The Center of the Bible

Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"

They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"

"What things?" he asked.

"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."

He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, "It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread (Luke 24:13-35).

Have you ever gotten to the end of a book and gone, "huh?" It might have been a novel or it could have been a textbook, but when you were reading it, it just didn’t make sense. You had no idea what the author was trying to accomplish. When you put that book down for the last time, it was nothing more to you than a bunch of words printed between two covers. It meant nothing to you.

It is a sad fact that many people in our world have this same opinion of the Bible. They may have read some of it, but what they read made no sense to them. They don’t understand what the Author was trying to accomplish through His writing. To them, the Bible is nothing but a bunch of words between two covers. To them, the words of the Bible mean nothing.

Yet to the Christian, the Bible is something completely different. To the Christian, the Bible makes perfect sense. The Christian knows exactly what God was trying to accomplish through the pens of His inspired writers. When a Christian temporarily lays down his Bible, he lays down a message that makes his heart burn within him, just as the hearts of the Emmaus disciples burned with passion.

What is the difference? Why do some people read the Bible and put it down, never to pick it up again, while others read and re-read the Bible throughout their lives? Why does the Bible seem like nonsense to some people, while it makes perfect sense to others?

What does the unbeliever find within the pages of the Bible? Chiefly, he finds one of two things. Some unbelievers look at the books of the Bible as propaganda. Such a person reads the Old Testament as a Jewish version of world history. But when this type of person reads about the miracles of God, he doesn’t suppose that these miracles really happened; the unbeliever knows that miracles are impossible. So this reader concludes that the Jewish writers of the Old Testament ‘made up’ the miracles to prove that they were God’s chosen people. By claiming that God has proved His love for the Jewish nation by a series of miracles, the Jews have created a history that gives them moral superiority among the nations. The New Testament is interpreted in the same way. The miracles of Jesus and the Apostles are of course impossible, but they were written into the Bible to prove that God supports Christians over Jews and Islamics. The New Testament was written to show that Christians have moral superiority over all other religions.

More commonly, the unbeliever who reads the Bible finds within it rules for moral conduct. To such a reader, the Bible is a guidebook to living with others--how to organize society for the good of all. Jesus’ teachings are especially noteworthy, since He introduces the idea that love can preserve relationships and society where strict laws and punishment cannot. This kind of reader believes that Jesus’ greatness comes from the fact that He re-wrote the Old Testament laws of conduct into a more humane teaching of love and acceptance. Jesus replaced old, out-of-date ways with a new approach towards living.

But what result comes from reading the Bible in these ways? If one sees the Bible as propaganda then it is worth nothing, because propaganda deliberately distorts the truth in someone’s favor. If one sees the Bible as a series of moral guidelines for living life, it is at best dated. If Jesus rewrote the rules of moral conduct because the older rules of Moses were obsolete, are not Jesus’ own teachings of 2,000 years ago now in need of updating? Times change, don’t they? If you were to read a book on dating manners from the 1950s, you could not expect to follow those rules when dating today, could you? If the Bible was written by men who were brought up in a different culture on the opposite side of the world two millennia ago, how can we hope to make sense of what they were trying to say? And so the Bible is laid down, a book of words without meaning or relevance.

But what does the believer find in the Bible? True, we find some history, as God shows us how His love for mankind has changed lives. We also find guidelines for making moral choices, choices in life that are pleasing to God. But we find one thing in the Bible that unbelievers do not find, even though they are looking right at it: we find the Savior, the Son of God dressed in human form.

Of course, even an unbeliever can see that Jesus is in the Bible. But without looking through the eyeglasses of faith, the unbeliever doesn’t see Jesus clearly. First of all, the unbeliever cannot see Jesus in His fullness, as we can. The unbeliever only sees a man who claimed to come from God, taught some good things about love, and was unfairly put to death. With the eyeglasses of faith, we can see the rest: that Jesus really was the Son of God, even though He also had human characteristics. By faith, we can see clearly that His suffering on the cross to the brink of death was not a tragic mistake of history; Jesus suffered under the anger of God as our stand-in, our replacement. Jesus taught about love, yes—but He did more than teach love, He lived love. His love for us moved Him to willingly accept every bit of God’s punishment that had been earmarked for our sinful transgressions against God. We were all due God’s wrath, because all of us have angered God by ignoring His righteous ways. But because of Jesus’ humiliating and painful crucifixion, we are freed from the sentence of punishment. We are freed from the fear of being punished to the point of death, and continuing to be punished even after it in hell.

