December 12
December 12
Every part of Scripture is profitable for you in some way.
I have been deeply blessed by God in many ways. But one particular blessing has influenced me perhaps more than any other. I never could have earned or deserved this. I was born into this blessing, and it has been a central theme throughout all of my life. It has been the central influence over what I have thought, desired, chosen, said, and done. This blessing has rescued, protected, and guided me from my earliest days until now. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without it. What is this amazing blessing? From the moment of my first consciousness, the Bible has been in my life. I was raised in a family that was far from perfect, but the Bible was central. Every morning was punctuated by the reading of God’s word. My mom was a walking concordance, referencing various Scripture passages throughout the day. Nothing has influenced who I am, what I value, and the choices I’ve made in life more than the grand narrative of redemption found in Scripture, where Jesus is the central hero and hope.
Perhaps because the word of God has been so present in my life, I’ve been tempted to take it for granted. Familiarity can cause you no longer to notice and appreciate something you see all the time. But over the years, by God’s grace, I had been led to understand the deep, bottomless wonder of the redeeming glory of this book that God so generously placed in my hands. If you have a Bible, if you understand its message, if you love its wisdom, if it has led you to love Jesus, and if it is your moral guide, then you have been deeply and richly blessed by grace.
I love how the apostle Paul captures the transformative glory of Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16–17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Notice that Paul’s summary of the glory of the gift of Scripture isn’t heady or theoretical. This is a street-level description of what God has designed the Bible to be and do in our lives and minds. The Bible instructs. The deep mysteries of God and the gospel unfold on its pages. The Bible reproves. It lays our hearts bare, exposing how we all have fallen short of God’s holy standard. The Bible corrects. It introduces us to the person and work of Jesus. By him all that sin has distorted and broken is made new again. The Bible trains. It teaches us how to live godly lives in this dark and fallen world.
Paul says that God gave us his word so that between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our homegoing we will have everything we need for a life of “good work,” that is, a life that is pleasing in the eyes of the one who has made us and saved us by his grace. Celebrate the grace of his word.