Reading the Bible Supernaturally E-Book

John Piper

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 733

Beschreibung

The Bible reveals glorious things. And yet we often miss its power because we read it the same way we read any other book. In Reading the Bible Supernaturally, best-selling author John Piper teaches us how to read the Bible in light of its divine author. In doing so, he highlights the Bible's unique ability to reveal God to humanity in a way that informs our minds, transforms our hearts, and ignites our love. With insights into the biblical text drawn from decades of experience studying, preaching, and teaching Scripture, Piper helps us experience the transformative power of God's Word—a power that extends beyond the mere words on the page. Ultimately, Piper shows us that in the seemingly ordinary act of reading the Bible, something supernatural happens: we encounter the living God.

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“Not many books should be recommended for both beginning Bible readers and mature Bible readers, but this is one of them. Utilizing brief and pointed expositions of often overlooked Bible verses, John Piper helpfully explains why we should be reading the Bible, the work of the Spirit in our Bible reading, and the fundamental skills and habits of faithful Bible reading. I cannot imagine a serious Christian who would not benefit from a thoughtful reading of this book.”

D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Cofounder, The Gospel Coalition

“I have been reading the Bible daily for thirty-five years. Reading the Bible Supernaturally challenged my motives, effort, and enjoyment. I doubt I will read the Scriptures the same way again. I look forward to deeper and more wonderful times alone in the Word in the days ahead. This book is a must-read for anyone wanting to take Bible study seriously.”

Francis Chan, New York Times best-selling author, Crazy Love and Forgotten God

“Stunning. Profound. Powerful. Reading the Bible Supernaturally will move you to captivated and awestruck worship at the Divine’s plan for his Word as an instrument to magnify his unrivaled glory. Seeing and savoring the God of the Scriptures is an extraordinarily high calling every believer must pursue, and no man can move us to that place quite like John Piper. This book, accessibly written and weighty in content, is so much more than a manual or study guide to the Scriptures. Rather, it’s an invitation to the experience God intended we have with his Word—an experience that is Spirit dependent, faith building, and worship inciting.”

Louie Giglio, Pastor, Passion City Church, Atlanta; Founder, Passion Conferences; author, The Comeback

“The seemingly mundane topic of reading the Bible ushers us into a world of supernatural grace for sinners. With constant reference to the Holy Scriptures, John Piper shows us how to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and to read by the light of Christ. Yet Piper commends no passive mysticism, but studious labor over the best of books; he is thorough, practical, and engaging throughout. Take up and read!”

Joel R. Beeke, President, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

“Reading the Bible Supernaturally reminds us why we cannot rest until every person on earth has access to the Bible in their own tongue. Tribes, languages, peoples, and nations are perishing without access to, or opportunity to know, this glorious God through this glorious book. John Piper stokes the urgency of our calling as the church of Jesus Christ to deepen our appreciation for the Word that God uses toward a missional end—his global and eternal glory.”

Michael Oh, Global Executive Director, the Lausanne Movement

“Reading the Bible Supernaturally is a thorough and compelling wake-up call to lethargic, passive, resistant, mechanical Bible readers (which is all of us at one point or another) to become hungry, eager, inquisitive, aggressively observant miners for the treasure in the text—fully expectant that God will bring us from death to life, from foolishness to wisdom, from damning despair to glorious hope through his Word.”

Nancy Guthrie, Bible teacher; author, Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament Bible study series

“If you disconnect the Bible from God’s glory, you lose your grip on both. What terrible things we hear people say about each of them, taken in isolation. John Piper puts them together, and finds himself preaching an astonishingly high doctrine of Scripture, right alongside an intimately experiential doctrine of God’s glory. Reading the Bible Supernaturally is not just one of the helpful activities that make up the Christian life. Kept in proper context, seen in full perspective, and received in wide-awake recognition of the living voice of the triune God, reading the Bible is the central act of Christian existence. This book, a kind of extended Christian hedonist gloss on Psalm 119, is an invitation to the miracle of Bible reading.”

