“Come to me, and I will give you ____.”

Finish this statement by Jesus: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you _______.

Chances are pretty good you know the last word there is rest. Here’s the thing I was thinking about today, though, when I read that verse. How many of us, even if we know that Jesus said rest at the end of that sentence, walk around with the subconscious belief that he instead said something like trouble, or pain, or punishment?

Far too many of us.

Now, we might not walk around with that subconscious belief all the time—it may come and go depending on where are lives are at—but the fact that it is there at all is a troubling reality and experience. I mean, for one, Jesus didn’t say that, so that’s a problem right there. But, even more than that, Jesus said the opposite of what we walk around at times subconsciously believing he said.

I love running and lifting weights. There are a lot of differences between the two activities, but there’s one thing they have in common, at least when I’m doing them. I love the moments where I can rest after a run or after a set of weight lifting. I think about those rests as I’m running and lifting. Two more miles, one more mile, five more reps, one more rep… then rest. My running slows to a walk, my hands go to my knees or above my head, and I get a chance to catch my breath. After the last rep of dumbbell presses I let the weights fall to my sides and hit the ground, and I catch my breath.

How awful would it be after a long run to get to the end and have no relief? Or how awful would it be to finish a set of squats, rack the weight, but still feel like it’s on your shoulders? I can tell you the for me, it would be enough to stop running and lifting. I think it’s why it’s no surprise that we feel like throwing in the towel in our lives every now and then. We can fool ourselves into believing that there’s no rest waiting for us if we come to Jesus. If we come to him he will give us nothing but more trouble, more pain, and he may even punish us. In other words, Jesus is just going to add to the weight that we’ve already been carrying around for far too long.

The good news is, this is wrong. We are wrong if we believe that Jesus said something opposite of what he really said. He didn’t tell those around him to come to him so he could make their lives worse. He told them to come to him if they wanted to rest. I know me, and even if I don’t know you I know that you like to have times to rest just like I do. The bummer is here we have Jesus offering exactly what we want and need, and yet so many times we choose not to come to him and forsake the rest he has for us.

The other bit of good news is that even if we’ve done that—ignored the offer of rest because we don’t believe him—we don’t have to go on doing it. Today might be the day for rest for you.

Stop running. Stop lifting. Come to Jesus. And rest.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV)

Three Tips (for now) for Reading, Understanding, and Responding to the Bible

1. Memorize

   I’ve got to be joking, right? You thought your memorization days were over when you finally go through your times tables, didn’t you? Well, not if you want to do something to bring your understanding of the Bible to the next level.

   I’ll put it out there right from the jump—of all the things you could do to help your ability to read, understand, and respond to the Bible, memorizing it will demand the most from you. It takes hard work to memorize a verse, and even more to memorize 20, but that hard work pays off big time not only once you get that section memorized, but as you memorize.

   You see, memorizing Scripture requires a lot of time on a small section of the Bible. I’m sure there are people who can do it, but it’s impossible for me to memorize 20-verses in a day. I have too many other things going on, and I’m just not that good at it. What I can do, though, is memorize one or two verses a day, for a week or two, which adds up to quite a lot of time spent focusing on the text, and that time has done wonders for my ability to read, understand, and respond.

2. Write in your Bible

   Whenever I got a birthday card (or any other card) from my grandma on my mom’s side, I would open it and see that she had underlined a word or two—sometimes entire phrases. I thought this was odd for a long time. I didn’t need help reading the cards she gave me, so I wasn’t sure why she took the time to underline certain words. Over the years, though, it became clear—those words stood out the most to her. She underlined them so they would stand out to me, too. They did.

   This is why you ought to write in your Bible as you’re trying to read, understand, and respond to it better than before. Writing in it makes it memorable. You can underline sentences that seem important, circle words that make you pause or are used often, scribble question marks and exclamation points, and draw connections between statements you find in the paragraphs.

   When you write in your Bible you’re not just writing for yourself that day, but you’re writing for yourself weeks, months, and years down the road, so when you get to that passage again you are reminded of what stood out to you the first time. Do your future self a favor and write in your Bible!

3. Read out loud

   The actor Walton Goggins said that to prepare for a role he will read a script 250-times and turn himself over to an imaginary set of circumstances. That’s it. And that’s not that far removed from what I’m suggesting in this tip for getting better at reading, understanding, and responding to the Bible.

   I’ve found that I have an altogether different experience with the Bible as I move from reading it with my eyes to reading it with my mouth. One of the things I’ll do when I really want to get into a particular passage of the Bible is walk around my house (when no one else is home) reading that section aloud as if I’m the one who thought up those words. I will pretend that I’m Paul, or Luke, or John, or even Jesus as I say out loud the words I’m reading.

   I don’t do that because I like hearing my own voice; I do it because something special happens as I give myself over to the circumstances of the passage I’m reading. If I can imagine—even for a short time—that I’m the one actually preaching the Sermon on the Mount, those words start to land on me in a way they just don’t when I’m only silently reading the words on the page. Even something like the letter of Jude starts to transform from a letter written by someone I don’t know to people I don’t know, to a letter uniquely fitting for the day.

