The Bible is about people – people who display for us how God wants us to relate to Him.
The Hebrew writer teaches that the Scriptures give us a great “cloud of witnesses” who serve as examples to us today. The Bible is full of stories about men and women like Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Joseph, Rahab, Gideon, David, Elijah, Naaman and many others who set examples of righteousness for us to follow.
Of course they had their flaws, but this just proves they were human like we are. We should be diligent to take on their godly traits and strive to please God the same way they did. We can even learn from their mistakes!
Be courageous like Moses! Be willing to sacrifice anything for God – even your son – like Abraham! Be patient through trials like Joseph! Be obedient like Naaman! Be honest or trouble will follow you like it did Jacob! Don’t get caught up in our sinful culture like Lot did! There are many others.
Learn from these great biblical examples, for only those who live pure lives can hope to live eternally with Heaven as their reward!
Do the statements above sound good to you? Do they make sense to you? What would you think if it was suggested these statements are wrong or at least are not completely correct? If such a statement would bother you, then please consider these questions:
Why do we have the stories in the Bible?
What are we meant to learn from stories in the Bible?
Who is the Bible about?
Let’s examine this together.
First of all, there is some truth in the statements made above. We are meant to learn from the the stories in the Bible. We should strive to please God. Courage, sacrifice, patience, honesty and obedience are traits we should desire for our own lives. The Bible characters can and do reveal these truths to us. So what’s the problem?
To put it simply, the Bible was not written to leave behind a sort of “Aesop’s Fables” from God. That would be what some theologians have termed moralism. Think about it – even pagan (not meant pejoratively) cultures like the Greeks, the Chinese and others have collections of stories encouraging the same ethical behavior and virtues as do the Bible stories – honesty, wisdom, patience, fair dealing, contentment and the like.
This should encourage the question, “Then what makes the Bible different?” That is a good question indeed.
The first answer might be: Well, the Bible is from God, and Aesop’s fables and the sayings of Confucius are from men. Fair enough, but the Muslims teach most of the same ethics as do the Christians. So do the Hindus and Buddhists. All major religions and most secular philosophers agree that honesty, fairness, etc. are virtues humans should strive to possess. So the answer, “The Bible is from God” (albeit true) doesn’t quite get it. Let’s narrow this down some more.
What is the real difference between Christianity and other world religions? Here’s a little hint…it’s in the name. It’s Christ. Jesus Christ is the difference. So how does this relate to our original set of questions above? What does Jesus have to do with the stories in the Old Testament? Now we’re getting to the important question. Here’s the answer…everything.
The Bible is not a book about people. Sure, it has people in it – real people, but the Bible is really a book about just one person – Jesus Christ. It’s the gospel, which means good news. The “good news” is not that God has established a set of moral principles so we can attempt to live up to them. That would be bad news. The good news is that Jesus has met the requirements of righteousness for us.
The Bible is not just another book of examples to follow and stories with morals to them; it’s a book of stories and examples which demonstrate how Jesus eliminated the need for seeking justification by such moralism.
The key here is the word justification. Jesus did not eliminate the need for good, moral living. He eliminated the need for justification on the basis of our own good, moral living. Justification comes by faith with godly living as its result, and faith that does not result in that kind of change in behavior is not a saving faith.
Some teach the idea of “imputed righteouseness” – that Jesus met all the requirements of the law and became sin (our inability to live up to God’s law) for us so we could exchange our sin for His righteousness.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor. 5:21
While the pure idea of “imputed righteousness” is debated, we must admit that our own righteous deeds weren’t and aren’t good enough to stand alone as our justification before God. It they were, there would have been no need for Christ to live sinlessly and die sacrificially. Standing before God, we will not be able to point to our own spotless record, but only to the spotless of record of Christ, by whose blood we are cleansed. It’s like the old hymn The Solid Rock we often sing:
When He shall come with trumpet sound O may I then in Him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne
You might be thinking, “Okay, okay. I see your point, but why all of is this so significant? How does any of this really impact my reading of the Old Testament and other Bible stories?”
In the next post, Roadsigns, we’ll give a brief glimpse into how the Bible can be read without reducing it to mere moral exhortation and with an eye on the good news of Jesus Christ. Some would call this “Biblical Theology” or “Christocentric”. We’ll follow that up with a more detailed set of articles exploring the Bible from a Christocentric (Christ-centered) perspective.
