The Purpose of Scripture
Knowledge, Love, Faith, and Hope!
Here is a lecture based on my book 7 Things About the Bible I Wish All Christians Knew which has its own podcast and several episodes on my YouTube channel.
Scripture was not written to help you lose weight, find a better career, be more productive in the office, be a better you, or even discover yourself.
The purpose and power of Scripture is experienced in the discipline of immersing oneself daily into the mystery of God as he reveals himself in his word.
It is Scripture, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and with the tutelage of our church’s traditions, that enables us to achieve genuine and lasting transformation. It is by soaking ourselves in Scripture that we cultivate virtue, curate our character, and conform ourselves to the pattern of Christ.
To put it briefly, I like to say that the purpose of Scripture is that God’s people would attain knowledge of God, deepen their faith, abound in love for God and love for others, and enjoy the assurance of hope—these are things we get from Scripture!
Knowing God
One purpose of Scripture is to know God. To know who God is, what God does, God’s purpose for creation, his purpose to put all things under Christ, and for the church to reign with Christ over the new creation. This means, as you might expect, that there is much to know about God!
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he prays a specific prayer for them: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). That is the purpose of Scripture reading, its study, meditation upon it, and preaching from Scripture: to know God better. Through our reading of Scripture, and the knowledge of God that it gives us, we begin to grasp ever more profoundly the love and beauty of the God who knows us and loves us.
Therefore, the goal of our instruction in the Scriptures is to know God better, so that we may grow in our love for God.
Faith
One thing that Scripture does is bring people to a point of faith.
In fact, when I first encountered Christianity and the Bible, one verse from John’s Gospel that I found particularly startling, confronting, and which elicited the first murmurs of faith was Jesus’s words in his speech directed at the Judean leaders: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). I saw here the promise of eternal life, the benefits of faith, and I experienced that kind of magnetic attraction to Jesus that the Gospels furnish by so wonderfully conveying the story and words of Jesus.
This is precisely what God’s word does, it creates faith, from the darkness of disbelief and despair, it plants the seeds that grow into trust in God, love for Christ, and listening to the Spirit. Or, as the apostle Paul said: “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ” (Rom 10:17). Scripture is without a doubt the most successful evangelist there is, was, or will be!
The purpose of Scripture is to not to get a passing grade in Religion 101, rather, the purpose of Scripture is to bring people to believe in Jesus, to come to Jesus, to grasp hold of Jesus, to rest in the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:30).
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Love for God and Others
Another purpose of Scripture is love, which includes growing in love for God and love for others.
I’m sure most of you know Paul’s ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13, a famous text, filled with some of the most memorable verses of Scripture: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).
Amidst the Corinthian “worship wars,” what Paul really stresses is that if you want to talk about super-spirituality, then the true measure of spirituality is the way of love and the greatest gift in the church is the gift of love-in-action. That is because love is the truest form of worship, love is the highest form of knowledge, and love is the supreme mode of spirituality. Whether it is prophecy or preaching, tongues or teaching, they need to embrace the most excellent way of love because love is the goal and measure of all things spiritual.
Scripture is jam-packed with teachings and themes about love: love for God, love for the church, and love for our neighbours. By reading Scripture, we discover the prominence of love in God’s instruction to us, and we develop a Spirit-endowed desire to love God and to love others.
As Augustine said: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation on them as does not tend to build up into this twofold love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”
Endurance unto Hope
When I wrote my Romans commentary a few years back one of the most striking things I learned and reflected upon was Paul’s account of the purpose of Scripture.
What do you think it is? Rules, religion, redemption, a relationship with God?
Nope, not even close! Paul said Scripture’s purpose was this: “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). The purpose of Scripture according to Paul is to impart to us endurance and hope!
Without hope, the best the secular world can do is pursue pleasure and power. But because of the words of Jesus and the instruction of the apostles given to us in Scripture, we are not such a people. The story of the gospel is that hope became flesh, dwelt among us, and now the word of hope goes forth into the whole world. It is thus no wonder that one of the most frequently repeated refrains in Psalm 119 is “I have put my hope in your word” because it is a word of promise and that promise was made good, is made good, and will be made good in Christ Jesus.
Living in the Light of Scripture
Scripture is not a newspaper to whack you over the head with for being bad, more accurately, Scripture is a light in the darkness to guide your path and to illuminate your life with Christ. The purpose of Scripture is to give us knowledge of God, to nourish our faith, to drive us to love God and to love others, and to have the endurance that comes from Christian hope.
Maybe the best description of the purpose of Scripture I've ever read. There was only one thing you said that I wonder why as it seems to contradict the rest of what you said. In the question "What do you think it is? Rules, religion, redemption, a relationship with God?", which has a nice set of "r"'s you say "a relationship with God". It certainly seems with all else you said that a relationship with God is one of the main purposes of Scripture, with the only caveat that the Word has to work with the Spirit for that to happen. Thoughts?
This is great!
Do you think these days there is too much emphasis by many on just 2 Tim 3:16-17, in regards to the purpose of Scripture, and not enough showing the wider purpose that you presented?