It would really be too much to ask that I should tell anyone how to do this, writing a mere couple of pages for the purpose. It would be too much, too, to claim that I could. There is no painless, “The Bible in two easy pages” for any earnest student. But a big step forward can be made, even in so short a space.
The Lord Jesus once said, “If any man’s will is to do His will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God, or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (John 7.17, RSV). And what He meant was this : there is only one way of recognizing the truth of God—and that is to want it when you find it. Any other way will lead to failure. It may lead to failure to understand what the Bible is about, because our minds are so obsessed with what we think it ought to be about. It may lead to a refusal to accept what it says even when we understand it, because we are so determined to maintain our own standards of opinion and conduct. But one thing is certain : in one way or another we are sure to stray, unless we will to do God’s will.
And it is no use saying, “Of course we all do.” The Pharisees thought they did, so long as the traditions of the elders exalted their idea of godliness. The result was, that they saw the transparently divine miracles of the Lord Jesus, and said, “That is the devil’s work !” They knew it was not true, but they blinded their eyes to the truth when they said it. They searched the Scriptures, “for in them they thought they had eternal life”, but they would not come to Jesus that they might have life. Their searching of the Scripture was in vain, for they were not looking to see what God had offered them there, but for what they wanted to find.
So it is still. A man who wants to find the immortality of the soul will find the story of The Rich Man of Lazarus, and perhaps read little else on the subject in all the Book. A man who wants to find polygamy will find Solomon’s multitude of wives, and forget or ignore that they turned away his heart. A man who wants to find infant baptism will find the records of baptisms of “his whole house,” and not trouble to enquire how old were its members. “Seek, and ye shall find-what ye look for !”
It is, in its way, like that dreadful parable which pictures God opening His hands to all the riches of the world and saying to His creatures, “Take what you like—take it, and pay for it !” As a man soweth, that shall he also reap, and it is true of Bible searching The complaint of our adversaries, that we can find what we like in the Bible, is true : we can, and so can they. But it is only done by ignoring what we do not like. And if we look for the pearl of great price, we shall not hold on at all costs to the cheaper pearls we have already got, and close our eyes to the richer treasures awaiting us. I should be foolish if I said, “To understand the Bible, just listen to me !” as though what I understood was all there was to know, and as though it was unthinkable that I myself should ever understand any more, and ever marvel that I could once have understood so little.
So that the way to understand the Bible is to begin by saying, “Open thou mine eyes, 0 Lord, that I may see.” For that very reason it might be seemly to say too much, in this introductory article about what we can expect to see when our eyes are open. For you would then be understanding, perhaps, not the Bible itself, but what I write about it : which must not lightly be assumed to be the same thing.
Pointers might be permitted, all the same. I doubt whether it is true, in these days that the Bible is best understood by going first to the Old Testament. Perhaps, since our Lord Jesus came, it has never been true. Many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which the apostles saw, and did not see them, and it may now, after the bright light from heaven has shone in the face of Jesus Christ, be the best way of understanding the revelation as a whole, to go back to Genesis first. Obviously Genesis is first : first in time ; first in introducing us to human sin and the promise of the Saviour ; it is clearly permissible to start there and work through until all the message of God falls into place historically. But it is not the only possible way.
Philip provides a classical example of a short cut. The Ethiopian official, reading in his chariet the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, did not understand what he was reading. “How can I, except some man should guide me ?” That in itself gives us cause to stop and think : it was hard for such a man to understand the prophets, without an evangelist of the gospel to help him. It must usually have been so during the days of the Old Covenant. Men and women read of a Saviour upon whose shoulders their sins were to be laid, but could not find him for themselves, for he had not yet come. They might profess a faith in the coming one, if their understanding had gone far enough for that, in which case they would rank with Moses, who esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt ; or with Abraham, who rejoiced to see the day of his Seed. But even diligent, ordinary students of the Word might not get as far as this. And there is no suggestion that the Ethiopian was not diligent. He had not simply happened upon a copy of the Scriptures, opened it idly, lighted upon Isaiah 53, and murmured sleepily to himself as his chariot jogged through the Wilderness, “I wonder who this fellow is ?”
He was a worshipper, already a Jew by faith. He had been up to Jerusalem to worship, and was doubtless well-schooled in the Jewish understanding of the Scriptures. He was a sinner, too, who knew something of his own desperate need, and, when he read about the Saviour who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, badly wanted to know where he could find such an one—for his own salvation. That is the kind of mind which is ripe for quick instruction. His will was to do God’s will, and Philip could instruct him much more readily than he could have taught an opponent of the Word.
At all events, he wasted no time. Beginning at this same scripture, he preached unto him Jesus. He could have begun at no better place in the Old Testament for introducing Jesus, and it might have been in the same way that the Lord Himself, on the day of His resurrection, opened the disciples’ understanding that they might understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:26, 45).
I doubt whether we could do better. For once we have arrived at the penitent’s state of mind, we shall no longer feel disposed to question the Genesis account of the origin of our sin and mortality ; we shall no longer be surprised at the history of human perversity with which the Old and New Testaments abound ; We shall be less contentiously inclined when we read of the divers manners in which God prepared the way for the coming of His Son ; and we shall look with gladder eyes at His face.
This spirit opens the door of understanding. This spirit removes barrier after barrier against the development of that understanding. We ask less and less : “How can I deal with this difficult passage, which others use against us ?” and more and more, “What is the true message behind this dark saying?” For all our diligent contending for the faith, the Bible is thought of less and less as an Armory of proof-texts, and more and more as a fountain of life. The very promises of present help to live our lives in this world comes alive in our understanding, and the pinnacle of understanding is reached when God and men can say, not only : “Does not that man know his Bible ?” but, “Has not that man reaped the fruits of his Bible learning?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One