The written word of God is to be interpreted in the light of the Living Word, because the purpose of the written word is to direct us to the Living Word so that we might know who God is and what he has done for us. When we approach Scripture with Jesus himself as the interpretive key to it all, then we hear the word of God as it was meant to be heard.

Thomas F. Torrance used to explain it this way: It’s like reading a murder mystery for the second time. The first time, we’re looking for clues as to “who-done-it.” But not everything is clear. Some things make sense; others don’t. Some things seem significant; others seem trivial. But in a well-crafted murder mystery there will be plenty of clues—so many clues that when it finally is revealed who committed the crime, we are somewhat surprised but also satisfied that it makes sense. We say, “Yes there were clues all along. We just didn’t know which ones to pay attention to and didn’t see how they ‘added up.’”

What would happen if we read the mystery a second time? Now knowing “who-done-it,” those early clues would not be irrelevant. Rather, we would see how significant they were. We would be able to sort out the irrelevant clues from the meaningful ones. Those clues would stand out as even more extraordinary. “No wonder suspect A said X. No wonder suspect B did Y.” We would see what they mean, how they point to who committed the crime. We would end up valuing those clues as foreshadowings even more than on the first reading.

That’s what it’s like when properly reading the Bible. Knowing that it all leads to what God has done in Jesus Christ, we don’t set that recognition aside. Rather, we interpret the whole of the written word in terms of its center, the Living Word of God. In that way, the whole of Scripture is properly interpreted; the gift of God is properly received.

Another way to say this is that the Bible itself tells us whose Scripture this is. We know who the author is. We know where the Bible came from. It is not anonymous. So here’s another analogy: reading the Bible is like reading a letter from someone you know and who knows you, not like getting junk mail from someone you don’t know and who doesn’t know or care about you. Reading these two types of mail are different experiences, aren’t they? Sometimes when I’ve gotten letters (or emails) from those I know well, as I read what they wrote, I can almost hear their voices. I know how they’d say it. It sounds “just like them.” Reading the Bible should be like that. The more we get to know the heart, mind, purpose and attitudes of Jesus, the more we’ll hear his voice throughout all of Scripture and see how it points to the Son, and to his mission as the self-revelation of the Father and the Spirit.

When reading and trying to understand Scripture out of the center of knowing whose scripture it is, another aspect of a proper approach becomes apparent. The primary purpose of all Scripture is to reveal to us who this God is. Central to the message of all the biblical writers is to convey to us the nature, character, purpose and attitudes of our Creator and Redeemer God. They want us above all to know not just that some kind of god exists, but which God in particular and what this God is like. They want their hearers to know who God is because the God they know wants to be known and is working through them to accomplish that.

But the revelation that God is accomplishing is not just aimed at abstract, impersonal informa­tion. It is knowledge that reveals a God who has created us for relationship, communication and holy love. Knowing this God involves interaction of faith, trust, praise, adoration, worship and therefore fellowship and communion, which includes our following in his ways — our obedience. This interaction is not just a “knowing about” but a knowing in a sense similar to how we hear of Adam “knowing” Eve and conceiving a child. By God’s acts of revelation, we come to know deeply who this God is. Love for this God, the worship of this God, trust or faith in this God are our responses to who this God is. True knowledge of God that is accurate and faithful leads to true worship and living trust in God.

Throughout the Old Testament, the most often and widely repeated description of God’s nature and character is his “steadfast love.” In the Psalms, the Lord’s steadfast love is noted nearly 120 times. Psalm 136 proclaims God’s steadfast love in the refrain of all its 26 verses. An expanded but slightly more comprehensive description found across the Old Testament echoes what the Lord revealed of himself to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” The Old Testament prophets constantly held out to their hearers the nature and character of God, the only one worthy of their faithfulness and worship. However, the fullness of what God’s steadfast love means does not come into full view until we see it embodied and lived out in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus with his promise to return.

Jesus made inquiring about and knowing who he was of paramount importance. His teachings and actions are designed to raise the question: “Who then is this?” His parables prompted his hearers to inquire more deeply. Jesus confronts his own disciples with this question at two levels: “Who do people say that I am?” and then more pointedly, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:27, 29). Jesus makes the question of Who central. We must do the same if we are to hear the Word of God (Living and written) as it was meant to be heard.

What is disclosed in Jesus and preserved for us in the responses of the apostles and their writings is that God is not just graciously loving towards us, but is Father, Son and Holy Spirit who have their being in triune holy loving from all eternity, before there ever was a creation. Jesus is who he is in his eternal relationship of holy love to the Father and eternal Spirit. That is the deepest level of God’s self-revelation, where we discover who God is in God’s inner and eternal triune life.

So we should approach our Bible study with our primary goal being listening, and learning from Scripture who our triune God is, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. We can then rightly interpret Scripture out of that center. This approach means that other questions we might like to ask first, or about which we might be anxious, will be secondary. Scripture, with Jesus at the center, not only provides us with certain answers, it tells us what the right questions are! So the questions of What?, Where?, When?, Why? or How? must be made relative to the question of Who?, for it is the key to all these other questions.

We now have laid out the basic orientation for our understanding of Scripture and how best to approach it. We will consider some further implications for listening to the Word of God in the next part.

Author: Gary Deddo