A Quote from J.I. Packer

[HKHaugan]

 Submission to Christ
Our primary authority is Jesus Christ our Teacher and our Lord, and our submission to Scripture is only the logical outcome and necessary expression of our submission to him.  It is to Christ that we come; but Christ sends us to a book.  Not that the book to which he sends us is a dead and wooden letter, or an authoritarian ogre.  He bids us listen rather to his own voice as he speaks to our particular situation by his Spirit and through his written Word.

--From 'Jesus Christ Our Teacher and Lord', in "Guidelines", ed. J. I. Packer (London: Falcon, 1967), p. 64.

 

Further note that insight J.I. expresses.  Jesus sends us to the Word because "He speaks to our particular situation by His Spirit and through His Word."  It is a collaborative effort.  The Word has at its heart our relational growth with God.  The Word brings power to think, to experience and to live out the LOrd's plan in the uniqueness of each of us.  It is that personal and that special.  No one of us will find direction we can trust outside its pages because we are images of God the Spirit as well as the Father and the Son.  Together we find mind, heart and spirit connecting with the Trinity of God.  That's what we were made for.  That's His design.  That's how we function best.  That's why nothing else really works. 

No matter what philosophy or religion begs your attention it is only as we yield to Jesus in His Word that our design becomes a reality.  There is no extra book, hero, myth, legend, or speculation regardless of their creative appeal, that can add or subtract from its special ordination by God.  The Bible is complete.  Nothing beyond it, around it or even from those who teach and write about it well, can ever equal its ability to touch our mind, heart and spirit. 

From beginning to end one things stands out in regard to the Word being personal.  It tells me God really knows me inside and out.  But it tells me about Him loving me in spite of what He knows.  He really likes me.  He really likes you.  He really likes people.  If that is the case it gives me a new way to see people around me as those God loves too.  It shows me the way out of self into Him and toward others.  What it does for me within calls for me to share the what and the Who, namely Jesus and His insights with others.  Rather than living just for myself I am propelled to live my heart in the open for others.  The Word gives me my meaning and becomes my purpose.  It's no longer just about about me but about the One who makes life real, deep, full and caring.  For each and everyone of us it carries in its pages the wealth of a Holy and perfect eternity in God's Kingdom and the guaranteed promise of the end of evil, its devil, aloneness, brokenness, sorrow, suffering and death.  Our response?.......Ah, the Word of God.......There's something in it just for you.......

Bask in its Sonshine. Be drenched by its dew.  God has made it special just for me and you.