In our first lesson, we introduced our study of the person of Jesus Christ by establishing a three-fold framework:
The Question: Who is Jesus?
The Source for our Answer: The whole Bible
The Answer: Jesus is our Lord and Messiah, God the Son Incarnate.
Our first lesson focused on the first step: introducing the question. Lessons 2 and 3 will focus on the second step: How the whole Bible guides us as we answer the question.
Do you remember learning about our [lack of] freedom to define Jesus in Lesson 1?
We argued that we are not free to define Jesus. Rather, through the prophets of the OT and the apostles of the NT, Jesus makes himself known. The whole Bible speaks about Jesus and reveals his exclusive identity and unique work as God the Son Incarnate.¹ In the whole Bible, the Father speaks through the Son by the Spirit. The whole Bible reveals Jesus.
But there is a problem here. We claim that the Bible reveals Jesus to be both Lord and Messiah, God the Son Incarnate, the only name that can save. But how do we know that we are hearing the Bible rightly? How do we know that our answer is the right answer?
What is your answer: How do we know that we are reading the Bible rightly when we conclude that Jesus is God the Son Incarnate?
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Why does it matter if we are reading the Bible rightly? Can't we all just agree to disagree?
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The Problem: What is the right way to read the Bible?
From the Arians of the 3rd and 4th centuries to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of today, there are those who have claimed that the Bible does not teach that Jesus is God the Son Incarnate. There are those who have argued that the Bible reveals a different Jesus, a Jesus who merely seemed to be human or a Jesus who was not really God.
This is not a new problem. The Pharisees of Jesus’s day probably knew the words of the OT better than any of us. And yet, based on their reading of Moses, they rejected Jesus and his self-proclaimed, Spirit-confirmed witness as Israel’s Lord and Messiah. Indeed, they did not merely reject him. John 5:18 tells us “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
How did Jesus respond? He argued that the Pharisees did not understand nor want to understand the Scriptures they so diligently studied.
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
41 “I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
—John 5:39-47 NIV
Why does Jesus talk about Moses? What does his answer teach us about how we should read the Bible?
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According to Jesus, it is possible to give yourself to this book and yet misunderstand it. It is possible to read this book and yet to read it wrongly. Just as we are not free to define Jesus, we are not free to decide how to read the Bible. The Bible itself demands that we read it how God, the divine Author, intended us to read it.
When we read the Bible as the Author intended us to read it, with eyes opened and hearts made new by the Spirit, we will see Jesus’s glory as God the Son Incarnate and believe in him. As John tells us at the end of his Gospel: “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 20:31).
Take a moment to write a prayer asking God to help us read the Bible as he wants us to read it.
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In this lesson and the next one, we will argue that the Bible itself tells us how we should read it. And we will find that when we read the Bible as the Author intended, we inevitably conclude that Jesus is Lord and Messiah, God the Son Incarnate.² Furthermore, if we read the Bible as it demands to be read, we will conclude that Jesus is fully God and fully man—the topics of focus in lessons 4 and 5.
But in this lesson, we begin by telling the four-part story of Scripture.