Quotes about Bible

The Bible welcomes us to bring our cares to God because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7).

the Bible is not a collection of stories, but one big story with lots of chapters. It is the story of how God meets weak and failing people with his powerful grace.

First, we must learn to read the Bible with our heads, in order to understand what is actually, objectively, being said. And second, we must learn to read it with our hearts, in order to experience God's voice through its pages. By carefully studying the Bible, we come to understand what its writers were originally saying. And by prayerfully exploring it, we learn to discern what the Holy Spirit is saying to us now.

By stopping to be still in the ways described above, prior to opening my Bible, I can prime my heart to hear from God in a focused way with far fewer distractions.

Notions of absolute truth and ultimate authority are fiercely attacked, and the Bible itself is no longer accorded unconditional respect in Western societies.

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.

Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.

When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey.

And for Christians, the gospel has always been the lens through which Israel's stories are read—which means, for Christians, Jesus, not the Bible, has the final word. The story of God's people has moved on, and so must we.

For Christians, then, the question is not "Who gets the Bible right?" The question is and has always been, "Who gets Jesus right?" The Gospel writers and Paul couldn't have made that any clearer.

The Bible is not a Christian owner's manual but a story—a diverse story of God and how his people have connected with him over the centuries, in changing circumstances and situations.

Ours is a historical faith, and to uproot the Bible from its historical contexts is self-contradictory.