OK, so most everyone knows what the Bible is, but have you ever tried to define it? I’ve heard many nicknames (the Word, the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Divine Love Letter, that-big-black-book-I-carry-but-seldom-read) but few definitions. It’s very important to try and define it because how you define something often controls how you treat that thing. So here’s my definition for the Bible:
That Bible is the Word of God, written in human languages, for all mankind.
Well, it doesn’t sound earth-shattering, but it is important. Trust me. As you can see it has three parts; each one is very significant.
The Bible is the Word of God. A book is only as good as its authors. The Bible was written by many human hands but God inspired it all. Whether you believe in a literal, word-for-word inspiration (aka dictation) or something more like divine inspirations of concepts, either way the Bible comes from God and therefore has authority. Everything that God felt was important, we have in the Bible today and equally there is nothing in the Bible that God did not want there.
The Bible is written in human languages. This one seems like a DUH but it too is important. All human languages have rules - this form of the verb gets used in that context, the plural of this noun is that, etc. So when you read you can’t just pick and choose what you want, you have to understand and follow the rules of language to get the real meaning of what was written. The Bible is no different. No matter how “divinely lead” you may feel, you can’t read ‘red’ in the Bible and think “yellow” and be correct. The only way to get at what the Bible really means is to use the common rules of the language(s) it is written in - then figure out what you are doing to do with that meaning. (More on that one another day.)
The Bible is for all mankind. (This one is harder to cover in brief, so don’t expect much depth today.) The Bible in the Book of John it says: “But these [the words of Gospel of John] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31 NIV) Notice that it doesn’t say “these are written for priests to know and explain to you how to be saved”. It doesn’t say that it is written for priests or theologians or Saints or people without piercings and tattoos who eat all their veggies and clean up their rooms at night. It is written so that the person reading (a non-believer is implied) might know Jesus and believe in Him for eternal life. The Apostle John wrote several books of the Bible, but this one is different. Here he used very simple language to express some very profound things. The Greek words used would be about the level that a high school dropout of the day could understand, maybe even simpler. John wrote it in simple language so that ALL would be able to understand and then choose to believe or not. He wrote his Gospel for all mankind - the Bible was written for all mankind - not just a select (usually self-appointed) few.
If the Bible is written to all of us, then all of us should be in there reading it. If the Bible is written in human languages, then there are rules to help us understand what it really means. If the Bible is God’s Word, then it has authority and we had better understand it to see what God expects of us. You need to accept all three to really understand how to treat the Bible and what place it will have in your life today.
ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS
Generous Apologist in training
The Bible - The Word of God, written in human languages, for all mankind.
Theology - The study of God and the things of God.
Theologian - Someone who studies hard and trains themselves diligently to make the hard to understand things of God even harder to understand. (Hopefully not.)
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