“In what sense am I a biblical Christian?”
I love the Bible.
When a monarch is crowned in these islands, a copy of the Bible is placed into her or his hands with these words:
…to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God
as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes,
we present you with this Book,
the most valuable thing that this world affords.
Here is Wisdom;
This is the royal Law;
These are the lively Oracles of God.
And I give my ‘Amen’ to that.
The Church of England set out 39 Articles of Religion back in 1563. Article 6 says:
Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary for salvation.
And I give my ‘Amen’ to that.
Within the Bible itself, in the 2nd letter to Timothy (3:16-17), the apostle Paul says:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
And I give my ‘Amen’ to that.
I believe that the Bible is our kindly lantern, the light to our feet, our guiding star; it will never play us false and its wisdom will never let us down. Its word is trustworthy and true.
Again in the 2nd letter to Timothy (2:15), Paul introduces to us a phrase I treasure:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
The Greek word orthotomeo occurs only in this verse, in the New Testament, and we translate it as ‘rightly divide’. It means ‘cut straight’ or ‘cut properly’ or ‘cut correctly’.
Proverbs 3:6, In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct (orthotomee in Greek, yashar in Hebrew) your paths.
Proverbs 11:5, The righteousness of the blameless will direct (orthotomei in Greek, again yashar in Hebrew) his way aright, but the wicked will fall by his own wickedness.
It’s also reminiscent of the verse in Hebrews 4:12 – For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Orthotomeo, rightly divide, is a verb that describes cutting a road through the tangles and impediments of overgrown country; cutting a straight path that goes directly to the destination. Paul means Timothy to so handle Scripture as to get straight to the heart of a thing without getting his feet tangled in the peripheral distractions of pointless arguments and fancy sophistry.
And I give my ‘Amen’ to that.
But here’s the thing. Not part of the Scripture, the whole Scripture, and with a commitment to study the meaning, the intention, the cultural background, and the effect on human society that the words would originally have had. In applying it to my life, which I try to do (and often fail), what I am attempting is to replicate the meaning and intention and the effect as appropriately translated to the modern setting of my life here and now. I am trying to build a bridge between the eternal truth of the Gospel and the norms and realities of the modern world.
The word of the Bible is always alive and active, but the application becomes sterile when one part is applied in contravention of other parts of the text. For example, the statements and attitudes of Westborough Baptist Church about Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral. Elizabeth Edwards was an attorney, an advocate of gay marriage, estranged from her US senator husband after he had a child with another woman, admitting to her faith wavering after the death of her son.
She died of cancer, and the Westborough Baptist Church protested her funeral. This was the statement they gave about their plans to disrupt the funeral:
God heard self-absorbed Elizabeth as she rode the talk show circuit spewing blasphemy. Elizabeth Edwards and her faithless husband, John, lightly esteemed what they had. They coveted things that were not theirs, and presumptuously thought they could control God.
I can quickly spot the biblical references in this statement, and quickly find my way to the scriptures they are citing. I can see where they are coming from, and why they think they are upholding the sacred values of the Bible.
I also think they have missed the point by a million miles.
Hatred, disruption, cruelty, meanness, causing others distress when they have been bereaved, making a career out of hounding and persecuting other people, whatever their beliefs and lifestyle – this is not the way the Bible means us to go.
The Bible charts the journey of the people of God as they struggle toward a living expression of His love, as they grow into the deepest meaning of faithfulness.
In this great journey, fulfilment is reached in the broken body of Jesus on the cross, showing us that the way of faithfulness is about accepting responsibility, redeeming whatever the cost, bearing the pain of the sin of others with the unconditional forgiveness of perfect grace.
In the New Testament, we see the newly formed church grappling with purity issues as the Gentiles, who are beyond the pale and unclean, want to join their number and be accepted as they are. Peter, struggling to embrace the openness of God, protests that he would never touch what is unclean. God tells him it is not for him to call unclean what God has declared clean.
Peter, probably knowing better than to argue with God, forbears from pointing out that in the Law of Moses, God did call the Gentiles unclean and that’s why Peter thinks they are.
What’s the lesson? It’s not that Gentiles are clean or unclean, it’s not about Jews and Gentiles at all. The lesson is that God moves us on. The lesson is that where the fruit of the Spirit is, there the hand of God is at work, and that this is a profounder truth than attaching labels to other people garnered from prohibitive proof texts.
The Bible – the whole Bible; its directions, its intentions, its meaning and its impact on society – guides my life and my thinking, according to my dim and wavering light. I don't always get it right. Many times I miss my way.
I pray for guidance to rightly divide the scriptures so that my feet may go straight through, without tripping over the brambles of dissension and self-righteousness, and arrive at the holy Word at the heart of the text – which is always Jesus, the bearer of the light of grace into a fallen world.