Q. 3 // What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A // The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
Genesis 1:1; John 5:39; John 20:31; Romans 10:17; 2 Timothy 3:15
Deuteronomy 10:12-13; Joshua 1:8; Psalm 119:105; Micah 6:8; 2 Timothy 3:16-17
When we come to the Bible, we must come to it to hear what it has to say. This is difficult because all of us come to it looking for something. We want answers to the big questions of our life and if we are going to find them anywhere, we assume it will be in God’s Word.
The Bible was not written to be the final word on all subjects. it was specifically written for 2 main purposes: to reveal who God is (and what we should believe about Him, as well as how we should live in response to Him (what He requires of us). When we open up our Bibles, we are not going to be given a complete history, a science lesson, or a complete map of future events. it isn’t that God doesn’t know these things, but this is not principally what He teaches us in Scripture. Psalm 119.105 tells us:
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
This means that God has given us a worldview with which to see and understand everything else we interact with. His special revelation (Word) is the lens through which we understand His general revelation (creation and experience). When we get this wrong we pit the Bible against Science, ourselves against other Christians over secondary issues, and get mad at God for not answering our questions (Bertrand Russell’s famous quip to God: Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence). In all of this, we miss the point. God has given us His Word to know Him and to live in a way in which we continually understand Him better (through our sin, His grace/ our failure, His holiness). God has given us His Word to help us fall in love with Him, not to be right. In loving Him, we get both.