The Bible: Living In The Word

The Bible: Living In The Word

(John 8:31-32)

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If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard lots of sermons about how important it is to read the Bible. So I don’t want today’s lesson to be just another rehash of things you’ve already heard over and over before.

Instead, I’d like to focus today on some things about studying the Bible that I don’t hear pastors teach very often, if at all. These are things that God has clearly put in His Word for us to know. However, these are also things that are easy to read over and miss if we don’t take the time to look at them carefully.

The Bible has a lot to say about itself, and I can’t think of a better place to start than to look at what Jesus Himself had to say on this subject. In John Chapter 8, Verses 31-32, we read,

John 8:31-32

31 Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you abide in My word, {then} you are truly disciples of Mine;

32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (NAS)

The first thing I notice in Verse 31 is that Jesus was talking to "those Jews who had believed Him". That’s important because Jesus was about to say something that is only for believers. Jesus is not going to say something to everyone, only to persons who are saved, only to born-again believers.

This is because Jesus is about to speak about the Bible, and Bible study is not for everybody. God’s Word can only be spiritually understood by believers. We are told this in:

1 Cor. 2:14: But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. (NAS)

This verse tells us that a "natural" or unsaved man can’t understand spiritual things. Unbelievers are spiritually dead. Every human being is born that way, and doesn’t have a living spirit inside of them until they are saved by believing in Jesus Christ. That’s why the salvation experience is called being "born again". The dead spirit within a person is made alive by the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. This is what the term "regeneration" means. So only a spiritual person can fully understand spiritual things, and only born-again believers are spiritual.

To an unbeliever, the Bible is just like any other book. They can study it academically, but they don’t fully understand the spiritual meanings to it like we do as Christians. That’s why we shouldn’t argue about the Bible with unsaved persons. We need to stay with the message of the gospel, about how Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. This will be understood by unbelievers because the Holy Spirit will make the gospel message clear to them.

But all of that is not the most precious part of what 1 Cor. 2:14 is teaching us as believers. Again, we are told in that verse that things in God’s Word are spiritually understood. What this means is that learning the Bible is not a matter of human intelligence. And that is the first point I want to make today from these verses.

While on the one hand, 1 Cor. 2:14 tells us that unbelievers can’t understand the spiritual aspects of God’s Word, on the other hand, this also means that all believers have the same ability and chance to learn it and grow spiritually.

Learning the Bible is a spiritual process. God the Holy Spirit takes the Bible, and makes it understandable to our own human spirits. This means that anyone can learn it, because human ability has nothing to do with it. A believer with a high IQ has no advantage over a Christian with a lower one. A pastor, evangelist, or seminary student has no advantage over any other believer.

God makes learning the Bible a spiritual process for many reasons. One reason is because He is perfectly fair, so He gives all Christians the same ability to learn His Word. Another reason is that it is God who gives us a living spirit at salvation, and God who teaches the Bible to that same spirit. Therefore, God gets all of the glory when we understand and learn the Bible because He makes the entire process work.

So in summary, 1 Cor. 2:14 teaches us that learning the Word of God is a spiritual process, and has nothing to do with human abilities. This means that all Christians have the same chance to grow in wisdom spiritually. It’s simply a matter of our free will. We can choose to live in the Word on a regular basis and do things through God’s power, or instead, we can choose to live in the world and do things in our own power.