Scriptures or Word

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)

I find the basic truth in this set of verses challenging to some of the assumptions that I was trained to believe. There are many yet today who still put great emphasis on knowing the Scriptures, on memorizing them, on learning strings of proof texts to win arguments while at the same time minimizing the role of the Holy Spirit's leading from within.

I understand why they say these things. They are reacting to the excuses that many give for rejecting truths of God's Word by saying that God told them not to read some book or not to believe certain doctrines. Such simplistic thinking – believing that feelings or prejudices are somehow the leading of the Spirit and should take precedence over submitting to the authority of the Word of God – that sort of religion is a counterfeit of the true leading of the Spirit which will never be out of harmony with the Word of God that is inspired by the same Author. Sensational religion is certainly one of the most effective schemes of the enemy to deceive millions of souls and to keep them in blindness about the truths of God necessary for salvation.

But I have also observed another equally dangerous trend over the years that is just as blinded in the opposite direction. It is an attitude that anything that can be seen as a counterfeit must be so wrong that only the extreme opposite can be trusted to be truth. This too is a very common method of arriving at belief but can be a very blinding error that is all too common among religious people. I have had to deal with the results of this thinking in my own life for many years because of being raised to discredit or marginalize things like grace, love, and joy simply because they were emphasized or misinterpreted by others who were refusing to accept our biblical truths.

Those who pride themselves in being experts in biblical knowledge and assure themselves that they know all the truth and that truth is going to save them, are in grave danger of missing the most important aspect of the ministry of Jesus to our hearts. They are caught in the same self-deception that gripped the lives of these Jews long ago and still keeps Jews today very resistant to embracing Jesus as the true Messiah. But the Jews do not have a corner on self-deception and unbelief; that is just as prevalent among Christians as it is with everyone else. All of us have blind spots in our lives and were it not for the covering grace of God none of us would ever be prepared to exist in the presence of a Holy God.

Jesus speaks here of the Word abiding within a person. He says this to the world's premier experts on the Scriptures but who did not really have the Word in them like they were sure they did. They were certain that knowing the Word of God sufficiently was what they needed in order to gain eternal life. Evidently they wanted eternal life or they would not have spent so much effort immersing themselves in the Word. They felt they knew the Scriptures forwards and backwards and thus were prepared to defend it and explain it and have greater understandings of truth than anyone around them. But Jesus says that without something called 'abiding', which is much different than intellectual absorption, that no amount of biblical expertise will prove beneficial when it comes to salvation.

This description sounds strikingly familiar. I was raised to give high priority to the Scriptures very much like these Jews did. Note that I am not saying the opposite should be the case. Having a thorough knowledge of Scriptures is very valuable and important and ignoring them can definitely cost one their eternal life. But it is not enough to just be an expert in the Word of God in order for it to have the saving effect on our lives and our future. Knowing all the proof texts, being able to read the original languages and properly interpret them into modern language has little effect on the condition of the heart. In fact, being an expert on the Word can potentially have the opposite effect on the heart as it was designed to have if it is not accompanied with a right-brain, experiential relationship involving our emotions and affections becoming deeply entwined with the heart of our Savior.

I believe that many will be saved in heaven who have had no knowledge or exposure to the Word of God in the Scriptures whatsoever. God does not make availability to the Bible a prerequisite to salvation no matter how valuable that is. Many will be saved who only followed to the best of their ability the promptings of the Holy Spirit in their hearts but were never given opportunities to know many of the things that we take for granted from the Word of God.

But if we have been granted opportunities to learn truth directly from the Scriptures and turn away from that duty due to laziness or discomfort that it might expose things we don't want to know about in our lives, then we become liable to suffer the consequences of such deliberate failure to get into the Scriptures. But getting into the Scriptures and learning lots of facts and doctrines and logic is still a danger in itself when the heart is not at the same time engaged in a serious encounter of knowing Jesus personally – which is the whole purpose of the Scriptures to start with.

Jesus states unequivocally here that a knowledge of the Scriptures without a heart connection to Him is a serious problem that can cost us our life, both here and for eternity. A knowledge of the Word without personally knowing the embodiment of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ can prove to be just as fatal as a rejection of the Scriptures in favor of following our feelings. There are many who have fallen into the trap of a left-brain-based religion and who believe that anything outside of that sterile religion of biblical knowledge is somehow wrong and even dangerous. They are keen to come up with formulas from their study that they insist must be followed if one is to be saved. The put great emphasis on believing in certain favorite doctrines and sticking to only facts while avoiding anything emotional or contemplative or heart-related. Unknowingly they are advocating that people should steel their hearts against impressions from the Spirit of God in favor of staunchly defending the truth intellectually.

