A Peculiar Glory 

(Our objective this week has been to come to a deeper understanding as to ‘where’ we stand in our relationship to the Bible).  

Con’t…taking from John Piper’s new book, A Peculiar Glory..

Not So Much Holding a View as Being Held 

It may sound strange, but “holding onto my view” was never the way I experienced it—at least not as I can remember.  It felt more like my view of the Bible was holding onto me.  Or, as I believe today, God was holding onto me by clarifying and brightening and deepening my view of Him in the Bible.   

What I mean can be best understood if you take the word view not just in an intellectual sense (as in viewpoint), but in the aesthetic sense—as in vista, or sight, or landscape.  I never recall merely having a view of the Bible, as if it was a book on the table, and I viewed it this way and not that way, nor did I see it as a set of ideas that I could view this way or that way.

Not a Painting on the Wall, but a Window 

The Bible was never like a masterpiece hanging in a museum that I viewed this way and that.  Rather, it was like a window.  Or like binoculars.  My view of the Bible was always a view ‘through’ the Bible.  So when I say that, all along the way, my view was getting clearer and brighter and deeper, I mean the reality seen through it was getting clearer and brighter and deeper.  Clearer as the edges of things became less fuzzy, and I could see how things fit together rather than just smudging into each other.  Brighter as the beauty and impact of the whole message was more and more attractive.  Anddeeper in the sense of depth perspective—I suppose photographers would say ‘depth of field.’  Things stretched off into eternity with breathtaking implications—in both directions past and future.  You could sum this up with the phrase the glory of God.  That’s what I was seeing.  This was not an ‘intellectual’ effort.  Seeing is not an effort the way thinking is.  It happens.  You may need to exert yourself to walk up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, but when you get there, seeing is not work.  You may need to travel to the Alps or the Himalayas, but when you get there, seeing is not an effort.  It is given to you. 

I did my walking and my traveling.  That’s what study and education is.  But I did not make myself ‘see’.  And that is why I say it is not as though I was holding onto my view of the bible, but rather that the view was holding onto me.  Or God was holding ont me by making the view supremely compelling.  If you are standing on the edge of theh gRand Canyone, or rafting down the Colorado River inside the canyone, it is proper to say you are held by the view, the sight, the vista.  That is what the Bible was doing for me.  It was holding me; I was not holding it.   

This is where I still stand—on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and at the foot of the Himalayas, and sometimes rafting right down through the depths of the glory.   (end quotes from JP’s new book, chapter 1

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If God is a personal God, a Creator, who made you and me, and He has a plan and prescription for how we can truly ‘know’ Him and experience Him and live with Him now and throughout eternity…and if this glorious God is on our side… and if we are truly dealing with the supreme Creator of the universe and a book that He inspired as gift for all the peoples of the world is available to us…then there can be no greater quest than to KNOW that the Bible is God’s word..and that the Christian scriptures are God’s divine revelation of His glory to all mankind.

Father…I praise you that you desire to reveal Yourself to us…Your glory…through the window of your Word.  Help us to see you more clearly in all of your glory and majesty and splendor.   Help us to devote ourselves in looking into and through the window of your glorious Word…so that we can seeYou..clearer, brighter, deeper.   Amen 

(I encourage you to acquire Piper’s book….its purpose is to demonstrate that the infallibility of the Word of God and how and why God gave us that word to reveal His glory. I bought mine on Amazon 😊)