Today’s Daily Light
A Peculiar Glory
(We are taking from John Piper’s new book.. A Peculiar Glory.
(Our objective is to come to a deeper understanding as to ‘where’ we stand in our relationship to the Bible). I ask you to really hone in and graze a bit on expanded translation that is offered in the last half of the paragraph).
Con’t from chapter 1… My Standing Place
John writes… I grew up in a home where the Bible was assumed to be the infallible word of God. Whether they succeeded or failed, my parents tried to submit to the authority of the bible. I think they succeeded pretty well. That’s probably one reason I never rebelled against them. They tried to form their ideas about God and man and sin and salvation from the Bible. They tried to bring their attitudes and emotions in line with the Bible. And they tried to form their behaviors by the Bible.
That’s what you do, if you believe it is a reliable communication from your Creator. In spite of blind spots, and in spite of what the Bible calls ‘indwelling sin’ (Romans 7:17,20), I think my parents fundamentally succeeded. The God they worshiped, the Savior they trusted, the joy they experienced, and the love they showed were, I believe, truly the God, the Savior, the joy, and the love of the Bible. It was all real.
There was no claim to perfection, either in knowledge of God or responses to that knowledge. They knew what the Bible itself taught about knowledge: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We can know truly, but we cannot know comprehensively or flawlessly while we remain sinners. The day will come when Jesus will return to earth, and the followers of Jesus will be changed. We will sin no more. And even though we will not become omniscient, we will cease to believe wrong things (1 Corinthians 13:12)
But for now, we are fallible people, trying to submit as fully as we can to an infallible book inspired by God. That is what my parents believed and what I grew up believing. As I moved though twenty-two years of formal education, the challenges to this view of the Bible were many and constant. They are many and constant today. And I assume there will be many of them until Jesus comes, because one of the most prominent writers of the Bible predicted it:
The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
Those times were already happening when the Bible was written. And there is good reason to believe that as the end of the world approaches (a time of which no one can predict), the Bible will be more embattled than ever. (continued tomorrow)
Father…thank you that even though we do not fully know all things related to your will, your plan…we have absolute confidence that Your will and plan is perfect. Even though we are imperfect…You are perfect. We thus take our stand, by faith, in Your finished work. We thus take our stand, by faith, in Your Infallible Word. We stand complete in You. Amen
