“All that is required is a firm resolve that the Bible should be allowed to speak for itself.”    ~Karl Barth,

The Bible is not a book of man’s thoughts about God and the actions of God, but rather God’s intimate thoughts and actions about and regarding man. It is the Word of God revealing God to his world. It isn’t merely a compilation of truth or a set of statements, but a complex act in which God has spoken, God is speaking, and God will speak. Through his Word, God encounters man by the incarnation of his Son, by the confirmation of that incarnation by the prophets and the apostles in the Scriptures, and by the continuing testimony of that act by the Christian community. That is God’s Word.

“The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God, but what he says to us; not how we find the way to him, but how he has sought and found the way to us; not the right relation in which we must place ourselves in him, but the covenant which he has made with all who are Abraham’s spiritual children and which he has sealed once for all in Jesus Christ. It is this which is within the Bible. The Word of God is within the Bible.”

And that Word is living and powerful. It impacts every person who hears it and it changes every person who believes it. It transforms people. It is a field of divine activity, an instrument of holy communication. It shapes us and molds us into the image of the Son. If only we’ll let it.

Peace,

Allan