This essay is printed with permission from Wipf and Stock from Christianity on the Frontier. New York: Macmillan Company, 1950. Reprinted by Wipf and Stock, 150 West Broadway, Eugene, Oregon 97401 (July 2025).
The Book that men most need to study is the book of which they know little and understand less. That book is the Bible. The Bible, it is true, occupies a unique position among the books of the world. It is, we are told, literature’s greatest monument, the book that circulates most widely, that speaks its message in a thousand tongues. All this is true. Yet, amid the plaudits that greet the Bible when its name is mentioned, there is a sobering fact that tempers exultation: the Book of books is the great unknown among its kind. To make the Bible known by the people of today is the supreme cultural and religious task of our time.
What is the Bible essentially? It is the record of God’s revelation to mankind, the abiding witness to the fact that He has spoken. God has spoken. This is the message of the Bible. There is a word from the Lord, an authoritative account of His relations to the world and to man. The eternal silence has been broken. Light has shown upon the mystery of man’s life. A divine answer has been given to the problem of his sin. The hidden God has become manifest in a new order of life. The one stupendous fact with which the Bible deals is that God has spoken by saving deeds and enlightening words. The Book is the record of His self-communication at different times and through diverse agents. It is thereby, in a wholly unique sense, the Word of God.
How God Has Spoken
But how has God spoken? In nature, in the heart of man, and in the general religious history of mankind, witness is borne to the godhead of the Creator. But in the history of the Hebrew people God revealed Himself in a unique manner as the living, speaking, and redeeming God. He made Himself known through saving acts and through men who interpreted His ways and purposes.
The Bible is, in particular, a record of encounters which specific individuals had with God, whereby He revealed Himself in their experience and understanding of Him. Time and again God is described as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ The lives of these men He wove into an historical redemptive pattern, making them the representative types of men in whose lives He still works and speaks. To understand what this means is crucial to our understanding of the Bible.
The designation of God in the Bible as the ‘God of Israel’ bears witness to the fact that in the life-history of a race which bore the name of Jacob, their ancestor, He revealed Himself in a way that became significant for them and, through them, for mankind. God’s revelation through Israel was not due to the fact that this people was exceptionally gifted in a religious sense. Indeed, the religious history of the Hebrew people from the days of Jacob and his sons, the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, to the time when Israel disappeared as a nation is, in many respects, a sordid tale. But by great redemptive acts, by a long process of hard discipline, and through the leadership of men who did His bidding and interpreted His purposes, God formed a race of people through whom His purposes were both revealed and carried forward in history.
Most significant as God’s interpreters among all the members of the Hebrew people are the prophets from Moses to John the Baptist. It is impossible to understand or to do justice to the Old Testament unless it is recognized that in all its parts it bears witness to the inspiration and insight of the Prophets. The lives and, in some cases, the writings, of these unique figures reveal the meaning of encounter with God. God, we read, ‘came’ to them; He ‘took’ them. They ‘saw’ Him; they ‘heard’ Him. They received insight into God. They spoke about Israel’s God as the God of the whole earth, the one and only God. Under the inspiration of the same Spirit that brooded over the chaos and made an ordered universe, they set God’s redemptive purpose for Israel and the world within the majestic framework of creation. They set it also in the living stream of world history. Taking objects and practices which the Hebrews had derived from other nations and the influence of other religions, they infused into these new meaning, and made them an integral part of the religion of Israel. Many objects and practices, for example, which were connected with the symbolism and ritual of the tabernacle and the temple, became, despite their lowly and foreign origin, types of holy mysteries, and patterns of holy living.
In a supreme and absolute sense God revealed Himself as the God of a unique person, Jesus Christ. The most significant name by which He is known in the Bible is ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ In the fulness of time and at the center of history a Man appeared. In Him were fulfilled the longings of Israel for a Messiah. In Him also received fulfilment the predictions of the prophets regarding a Deliverer in whom God’s purpose for mankind would find its focal expression and from whom would emanate light and power to make God and His purpose fully manifest. The coming of the Christ is the supreme event to which the Old Testament looks forward.
Of Jesus Christ, the Word of God became flesh, it can be said that He revealed to the world what God is and what man should be. His life was not a casual appearance in history, for God had sent Him. His character was not a solitary expression of ideal goodness, for God was like Him. His life purpose, which led Him to a cross, was not a vain beating against a meaningless or hostile universe, for God was in Him. The Resurrection was the proof that He was truly the Word of God Incarnate. It was also the pledge that no word that He had spoken would fall to the ground. For God, who had spoken through the prophets, had now spoken in a Son.
The men and women who recognized Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and believed in Him as the Christ of God, became a new community. This community was brought into being and indwelt by the same Holy Spirit who had created the world, inspired the prophets, and given Jesus Christ to mankind. It became the new, the spiritual, Israel, the Body of Jesus Christ, the organ of His redemptive will in history. In the course of the years, and under the inspiration of the same Spirit, the Church formed the Canon of Holy Scripture. In and through the Church and its history, God still guides Christians into an ever larger understanding of His redemptive purpose centering in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit awakens in the hearts of Christian believers, members of the Body of Christ, the filial attitude towards God which leads them to say ‘Father.’ He convinces them also of the essential truth of the Holy Scripture by the witness of His own presence in their hearts.