   It’s one thing to read the Bible as if it’s an ancient document far removed from the world you live in, and quite another to read it as if you’re the one who wrote it. So, if you want to grow in the way you read, understand, and respond to the Bible, you might want pretend you’re Luke every once in a while.

Response as the Goal of All Bible Reading

I love purpose statements. I love them because I really don’t like guessing about someone’s motivation. It’s an uncomfortable place to be in. If I’m reading something someone wrote or listing to someone give a talk, I don’t want to be left wondering why they wrote what they wrote or said the things they said. I think this is partly why I like John’s gospel so much.

As the apostle John was drawing his gospel to a close, he thought it would be a good idea to make clear why he wrote it in the first place—to remove the mystery, if there was any. To do that he wrote that, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31, NIV). With that statement, you and I don’t have to wonder or guess about his purpose. John wrote what he wrote so that you and I might believe in Jesus (or continue to believe—there’s some debate about that, but we don’t need to get into it here) and, through believing in Jesus, experience real life.

In other words, what John did with his gospel is to give an opportunity for everyone who reads it to respond to what he wrote. I think that although John is probably the clearest of his fellow biblical authors about his purpose, his purpose is not unique to him. I would guess that if we were able to ask any of the biblical authors why they wrote what they wrote, their answer would be that those who read what they wrote would respond in one way or another to what they’ve read. It’s the same purpose I have in writing what I’m writing here. I want you to respond to it; I don’t want it to be wasted time.

Throughout the church world the language that is often used in relation to what I’m talking about here is application. Most books on Bible reading or Bible study guides will talk about applying the text to our lives in order for it to have any meaning. And I think they’re partly right. If all we ever read the Bible for is to gain knowledge then we’re missing the point, because knowledge alone puffs up (1 Corinthians 8:1, NIV). However, I think talking about application for all biblical texts sets us up for confusion and frustration, because not all biblical texts are equally applicable to us. To be sure, there are plenty that apply directly to us, but there are some—quite a few, actually—that are impossible for us to be able to directly apply to our lives.

Consider this passage from Leviticus 4 as an example of a text that is impossible for us to apply to our lives today: “If the whole Israelite community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though the community is unaware of the matter, when they realize their guilt and the sin they committed becomes known, the assembly must bring a young bull as a sin offering and present it before the tent of meeting. The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull’s head before the Lord, and the bull shall be slaughtered before the Lord. Then the anointed priest is to take some of the bull’s blood into the tent of meeting. He shall dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle it before the Lord seven times in front of the curtain. He is to put some of the blood on the horns of the altar that is before the Lord in the tent of meeting. The rest of the blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He shall remove all the fat from it and burn it on the altar, and do with this bull just as he did with the bull for the sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for the community, and they will be forgiven. Then he shall take the bull outside the camp and burn it as he burned the first bull. This is the sin offering for the community.” (Leviticus 4:13-21, NIV)

Right off the bat, it’s clear that this section of Scripture was written to a particular people during a particular time. That people and that time being the whole ancient Israelite community following their exodus from Egypt. You and I aren’t those people and we are not in that time. So if application was our goal in reading this passage, how would anyone today be able to apply it? The short answer is, no one today could appropriately apply it, so why would we ever make application the main goal of reading all the time? This is why I have found it helpful to talk about responding, instead. I think there are plenty of places throughout the Bible where direct application is right and necessary, but the direct application is a fruit of a proper response; application doesn’t arrive on its own.

Even though we are not able to directly apply Leviticus 4:13-21, we are fully capable of responding to it. Our response to that text might be something like, recognizing what God was doing with the ancient Israelite community in how he was being up front about unintentional sin, giving them clear instructions for how to deal with unintentional sin, and how what Jesus did on the world’s behalf in relation to sin somehow relates to what Moses was talking about way back then. I think that’s an appropriate response to Leviticus 4 even though application was never a possibility. And yet there was still a purpose for us with that portion of Scripture—we can still benefit from reading and responding to a section of the Bible that has no direct application to us.

This idea of not being able to apply a text, but still being able to respond to it is not unique to the Old Testament. In fact, we run into the same situation with one of the most famous sentences in all the Bible from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, NIV). Here we have John reaching back as far as he can into the past and telling his readers what it was like back then. In particular, telling his readers about the Word and his relation to God. How would you apply this text to your life? Is there something you and I are being called to do from this text? I don’t think there’s any direct application for us. There’s nothing in the text for us to do, but that doesn’t mean the text has no purpose for us, because we are still able to respond to it. Our response, though is not by way of application but by way of stirring our imagination in wrestling with the reality of who God was and is. John 1:1 serves us today by giving us something solid to grab hold of, something true about who God was and is, and it’s okay that the text isn’t directly calling us to do anything.

