Don’t [Just] Read your Bible [Alone]

My article from this week's edition of the Rockford Squire:

In decades past, it was necessary in many places for a problem to be addressed in the Church – largely across denominational lines.  In many circles, it was common for people to hold the misconception that if they attended a Sunday service, they had their weekly dose of God’s Word, and it would hold them over for the week until they repeated the process.  As a result, there was broad encouragement for people to read their Bibles at home, on their own, or to gather with a peer group to discuss it.  Bible distribution increased to greater levels than previously witnessed.  Other disciplines like a daily, individual “quiet time” emerged, and Bible reading in the home really did increase. 

 

Today, we can still see residual effects of that movement, but we have reached the point where an opposite correction may be in order.  However people approach what they read in the Bible, one can see a generally positive attitude toward it, but today, it can be witnessed that many people who identify as Christians only read their Bible at home alone.  When the effort was made to encourage Bible reading in those past decades, it was intended to be in addition to hearing the Scriptures on Sunday, but in a growing number of cases, it has become what people do instead of hearing the Scriptures in a weekly service. 

 

While there is certainly a danger in a preacher twisting the Bible to say what he wants it to say, the danger is equal or greater when the reader becomes his own preacher.  If someone proclaiming God’s word publicly strays from the truth, there are others there to correct him, but when the reader only preaches to himself, there is no one to correct his errors, and they have the opportunity to compound. 

 

So, do read your Bible, even at home alone, but also gather with other Christians to hear God’s Word proclaimed and explained.  Receive the Sacraments in a weekly service, and discuss the Scriptures with others, whether in a structured study or a less formal group.  Even have a live expert in your corner who can be your guide to quality resources beyond your Bible to aid your understanding, and coach you (preferably with knowledge of the original Greek and Hebrew language of Scripture) in understanding what you have read and how other Christians have historically.  Grow deeper not in just what the Bible means to you, but in knowledge of what it actually means, so that you would gain assurance in genuine, reliable truth. 

GALATIA VS. CORINTH

My article from this week's edition of the Rockford Squire:

Among present-day churches, one can find plenty of contentious topics.  No need to list them now, but I often hear from pastors who are being criticized for being too lenient about a certain teaching or practice or too strict about another.  This isn’t a problem unique to our present experience, though.  It was found even in the early Church while the New Testament was still being written. 

Two of St. Paul’s letters actually address each end of this spectrum.  At the Church of Galatia, Paul had proclaimed the Gospel, and a congregation arose.  However, after Paul’s departure, other teachers followed him in and deceived the people.  He had proclaimed that Christ died for the sins of the world and forgives sins by grace—as a free gift.  The false teachers attempted to convince the people that to be “real Christians,” they needed to also follow the Old Testament law.

In Corinth, the trouble wasn’t with too many laws, but with disregard for the law.  The Corinthians didn’t just experience the struggle common to all Christians to overcome sin, but they went above and beyond in order to find new and creative ways to break God’s law.  Paul had proclaimed the same Gospel here, but the people of that congregation chose to use it as an excuse to disregard the law entirely. 

One congregation added to God’s command and burdened the conscience of Christians with laws God Himself never imposed on them.  The other ignored or defended behavior that was clearly immoral even apart from Scripture, using grace as an excuse to follow their own desires.  Paul demonstrated to both churches that they had been deceived and were following something other than the truth.  He admonished the Corinthians to correct their excesses, while encouraging the Galatians to throw off the excesses that had been imposed upon them. 

The appropriateness of St. Paul’s correction did not flow from being a middle way between the extremes, but instead from the fact that it was objectively true and both extremes had departed in opposite directions from what was written in Scripture and what was proclaimed to them.  When the Apostles held a council about many of these controversial matters (Acts 15), they did not seek to satisfy one side or the other, or even to compromise between the two, but only to be faithful to what they had received from Christ.  Likewise, the resolution of present-day controversy is not in appeasing one extreme or the other, or even finding a compromise between them, but rather in proclaiming no more and no less than the words of our Lord given through His Apostles in Scripture. 

Easter - Ascension - Pentecost

 

Now that Resurrection Sunday has concluded, the average person probably thinks to the civic holidays of Summer (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day) as the next highlights on the calendar, and Christmas as the next big religious event.  However, for the historic Church, the day that we English-speakers call Easter was really just the beginning of about 2 months of feasts and festivals remembering major events in the post-Resurrection life of Jesus and the birth of the Christian Church. 

 

We just began to celebrate the historic fact that after Jesus died on Friday afternoon, He rose to life again on Sunday morning, because Easter Sunday actually serves as merely the kick-off to an eight-week celebration of the Resurrection.  The 8 weeks represent the “8^th Day” of the New Creation which is promised in Scripture and initiated in the resurrection of Jesus, and many of the readings for these Sundays show the events in which Jesus appeared to his disciples (Luke 24, John 20-21), other eyewitnesses, and even a crowd of hundreds (1 Corinthians 15)

40 days into this Easter season is the Feast of the Ascension, observing the day 40 days after the Resurrection when, while Jesus was talking with His disciples, Jesus began to be lifted up, and a cloud hid Him from the sight of the disciples.  Other New Testament passages speak of Jesus as presently being ascended into Heaven and that He is “seated at the right hand of God the Father…” as Christians confess in the Apostles’ Creed. 

 

Finally, on the 50^th day after the Resurrection, the disciples appeared in Jerusalem, proclaiming the resurrected Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesy in a miraculous event where they were understood by pilgrims of numerous languages and homelands, marking the birth of Church by the Baptism of 3000 people, which is celebrated by Christians as Pentecost. 

 

Before Jesus died, He had promised His disciples that after He had risen, He would send the Holy Spirit to guide them and remind them of the things He had said (John 14-16), and just before He ascended, He again promised to send the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:8).  Through the Church, born on Pentecost, He fulfills these promises, which the rest of the New Testament urges us to seek out in the proclamation of Scripture, in Baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper, occurring in the gathering of other Christians, and through which the Holy Spirit causes people to trust in Jesus. 

Thanks be to God for this rich observance of our Lord’s resurrected life in the heritage of the Church, which we continue to receive, even nearly 20 centuries after the original events.