Reading God's Word (Part 1 of 3)
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you…When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:7–14, ESV)
A Factory of Idols
John Calvin is famous for saying, “The human heart is a factory of idols.” This factory is working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It produces idol after idol after idol. Then we chase after these idols with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
As we chase after these idols that cannot speak, cannot see, and cannot hear, we slowly lose our ability to speak, see, and hear. Psalm 115 says, “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:8, ESV). Our mouths slowly close. Our hearing becomes muffled. Our sight slowly fades.
Biblical Implications
Understanding this about ourselves forces us to ask some questions. One of them being: How can I rightly understand the Bible if my idolatry is constantly blinding me to God’s truth?
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve felt this struggle in our own lives. It can go a couple different ways. We might embrace a certain position, then search God’s Word to tell us what we already believe—forcing it to submit to our own desires. OR, as we read God’s Word, we come across something we don’t like, then work really hard to make it say something different—once again forcing it to submit to our desires. Other times, our blindness causes us to completely misunderstand certain passages of scripture without any work on our part. Any of these temptations are lurking in our heart, ready to mislead us at any moment.
So what do we do? How can we fight these temptations to misunderstand God’s Word and have confidence that we understand it rightly?
Step One: Repent
The first step is always repentance. If our sinful idolatry is the root of our blindness—which it is—then the first step is to repent of any sinful idolatry in our lives. The longer we embrace sin in our lives, it hardens our heart and dims our eyesight. A soft heart and clear vision begin with repentance. We must “put off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:9–10, ESV). This is something we must do regularly in order to keep our eyes on Christ and to keep our vision clear as we read God’s Word.
Step Two: Pray
In order to understand God’s Word rightly, and overcome our own blindness, we need help. Thankfully, Jesus gave us a Helper (John 16:7) and said the Helper would, “guide [us] into all the truth” (John 16:13). This Helper is the Holy Spirit—the same Spirit that inspired God’s Word. So, if we want to understand God’s Word rightly, it only makes sense for us to ask the Holy Spirit to give us guidance. He inspired God’s Word in the first place and continues guiding us into the truth of God’s Word. So, whenever we come to God’s Word we should begin with prayer, asking the Spirit to overcome our blindness and lead us into all truth.
Conclusion
For some, this first post may seem anti-climactic. They might say, “Really, your advice for reading the Bible rightly is to repent and pray?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If you ignore these two things, you will get nowhere.
You may read the Bible every day, but if you don’t repent and pray your heart will be hard, your eyes will be blind, and you will not rightly understand God’s Word. It doesn’t matter if you have a PhD in theology or if you are the smartest man/woman in the world. You cannot rightly understand God’s Word with a hard heart and blind eyes. So, you need to begin with repentance and prayer.