Of course, though, there are plenty of places in Scripture where our response will be made evident by the way we apply the text to our lives. Think of Galatians 5 and Paul’s description of what life in the Spirit is like: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” (Galatians 5:13-15, NIV) We would be fooling ourselves if we thought there was no direct application for us today from this passage. This is not like what we saw in John 1 or Leviticus 4. This text applies directly to us if we respond to it appropriately. Our response ought to be one of first reflection of our own lives, which includes a comparison to what Paul described, then adjustments in our lives where they’re appropriate. Paul is giving us instruction for life and if all we ever saw it for was simply something to consider as true without any direct application then we would missing out on his intention.

This way of reading the Bible takes effort on our part—serious effort. The Bible is not some cryptic force that can make you do what it wants you to do. In fact, it has no influence over you if you choose not to give it any. This is the surprising thing about God choosing to communicate his intention and will with his people through the writing of the Bible. He knew that words on a page are easy to ignore (the experience with the Mosaic law made that clear), and yet he chose to go this way with it—and for good reason.

Because God gave us a book that requires us to read, understand, and respond to it, it is up to us to decide if we are going to be shaped by God’s words to us. It is up to us if we’re going to take him seriously or not. And this is good. This reveals to us something true about ourselves. So it’s up to you and it’s up to me to decide—on a regular basis—if we are going to take the necessary steps to not only read, then work to understand what we’ve read, but also to respond to what we’ve read and understood. This is the life of a Bible-reader.

The Bible: A Collection of Collections

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more intimidating book for the average person than the Bible. 

I have two sitting next to me right now. The first is an English Standard Version (ESV), single column edition containing 1,488 pages, in something like 7 or 8-point font. The second is a New International (NIV), double column edition containing 1,302 pages, in something like 8 or 9-point font. What’s more, they both have textual footnotes on every page with even smaller font pointing to different places between their covers. If that wasn’t enough, the table of contents for these two Bibles each show an astonishing list of 66-books with odd names like Deuteronomy, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Colossians, Nahum, Philemon, and Habakkuk. 

It’s a lot to take in.

The problem is, it’s so much to take in that a lot of regular folks—people like you and me—find that the Bible is not worth the trouble—so we just don’t read it. It’s difficult enough to find a regular book that’s understandable and entertaining to read, let alone one that’s almost 1,500 pages long.

I remember being a little kid and getting the motivation a few times to read the Bible for myself. I would grab the one given as a gift, flip open the cover, pass through the several introductory pages about translation philosophy and notes about that particular edition (those pages didn’t make sense to me at that age anyways), find my way to some book called Genesis and start reading, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gn 1:1)

I don’t think I ever made it past the fifth page.

I would be reading along, wonder where this story was going, flip through some pages and be totally lost, because the Bible didn’t read like any other book I had read before. Some of that was due to me being a little kid. It wasn’t the Bible’s fault that the me at age 9 couldn’t make heads or tails of a book that wasn’t written like the “Goosebumps” books I would fly through. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, over at least a thousand-year period of time. There’s no way it could compare with the hot-off-the-presses R. L. Stine books I couldn’t wait to make my way through.

So what do we do with this intimidating book? Is just a lost book to most us? A book that if it was only written differently we could find time to read, understand, and respond to what it was saying?

It doesn’t have to be a lost book. In fact, I think with a little re-presentation of what the Bible is, and what’s in it, it can become not only a book that’s possible for us to read, understand, and respond to, but a book that we would find indispensable in our effort to live the kind of lives God has called us to live.

---

Most of the time when the Bible is talked about, it’s described as a self-contained, one-volume book. Some will point out that there’s a division within the book itself, which break it up into two main collections called the Old Testament and the New Testament. That’s helpful, but there’s more help to be found as there are further collections within those collections that aren’t identified as clearly.

---

The Old Testament

The Pentateuch

Within the collection called the Old Testament, which is about the first two-thirds of any Bible you’d pick up, there are natural (albeit somewhat hidden) smaller collections making up those first 39-books. The first smaller collection has come to be called the Pentateuch, which (I know) is another weird word associated with the Bible. What the word Pentateuchmeans, though, is pretty straightforward. It means basically, the five scrolls. This Pentateuch collection contains the first five books called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

And, with that, we’ve gone from a daunting 39-books to five—a much more manageable collection of books within the larger book of the Bible.

For someone who has never read anything out of the Old Testament, and making their way through the entirety of the 39-book collection is too much to get into, it might make sense to work through just the Pentateuch. After someone has read starting in Genesis through Deuteronomy, they will have both gotten their feet wet in the biblical text, and made their way through a considerable collection of the overall collected biblical texts.

The Historical Books 

After that smaller five-book collection is a little larger collection commonly referred to as the historical books. In this collection you’ll find the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

Here’s something really interesting about this collection: the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, and Ezra and Nehemiah, are really smaller collections all on their own. Originally the two books we’re used to, such as 1 & 2 Kings, were just one story. We find them divided in our Bibles, but they don’t have to be read like that. Also, the individual books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one. So you could set yourself the task of reading Ezra and Nehemiah and you will have read one of those ancient collections within a collection—you would be reading the Bible. 

The Wisdom Books

The next collection within the larger collection of the Bible is what’s commonly referred to as the wisdom books(sometimes called the poetic books). These books include a couple books that even those who’ve never read anything from the Bible would be familiar. Those books are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon).