Fred Sanders, Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University; author, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything

“No book has inspired me to approach Scripture with as much anticipation as Reading the Bible Supernaturally. Read this book at your own risk, for it will ignite your devotional life. You will find yourself actively hunting for treasure in the Bible, looking carefully at each passage, praying and trusting that God himself will open your eyes to see and savor his glory. Don’t let the length of this book fool you; it is clear, accessible, and inspiring. In fact, it is the most practical, passionate, and motivating book on reading the Bible I have ever read. Read it. Apply it. Test it. It will transform your approach to God’s Word.”

Vaneetha Rendall Risner, author, The Scars That Have Shaped Me

“Having read Reading the Bible Supernaturally, readers will not return to Scripture carelessly or indifferently but with renewed and stimulated appetite to meet with the God of glory who inspired it and can be found and freshly encountered through its pages. John Piper’s own insatiable appetite for fellowship with God communicates inspiringly.”

Terry Virgo, Founder, Newfrontiers

Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture

John Piper

Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture

Copyright © 2017 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing 2017

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked TEV are taken from the Good News Bible in Today’s English Version – Second Edition, Copyright ©1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-5349-3ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-5352-3PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5350-9Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5351-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Piper, John, 1946– author.

Title: Reading the Bible supernaturally : seeing and savoring the glory of God in Scripture / John Piper.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016029650 (print) | LCCN 2016031894 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433553493 (hc) | ISBN 9781433553509 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433553516 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433553523 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible—Reading. | Bible—Devotional use. | Glory of God—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BS617 .P56 2017 (print) | LCC BS617 (ebook) | DDC 220.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029650

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-03-02 04:20:18 PM

To

all who have helped me see

the light of the glory of God in Scripture,

a legacy of shared illumination

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part 1

The Ultimate Goal of Reading the Bible

Introduction to Part 1: The Proposal

 1  Reading the Bible toward God’s Ultimate Goal

“Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

 2  Reading the Bible toward White-Hot Worship

“Because you are lukewarm, . . . I will spit you out of my mouth.”

 3  Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 1

“When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.”

 4  Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 2

“When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”

 5  Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 3

“My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

 6  Reading to Savor His Excellence, Part 1

“You have tasted that the Lord is good.”

 7  Reading to Savor His Excellence, Part 2

“These things I speak . . . that they may have my joy.”

 8  Reading to Be Transformed, Part 1

“We all . . . , beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformedfrom one degree of glory to another.”

 9  Reading to Be Transformed, Part 2

“Their abundance of joy . . . overflowed in . . . generosity.”

10  Reading toward the Consummation

“Ransomed . . . for God from every tribe.”

Part 2

The Supernatural Act of Reading the Bible

Introduction to Part 2

11  The Necessity and Possibility of Reading the Bible Supernaturally

“He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

12  Why the Pharisees Couldn’t Read

“Have you never read . . . the Scriptures?”

13  New Testament Pictures of Bible Reading as a Supernatural Act

“Receive with meekness the implanted word.”

Part 3

The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Introduction to Part 3

14  God Forbid That We Despise His Natural Gifts

“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

15  Humility Throws Open a Thousand Windows

“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.”

16  The Indispensable Place of Prayer in Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Wakening Our Desire for the Word

“Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain.”

17  The Indispensable Place of Prayer in Reading the Bible Supernaturally: To See, Savor, and Love with a United Heart

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

18  Reading the Bible by Faith in the Promises of God

“I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

19  Reading the Bible by Faith in His Promise to Instruct Us

“Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.”

20  The Ordinary Aim of Reading: The Meaning of Meaning

“We are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand.”

21  The Ordinary Aim of Reading: Five Reasons to Define Meaning as What the Author Intended to Communicate

“I wrote to you in my letter . . . not at all meaning . . .”

22  The Ordinary Aim of Reading: God’s Intention through Man’s Intention

“The things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.”

23  The Power of Patience and Aggressive Attentiveness

“If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures . . .”

24  Active Reading Means Asking Questions

“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding.”

25  Asking Questions about Words and Phrases

“The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”

26  Propositions: Collections of Nuggets or Links in a Chain?

“He spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading . . .”

