Discipleship Letters 85-86

Discipleship Letter 85                                    May 02^nd, 2010

Thomas Paine said, “The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed” [Quoted from Kristin Swenson, Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked-about Book of all Time (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 1.].

Reading the Bible is a spiritual act; examining the Bible is a spiritual labor. It is not necessary that we receive what we labor. But we can be sure that we receive nothing when there is no labor. Paul said, “A man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7).

In Acts 17:11, Luke said that the Bereans were of more noble character than the believers in Thessalonica because “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” They did not merely receive Paul’s message of the gospel. They examined it to see if what Paul taught was true. It showed the seriousness of the believers in Berea.

To examine is to scrutinize; to scrutinize is to slow down and to listen to the text. To listen to the text is to be led by the authors of the text or the Author of the text. Our fast-pace culture compels us to skim through the text to grasp more. Examining the text is an anti-cultural act. It aims at less; however, less is more.

The angel said to John the apostle, “Take it [the scroll] and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey” (Rev. 10:9). Only when we examine the text, we taste the different flavors of the text.

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Discipleship Letter 86                                    May 09^th, 2010

“If there were no sin, we would be both pulled forward into loving communion with God by the coming grace of the new creation…and pushed forward into this communion by the collective weight, habits, and influence of a human history filled with loving relation to God. Since sin has entered the picture, we are pulled forward by God, but our own human history is a mixed bag. It does not unequivocally propel us toward divine communion, but rather it places us in temptation and instills in us a propensity to sin” [Shannon Craigo-Snell and Shawnthea Monroe, Living Christianity: A Pastoral Theology for Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), pp. 81-82.].

We are a mixed bag. The church is a mixed church. We are a mixed congregation. Israel is a mixed people. David is a mixed person. We are mixed with mixed motives. Christian life is a mixture of guilt and grace in which God journeys with us. He journeys with us first, we then journey with God. “We are pulled forward by God.” We don’t move forward by human effort, which always proves us wrong. We are pulled forward by his grace through which we find acceptance and forgiveness in spite of our mixture. Sin sometimes pulls us backward; however, his grace always pushes us forward.