This is the two-hundred-ninteenth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.
There are two basic ways we get to know the word of God. The first way is to come to Scripture with open minds and hearts and with an attitude of discovery. It’s when we read Scripture, trying to minimize our preconceived notions, letting the words of the biblical authors have their impact. It’s to let the word of God set the agenda, form the issues, shape the questions, determine the emphases.
This is when we read Exodus and see new things about God’s love and power we never saw before, or read some of the Psalms and get a fresh sense of the main heart issues that come through, or read 2 Corinthians and understand the angst out of which Paul approaches a church that has given him many headaches. Reading the Bible in this way is true discovery. It is a spiritual attitude that says: God, my mind and heart are open. Say what you will, tear down what you will, build what you will.
The other main way we study the word of God is when we come to it with our questions. Your friend wants to divorce her husband and you go Scripture to see what it says about grounds for divorce. Your church gives you the option of having your newborn baptized or waiting until he or she can express faith, and you wonder: what does Scripture actually say about baptism? Your country is about to go to war and you think that there must be a difference between just war and unjust war—but what does Scripture say about it?
Both approaches are valid, and both build us up in different ways. If we only use the first method we’ll miss opportunities to apply Scripture to life as a skilled surgeon uses a scalpel. But if we only come to Scripture with our questions (the second approach) we’ll never let God have the first word and we’ll miss the big ideas of Scripture that our questions would never anticipate.
There are thousands of reasons we go to Scripture with our questions looking for answers, even though building our belief system through the first approach is the best long-term way to build a superstructure of faith.
[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Explore the Many Ways Bible Gateway Helps You Study the Bible]
So how do we (in the second approach) properly approach Scripture with our questions? There are proper methods and deeply flawed approaches. For instance, it’s a mistake to have a question and go to the Bible hunting and pecking for a verse that perhaps God will use to solve the dilemma. If you’re deciding whether to take that job in Cincinnati and you happen upon a passage where God tells someone to “go forth,” that’s not a biblical answer to your question.
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We can find good answers in Scripture when we ask questions like:
- What is the meaning of sin?
- What principles should govern my personal finances?
- What is the basis of a good marriage?
- What should I be trying to do in worship?
- Am I responsible for the mistakes of my kids or are they?
- What is the work of the Holy Spirit?
- What does it mean to be a believer living in a secular society?
- How should I pray?
- How can I forgive someone who is not asking for forgiveness?
Any of these are fair questions to ask of Scripture. Some answers are easy to find, others take much work.
Oftentimes the questions we ask get reshaped as we go looking for the answers. We realize we have not been asking exactly the right thing.
For instance, one of our most common questions is: How can I know the will of God for my life? Using a concordance or an online or computer search function we can go looking for the phrase “will of God.” What we find is that the idea of “the will of God” in the Bible virtually always relates to the moral quality of our lives. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 is typical: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (ESV). This implies that we don’t need to go through every decision of every day wondering what “the will of God” is. “God’s will,” as Scripture uses the phrase, has nothing to do with deciding between a two-door or four-door car, or getting a family pet, or what classes you sign up for in college. In such matters there are good choices and bad choices, and so we ask God for wisdom, but our study of the idea of “the will of God” in Scripture reframes what we assumed the ideal meant. We change the question itself.
And so we have these two approaches: studying the Bible and taking it as it comes, and going searching for answers for the important questions we have. In both approaches we study Scripture as an act of obedience and submission.
[See previous – Respecting the Text]
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Mel Lawrenz (@MelLawrenz) trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s teaching pastor. He has a PhD in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel’s many books include Spiritual Leadership Today: Having Deep Influence in Every Walk of Life (Zondervan, 2016). See more of Mel’s writing at WordWay.
The post How to Live the Bible — Finding Good Answers appeared first on Bible Gateway Blog.