27  Querying the Text about Paradoxes, Pleasures, and a Transformed Life

“The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”

Conclusion

Appendix: Arcing

A Word of Thanks

General Index

Scripture Index

Desiring God Note on Resources

Spiritually to understand the Scripture, is to have the eyes of the mind opened, to behold the wonderful spiritual excellency of the glorious things contained in the true meaning of it, and that always were contained in it, ever since it was written; to behold the amiable and bright manifestations of the divine perfections, and of the excellency and sufficiency of Christ, and the excellency and suitableness of the way of salvation by Christ, and the spiritual glory of the precepts and promises of the Scripture, etc. Which things are, and always were in the Bible, and would have been seen before, if it had not been for blindness, without having any new sense added by the words being sent by God to a particular person, and spoken anew to him, with a new meaning.1

Jonathan Edwards

1. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith and Harry S. Stout, rev. ed., vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 281.

Preface

To write a book that you hope will help others see more of God in the Christian Scriptures is to acknowledge that God intends that a reader of his word understand it and enjoy it with the help of others. Writing books, teaching lessons, preaching sermons, raising children “in the instruction of the Lord”—all of these imply that God has planned for us to understand the Bible with the help of human teachers. Another way to say it is that God reveals more of himself through his word when it is read in community than he does when it is read in isolation.

The New Testament shows repeatedly that Jesus Christ gives teachers to his church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12). Those teachers do not replace the Bible as God’s inspired word. They help us understand it. In fact, the aim of human teachers is to help all believers grow to the point of being teachers themselves—not necessarily in an official capacity, but at least having the ability to use the word of God for both oneself and others.

Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. (Heb. 5:12–13)

Therefore, I see myself, and this book, as one small part of God’s unfathomably complex matrix of influences that make up the Christian community of discovery and illumination. Therefore, nothing in this book should be construed to imply that its aim is to produce isolated Bible readers. It is a stone tossed into a pool of people. Its ripple effect, if any, will flow through relationships. Its aim is to be part of God’s global purpose to create a beautiful bride for his Son—“the church . . . in splendor, without spot or wrinkle . . . holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). The beauty of that bride consists largely in the humble, holy, happy, loving way Christians treat each other. If the end is corporate glory, we should not be surprised that the means is corporate growth. We read the word together; we reach the end together.

God has used hundreds of people to help me understand and love the Bible. I would like to help you—so you can help others. This is as it should be: a legacy of shared illumination until God’s purposes for the church and the world are complete. May God turn your own ripple into a wave of blessing for the few that you know, and the thousands you don’t. I am praying to this end.

The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a-begging for its evidence, so much as some think: it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself. . . . The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory.

Jonathan Edwards

Those who are under the power of their natural darkness and blindness . . . cannot see or discern that divine excellency in the Scripture, without an apprehension whereof no man can believe it aright to be the word of God.

John Owen

Introduction

This is a book about what it means to read the Bible supernaturally. I know that sounds strange. If there is anything obvious about you and me, it is that we are natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. We are not angels or demons; and we are certainly not God. But if the Bible is what it claims to be—namely, inspired by God—then it has a supernatural origin. And what I will try to show is that such a book calls for more than your natural kind of reading. Not less. But more. In fact, it calls for the very best of natural reading. But also for more—something beyond what is merely human.

As with all strange-sounding claims, there is a backstory. I tried to write this book a year ago, but within a matter of days, another book pushed its way into my mind and demanded to be written first. So I postponed this one and wrote A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness.1 The question “Is the Bible true?” begged to be answered first.

In a sense, this is backward. Surely you must read a book before you can decide whether it’s true. So shouldn’t a book about how to read the Bible precede a book about its truthfulness? Maybe. But in my case, the discoveries I made writing A Peculiar Glory proved essential for the way this book is written. The way the Bible shows itself to be true and completely trustworthy carries indispensable implications for how to read it. This has become much clearer to me through writing A Peculiar Glory first.

You don’t have to read A Peculiar Glory in order to understand this book. But it will clarify what I am doing in this book if you know how that book argues for the truth of the Bible. So I’ll give a summary. The point of that first book, which shapes this one throughout, is that the Bible reveals its complete truthfulness by the shining forth of a self-authenticating, peculiar, divine glory. That too may sound strange. But it may not seem as strange if you compare that kind of argument with several others in the Bible of the same kind.