What God Has Said
What is it that God has said? The Gospel, the Good News, contained in the Old Testament and in the New, regarding God’s gracious purpose for mankind, is the content of the Bible message. In thr study of this content the Bible must be understood in its own light. Its categories and terms are native, and not alien, to itself. No part of it can be understood or interpreted in isolation from the other parts, but only in relation to the whole. Only a method of study which starts with Jesus Christ, in whom the fulness of God and His purpose became manifest and which uses Him as the supreme key and clue to an interpretation of Scripture, can make the central meaning of the Bible plain. Only by such a method can the substance of God’s self-disclosure be apprehended and its progressive character become clear. Only in this way, too, can the error be avoided of perpetuating practices which were valid at an earlier stage in God’s dealing with men, before His full purpose became manifest in Christ. In studying any part of the Bible it is necessary that everything shall be judged with full attention to the significance of Christ’s own words, ‘Ye have heard that it was said by men of old time … but I say unto you …’ Nothing is more unbiblical, nor can anything be more perilous, than to take certain words and commands of God out of their proper context in the Bible and attempt to give them permanent and independent validity.
The deepest note in the Bible is the affirmation of a spiritual unity closely related to the unveiling of God and His gracious purpose in Christ. A unity, like the unity of a musical harmony, underlies the whole. This harmony has an exultant quality. The world of man which came to birth in music, when ‘the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,’ will end in a redemptive harmony. Notes of music will celebrate the achievement of redemption by him who redeems men to God from ‘every tribe and people and tongue and nation.’
The education of the chosen people was basically a training in the unity of God and His purpose. God, the Lord, being one God, the law of life is one law. True human living consists in obedience to the will of God. Accordingly, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ But before this holy fear is engendered and wisdom obtained, each human heart must be ‘united’ in its secret places.
Unity is established between God and His people by a covenant, whereby they become God’s ‘portion’ and He becomes their ‘portion,’ their inheritance. The ultimate goal of this community of life and purpose between God and His covenant-people is, according to the Old Testa-ment, that the nations of mankind should be blessed through Israel and become one in the God of Israel.
But before this redemptive unity can be achieved in history, there must appear in Israel the Suffering Servant, who, on account of the sins of his people and of all people, would be bruised and broken and rejected by men, in order that he might see the travail of his soul and constitute a new and united family of God from among all the nations of mankind. Therefore, the supreme unity is revealed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was perfectly one with the Father. The unity of character and will between Jesus Christ and His Father led Him to the Cross. The Cross of Christ is the supreme revelation of human sin. It is also the supreme manifestation of God’s judgment upon sin and of His redeeming love whereby He creates new men in Christ.
The unity achieved in the reconciliation between man and God in the Cross of Jesus Christ led to the establishment of a new unity in the relations between man and man in human society. Elements in society and history between which no true partnership had hitherto existed became one. Jews and Gentiles, masters and servants, men and women, cultured and unlettered, all became one in Christ as members of His Body, the Church. Through the Church as the Body of Christ, God’s will would be made known and done among men; His Kingdom would come; His will would be ‘done upon earth as it is in heaven.’
Why God Has Spoken
But why should God have spoken? Unless God had revealed Himself and His will, men could never have known Him or His purpose. According to the Bible, it was the deep rift in human nature and the expression of man’s rebellious will against his Maker that led to the self-disclosure of God, the record of which is contained in the Bible. The purpose of the divine revelation being, therefore, redemptive in character, the Bible must never be regarded merely as a Book which supplies information. It is not interested in telling about nature as such, or even about God as such, or about the future of the world as such. Much harm has been done in the history of civilization and within the Christian Church by regarding the Bible as a store-house of wisdom on matters which do not concern it. Upon many important matters God has left men to make their own investigation and come to their own conclusions. The truth revealed in the Bible is redemptive truth. It is truth in order to goodness. It opens up to men how they may be redeemed unto goodness of life, unto consecration to the will of God, in the time and place and circumstances in which they find themselves. That being so, they only can understand the Bible and are capable of interpreting it who, feeling their need of redemption, come to its pages in search of God’s answer to the problem of their sin and their unsatisfied yearning. To hear the Word of God speak to us through these sacred pages means to recognize that what God desires is man’s response in repentance and faith and to take action accordingly. Only when God is obeyed is He truly known.
Recognizing, therefore, that the Bible is a book about redemption which is to be studied in the perspective of redemption and in the light of that central redemptive figure, Jesus Christ, we are brought into a truly Biblical attitude toward the nature of God’s self-disclosure. We give up the attempt to understand the Bible by merely dissecting its documents into parts. We do not lose time in the vain, unbiblical effort to make the Bible a textbook in matters in which God did not intend it to be authoritative. But in all matters pertaining to our knowledge of God, the salvation of the soul, the ordering of human society, the upbuilding of the Christian Church, the coming of God’s Kingdom, it is in and through the Bible that God speaks His word of command and grace.
There is a sense, indeed, in which the Bible may be described as a very direct and intimate letter to ‘whom it may concern.’ In its ultimate meaning, beyond all questions about authors and documents, about the origin and development of many ideas and practices contained in the Record, it is a letter from God to mankind. By its diffusion among all nations and the individual challenge of the truth it conveys, this book carries upon it the name and address of every people and person to whom it comes. To each of these it comes not as a book about religion, not even as a book about God. It comes rather as a very intimate and personal communication to all men, corporately and individually, to hear and obey the Word which the living God addresses to them.
