2 Corinthians 3: 2-3

We are the Church of Jesus Christ; we are an institution that is not made with human hands, which is not sustained by human toil but by the hand of God.  We are a letter written by the Spirit of the Living God and as such it is of great importance what it is that we say.  We have our confessions, we recite our creeds but do our lives bear witness to the grace of our risen Lord?  What does it mean to say that we have the letter of Christ written on our hearts?  Does it make a difference in our lives?  Does it inspire, and even compel us to live Godly lives?  It should.

            I have noticed a recurring theme with regard to Scripture and the effect of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Throughout the Scriptures, Old Testament and New, there is a consistent demand that people take the Word of God and digest it, internalize it, make it part of their very being.  It is stated overtly in the book of the Prophet Ezekiel and again in Revelation, an angel tells the visionary to take the scroll of the Law and eat it, implying of course a different mode of ingesting the material.  Simply reading will not do, you must chew it, ruminate on it, digest it so that it becomes part and parcel of your existence.  The type of understanding of Scripture that Jesus exhibited is a product of this process.  Jesus by his divine nature was able to digest the writings of the Law and they became part of him but he was also human and thus demonstrates that all of us have the potential to digest the Scripture on some level.

            This is born out in the process of learning in general.  To play a musical instrument one must practice chords and scales, memorize melodies and rhythms and only when you have done the background work can you play the instrument with expression, all the tedious learning that was done has now instilled the ability to almost unconsciously process the data needed to “play” the instrument.  Riding a bicycle is a too complex a balancing act to be done with the conscious mind, only when one has learned to let go and simply ride does it become simple.  No matter what we learn from arithmetic to art the process is the same, the mundane and the tedious must be mastered in order to become a master at the craft.

            So it is also at the Scripture, no matter what level of study you are engaged in, whether you are a scholar working with the language of origin or a young student memorizing the story of Noah, you must work at the basics in order for the Word of God to penetrate your being.  The end result is marvelous; the end result is the power of God written on your heart.  When Jesus was confronted with Pharisees and Scribes who wished to make the Scripture into an indecipherable tangle of legalisms he was able to apply the Spirit of God and the knowledge of the Word to refute their peevish stumbling over minutia.  The Spirit of God was in him and the Word was part of his being.  Jesus was able to understand the Scripture in its full, intended purpose.  The broad purpose of the Scripture is to bring us towards God, to inspire us to live holy lives; not to quibble in fear over rituals.

            The level of understanding that Christ attained is of course beyond our capability but it gives us an ideal towards which to aspire.  There is much argument in the Church today over the “authority of Scripture,” but there is no place for such argument, without Scripture God is silent and we are utterly lost.  Without Scripture even the most spiritually aware will stumble into dreadful error.  Without Scripture we are unable to understand even the most basic attributes of God’s will.  We must accept on faith the “authority of Scripture” and begin the long and difficult process of interpretation.  It is faith that allows us to truly understand Scripture, to have it written on the tablets of our hearts.

            As we strive to be the Church of Christ, we also must strive to ingest the Scripture, all of it, no matter how difficult, no matter how tedious it may seem.  We will always face the challenges of those who would abuse and neglect the Word of God.  Some will be like the Pharisees, legalistic and narrow; others will be like pagans who deny the power of God altogether and look at the Bible as a nice collection of stories and quaint morality tales; still others will be hostile to our faith and accuse us of superstition and backwardness.  Only by training ourselves to understand rightly will we be able to fend off those challenges and move ever towards God.