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Who will be master?

Mark Klassen

Moses and the Burning Bush. Ca. 1655 —Rembrandt

The Pharisees were masters of the Scriptures. Yet when Jesus, the Master to whom those Scriptures testified, stood before them in all His glory, they did not recognize Him. In fact, they felt so annoyed and threatened by Him that they sought to kill Him.

We so easily denounce the Pharisees from our modern vantage point – they were badly mistaken. But how often, in this critical area of our approach to the Scriptures, does our procedure come dangerously close to theirs? When we as Christians study the Bible, do we have as our goal to be masters of the Scriptures? Or do we study in humility before our Master and desire to have His teaching gain mastery over us?

Certainly, none of us would deliberately model our approach to the Scriptures after the Pharisees. Yet we must be careful not to allow the pressures of the world and the deceitfulness of pride to similarly mislead us. Perhaps we would do well to listen again to the rebuke that Jesus levelled against the Pharisees and to reconsider its implications for our own life and practice: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life” (John 5:39-40).

Sadly, these religious zealots of Jesus’ time had a relationship with a book, but no relationship with the Person to whom that book testified. They took the Scriptures seriously and believed sincerely that their disciplined study would yield a good return, nothing less than eternal life. Yet, despite their strong religious intent, they were far from understanding the true purpose of the Scriptures.

This reminds us of a terrible reality – that it is possible to come to the Scriptures without coming to Jesus. Our approach to the Bible, therefore, needs to be defined in terms of our response to the God of the Bible. The call of the Scriptures is “Follow Me”, and the voice is that of Jesus Christ. It is not insignificant that the Bible calls Jesus the Word of God and that we as the followers of Jesus call our Scriptures the Word of God. As we read the Book, we must expect to encounter the Person. The person of God was revealed to us in human form in Jesus Christ, and the truth of God is revealed to us in human words in the Scriptures.

The bottom line for us as Christians is that the Scriptures are meant to nurture our relationship with Jesus. We cannot afford to lose sight of this purpose. For many in the church, this is an obvious point. Yet, for many of us, especially those of us who are more “serious” about Bible study and who are theologically trained, the danger of coming to the Scriptures without coming to Jesus is unfortunately very real. And because we serious students of the Bible are often among the leadership in our churches, our responsibility is all the greater. We must therefore be all the more careful not to impose our intellectual skill on the flock that has been entrusted to our care.

What we seem to be blindly unaware of in the church today is that many of our modern methods of Bible study cultivate the same depersonalized interaction with the Scriptures that was typical of the Pharisees. Our approach to the Bible has too often become over-intellectualized. This affects the church in at least two very different ways. First, there are many who shy away from Bible study because the task is too intimidating; as common church-goers, they feel tremendously unqualified to offer their insights into a discussion of biblical truth. Second, many others gravitate toward this kind of Bible study because of pride, desiring to parade their intellectual skill and thus gain control of both the text and their fellow believers. The church is crippled by both responses, and the gospel and the Kingdom are not served.

Surely there is a better way for us as the church to approach the Scriptures. In fact, I believe that this way is already being rediscovered in the church and that it is requiring us to be very deliberate about at least three aspects of our approach to the Scriptures: the spiritual, the intellectual and the communal.

The spiritual

As has already been stated, Bible study needs to be understood primarily in terms of a spiritual encounter with the God of the Scriptures. More than anything, the Bible confronts us, not with mere facts, but with a Person. That Person is a spiritual being who is speaking to the reader and inviting the reader to believe, to obey and to trust. This personal encounter must invariably require an active response on the part of the reader.

Good Bible study, then, is an act of submission in which the reader who learns truth bows humbly before the Spirit of truth. It goes beyond an intellectual exercise and engages the heart and the will. As readers, we are not required simply to process information; we are presented with the prospect of spiritual and social transformation. When faith and obedience are brought into the exercise, Bible study becomes a radical encounter with Jesus Christ, resulting in a restructuring of the reader’s world in all of its dimensions.

The intellectual

The Bible comes to us in words and symbols, poems and stories, as literature of a wide variety of types. This is the medium through which God has chosen to present to us a testimony about Himself. In amazing ways, the Scriptures awaken the curiosity of children and engage the minds of the most astute scholars.

The variety of literature is also matched by a variety of viewpoints. The Bible does not offer one systematic presentation of God’s encounter with humanity, but rather it incorporates various perspectives on this grand drama.

As a result, though the Bible may often be an enjoyable read, it is certainly not an easy read. For the Christian to truly gain a biblical worldview, much is required. The good and careful reader is both sensitive to the Scriptural text and sensitive to the Spirit of God who is speaking through that text. This task involves integrating the intellectual with the spiritual – learning to grapple with the various literary devices and shifting perspectives, and at the same time surrendering to God our old ways of thinking and living, and adopting new ways which arise from the biblical text itself. The Bible thus engages our mind in a way which is meant to affect our whole being.

In our modern ways of thinking, there are two common fallacies concerning our intellect which I believe have caused serious setbacks in our Bible reading: first, that our intellect functions best when it is detached from the distractions of our everyday world, and, second, that our intellect functions best when it resists the influence of its wild cousin, our imagination. These misconceptions are in part the unfortunate remains of the Age of Enlightenment, which has left modern man cold and empty in various realms, not in biblical studies alone.

The Bible defines quite a different approach to the intellectual journey. It is well grounded in everyday life, and it speaks to us there. But it is also full of figurative and imaginative language, and it invites us into a world far more expansive than we are used to. A good intellect, therefore, is able to soar into the emerging realities of a world beyond, but also is able to explore the significance of what is most ordinary in this world below. That is precisely what the Spirit of truth teaches us through study of the wide variety of literature and perspectives in the Bible.

The communal

The individualism that we in the modern West have become so accustomed to is foreign to the biblical worldview (as it is to most societies outside of the West) – though, as we in the West move into postmodernism, a stronger sense of community may be emerging.

Historically, the Bible arose from the midst of a community, first as the Scriptures of Israel and second as the expanded Scriptures of the Christian church. As the authoritative guide for this community of faith, the Scriptures are read and responded to with that community in view. Neither the reading nor the responding is meant to be carried out by isolated individuals.

Good Bible study, therefore, is never merely a personal thing. We as the church need to come together to read, to hear and to share our insights. We believe that God has given the church His Spirit to guide us into all truth and that His Spirit works through the community. As we gather together for Bible study in the presence of God’s Spirit, we come with the expectation that we can learn more together than we could ever learn alone. We also come with the confidence that, as we open ourselves to the Spirit and to each other, we will test each other and keep each other in line, so that we will not be easily led into falsehood. As we faithfully teach and preach within our community of faith, we are judged by faithful hearers.

The community reminds each of us that we are a part of something that is much bigger than us. When we as Christians read our Bibles, we should keep in mind not only those in the church down the road and the millions around the world who share our faith and Scriptures, but also the cloud of witnesses which have gone before us through the centuries who have cherished that same faith and Book. This is our community, and we do not read well without it.

These are the directions, I believe, in which the Spirit is leading the church. May God give us the grace to follow. His Spirit is speaking to us, and yet so are the spirits of this present age, among them the deceitful spirit of the Pharisees.

Mark Klassen is on staff at Yarrow (B.C.) MB Church and also works for MCC Supportive Care Services.

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Last modified November 16, 2000.

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