Within this collection we can further group a few of the books into a three-part relationship. Those are Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. For someone who has never read anything out the Old Testament, reading this smaller collection within the wisdom books might prove helpful, encouraging, and exciting as you see how different books within the Bible could be in conversation with one another.

The Prophetic Books

The last main collection of Old Testament books contains the prophets. In this collection you’ll find the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—a lot of these books being the main ones Jesus refers to in his teachings. And, just as with the historical books, we can further break up this collection into two smaller collections of the major and minor prophets.

The major prophets are not those prophetic books that are more important than the others, but those books that are longer. In that collection you’ll find the books of Isaiah, through Daniel, which leaves the books of Hosea through Malachi as the minor prophets. Choosing to read through either the major or minor prophets would definitely make you a Bible reader.

---

After those four smaller collections within the larger Old Testament collection, we come to the New Testament collection, which is where you might be more familiar—it might even be where you started reading the Bible, if you’ve read some of it before. Similar to the Old Testament collection, we have smaller collections of books within this larger collection.

---

The New Testament

The Gospels and Acts

The first smaller collection within the New Testament is called the Gospels and Acts. In this collection of books we have (you guessed it) the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—followed up by the book of Acts. As we were able to do before, we can find an even smaller collection within this one.

Within the Gospels and Acts we have three gospels that are pretty similar to one another and an outlier one that, although still tells the same overall story about Jesus, goes about it in a unique way. This first smaller collection is commonly called the Synoptic Gospels, which includes of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. One of the cool things in this Gospels and Acts collection is that it’s pretty clear that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts was the same person. You can see this for yourself by how Acts references the beginning of Gospel of Luke. So, if you wanted to, you could begin reading the Bible not by trying to take it all in at once, but by starting with the much smaller collection of the Gospel of Luke and Acts.

The Letters

The second main collection of books within the New Testament is the letters (or, epistles, if you’re more familiar with that word). Within this collection of letters you’ll find (you guessed it, again) a collection of letters written by several different people (Paul, Peter—whoever wrote Hebrews—John, and Jude). These letters are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter,  2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude.

This smaller collection within the New Testament is where the Christian church has spent a lot of its time—and for good reason. It’s been found to be particularly helpful to us in our day-to-day lives. In this collection you’ll find people like Paul and Peter writing to churches and individual folks they know to address issues ranging from personal relationships, theological realities, and church-life, among many, many others. It might be the place you’d like to begin reading the Bible.

The Revelation

The last collection of collections within the Bible is just one book—the Revelation. It’s with this smallest collection where many movies have been made and many books have been written. This might be the most intimidating book within the entire biblical collection, but it doesn’t have to be. At its core, it’s a book about worship. In particular, it’s a book about those who choose to worship the beast and the implications and consequences that come from that decision, and those who choose to worship God and the implications and consequences that come from that decision. If you were to pick one book out of the entire Bible to read in one sitting, Revelation might be the book for you.

---

One of the things any runner learns early on in distance running is that when they get ready to hit the pavement for their first 15-mile run, they shouldn’t be thinking about the entire run when they start. It’s too much. They can’t get to the end of the entire 15-miles without running the first 14. So, when they start, their only focus is on the mile in front of them, because they know they can’t get to mile 2 without running the first one. 

This is the same practice I would suggest for reading the Bible, especially if it’s felt for too long like an impossible task. You might start by picking just one of the books out of the prophetic collection. You might even pick the shortest of the collection. Or maybe you’d rather jump all the way to the New Testament and start with a book like 1 John.

Perhaps, though, you’d like to read one of the smaller collections in its entirety before moving onto another one. The Gospels and Acts might be the right place for you. Once you get them read—no matter how long it takes—you can celebrate in the satisfaction of completing that section, just like a runner does when they pass the four-mile mark on their way to completing the next 11 of them.

The point is, there’s no reason you have to feel intimidated by the fact that you picked up a 1,500-page book to read. It’s 1,500 pages but, as we’ve seen, it’s really just a large collection of much smaller collections, of which are 50 to 100-pages. And those are much more manageable.

Bored With the Christmas Story

The Christmas story we’ll tell and celebrate this week is the same story that’s been told for the past two-thousand years. Nothing has changed about it. And because nothing has changed, there’s an inherent danger presented to us—boredom.

You might be bored with that story right now. Even thinking ahead to going to a church service, listening to the same songs, hearing the same passage or passages of Scripture being read might be enough to make you wish you could just fast-forward through all that same old, same old.

But you don’t have to be bored with it, if you don’t want to. You can resist the boredom by reminding yourself of the actual story. This isn’t a rebellion against the Christmas or anything like that—I think we’re still free to enjoy all that fun. It’s a chance to remember where we came from and why Christmas has any meaning for us at all.

For thousands of years, God’s people had been struggling as they followed him. The struggle didn’t start with Moses, and it didn’t start with Abraham. Adam and Eve found that they struggled in the garden. This pattern continued through Abraham, through Moses, into the judges, kings, and prophets. God’s people had a hard time finding a consistent footing as they tried to follow keep in step with him.