Reading the Bible through the eyeglasses of faith, we can make sense of what seems to be nonsense to the unbeliever—we can see the truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. This makes no sense to the unbeliever—the dead cannot possible be revived after three days of decay. But because of our faith, we know that God's saving love could not permit His Holy One to see decay, to remain the captive of death. We know that Jesus not only could be raised, but that He would be raised. Jesus demonstrated His power over death by raising Lazarus after he had been entombed for four days. Jesus, who always kept His promises, said that He would rise again on the third day. Jesus had said that He was returning to His Father in heaven. Certainly no one who died as a criminal hated by God could spend eternity in the Father’s presence; when Jesus died, He died not because He was a sinner but because He had completed the work of atoning for humanity's sins. But most importantly, Jesus had to rise because He is the resurrection and the life—no one comes to the Father except through Him. If Jesus remained dead, the way to the Father in heaven would be cut off from mankind forever. Jesus had to live so that as He lives after the grave, so may we. Our faith lets us see that the resurrection did happen, because it had to happen—just as God intended.

We have this confidence because our glasses of faith also let us see Jesus everywhere in the Bible. The unbelievers only see Him in the New Testament, but we can see Jesus in the Old Testament too. We see Him in the creation of the world, because Scripture says of Him, "He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made" (John 1:2-3). Scripture teaches us that if sinful man looks upon God, it means death-- so it is the office of the Son of God to appear to us and speak for His Father. It is the Son of God that visits Abraham with the promise of a son. It is the Son of God who speaks to Moses from a burning bush, and leads the Israelites through the desert as a pillar of flame and a pillar of smoke. It is the Son of God who speaks to Elijah in the wilderness.

Jesus is at the center of the Old Testament. It is because Adam and Eve fell into sin in that a Savior is promised to them in Genesis chapter three. The Savior of the world is promised to Abraham as His greatest descendant. King David is promised that one of his descendants will rule God’s people forever. Isaiah spoke of the coming Deliverer as one who must endure suffering in order to bring about the release of God’s people from slavery to sin and death. The book of Psalms speaks of the Savior’s resurrection. The entire Old Testament is either about what God is doing for His people through His Son at that time, or what God will do for His people through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Jesus did not reinterpret the Old Testament, nor did He make it obsolete—Jesus completed the Old Testament, by bringing to full flower its’ every promise.

We can only see Christ in the Bible clearly through eyeglasses of faith. We don’t have the ability to make these glasses for ourselves—Jesus gives them to us. Jesus gives them to us when we read the Scriptures with an open mind, a mind that does not refuse to believe what God says of Himself. This is what happened to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus came to walk with them that first Easter afternoon, and He showed them how all the Scriptures spoke of Him and His saving work. As Jesus explained the Scriptures to them, their hearts burned with light and passion. The words of Scripture made sense! They were not merely words on paper; they were a message of hope that transformed their lives. And as Jesus sat down with them, He gave them faith—faith that allowed their eyes to see Him clearly, both in the Scriptures and right there in their lives. Jesus disappeared, then, but it was no longer necessary that He be visible to the mortal eye. Through the eyeglasses of faith, the disciples would never lose sight of Him again.

The Bible is about God revealing His love for us through Jesus. If the reader of the Bible cannot see Jesus in every book of the Bible, the Bible will make no sense. It is only through faith that we can see Jesus, a faith that He gives us as we read His words with open minds and hearts. As we read, willing to believe, Jesus builds faith in us-- and the more we read, the stronger our faith becomes and the clearer Jesus’ love shines in our eyes. That is why the Bible is not a book that we put down and leave; the Bible is a book that we may set aside as we do other things, but we come back to it again and again. The Bible is a book that makes more and more sense as we read and re-read it.

I encourage you to pick up a Bible and look for Jesus within its’ pages. If you can, use a Bible that has cross-references, and take the time to read those cross-references. The more you see Jesus in the Scriptures, the more of Himself He will reveal to you, and the more your heart will burn with the light of His love.