By Jonathan Keller
Measure twice, cut once.
Last week, I had pondered the idea that God works humility in His people by human features of the biblical canon. Various genres and distances of language and time teach us to sit under the bewildering authority of Scripture. If the Bible were only a human artifact, it would stand as a really excellent book. This week, though, I will delve into how the divine aspects of the Bible also work humility in us. The God-touched parts of Scripture inform us about the precise nature of the virtue of humility espoused here.
If you know nothing about Scripture, you may have heard that it is the Word (capital W) of God. It is divinely inspired or divinely authored (2 Tim. 3:16). Shortly, this does not mean that God the Father took up a godly ballpoint quill and penned all of Scripture Himself. Instead, it means that the Spirit of God attended the construction of each of the books (both their original manuscripts and the edits to form the versions we see today) such that the canon, taken together, declares the will of God pertinent to our salvation and godliness. They contain the message intended by God to communicate to humanity how we might be made right with Him again. Through human idioms God made Himself known to us, even across barriers of time and translation.
One of the core intentions of this message is godliness. In the beginning, God made people in His image, and later on, He reveals that “those whom He foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). God conforms His people through His Word to make them look, think, and do like Jesus. Even the name “Christian,” which means “little Christ,” carries this intention. We are to become like God with respect to a variety of attributes (cf. Galatians 5:22-23 for some of these).
How is God instructing us in this message, though? How do we learn the sense of it? Well, Jesus told us that the One who inspired the Scriptures would also be the One to teach God’s people their meaning (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13). The Scriptures declare what Jesus commanded His people, and the Spirit of God who worked to form the Scriptures would also give their sense. Who better to teach on a book than its author, especially an author who is so knowledgeable that He knows even the best methods for us to understand the message?
Measure twice, cut once.
God is measuring us with a body of Scripture with both human and divine aspects to it, to work in us a humility that sees our place rightly. Though we are but creatures, God made us in His divine image and through His Son to somehow participate in it. Through divine authorship, purpose, and instruction, God by His Spirit works a humility of living faithfully in our proper place under His Lordship. Count it a miracle as you grow to understand your place in God’s world while you study His Scriptures in His Spirit!