The result was exile. First, a spiritual one, then a physical exile.

While reflecting on the human condition, the prophet Jeremiah said that, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV). The teacher in Ecclesiastes said that, “The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live” (Ecclesiastes 9:3, NIV). The prophet Isaiah, speaking a word of condemnation and warning over God’s people, made clear their fate if they continued in their folly as he said, “ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes” (Isaiah 6:9-10, NIV).

If this wasn’t enough, God’s people continually found themselves “outside” of where and what they were made for. First, Adam and Eve were removed from the garden and prevented from returning. Next the new people of God were in slavery for 400-years in Egypt. Next, they were unable to find the promised land as they wandered the wilderness. Next, because of Moses’s disobedience—and the disobedience of an entire generation of Israelites—they were unable to finally enter the newly found promised land. From there, their exile continued as God’s people found themselves under judges and kings who treated them poorly, resulting in another exile, this time to Babylon.

Within this struggle, though, there was a hope laid out for God’s people. A hope that he would make all things new. A hope that this pattern of exile would finally end. Long before the apostle John wrote Revelation, the prophet Isaiah talked about a new heavens and a new earth. 2 Chronicles and the prophet Malachi both shared a similar hope of God doing something that he hadn’t done before—perhaps arriving to rule and reign as the true king.

After the last words of the Old Testament there were many, many years where the people waited. They knew what had been promised, and they held out hope for the promise, but it wasn’t always easy. They grew restless. They started to wonder if God was really going to do what he said he was going to do. Generation after generation would pass down this hope, reminding those who came after of what was promised. And then something miraculous happened.

Paul tells it like this:

Who [Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11, NIV)

God stepped into this world in a way he had never done before. In the ancient past God was just a little bit removed from his people. Sure, he was walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and he was going before them in the exodus, and he was present in the temple, and the prophets were his mouthpiece, but he was still unapproachable in some real sense. That is, until, he made himself nothing. God—the one uncreated being in the entire universe—became like those he created—you and me. He became a human being in the person of Jesus. He became what he was not, so you and I could be finally be what we were created to be—fully human.

Not only that, but as a human being he humbled himself—even to the point of death on a cross. God, himself, not only willingly stepped into humanity, but willingly stepped into death. Because of that he has been exalted above everyone and everything else. All honor and glory belongs to him.

This all happened because God became a human being. The cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the exaltation, the second coming, and the new heaven and new earth, are all a result of what happened on that first Christmas day.

How can we be bored with a story like that?

This story we’re a part of, this story that we get to tell and pass on to our kids, this story that makes everything else we believe in a reality is worth leaning into in a fresh way each year. We might be bored with doing the same things year after year, but let’s not confuse that with being bored about the God of the universe becoming a human being.

That was a miracle, and miracles are never boring.

Our Way In and Through the Bible

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.

Hate Like God

If you’re going to hate, hate like God.

In preparation for 2025’s Exploring the Bible seminar on Reading, Understanding, and Responding to the Bible I was reading in the psalms and struck—as I have been in the past, but haven’t given as much time to it—by the way the psalmists talk about God hating not just things (like sin), but people. In particular, I was struck by this verse: “You hate all who do wrong.” (Ps 5:5, NIV)

For a long time I think I’ve kind of just let statements like that one go, because I didn’t know what to do with them. It's one thing to think of a person hating something or someone else—it’s not comfortable, but I don’t think it seems foreign to us—it’s quite another to think of God hating someone. But there it was (and is) in the psalms.

To be fair to that statement from Psalm 5:5, it doesn’t exist on its own; it finds its place within the larger context of the surrounding verses, which read:

“In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, evil people are not welcome. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong; you destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest. But I, by your great love, can come into your house; in reverence I bow down toward your holy temple.” (Ps 5:3-7, NIV)

It's clear to see that David’s focus in writing this section of the psalm is on God’s response to wickedness—in particular, those who do wickedness. He writes, “…evil people are not welcome. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence.” The point is clear enough: when it comes to being with God, evil and those who do it are not welcome. He continues to explain this by writing that God hates “all who do wrong.” Further, that God detests “the bloodthirsty and deceitful.” Humanity was out of luck then, right? Amazingly, that statement is quickly followed up by one on God’s love. David writes, “But I, by your great love, can come into your house.”

At least two things seem to be true in Psalm 5:3-7. The first: that God hates, not just the wrong that people do, but the people who do the wrong. The second: that in God’s great love, David—who wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination—can somehow come into God’s house.

Should we just toss this difficulty up to the poetic nature of the psalms? God doesn’t really hate anyone, that’s just a way a strong idea was expressed back in the day—similarly to saying that God doesn’t really get angry, although the Bible speaks of him getting angry. I don’t think that quite works, because there are also a lot of nice things said about God throughout the psalms—and as we just saw, right after that statement about hate. Would we also be so eager to treat those nicer statements in the same way? I also don’t think so. I do, though, think something peculiar is going on with this hate language that must be interpreted correctly to avoid misunderstanding the statements.

