The Word Points to the Word

Today's Scripture

John 5:39-40 — "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."

John 1:14 — "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Luke 24:32 — "They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?'"

The Big Idea

After six days of marveling at the Book, here is the Bible's last surprise: it does not want your admiration. A signpost is not the city. A menu is not the meal. The Book exists to give you a Person — and it is possible, even common, to love the Book and miss him. The Bible's own goal for you is that you meet Jesus.

Reflection

The people who knew the Book and missed the Author

The most sobering sentence in this whole week comes from Jesus, and he aims it at the best Bible students of his day. John 5:39-40 — "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."

Let that land. These men memorized books of the Bible we struggle to skim. They debated single letters of the text. Jesus does not mock their diligence — he confirms that the Scriptures really do witness to him. The tragedy is in the last clause: they treated the signpost as the destination. They camped at the sign that said "Living Water, 1 mile" and died of thirst reading it.

How does that happen? Tim Keller spent his ministry naming the mechanism. There is a way of using the Bible — diligently, even joyfully — that is really a way of building a case for yourself:

"Religion operates on the principle 'I obey — therefore I am accepted by God.' But the operating principle of the gospel is 'I am accepted by God through what Christ has done — therefore I obey.'" — Tim Keller, The Reason for God

Run Bible reading through the first principle and the Book becomes a treadmill: chapters logged, streaks kept, verses deployed to win arguments — and underneath, a quiet scorekeeping self that is no closer to Jesus than before. The Pharisees of John 5 were not Bible readers who slipped up. They were what Bible reading becomes whenever it stops being a road to him.

This is why a week like ours carries a small danger of its own. You can finish seven days about the wonder of the Bible and walk away loving... the Bible. Its history, its unity, its poetry — all real, all worth loving. But a man who falls in love with his fiancée's letters and stops showing up to see her has misunderstood the letters. They were never the relationship. They were the voice of it.

The Word behind the words

Why is meeting a Person the Book's goal? Because of who, according to the Book, the deepest Word actually is. John 1:1-3 — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him."

John reaches back behind Genesis and says: before God's word was ever ink, it was a him. And then the sentence that splits history: John 1:14 — "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory." God's ultimate self-expression is not a paragraph. It is a baby, a carpenter, a crucified and risen Lord. When heaven opens at the end of the Bible, this is still his name: "the name by which he is called is The Word of God" (Revelation 19:13).

C.S. Lewis kept this order straight in a letter to a friend:

"It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him." — C.S. Lewis, Letters

Be careful not to misuse Lewis here. He is not lowering the Bible; he is aiming it. The Book is God's appointed road to the Person — which is why neglecting it never leads to some purer, book-free Jesus. Jerome, the scholar who gave the Latin-speaking world its Bible, said it with four words that have rung for sixteen centuries:

"Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." — Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah

No Book, no him. But also: the Book, for him. Martin Luther found the perfect picture in the Christmas story:

"Here you will find the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies... Simple and lowly are these swaddling cloths, but dear is the treasure, Christ, who lies in them." — Martin Luther, Preface to the Old Testament

The shepherds did not worship the manger. They also did not find the baby anywhere else. That is the relationship between the Bible and Jesus, settled in one image.

Hearts burning on a road

Luke 24 shows you what it looks like when the Book does its real job. Easter Sunday, late afternoon. Two heartbroken disciples walk the seven miles to Emmaus, and a stranger falls in step. "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). The risen Jesus's first sermon is a Bible study — the whole Old Testament, with himself as the key.

Then, at the table: "he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him... They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?'" (Luke 24:30-32). Burning hearts — not because the stranger gave them new information, but because the old Book had suddenly become a window with his face in it.

Notice the order of events. Jesus could have simply announced himself at the first bend in the road — one glance and their grief would have ended. Instead he spent the seven miles opening the Scriptures first, so that when their eyes were finally opened, they would know that the one at their table and the one in their Bibles were the same person. He wanted them to find him in the Book, because the Book is where the next twenty centuries of disciples would have to find him too.

Keller used to demonstrate what Jesus must have shown them on that road — how every shelf of the library leans toward him:

"Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us. Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal." — Tim Keller, What Is Gospel-Centered Ministry?

"Imputed" is an accounting word: his perfect record, credited to your account. That is the gospel hiding in plain sight on every page — true and better Joseph, true and better Moses, true and better David, true and better temple. Once you have seen it, you cannot unsee it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother-in-law — a skeptic — about what reading became when he started reading this way:

"First of all I will confess quite simply — I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter to Rüdiger Schleicher

A little humbly. The Emmaus disciples did not crack the code; the host took the bread and their eyes were opened. The burning heart is not a reading technique. It is a gift you can ask for — and he loves to give it.

Wise for salvation

So how should this week end? With the quietest verse we have read, and maybe the biggest. Paul reminds Timothy of his childhood: "from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:14-15). There is the Book's entire job description in one phrase. Not wise for trivia. Not wise for winning religious arguments. Wise for salvation — and even then, only "through faith in Christ Jesus." The Book saves nobody; it makes you wise enough to be saved by him.

John says the same about his Gospel in his own closing line: "these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31). Written so that. Every page of Scripture has a purpose clause attached, and you are it.

A.W. Tozer states the destination one last time:

"The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence." — A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Seven days ago we asked whether God would leave us guessing. Here is the full answer. He spoke through skies and prophets and poems and letters; he breathed out a library through shepherds and doctors and fishermen; he gave us bread, honey, lamp, and sword. And all of it — every genre, every verse, every picture — was him walking toward you, the way he walked the Emmaus road: closer than you knew, opening the Scriptures, waiting to be asked to stay. The Book God gave us is not the gift. It is the wrapping paper. The gift is Christ.

So take up and read — but do not stop at reading. Come to him, that you may have life.

Going Deeper

Read Luke 24:13-35 in one unhurried sitting — the whole Emmaus story. Before you start, pray one sentence: "Lord, do for me what you did for them." When you finish, write down where in this week the Book felt most like a window with his face in it, and tell one person about it this week — the Emmaus disciples ran seven miles back in the dark to do exactly that.