Faith Matters: How to Read Your Bible!

How do you read your Bible? Do you read it as a random collection of books? Do you read it primarily as a book of moral rules and guidelines for your life? Do you read it only as ancient myths and interesting stories?

I would argue that we should not read our Bibles in the ways outlined above. Instead, we should read our Bibles through the lens of promise and fulfillment. Here is what I mean: The Bible presents us with history—a history rooted in God’s saving plan of redemption in Jesus Christ. This is the overarching theme of the Scripture, both in the Old Testament and New Testament.

Because of this, we should read the Old Testament as showing us God’s promises of salvation to come in Christ. God promises a deliverer who will be born of a woman and who will crush the devil’s head (Genesis 3:15). God promises that in Father Abraham’s offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:3). God promises that a particular offspring will come through the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10), and then through King David’s line (2 Samuel 7:12-13). God promises that Abraham and David’s offspring will be a suffering servant who will die for the sins of his people (Isaiah 53). This offspring will then rise again from the grave in resurrection (Psalm 16:10). There are many other promises that we could list.

While the Old Testament shows us God’s promise of salvation to come, the New Testament shows us how that promised salvation is fulfilled by Christ. The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) are simply the continuation of the story begun in the Old Testament. This is why Matthew 1:1 says, “The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Immediately, our minds think back to those promises God made in the Old Testament to Abraham and David. Christ is the one in whom all nations will be blessed (Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:8)! Christ is the final descendent in the line of David who will reign on David’s throne (2 Samuel 7:16; Luke 1:32)! Christ has fulfilled God’s mission of salvation by dying and rising again. As the apostle Paul writes, “For as many as are the promises of God, in [Christ] they are yes” (2 Corinthians 1:10). The “yes” of fulfillment ought to fill us with joy as we praise God for what he has done in Christ! And it is one of the purposes of the church to proclaim that message to all people with all its farreaching implications for our lives.

Reading Scripture through the lens of promise and fulfillment helps us to put Christ at the center of the Scriptures, rather than ourselves. In other words, we must have a Christ-centered reading of the Bible, rather than a self-centered reading of the Bible. Before asking, “How does this apply to me?” we should ask, “What does this say about Christ and his salvation?” It is only after answering the second question that we can truly and properly answer the first question. We can only truly find ourselves in God’s drama as we explore that drama revealed and fulfilled in Christ.

Reading the Bible as a random collection of books misses the beauty and richness of the tapestry of God’s glorious grace revealed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New. Reading the Bible primarily as a book of moral rules or guidelines is to confuse our works with Christ’s work of salvation. And to read the Bible as ancient myth is to miss the ground-breaking, worldshaking truth that God the Father has sent his son into our world, to take on our flesh, and to die a real death, for real sinners who needed a real salvation. Pastor Mark Hogan Pilgrims Reformed Baptist Church Valley City, ND