In speaking with a young man who called himself a Buddhist and claimed to really admire Jesus but not trust the Bible, he asked me why I trust and believe the Bible. My answer was because through the Bible God revealed Jesus to me. I saw Jesus in and through the Bible and in return this Jesus whom I have both seen and experienced has confirmed the Bible as being not just the work of man but the work of God. The promises that are made in the Bible I have come to enjoy and realize in Jesus.
For example, Romans 10:11-13 says this, “Now the Scripture says, ‘No one who believes on Him will be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, since the same Lord of all is rich to all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Guess what, I called upon Jesus and He answered me, He richly answered me, He saved me. When I saw Him, I believed in Him. When I believed in Him, I saw Him. The Scriptures say that He will richly answer us when we call upon Him and I can testify of this being true in my own life. I am rich with evidence and confirmation that Jesus is for real.
I cannot see how anyone could possibly say that they believe that the Word of God is truth if they have not experienced it to be true. This is why so many people lose faith in the written Word of God when they pick up a book like “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman. Firstly, most people are not biblical scholars and so do not have the resources needed to challenge and resist the claims made by people like Ehrman. Secondly, if they have never experienced the claims and promises of the Bible to be for real then they have nothing left to stand on, and I cannot blame them for questioning and rejecting Scripture.
Not until Christians begin to believe what the Bible says, to live as it tells us, and to walk in its supernatural promises will the world have any reason to take the Bible seriously. The reality is that the modern western Church offers no supernatural confirmation. There is no demonstration of the Spirit and power of God. If there was ever a time that we needed “the Lord working with (us) and confirming the word by the accompanying signs,” it is now.
The battle for the Bible does not simply belong to the scribes and scholars but it belongs to the Church. If by sound, rational, and persuasive arguments we manage to show the Bible to be the Word of God but do not live as if it were the Word of God to us then we have still lost the debate. Most people don’t really believe what they cannot see, and if they do not see us living by the Word of God why should they believe us?
Even though Christianity is a historical religion it is also an experientially supernatural religion. We are rooted in history and presently enjoy it by experience. The Bible introduces us to one Jesus but in two different contexts. In the first context we are exposed to a Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God, come down from heaven, born of a virgin, lived as a Jew in a nation under Roman occupation, and He was betrayed, crucified, and raised on the third day to reconcile all who would believe in him to Father God. The second Jesus context that Bible exposes us to is the Jesus of history in present reality as the risen savior able and desiring to save all who would call on His name. From my own testimony, as I was exposed to this Jewish man who lived two thousand years ago, by the grace of God I believed on Him as my risen Savior.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Recently I was thinking of the question, "how does the word work?" and the answer that came to mind is, "He knows." Partly, the direction I'm going here is that I don't know and could not account for all that God knows, in particular knowing about every situation and all people. And because God knows, what He says is correct, complete, relevant, and it works. But this could just sound like static to someone who does not believe :) I think that it is true; something else that came to mind, and I'm not sure it's true, is about faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. And God does things for us through our having faith in Him and what He says. The thought came to mind that any other pathway of blessing could be false. If all I had to do was bow down to get blessed, I could do that action and not have my heart turned toward the Lord. Or if all I had to do was say, "I believe", then I could say those words yet not believe. Yet if God is the judge of whether a person has faith, then there is no faking that and no error in whether the person *does* have faith. If God says he does, he does. And if God does for the person, the person does have faith. Sometimes people who do not seem to be righteous can have faith to receive blessing from God while the righteous may not have faith in the same regard. I was thinking today that I want to have faith like a person being willing to yell at a football game, yeah, I want to express my faith! My heart is full of a noble theme. I want to be full of faith.
Post a Comment