How can I understand the gospel if I don’t understand who God is, what he has done, and that we mortals are all fallen creatures lost in our sins? This is why, for example, Paul begins the great book of Romans teaching us that we have all fallen short of the glory of God (culminating in Romans 3:23). If we misunderstand that, we misunderstand everything.
And as I’ve argued elsewhere, we do misunderstand that, because we arrogantly assume our intellects are not fallen. Some actually teach that it’s possible to attain perfect doctrine–to know ALL the right answers. We are humans in the flesh but virtual gods in the intellect! Surely this sounds wicked. It is. Those who believe this don’t really understand Genesis 3 or Romans 1-3, among many other passages.
And so we have to bring to the study a certain attitude: humility. We have to appreciate that God is infinitely smarter and subtler than we can begin to comprehend. The very notion of understanding all God’s will perfectly in all its magnificence should strike us as patently ridiculous. Plainly, God intends for us to know enough to become and stay saved and serve him effectively. Beyond that, we understand what God wants us to but not everything.
God is not a rulebook—he’s a person with free will. I’ve grown to hate the cliché “putting God in a box,” but it makes the point. You cannot understand God by wondering about prohibitive silences. Rather, you learn how to fill in those silences by knowing God as a person, a person who so loves that world that he gave us Jesus to die for our sins.
Just think of it. Our entire “plan of salvation”—hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized—does not mention God, Jesus, or the cross! Whom do we believe? What do we believe? Into whom am I baptized? Why repent? Because I have to do it to go to heaven? Or because, having learned of the incredible sacrifice of the very Son of God, I’m shamed in my sinful ways, and I desperately want to become what He wants me to be?
Now, as you’ve surely guessed by now, I’m an extremely left-brained person, and talking like this is hard for me. But we have to admit, accept, and even revel in the emotional side of our salvation—of our relationship with the Creator and his Son. We are an emotional people, and so our emotions have to be reconciled just as does our intellect.
Hence, this has to be about persons—what God, a person, did to create the universe, how mankind sinned, and how the person God, with incredibly undeserved love, gave his only begotten Son so that people who in no way deserve salvation can have salvation (John 3:16). And how we now have an amazing relationship with God, who actually lives within us through his Spirit just to be closer to us.
We must bring to our study of the Scriptures a humility in tune with the heart of God. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (Jas. 4:10). This is not some vaporous abstraction—it’s the essence of understanding. In fact, this is surely the greatest weakness of Church of Christ hermeneutics—we think that the Bible is a book of riddles that we are to solve, and having solved them, we believe we have accomplished something that makes us superior to other believers.
In the Churches of Christ, we have taken great pride in having the right answers, the right pattern, the right plan. Thus, while the other churches may have bigger buildings, on better streets, in better neighborhoods, we have the Old Paths. We know the truth while we pretend the “denominations” were willfully ignoring the truth, indeed, were intentionally teaching lies. The sense of superiority has been palpable. We have been a proud people! It’s always fun to have someone to look down on.
But godly people don’t look down on others. If I happen to know something someone else doesn’t, it is only because it has been given to me, and as a result, I am called to teach, but never to feel superior. Indeed, the truth is that only God is sovereign and only God is righteous. And if I make it to heaven, it’s because of a gift I’ve been given me, not because of anything I have accomplished.