When you and I think about hate, we almost always think of it as an overwhelming emotional response toward a person or thing. If I say I hate Ryan who lives down the street, I mean that Ryan (as a person) really, really, really bothers me. If I say I hate him, I mean I don’t want him around at all. I mean that even his existence bothers me. That’s why a lot of us are taught to keep away from that type of language. To say we hate someone means roughly that we wish they didn’t exist. The question, then, is this: is that what the Scriptures mean when they speak of God hating all who do wrong?

I was particularly helped on this matter by looking at one of the clearest hate statements in the Bible, found within the New Testament. Paul, in Romans, quotes the prophet Malachi, and writes, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (Ro 9:13, NIV) Pretty clear, right? God enjoys having Jacob around, but he wishes Esau would beat it, forever. The New Living Translation is really helpful here.

The translators of the NLT translated Romans 9:13 a little differently than the NIV. They went with, “I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.” I know you noticed the difference. Where the NIV translators set love and hate side-by-side, the NLT translators switched it up a little by setting love and rejected side-by-side. Why did they do that?

Romans 9:13 is not a difficult verse to translate from Greek into English. The two main words we’re looking at are agapao and miseo. Agapao is the Greek verb often translated as love, and miseo is the Greek verb often translated as hate. However, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, when it comes to translating the Greek of the New Testament into English, context determines translation.

The translation process is way more involved than a simple equation of something like this Greek word equals that English word. One Greek word might be translated a number of different ways into English, because—just as it is in English—the same word isn’t always used in the same way depending on the context in which it’s used.

Think of the word love in English. If you say that you love your mom and that you love pizza, you don’t mean the same thing. If you were translating your statement about loving pizza into another language, you might want to be clear in that other language that you don’t mean you feel the same way about pizza that you do your mom. That’s kind of what’s going on with the NLT’s translation of Romans 9:13.

The NLT translators have decided that although miseo is used—and it’s often the right decision to translate it strictly as hate elsewhere—here it’s probably not the best decision, because what Paul is saying is that although God has chosen to accept Jacob (i.e., Israel—his chosen people), he is not going to accept those outside—he is rejecting them. My suggestion, to make this sentiment clearer, would have been translate agapao not as love, but as accept, so the verse would have ended up reading, “I accepted Jacob, but I rejected Esau.”

In the context of Romans 9 and the quotation of Malachi (reaching all the way back to Genesis) God is saying he is going to accept (i.e., love) all those who make him their God, and he will reject (i.e., hate) all those who don’t make him their God. It’s as if God was saying something like this: “By me choosing Jacob over Esau, before either of them had been born, I’m showing you that I have decided to make a people for myself out of the world. In them I will show my righteousness as I set my acceptance on them. They, in turn, will show their acceptance of me in the way they follow my direction to live a righteous life. As a result, you will also see my rejection of wickedness by the way I am against, and have rejected, those who do not follow me, and thus choose to make their lives in wickedness.”

This is how God hates.

His hatred is rejection. And his rejection is based on the rejection of those he created to have life. Those who reject God have been and will be given the rejection they’re seeking—God will reject them, too. When the psalmists (and others throughout the Bible) speak of God loving someone, they mean that God has chosen to favor and accept them. When those same psalmists (and others throughout the Bible) speak of God hating someone, they mean that God has chosen to reject them (partially now, and completely later).

Further—and this is really where we get to the point of this article—we must say that the way God has hated and continues to hate, is not by outright rejection just because someone has rejected him. The cross and resurrection stand in direct opposition against this sort of thinking.

God has been and continues to be rejected again, and again, and again, by countless people who have lived, are living now, and will live later, but that did not stop God from doing something for them. He made a way for them to come back, in the midst of their rejection, to experience life in him. He has removed any barrier to them coming home—the road closed signs have been removed, and the directions are clear.

For all those who at one point rejected God—which was all of us at one point or another—he has said, “Look at how much I love you by what I have done for you. I have put away your sin. I have offered life to you. Won’t you take it? Don’t you want to live? I have life in me, and I’m gladly offering it to you. And lest you think that because of your abounding sin you cannot come home, I’m telling you that as your sin has increased and may even increase later, my grace will not just match your sin, but far exceed it. You cannot out-sin my love for you.”

This is how God hates.

He is clear that he will not wink an eye at, or tolerate sin. Sin cannot come near him, because he will not allow it. His righteousness precludes that from happening. He will not welcome wickedness, but he will welcome the wicked. He will welcome you and I in the midst of our sin. He will welcome us if we want to come home. He has just one requirement: our sin cannot come with us.

So, if you and I are going to hate, we ought to hate like God. We do not need to welcome wickedness, and we do not need to welcome those who choose to live their lives in wickedness. We, however, do need to make sure those who choose to live their lives in wickedness know that there is a way home, and that the door has not been closed to them. It’s also a good idea for us to remember that, in all our rejection of wickedness, we are not God. He is the only one who is righteous to his core. We have lived in sin. We have loved sin. We have had to come back home. God has always been home. This is, of course, good for us because it allows us to invite people home in humility. We’ve had to come home, too, so we can show them the way.

