I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11
THAT MANY PERSONS FIND THE BIBLE HARD to
understand will not be denied by those acquainted with the facts. Testimony to
the difficulties encountered in Bible reading is too full and too widespread to
be dismissed lightly.
In human experience there is usually a complex
of causes rather than but one cause for everything, and so it is with the
difficulty we run into with the Bible. To the question, Why is the Bible hard
to understand? no snap answer can be given; the pert answer is sure to be the
wrong one. The problem is multiple instead of singular, and for this reason the
effort to find a single solution to it will be disappointing.
In spite of this I venture to give a short
answer to the question, and while it is not the whole answer it is a major one
and probably contains within itself most of the answers to what must be an
involved and highly complex question. 1 believe that we find the Bible
difficult because we try to read it as we would read any other book, and it is
not the same as any other book.
The Bible is not addressed to just anybody.
Its message is directed to a chosen few. Whether these few are chosen by God in
a sovereign act of election or are chosen because they meet certain qualifying
conditions I leave to each one to decide as he may, knowing full well that his
decision will be determined by his basic beliefs about such matters as
predestination, free will, the eternal decrees and other related doctrines. But
whatever may have taken place in eternity, it is obvious what happens in time:
Some believe and some do not; some are morally receptive and some are not; some
have spiritual capacity and some have not. It is to those who do and are and
have that the Bible is addressed. Those who do not and are not and have not
will read it in vain.
Right here I expect some readers to enter
strenuous objections, and for reasons not hard to find. Christianity today is
man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even
respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that
of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken desperation to get people to
accept a Savior of whom they feel no need and in whom they have very little
interest. To persuade these self-sufficient souls to respond to His generous
offers God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking
down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of
course, a kind of religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering
and sometimes embarrassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make
man the star of the show.
The notion that the Bible is addressed to
everybody has wrought confusion within and without the church. The effort to
apply the teaching of the Sermon
on the Mount to the unregenerate nations of
the world is one example of this. Courts of law and the military powers of the
earth are urged to follow the teachings of Christ, an obviously impossible
thing for them to do. To quote the words of Christ as guides for policemen,
judges and generals is to misunderstand those words completely and to reveal a
total lack of understanding of the purposes of divine revelation. The gracious
words of Christ are for the sons and daughters of grace, not for the Gentile
nations whose chosen symbols are the lion, the eagle, the dragon and the bear.
Not only does God address His words of truth
to those who are able to receive them, He actually conceals their meaning from
those who are not. The preacher uses stories to make truth clear; our Lord
often used them to obscure it. The parables of Christ were the exact opposite
of the modern "illustration," which is meant to give light; the
parables were "dark sayings" and Christ asserted that He sometimes
used them so that His disciples could understand and His enemies could not.
(See Matthew 13:10-17.) As the pillar of fire gave light to Israel but was
cloud and darkness to the Egyptians, so our Lord's words shine in the hearts of
His people but leave the self-confident unbeliever in the obscurity of moral
night.
The saving power of the Word is reserved for
those for whom it is intended. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear
Him. The impenitent heart will find the Bible but a skeleton of facts without
flesh or life or breath. Shakespeare may be enjoyed without penitence; we may
understand Plato without believing a word he says; but penitence and humility
along with faith and obedience are necessary to a right understanding of the
Scriptures.
In natural matters faith follows evidence and
is impossible without it, but in the realm of the spirit faith precedes
understanding; it does not follow it. The natural man must know in order to
believe; the spiritual man must believe in order to know. The faith that saves
is not a conclusion drawn from evidence; it is a moral thing, a thing of the
spirit, a supernatural infusion of confidence in Jesus Christ, a very gift of
God.
The faith that saves reposes in the Person of
Christ; it leads at once to a committal of the total being to Christ, an act
impossible to the natural man. To believe rightly is as much a miracle as was
the coming forth of dead Lazarus at the command of Christ.
The Bible is a supernatural book and can be
understood only by supernatural aid.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:12-13
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