strange-sounding claims, there is a backstory. I tried to write this book a year ago, but within a matter of days, another book pushed its way into my mind and demanded to be written first. So I postponed this one and wrote A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness.1 The question “Is the Bible true?” begged to be answered first.

In a sense, this is backward. Surely you must read a book before you can decide whether it’s true. So shouldn’t a book about how to read the Bible precede a book about its truthfulness? Maybe. But in my case, the discoveries I made writing A Peculiar Glory proved essential for the way this book is written. The way the Bible shows itself to be true and completely trustworthy carries indispensable implications for how to read it. This has become much clearer to me through writing A Peculiar Glory first.

You don’t have to read A Peculiar Glory in order to understand this book. But it will clarify what I am doing in this book if you know how that book argues for the truth of the Bible. So I’ll give a summary. The point of that first book, which shapes this one throughout, is that the Bible reveals its complete truthfulness by the shining forth of a self-authenticating, peculiar, divine glory. That too may sound strange. But it may not seem as strange if you compare that kind of argument with several others in the Bible of the same kind.

The Glory of God Authenticates the Creator

For example, how does the Bible expect all humans to know that God exists, and that he is all-powerful and generous, and should be thanked and glorified? Not many questions, if any, are more important than this. The answer is that the Bible expects all humans to see the self-authenticating glory of God in the universe he created. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

Just this morning, I was walking home from a prayer meeting at church. As I crossed the bridge over the interstate, I saw, to my left, on the horizon, that the sun was just rising. It was white with brightness. I could only let my eyes glance briefly to the side of the sun. The ball itself was too brilliant to allow a direct sight. Everything from horizon to horizon was luminous with its own color and shape in the crystal-clear air. It is wonderful how natural light—the brightest and most beautiful of all lights—can cheer the soul. But none of that beauty and none of this natural cheerfulness is the glory of God. It is “declaring the glory of God.” We are not pantheists. To see the glory of God, we must experience something supernatural. But it is there to see.

So there is a divine glory shining through the natural world—not just a natural glory. It’s not just the glory of beautiful sunrises, and the stunning complexity of the human eye, and the solar system. It is something ineffable, but real and discernible. We are expected to see not just natural glory, but the glory of God.

The apostle Paul realizes that people do not see this divine glory by themselves. He explains why this is true and yet why none of us has an excuse for this spiritual blindness. It’s because

what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (Rom. 1:19–21)

This means that God has shown everyone the glory of his power and deity and generosity. If we do not see God’s glory, we are still responsible to see it, and to treasure it as supremely glorious, and to give God thanks. If we don’t, we are, Paul says, “without excuse.”

The Glory of God Authenticates Jesus

There is another, similar argument for how people should have recognized the divinity of Jesus. How did Jesus expect his first followers to know that he was the divine Son of God? The answer is that his whole way of life, the kind of person he was, and the works that he did revealed a self-authenticating, divine glory. His closest disciple wrote, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

But many people did not see this glory. Judas certainly didn’t, in spite of three years of nearness. The Pharisees didn’t. Even his disciples were slow to see. To such people Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me . . . ?” (John 14:9). He had shown them enough. They were responsible to see the glory—and to know that he was the divine Son of God. To be sure, Jesus was really human. He was natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. But he was also the virgin-born, supernatural Son of God (Luke 1:35). There was a glory shining through. Those who heard his teaching and saw his ministry were responsible to see it. This is how they were to know the truth.

The Glory of God Authenticates the Gospel

Consider one more example of how glory authenticates truth. This one relates to the gospel itself—the heart of the good news about Jesus’s death and resurrection for sinners. How are people who hear the good news of the Christian gospel supposed to know that it’s from God? The apostle Paul answered: they can know that it’s from God because they see in it “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Or, putting it slightly differently, they can know because they see in it “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

But many people hear the gospel and do not see divine glory. Why? It is not because the glory of God is unreal. It is not because the glory of God is not there in the gospel. It is because human beings, by nature, “are darkened in their understanding . . . due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). It is not owing mainly to ignorance, but to hardness. This hardness is a deep antipathy to the truth. They are “perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). Satan, the “god of this world,” exploits this hardness. Paul says he “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). But the glory is really there in the gospel. To hear the gospel faithfully and fully presented is to be responsible to see divine glory.

The Glory of God Authenticates Scripture

The point of A Peculiar Glory is that the glory of God authenticates Scripture in a way similar to these three examples. In and through the Scriptures we see the glory of God. What the apostles saw face-to-face in Jesus Christ they impart to us through the words of Scripture. “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). The glory that they saw in Christ, we can see through their words. The human words of Scripture are seen to be divine the way the human man Jesus was seen to be divine. Not all saw it. But the glory was there. And it is here, in the Scriptures.

All People Know God

One more illustration might help clarify how this actually works in the human soul. How is the glory of God seen? To be sure, the natural eyes and ears and brains are part of the process. Without them we cannot even see or hear or construe the natural things that reveal God’s glory—creation, incarnation, gospel, Scripture. But this natural seeing is not decisive in seeing the glory of God. “Seeing they do not see,” Jesus said (Matt. 13:13). Something more than the use of the natural eyes and ears and brains must happen.

The way the apostle Paul puts it is that you must “have the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know” (Eph. 1:18). This too is strange—the heart has eyes! But perhaps not beyond comprehension. Most people are at home speaking of “the heart” as something more than the blood-pumping organ in our chest. Such language is not foreign to us....