These people – and they are everywhere and in every religion quite likely – strongly advocate an intellectual religion devoid of emotion and based strictly on facts. They sternly warn everyone of the dangers of meditation and of certain forms of prayer because they are certain that such things are sure to lead one into hopeless deception. I do not deny that there are many subtle forms of deceptions circulating in this world designed to draw people away from the plain teachings of the Scriptures. However, a counterfeit is only as effective as it mimics something that is true. So instead of trying to get as far opposite as we can from a counterfeit as many propose we should, I would suggest that we might try to discover just what the counterfeit is trying to mimic and find that the genuine may be much closer in appearance to the counterfeit than we would prefer.

I will fully agree that the facts and doctrines we believe must always be tested against the Scriptures above any emotional preferences that we may have. But to run away completely from emotions and not allow our hearts to thrive and connect in ways they were designed to do and respond to the affections of Jesus for us is even more dangerous in my opinion. For the deceptions hidden under the cloak of a formula-based religion can be even more subtle than a religion based more on emotions that avoid a careful study of the Scriptures. All doctrine must be submitted to them as the authoritative expression of the truths about God. But we need much more than just doctrine in order to experience real life.

I spent years in a style of religion where it was assumed that having God's word abiding in you meant memorizing great quantities of Bible verses. We were quoted texts about hiding God's Word in our heart as reasons for making memorization of Scriptures mandatory for passing certain subjects in school. I am not against memorization of Scriptures in any way. That is a wonderful advantage for anyone and I certainly have been greatly blessed because of my own solid foundation growing up with much exposure to the Word of God.

However, having said that I will have to confess that my relationship with Jesus was anything but healthy for much of my life. Most of my early years were spent in suppressed terror of God and were anything but pleasant, much less producing fond memories for me. Many today are still promoting that same attitude by steering people away from having a heart-felt emotional connection with Jesus while insisting that we must stick to the facts of the Bible as our only safe means of salvation. But this flies directly in the face of these words of Jesus that I am seeing here today.

Another subtle twist of truth I have seen over the years is the notion that learning factual truths about doctrines and knowing the right religious formulas or answers is somehow equivalent to knowing Jesus. The two ideas are very often interchanged without any distinction that they can be very different things but closely linked together. I have noticed that often when people say they brought someone to know Jesus that what they really meant was that someone was convinced to believe a particular set of doctrines and became members of a certain church. Knowing Jesus and joining a church may be radically different things, but the difference between the two is often extremely blurred and obscured.

These Jews that Jesus was speaking to actually had all the right doctrines as far as we can tell. They had the right Scriptures and knew it better than nearly anyone else on earth. They kept the right day of worship and they were following the instructions God had given to His people concerning the right forms of worship. They believed the right doctrines and enforced them rigorously on those around them. Yet when the living, breathing Embodiment of those same Scriptures showed up in person and began living out the reality described in the same Bible they claimed to believe in, they found themselves in constant conflict with Him as to the real meaning of the very same Scriptures He used.

When I hear someone discounting the idea of being led by the Spirit in favor of living in a factual-based form of religion I become very alarmed. I realize they are reacting to other false exhibitions of religion based on emotionalism instead of accountability to the authority of the Word of God. But I also know that this path of logic can lead one back into a trap of legalism while at the same time denying that it is doing so. There are ditches on both sides of the road, but interestingly I sometimes discover that the answer is not to find the happy medium between the two assuming that this is where truth must be found. That may not be truth but may simply be a debilitating compromise.

The truth as it is in Jesus may well be a completely different road altogether than what religion usually portrays from the perspective of one ditch or the other. Real truth, as I have been learning it over the past few years, must be solidly based on a heart encounter with a real person in the form of the real Jesus sent to reveal the real truth about our Father in heaven. Having a heart relationship that is growing, thriving and accountable will always involve allowing the Scriptures to be the objective source of error-checking in our lives. But it will not be a factual, sterile, doctrinal experience but will be one engaging the emotions and affections while still remaining in harmony with true doctrines.

Eternal life can only be experienced from inside the Son of God. The Word is more a person than it is a series of words on paper, though it is partially revealed in that form. I must be willing to allow God to lead me by His Spirit that may appear to be quite unpredictable at times the way Jesus told Nicodemus it would be in John 3. But that leading of the Spirit will never take us away from the Scriptures but will enlighten us as to the much deeper significance of the real meaning of those Scriptures.

The attractions of a counterfeit, as compelling as they might be, only indicate that the far greater glory of the genuine is something to move toward, not away from. We must be careful of deceptions on both sides of these issues, but we can catch clues from what attracts us to either deception as to the nature of what we may find when we encounter the real truth as it is in Jesus. Let us never settle for lesser light and glory when God is calling us far beyond those cheap imitations to a relationship of the heart built on a secure identity received in close fellowship with Jesus through His Spirit.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (Romans 8:14)

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. (John 15:7-8)