It is not meaning, or wishing, or resolving, or intending, or thinking about it that will not advance you one step. The way to do a thing is to do it, and the way to read the Bible is actually to read it. Ryle put it in Practical Religion: “Begin reading your Bible this very day.
(See Psalm 119, Hebrews 4:12 and 2 Timothy 3:15-17 on this.) As J.C. Shut yourself up with Bible for several hours and allow yourself no diversions: miracles may occur. Quite often, a prolonged and meditative reading of Holy Writ itself will cure us of our conformity to the world and its wiles.
Or, even more pointedly, Jesus thundered, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are” (Matthew 23:15 see also James 3:1-2).
But Jesus warned against theological deformation with a penetrating question: “Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3). By habit, we hamstring holy writ-to our own shame and peril. Our worldly propensity is to dilute the demands of the Scripture to the level of self-help advice, to downgrade the Gospel from good news to one of many views, and to domesticate the deity himself, shrinking Him down to manageable, comfortable, and respectable proportions. Too often and too easily, we read God’s fiery and blazing summons from heaven with a veil over our eyes and with layers of ice covering over our hearts-if we read it at all. This is not the theology of the Precious Moments greeting cards. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:24-26). For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. Or this: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Consider this blast from Jesus: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). We often forget how radical, how disturbing, and how countercultural the Bible is. Douglas Groothuis' review of "Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God " by Francis Chan and Danae Yankoski.įrancis Chan with Danae Yankoski, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God 2008.
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