What Do You Want From a Bible Translation?

I think, for most of us, the answer is obvious: we want an understandable translation that is faithful to the original textual witnesses.

A Bible translation is not helpful or useful if it can’t be read and understood. Nor is a Bible translation helpful or useful if it veers away from what the original authors of Scripture actually wrote. We want something that can be understood when we read it, and something that doesn’t make us wonder where it came from.

It’s hard to overstate how good we’ve got it in the English speaking world when it comes to Bible translations. You can go to www.biblegateway.com right now and choose from around 60 different translations. Almost all of which fit what I’m assuming is our shared expectation for a translation. This cannot be said for any other language in the world. The wild thing is that with these amazing options at our hands, we can become picky, start to worry, and sometimes become paralyzed from just making a decision and reading.

Peter Gurry, of the Text & Canon Institute, wrote a helpful article on where this pickiness, worry, and paralyzing feeling comes from. It’s worth looking into and considering for yourself because, if you’re anything like me, you’ve thought once or twice about the translation you read and whether or not there’s a better one out there. You might have even had someone point out something in your translation or in another that’s caused you to wonder if you’d be better served by reading a different one.

This was one of the reasons why I took several years to study Greek and Hebrew. I found myself wondering again, and again, if the translation or translations I was reading were the best. What I learned in my limited time in Greek and Hebrew was that it was the wrong question from the start. And you and I both know, if we start by asking the wrong question, we’re bound to come up with a wrong answer.

Instead of trying to find the “best” translation, I slowly started to believe that I was far better off just picking one, or two, or three, and appreciating each of them for what they each do well, while being gracious to them for those places where they bothered me. It’s honestly hard to find an overtly bad translation—they’re out there, to be sure, but you have to look for them. Whether you’re reading the ESV, NIV, NLT, KJV, NKJV, NASB, NRSV, CSB, LEB, NET, etc., you’re more than likely going to find a translation that is understandable and faithful to what was originally written. What you’ll also find, though, are the differences between even really good translations.

We know that the ESV is not like the NIV. And the NIV is not like the KJV. And the KJV is not like the NLT. The differences are obvious. The question for us, though, when it comes to what we want from a translation, is: What differences actually make a difference? It might be helpful for us to look at just two passages for an example of what I’m talking about.

In Luke 7, we have a story about a woman “who lived a sinful life” crying over the feet of Jesus and wiping his tear soaked feet with her hair. Jesus, makes a comment on this situation to those around him, saying, “…I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little…Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Lk 7:48, 50, NIV) Remember that bolded portion of the verse.

Later in Luke 8, we have a story about a sick woman coming to Jesus in a crowd of people being able to just touch the edge of his cloak. Jesus knew that something had happened after the woman touched him— “…I know that power has gone out from me.” (Lk 8:46b, NIV)—and the woman’s sickness ceased. Jesus, commenting on the situation, said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” (Lk 8:48b, NIV) Again, the bolded portion is what we’ll be looking at closely.

In these two passages there are stories of a person’s faith doing something for them. In the first story from Luke 7, the woman’s faith saved her, while in the story from Luke 8, the woman’s faith healed her. No big deal, right? Right. That is, until you consider the underlying Greek text from these two passages.

In Luke 7:50, the Greek word underlying the English translation—has saved you—is σέσωκέν (sesoken). In Luke 8:48, the Greek word underlying the English translation—has healed you—is σέσωκέν (sesoken). You didn’t just misread anything. It’s the same Greek word, but with two different English translations. Now, depending on your preference for an English translation, you either like what is happening here or it bothers you (even if you aren’t quite sure what’s going on).

The two Greek words from Luke 7:50 and 8:48 are both built on the word, σῴζω (sozo). Now, sozo generally means to save, and that’s how it’s often translated. But, there are more than a few times in the New Testament where translating sozo as to save might not quite get the actual meaning across. Of all the Bible translations I regularly use, I’m only able to find a couple that translate both Luke 7:50 and 8:48 the same way with has saved you, because context determines translation, and translations determines interpretation.

We’ve already seen that the contexts for Luke 7:50 and 8:48 although similar (both stories have a woman coming to Jesus and Jesus saying something about their faith) are not the same. In the first, the context is about forgiveness of sins, while the second is about the healing of a sickness. Because of the different contexts most translators have made the decision to translate the first use of sozo as has saved you and the second as some version of has healed you.

There are folks out there who advocate for translating both passages with the same has saved you translation, which then allows the reader to make the interpretive decision that these two has saved you statements aren’t really talking about the same thing even though the same words are being used. This reasoning makes sense to me. Some would rather have their translation keep those types of linguistic connections more visible on the page.

There are other folks out there who advocate for translating the passages differently with has saved you and has healed you, which makes it clear to the reader that the contexts, although similar, are quite different and should be interpreted differently. This reasoning makes sense to me, as well. Some would rather have their translation reflect the interpretive choices based on the contextual situations of each story on the page.

