Good Morning.
I want to share a few thoughts with you from my reading this
week. They come from the book “The Blue
Parakeet,” by Scot McKnight.
“… [Augustine] made the bold claim that if the Bible leads
the reader to be more loving, then the Bible has accomplished its mission.”
“Augustine knew the Bible’s main mission: so that we can
become people who love God and love others.”
“Any method of Bible study that does not lead to
transformation abandons the missional path of God and leaves us stranded. So what is God’s missional focus in giving us
the story of the Bible? In one
expression, it is to give us facts so that we will move those facts into
relationship, character, and action.”
“…[Scripture] tells us that God gave the Bible a
mission: God speaks to us so we will be
the kind of people he wants and will live the way he wants us to live.”
Here, McKnight refers his readers to 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and
Psalm 119, although there are many, many other verses that express why we have
been given Scripture. He points to the
great “so that” in 2 Timothy and the great joy rooted in love expressed in
Psalm 119.
McKnight concludes that from reading Scripture we cannot
avoid the mandate to love and support one another in real and visible ways. “If you are doing good works [cf. 2 Timothy 3:14-17],
you are reading the Bible aright. If you
are not doing good works, you are not reading the Bible aright.”
This isn’t an argument about faith versus works. It’s an affirmation drawn consistently from
Scripture that faith in God means loving God and loving God means showing that
love through righteous action to all the world.
What do you think?
Pastor Jim
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