The Creator has turned the light on into our darkness. We are immensely privileged to have a word from God that is the written record of His self-disclosure. All Scripture – the recognized canon – is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16-17), meaning it is transforming truth that is to be brought to bear upon our lives. All of it was revealed and written for our instruction (Romans 15:4). It is given to form our lives through teaching, warning, correction, and training in righteousness.
Scripture is the objective truth which reveals that righteousness for our life training. It is the character of God revealed. Behind every precept of Scripture is the Person to whom Scripture points us. This is why we do not reduce the Scriptures to a list of commands (imperatives), but we see the Goodness that is the source of those commands (indicatives). The written record of God’s activity is so “that you may know that I am the LORD” (Exodus 10:2; Deuteronomy 29:6).
“I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God!”
Deuteronomy 32:3
To “proclaim the name of the Lord” is to “make open declaration of His character as revealed in His actions toward His people.” God is like what God has done. We contemplate that through the reading and meditation of God’s self-disclosure.
In God’s self-disclosure we can see and understand His heart. God’s people are the object of His loving concern (Deut. 7:6-9). His activity reveals His steadfast love, forbearance, faithfulness, kindness, and His justice. Thankfully, the infinite, sovereign, holy Creator does not deal with us merely in terms of strict justice.
Scripture exposes the heart of man – the unrighteousness, wickedness and brokenness that exists at the core of every person. Like an MRI machine, Scripture reveals our inner condition (Romans 3:19-20) — that we are deserving God’s justice in holy wrath.
This exposure also makes clear the necessity of God’s grace. His laws are His loving boundaries – “for your good” (Deuteronomy 10:13) — and the Law ordained in the Old Testament foreshadows Christ, who not only fulfilled the righteous requirement of the Law in our place(Rom. 8:3-4), but took upon Himself the necessary judgment of the holy God in our stead.
Through all of Scripture, there is one unifying theme of redemption. God’s plan of redemption is the outflow of His loving, forgiving heart. How He accomplished this redemption is a demonstration of His holy justice and grace. Over 3,400 years ago, Moses uttered the words “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15). Jump ahead in history another 1400 years and you find Peter and Stephen affirming that Jesus Christ fulfilled this prediction (Acts 3:22; 7:37) through His advent and redemptive work.
The grace of God revealed throughout the Scriptures make it known that our relationship with the God of the universe is not based one’s attempts at right behavior, but that God Himself will do a work of transformation in His people at the level of their affections and attitudes. Moses prophesied “the Lord will circumcise your hearts” (Deut. 30:6). In other words, God’s plan of redemption will establish in His people a heart that is bent toward Him – to draw near, to delight in, to love, and to please.
This act of transformation was predicted in what is known as the New Covenant foretold through the prophet Ezekiel, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).
On the night that Jesus was betrayed before His crucifixion, He established a rite of remembering for His followers saying, “this cup is the New Covenant in my blood” (Luke 22;20; 1 Corinthians 11:25). His self-sacrifice was for our redemption through which He would accomplish a radical transformation at the core of His people. Thereby He created a new humanity – citizens of His kingdom, ambassadors of reconciliation.
The value of Scripture is that in it, we find a grand narrative of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It is through the formative power of revealed Scripture that we are called to live in the realty of this beautiful story.
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(1) Dillard/Longman III, An Introduction to the OT, (Zondervan, 1994) p.103
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