The regular habit of reading the Bible doesn’t sound strange to us, because it’s a part of who we are. But if we zoom out a little, and take stock of the fact that we regularly read a book made up of a coherent collection of writings, of which the newest is nearly 2,000-years old, we can start to see how this would seem strange to a lot of people.
How many of us have a close friend who regularly reads the writings of Homer? What about a friend who regularly reads the writings of Aristotle? How many of us know anyone who regularly reads the writings of Plato, Sophocles, Virgil, Plutarch, Euclid, or Xenophon? Unless some of us out there are friends with a history professor, I would say none of us know anyone who regularly read the writings of those folks. And yet, Christians all over the world—young and old—spend a lot of their lives reading a collection of writings that was written around the same time as some of those folks listed above put pen to paper.
Why do Christians spend so much time reading the Bible?
It's often said that the main reason someone accepts an invitation to church is because they know the person extending the invitation. It’s rare for someone to step into a church building on a Sunday morning out of the blue. It’s much more common for someone to get up early for church because they’re going to be sitting next to someone they know during the service. I would guess you and I came to our habit of reading the Bible in a similar way.
Not many of us started reading and enjoying the Bible because we saw it on a bookshelf in a store and thought it looked interesting, or because we were simply handed one and told we should read it. Most of us found our way to the Bible because of a person. Different from an invite to a church service, though, this person who has drawn us into reading the Bible is not our friend who likes reading the Bible; this person is someone from within the Bible itself. Most of us started reading and enjoying the Bible because of Jesus.
Imagine you wanted to get your friend, who isn’t a reader at all, to start reading the Bible. How would you do it?
You could start by telling him how interesting it is that we even have a Bible. You could explain the translation process by which we’ve come to be able to read these ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts in understandable English. Or you could tell him about how you believe that somehow God, although using actual people, really wrote these words, so much so that you believe that when you’re reading the Bible you’re actually hearing from God himself. Or you could tell him about all the prophecies in the Bible that have come true, which help point to the overall trustworthiness of what the Bible has to say.
My guess, though, is that none of those options would work on any consistent basis. Those of us who have already bought-in to the Bible find those things interesting. We’re all in on the translation process, the miracle of inspiration, and on how prophecy after prophecy has been proven true. But those things don’t mean anything to someone who hasn’t already bought-in like us. No, if you wanted to get your friend, who isn’t a reader, to read the Bible you ought to tell him about the one person who makes reading the Bible worth it.
In a sort of backwards way from how the Bible is often presented, Jesus is the one by whom we come to the Bible. This could be confusing because the gospels don’t show up in the Bible until the last two-thirds of it. To put it another way, there are 39-books in the Bible before Matthew—the first gospel about Jesus—and I’m saying that it’s through this Jesus, in the 40th book of the Bible, that we have our reason for reading any of it.
With almost every other book ever written, we should start from page one and work forward. Not so with the Bible. Not so, at least from the Christian perspective. There is nothing wrong with beginning to read the Bible from Genesis, working through to the wisdom literature of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, and then closing out with the prophets. I’m actually making my way through it in a similar way right now, and I assume some of you reading this have done something like that.
That’s just not how we usually come to the Bible.
We come to the Bible through hearing about the life of Jesus—the things he said, the things he did, the trouble he got into, the grace he extended to those around him, the genius he displayed while others were trying to trap him in what he taught, and the way he willingly gave up his own life for the world. Jesus is the one who captivates people like you and me. And he is the one who motivates us to open up this book from thousands of years ago. Remove Jesus—the one who drew us to the Bible—from our relationship to the Bible, and most of us wouldn’t care what it has to say anymore.
There are a few people who read Plato and Sophocles because they think they folks like them helped change the world in some small but important ways. Christians read the Bible because we believe Jesus changed the world in ways we can’t even imagine right now. And, through his changing the world, we can have changed lives, as well. When it comes down to it, that’s why most Christians read the Bible.
The stories of creation, the exodus, the great back and forth between the kings and judges, the incredible wisdom of folks like Solomon, and the surprising pronouncements of the prophets, are worth reading for their own sake. They tell an exciting story, but Christians believe that story they’re telling only finds its real meaning in as much as it finds its home in Jesus.
As the writer of Hebrews says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Heb 1:1-2, ESV). The final biblical revelation of who God is and who we are in relation to him and the world is Jesus.
He is our way in, and our way through the Bible.