Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Max Lucado
A Love Letter
When people who are non-believers criticize the Bible, I say, “It wasn’t written to you, it was written to believers. It is God’s love letter to us.” Of course, it’s not their fault that they can’t understand it because “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1st Cor 1:18), so “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1st Cor 2:14).
The Mind of God
Who can know the mind of God without knowing the Word of God? No one can, that’s who. If we want to know what God thinks like, then we must be in the Word of God. When people ask me, “I want to know the will of God for my life,” I tell them, you must first obey the revealed will of God before He lets you know His will for your life. God’s will for us is not some hidden, mysterious thing, but rather, as the Apostle Paul says, “this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1st Thess 4:3-5). That’s simple enough, isn’t it?
His Redemptive Plan
The entire Bible is God’s redemptive plan unfolding one book at a time. There was even a hint of Christ’s coming back in the Garden (Gen 3:15). With each passing book in the Bible, God slowly but surely reveals Himself, but also the redemptive plan He has for us begins to unravel and the plan He has for Israel through His holy prophets. The church and Israel might have different destinies, but God’s plan for both of them must be through Jesus Christ and Him alone as the way to the Father (John 6:44; Acts 4:12).
The Living Word
Here is how I believe a person is saved. They hear the Word of God and the Spirit of God makes sense of it, and then Spirit of God brings them to repentance and He points them to the Living Word, Jesus Christ so that they might be saved. So the outer Word (the Bible) speaks through the inner Word (the Holy Spirit), to reveal to us, the Living Word, of course that being Jesus Christ. But the gospel must be preached because “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching” (Rom 10:14)? Maybe He will use you as a means to save some.
Conclusion
It truly is the purpose of the Bible to simply to proclaim God’s plan to save His children, so read God’s love letter written personally to you and your brothers and sisters to know the mind of God with the Spirit of God. There you’ll see God’s redemptive plan unfolding, and then people will be transformed into the image of Christ and become the children of God…and all for the glory of God.