The Glory of God Authenticates the Creator

For example, how does the Bible expect all humans to know that God exists, and that he is all-powerful and generous, and should be thanked and glorified? Not many questions, if any, are more important than this. The answer is that the Bible expects all humans to see the self-authenticating glory of God in the universe he created. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

Just this morning, I was walking home from a prayer meeting at church. As I crossed the bridge over the interstate, I saw, to my left, on the horizon, that the sun was just rising. It was white with brightness. I could only let my eyes glance briefly to the side of the sun. The ball itself was too brilliant to allow a direct sight. Everything from horizon to horizon was luminous with its own color and shape in the crystal-clear air. It is wonderful how natural light—the brightest and most beautiful of all lights—can cheer the soul. But none of that beauty and none of this natural cheerfulness is the glory of God. It is “declaring the glory of God.” We are not pantheists. To see the glory of God, we must experience something supernatural. But it is there to see.

So there is a divine glory shining through the natural world—not just a natural glory. It’s not just the glory of beautiful sunrises, and the stunning complexity of the human eye, and the solar system. It is something ineffable, but real and discernible. We are expected to see not just natural glory, but the glory of God.

The apostle Paul realizes that people do not see this divine glory by themselves. He explains why this is true and yet why none of us has an excuse for this spiritual blindness. It’s because

what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (Rom. 1:19–21)

This means that God has shown everyone the glory of his power and deity and generosity. If we do not see God’s glory, we are still responsible to see it, and to treasure it as supremely glorious, and to give God thanks. If we don’t, we are, Paul says, “without excuse.”

The Glory of God Authenticates Jesus

There is another, similar argument for how people should have recognized the divinity of Jesus. How did Jesus expect his first followers to know that he was the divine Son of God? The answer is that his whole way of life, the kind of person he was, and the works that he did revealed a self-authenticating, divine glory. His closest disciple wrote, “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” (John 1:14).

But many people did not see this glory. Judas certainly didn’t, in spite of three years of nearness. The Pharisees didn’t. Even his disciples were slow to see. To such people Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me . . . ?” (John 14:9). He had shown them enough. They were responsible to see the glory—and to know that he was the divine Son of God. To be sure, Jesus was really human. He was natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. But he was also the virgin-born, supernatural Son of God (Luke 1:35). There was a glory shining through. Those who heard his teaching and saw his ministry were responsible to see it. This is how they were to know the truth.

The Glory of God Authenticates the Gospel

Consider one more example of how glory authenticates truth. This one relates to the gospel itself—the heart of the good news about Jesus’s death and resurrection for sinners. How are people who hear the good news of the Christian gospel supposed to know that it’s from God? The apostle Paul answered: they can know that it’s from God because they see in it “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Or, putting it slightly differently, they can know because they see in it “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

But many people hear the gospel and do not see divine glory. Why? It is not because the glory of God is unreal. It is not because the glory of God is not there in the gospel. It is because human beings, by nature, “are darkened in their understanding . . . due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). It is not owing mainly to ignorance, but to hardness. This hardness is a deep antipathy to the truth. They are “perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). Satan, the “god of this world,” exploits this hardness. Paul says he “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). But the glory is really there in the gospel. To hear the gospel faithfully and fully presented is to be responsible to see divine glory.

The Glory of God Authenticates Scripture

The point of A Peculiar Glory is that the glory of God authenticates Scripture in a way similar to these three examples. In and through the Scriptures we see the glory of God. What the apostles saw face-to-face in Jesus Christ they impart to us through the words of Scripture. “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). The glory that they saw in Christ, we can see through their words. The human words of Scripture are seen to be divine the way the human man Jesus was seen to be divine. Not all saw it. But the glory was there. And it is here, in the Scriptures.

All People Know God

One more illustration might help clarify how this actually works in the human soul. How is the glory of God seen? To be sure, the natural eyes and ears and brains are part of the process. Without them we cannot even see or hear or construe the natural things that reveal God’s glory—creation, incarnation, gospel, Scripture. But this natural seeing is not decisive in seeing the glory of God. “Seeing they do not see,” Jesus said (Matt. 13:13). Something more than the use of the natural eyes and ears and brains must happen.

