1.4 As Revealed in the Holy Scriptures

That we pursue a holy path, leading to words and actions conforming to the express will of God, is integral to our living as disciples of Jesus Christ. We have been called to live under Jesus Christ’s authority, that our faith and practice should demonstrate that He is our God and Saviour.

 How, though, are we to identify and confirm that the appropriate indicators and consequences of Jesus Christ’s authority are present in our lives? How are we to envision the shape of faith and practice outworked? And how are we to relate our responses to the manner in which we live out our lives, within the cultures and contexts in which we find ourselves?

 

So far, we have observed that our Declaration of Principle affirms the need of each and every Christian to enter a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, to live under His authority. It invites us to grasp that God is interested in forming not simply isolated individuals, but a society of persons – a people – who are together a ‘royal priesthood and a holy nation’ ( 1 Peter 2.9). In doing so, He calls us to come to and listen to the distinctive voice and command of God, expressed in His dealings with His covenanted people. We are called to measure our lives and style of living against the yardstick – the cannon – of royal and holy life recorded in the Holy Scriptures: the Bible.

The Bible is a comprehensive collection of sixty six different books, presenting us with a variety of forms of literature, formed and shaped over many centuries and through different cultures, tracing God’s dealings with His covenanted people, in and through to the time of fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Because of this, the Bible is an invaluable and vital component in guiding us towards discerning how the authority of Jesus Christ be outworked in our lives. On the one hand, the diverse nature of its writings – Law and regulations, Prophetic and apocalyptic utterances, Poetry, Prose and historical narratives, with the further addition of biographical accounts of Jesus Christ and the Apostles’ letters in the New Testament – does not easily allow us to form a uniform template of Godly living that is normative and prescriptive in all matters of living, for all cultures and contexts. God wants us to work out the implications of faith, as it effects our discipleship and witness. The Bible draws us into a conversation with people whose faith and practice make them one with us, in that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ called and commissioned them, as well as us. In the Bible, we observe their struggle to live in faithful, covenantal relationship with God.

 For the people of faith found in the Bible, as for us, all that God has promised and commanded would find fulfilment in the person of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1.20). For those whose lives and stories are told in the Old Testament, it was a life lived in anticipation and longing for the fullness that would come, one day, in and through Jesus Christ. For those of the New Testament, it is the consequences of the impact and implications of meeting with and being grafted into the life of God’s Son, the Word of God made flesh (John 1.14), that we are confronted and challenged with. Their story in our story. What was real for them is real for us.

Here we come to what is mandated, in our Declaration of Principle, as the proper use of Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture is there to guide us in matters of faith and practice. In this, our Declaration of Principle is true to the testimony of Holy Scripture itself. That is, the purpose of the Holy Scriptures is to equip us ‘for every good work’ ( 2 Timothy 3.17). The Bible is not given for purposes of speculation (1 Timothy 1.4; 2 Timothy 4.3-4). The Holy Scriptures are to be read in public (1 Timothy 4.13) as well as private, for ‘all Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’ (2 Timothy 3.16). In our use of Holy Scripture, we are to hold it as God’s gift to all His people to be heard by all His people, that we might together listen, discern and learn its message, applying its lessons and discovering its implications for our lives.

In engaging in this process of listening, learning and discerning, it is important to remember that we have no mediator, who stands between the people and God, other than Jesus Christ. It is important to test what is said, by any teacher or preacher, in the light of what we find spoken of in the Scriptures (1 Timothy 1.5-7; Jude 4). As the Scriptures remind us, there is a propensity to look for a person of human stature and authority to lead us, rather than to seek after teachers that model the way of Christ (Hebrews 6.12, 13.7). It was true of Israel, in their longing for a King. It was true of the first believers, in the apparent readiness of some to embrace teachers who challenged the stature of the apostles (2 Peter 3.15-16;). Equally, there is the danger of treating the Bible as a talisman, a source of revelation in all matters, beyond those of faith and practice. This is not what is it mandated to be used for. The Scriptures are there to point us to and bring us to the one authority that is over our lives: Jesus Christ Himself (Luke 24.27).

 Properly used, the Scriptures are given to teach and help us discern the way and the will of God. They are there for us to read both privately and publicly together, testing what preachers and teachers say. The Scriptures help to amplify and apply the revelation of God’s way, in and through Jesus Christ, for our lives. With the guidance of the Holy Scriptures, we have a light to our path (Psalm 119.105). Without their guidance, we are quite likely to stray from the path of God’s pleasure and blessing (Joshua 1.8; Jeremiah 10.23).

 Questions for reflection:

·         Which parts of the Scripture do you look to most readily, for guidance?

·         Which books in the Bible do you find most difficult to relate to? Can you explain why?
·         What matters wold you like to gain clearer guidance on, from the Scriptures?