So coming back to our earlier question—What differences actually make a difference?—and the overall question—What do we want from a Bible translation?—I think we can give some answers.

To the first question about the differences, we can for sure say that differences abound in different translations; however, what I think we’ll find again, and again, as we actually read different solid translations, is that the majority of those differences really don’t make a difference to you and I being able to understand what we’re reading and trusting that the text isn’t being messed with. In short, if you’re anxious about translations, you can relax. The good ones are there if you want them.

To the second question about what we want from Bible translations, we can rejoice that our expectations are being met. And they’re not just being met once or twice, they’re being met over, and over, and over again by faithful translators all over the English speaking world who want nothing more than folks like you and I to be able to read the Bible for ourselves to know the God who is revealed in the pages of the Bible as the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

God has done an amazing thing with the gift of these translations, and the shame would be if we were too busy driving ourselves crazy with the options out there that we never received and enjoyed the gifts God has given. So, enjoy them by understanding and trusting whatever translation you pick up and read.

Jesus Was (And Is) a Real Human Being

Theological disputes are not something unique to our time, or even the time of our ancient relatives.

Reaching all the way back to the first century we can find disagreements about important theological matters. Jesus had his arguments with the Pharisees and Sadducees, not to mention those with the religious leaders of his day. Paul had to deal with controversies with church members as they were still learning what it meant to live in this new kingdom with its new covenant. And John felt pushback from those who insisted that although Jesus may have been God (there were definitely some who thought he wasn’t), he surely wasn’t a human being.

And so, one of the main motivations for John writing what we call “1 John” was to remind those early believers of what had been true and what they had been taught since the beginning. Namely, that this Jesus—whom they rightly worshipped as their Lord and God—was a real human being.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.” (1 Jn 1:1-4, NIV)

John hits all the markers here for an accurate eyewitness account. That…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. Seeing, hearing, and touching.

In other words, John was reminding those early believers that people had really come into contact with the human being called Jesus—John himself being one of those early eyewitnesses! Their experiences were not dreams, nor were they delusions. They, instead, were real encounters where they saw him heal another person, they saw him walking down the road, they listened to him teach to the masses, and have private conversations with individuals. And not only that, but they placed their hands on him. They even had times where they placed their hands on him.

To be sure, people of John’s day believed in ghosts. Not so different from us, today. Jesus, though, was no ghost, or phantom, or apparition. In fact, on more than one occasion Jesus’s disciples thought he was a ghost. During one of those times they were in a boat in dangerously choppy water, and they saw someone coming at them, walking on the water. Their first inclination was that this someone was a ghost, and they were naturally terrified. It wasn’t until he spoke to them that they realized this someone was no ghost, but Jesus in the flesh. (Mt 14:16-26)

We cannot separate out or compartmentalize Jesus deity from his humanity. Jesus was not and is not some part God and some part human. He was and is one individual. And this one individual was and is God and man.

John wanted his readers then and us today to remember that. The world’s views will no doubt change over time—as they already have. We’re called to hold on to what was witnessed and taught from the beginning. And what was taught was that Jesus was a real human being.

Live for Your Reward

Just before talking about the common practices of giving, praying, and fasting, Jesus gives his hearers this warning: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Mt 6:1, NIV).

There are at least two things to make note of with that statement.

The first: Jesus understands the practices of giving to those in need, praying to God, and fasting to be our righteousness. Our right way of living is bound up with things like giving, praying, and fasting. As we give, pray, and fast we are living as one who is living in a right relationship with God and those around us. This is good, but Jesus warns his hearers that they ought not do those things in order to be seen by others.

This is the inherent danger of the Christian life. We’re expected to give, pray, and fast, and we’re expected to do so in a world full of people. So we must be on our guard when we are giving, praying, and fasting in public that we’re not doing so in order to get a reaction from others. If that’s what we want, that’s what we’ll get.

The second: Jesus says that if we are giving, praying, and fasting in order that those around us take notice of us, we will have no reward from our Father in heaven. The implication in that statement is clear. There is a reward to be had from us living in a right relationship between us and God and us and the world, but that reward can only come from God or those around us. It’s not a both-and.

If we’re seeking a reward from those around us based on the way we pray, we’ll get it, and that’s all we’ll get. We’ll forfeit the greater reward from God. The reward of our lives having a direct impact on how God is known to those around us.

When we give, pray, and fast, we ought to be doing so to get the reward that only comes from God. This is not selfish. This is humility. This type of righteousness is one that lays itself down, makes itself small in order for God to be made big. In this way of life we can have a hand in God being magnified throughout the world; in his kingdom extending throughout the earth.

This is, of course, what Jesus talked about earlier in Matthew 5 when he said, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:14-16, NIV).

Let your light shine through as you live out your righteousness by giving, praying, and fasting, in such a way that as your light shines it does not draw anyone to you, but points them to God. Live as though you’re not the main character in your life, because you’re not. You’re a supporting character that is on the stage for a while and then gone. This is not the same thing as saying you are unimportant. You were made in the image of God—to show him to the world. And you have a reward offered to you through that way of living.

Live for your reward.