The way the apostle Paul puts it is that you must “have the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know” (Eph. 1:18). This too is strange—the heart has eyes! But perhaps not beyond comprehension. Most people are at home speaking of “the heart” as something more than the blood-pumping organ in our chest. Such language is not foreign to us. This “heart” is the real us. Intuitively we know that there is more to us than flesh and bones. We know we are not mere chemicals in a sack of skin. We would not talk the way we do about things like justice and love if we didn’t believe that.

Is it so strange, then, to add to this immaterial personhood the idea of immaterial eyes—“the eyes of the heart”? This inner person, who is the real us, sees and knows things that are not identical with what the eyes of the body can see. Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things.”2 There is a spiritual seeing through and beyond natural seeing. There is a spiritual hearing through and beyond natural hearing. There is spiritual discerning through and beyond natural reasoning.

How may we conceive of what happens when the heart sees the glory of God? I found a clue in the way Paul speaks of our knowledge of the glory of God in nature. On the one hand, Paul says that we all “know God.” “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). That is astonishing. Everyone knows God! But in other places, Paul emphatically says that by nature people do not know God. For example, “In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21). The “Gentiles . . . do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:5). Formerly “you did not know God” (Gal. 4:8; see 2 Thess. 1:8; 1 John 4:8).

So, what does Paul mean in Romans 1:21 when he says that all human beings “know God”? To answer this, we might simply quote Romans 1:19–20, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” In other words, we might say that “knowing God” in Romans 1:21 simply means having the witness of creation available and clearly seeing it by the natural eye.

But is that all Paul means when he says, “They knew God”? I think there is more. In Romans 2:14–15, Paul says that people who have never heard of the law of God sometimes do what the law requires. Their consciences witness to God’s will. He puts it like this: “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.”

The Template of Divine Glory

So here is my suggestion. “Knowing God” in Romans 1:21 includes this deeper heart experience of Romans 2:15. The analogy that I find helpful is to conceive of the innate knowledge of God and his will as a kind of template or mold in the human heart. This template is designed by God in every human heart with a shape, or a form, that corresponds to the glory of God. In other words, if the glory of God were seen with the eyes of the heart, it would fit the template so perfectly that we would know the glory is real. We would know we were made for this.

So when Paul says that all humans “know God,” or that all humans have the work of the law “written on their hearts,” he means that there is a glory-shaped template in every heart waiting to receive the glory of God. We all “know God” in the sense that we have this witness in our hearts that we were made for this glory. There is a latent expectancy and longing, and the shape of it is buried deep in our souls.

Hearts Packed Hard with Alien Loves

The reason we do not see the glory of God is not that the template is faulty or that God’s glory is not shining. The reason is “hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). This hardness is a deep aversion to God, and a corresponding love for self-exaltation. Paul said that the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God (Rom. 8:7). And Jesus said that “light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). Our problem is not that we lack the light, but that we love the dark. This is the hardness of our hearts.

So, in my analogy of the template, this means that the hollowed-out shapes of the mold, which are perfectly shaped for the all-satisfying glory of God, are instead packed hard with the love of other things. So when the glory of God shines into the heart—from creation or incarnation or Jesus or the gospel—it finds no place. It is not felt or perceived as fitting. To the natural mind—the mind whose glory-shaped mold is packed hard with idols—the glory of God is “foolishness” (1 Cor. 2:14 KJV). It doesn’t fit. As Jesus said to those whose hardness pushed them to the point of murder, “You seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you” (John 8:37). Of course, they could construe his words, and remember his words. But they could not see them as glorious or compellingly beautiful. They heard the words, but they did not love them. They loved the darkness that filled the template that was designed for the brightness of the glory of God.

The Supernatural Excavation of the Template

Perhaps you can see now why I said that the present book is about what it means to read the Bible supernaturally. If we are on the right track, the only hope for seeing the glory of God in Scripture is that God might cut away the diamond-hard, idolatrous substitutes for the glory of God that are packed into the template of our heart. The Bible speaks of this supernatural act in many ways. For example, it describes this supernatural in-breaking as a shining into our hearts of divine glory (2 Cor. 4:6), and as a granting of truth and repentance (2 Tim. 2:25), and as the giving of faith (Phil. 1:29), and as raising us from the dead (Eph. 2:5), and as new birth by the word (1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18), and as the special revelation of the Father (Matt. 16:17) and the Son (Matt. 11:27), and as the enlightening of the eyes of the heart (Eph. 1:18), and as being given the secret of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:10).

When this miracle happens to us, the glory of God cuts and burns and melts and removes from the template the suicidal cement of alien loves and takes its rightful place. We were made for this. And the witness of this glory to the authenticity of the Scriptures is overwhelming. Where we saw only foolishness before, we now see the all-satisfying beauty of God. God has done this—supernaturally.

No one merely decides to experience the Christian Scriptures as the all-compelling, all-satisfying truth of one’s life. Seeing is a gift. And so the free embrace of God’s word is a gift. God’s Spirit opens the eyes of our heart, and what was once boring, or absurd, or foolish, or mythical, is now self-evidently real.

So my argument in A Peculiar Glory was that the glory of God, in and through the Scriptures, is a real, objective, self-authenticating reality. It is a solid foundation for a well-grounded faith in the truth of the Bible. This faith is not a leap in the dark. It is not a guess, or a wager. If it were, our faith would be no honor to God. God is not honored if he is picked by the flip of a coin. A leap into the unknown is no tribute to one who has made himself unmistakably known by a peculiar glory.

It Is a Peculiar Glory

Up to this point in my recap of A Peculiar Glory, I have not emphasized the word peculiar. What does that word imply? It implies that the way the Scripture reveals its complete truthfulness is by means of a peculiar glory. In other words, the power of Scripture to warrant well-grounded trust is not by generic glory. Not by mere dazzling. Not by simply boggling the mind with supernatural otherness. Rather, what we see as inescapably divine is a peculiar glory. And at the center of this peculiar glory is the utterly unique glory of Jesus Christ.

There is an essence, or a center, or a dominant peculiarity in the way God glorifies himself in Scripture. That dominant peculiarity is the revelation of God’s majesty in meekness, his strength in suffering, and the wealth of his glory in the depth of his giving. This peculiar glory is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Along with countless manifestations in Scripture, this is the central brightness of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). This is what bursts upon the heart and mind of the person in whom God shines with the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

Encountering the Glory in Jesus

This peculiar brightness shines through the whole Bible but finds its most beautiful radiance in the person and work of Jesus Christ. My guess is that the vast majority of people who come to believe in the divine inspiration and complete truthfulness of the Bible come to this conviction through an irresistible encounter with Jesus Christ. The peculiar glory that authenticates the Bible shines first and most clearly in Jesus.

How does that happen? Sometimes it is one particular word or deed of Jesus that penetrates the heart and begins to shatter the hardness that hinders the light of Christ’s beauty. But sooner or later, it is the whole biblical portrait—climaxing in the crucifixion and resurrection—that conquers us and overcomes all resistance.

When the churches of Galatia were starting to drift away from the gospel of Jesus, Paul wrote to them and said, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1). This “portrayal” came with words, not pictures. But it was so real, and so vivid, that Paul said it was an appeal to their eyes—“before your eyesJesus Christ was publicly portrayed.” They saw the peculiar glory of Christ in the preaching of the gospel.

Paul was so taken back by their apparent departure that he called it a kind of witchcraft. “Who has bewitched you?” They had been converted by seeing the peculiar glory of Jesus, most vividly in his crucifixion. His hope was that his letter would blow the demonic vapors away and restore the vivid sight of Christ’s glory. This is how most people come to a well-grounded faith in Christ and his word.

A Sketch of the Biblical Portrait of Jesus

It may be that you do not have a clear sense of what I mean by the “whole biblical portrait” of Christ. Perhaps you do not resonate with the idea that your mind and heart can be brought to a well-grounded confidence in Christ through the peculiar glory of his biblical portrayal. If so, let me try to sketch a small version of that portrayal. The aim here is to illustrate the luminous constellation of Jesus’s words and deeds, in the hope that you will see how his divine glory shines through their cumulative, multifaceted uniqueness.

No One Loved God and Man More

Jesus was a person of unwavering and incomparable love for God and man. He became angry when God was dishonored by irreligion (Mark 11:15–17), and when man was destroyed by religion (Mark 3:4–5). He taught us—and showed us how—to be poor in spirit, meek, hungry for righteousness, pure in heart, merciful, and peaceable (Matt. 5:3–9). He urged us to honor God from the heart (Matt. 15:8) and to put away all hypocrisy (Luke 12:1). And he practiced what he preached. He was meek and lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29). His life was summed up as “doing good and healing” (Acts 10:38).

He took time for little children and blessed them (Mark 10:13–16). He crossed social barriers to help women (John 4), foreigners (Mark 7:24–30), lepers (Luke 17:11–19), harlots (Luke 7:36–50), tax collectors (Matt. 9:9–13), and beggars (Mark 10:46–52). He washed his disciples’ feet, like a slave, and taught them to serve rather than be served (John 13:1–20).

Even when he was exhausted, his heart went out in compassion to the pressing crowds (Mark 6:31–34). Even when his own disciples were fickle and ready to deny him and forsake him, he wanted to be with them (Luke 22:15), and he prayed for them (Luke 22:32). He said his life was a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), and as he was being executed, he prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers (Luke 23:34).

No One Was More Truthful and Authentic

Not only is Jesus portrayed as full of love for God and man; he is also presented as utterly truthful and authentic. He did not act on his own authority to gain worldly praise. He directed men to his Father in heaven. “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7:18). He does not have the spirit of an egomaniac or a charlatan. He seems utterly at peace with himself and God. He is authentic.

This is evident in the way he saw through sham (Matt. 22:18). He was so pure, and so perceptive, that he could not be tripped up or cornered in debate (Matt. 22:15–22). He was amazingly unsentimental in his demands, even toward those for whom he had a special affection (Mark 10:21). He never softened the message of righteousness to increase his following or curry favor. Even his opponents were stunned by his indifference to human praise: “Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God” (Mark 12:14 author’s translation). He never had to back down from a claim, and could be convicted of no wrong (John 8:46).

No One Spoke with Such Unassuming Authority

But what made all this peculiarly amazing was the unobtrusive yet unmistakable authority that rang through all he did and said. The officers of the Pharisees speak for all of us when they say, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). There was something unquestionably different about him. “He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:29). Yet he felt no need to flaunt it. It was natural to him.

His claims were not the open declaration of worldly power that the Jews expected from the Messiah. But they were unmistakable nonetheless. Though no one understood it at the time, there was no doubt that he had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19; cf. Matt. 26:61). They thought it was an absurd claim that he would single-handedly rebuild an edifice that took forty-six years to build. But he was claiming, in his typically veiled way, that he would rise from the dead. And he would rise by his own power. “I will build it.”

In his last debate with the Pharisees, Jesus silenced them with this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They answered, “David’s son.” In response, Jesus quoted King David from Psalm 110:1, “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Then, with only slightly veiled authority, Jesus asked, “David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?” (Luke 20:44). In other words, for those who have eyes to see, the son of David—and far more than the son—is here.

That’s the way he put it more than once. “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” (Matt. 12:6). “Something greater than Jonah is here. . . . Something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt. 12:41–42). This kind of veiled claim runs through all that Jesus said and did. For those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, something unimaginably great—and glorious—is here.

The Veil Is Lifted

Then there were words that were not at all veiled, and indeed were blasphemously self-exalting—unless they were true. He commanded evil spirits (Mark 1:27) and all the forces of nature (Mark 4:40), and they obeyed him. He issued forgiveness for sins (Mark 2:5), which only God can do (Mark 2:7). He summoned people to leave all and follow him in order to have eternal life (Mark 10:17–22; Luke 14:26–33). He said he would stand at the judgment day and declare who will enter heaven and who will not (Matt. 7:23). And he made the astonishing claim that “everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32–33). He said he was the final arbiter of the universe.

Love and Sacrifice to the Uttermost

Then, with all this power—all this potential to make a life of exquisite pleasure and fame on earth—he sacrifices it all for the eternal happiness of sinners. He says uncompromisingly, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Over and over he told his disciples what was going to happen—it was the plan: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

In all of his self-giving, he was intentionally fulfilling Scripture. “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him” (Mark 14:21). So he not only submitted himself to death; he also entirely submitted himself to his Father in heaven (John 5:19)—and to God’s word in Scripture. He was not caught in a web of tragic circumstances. He was willingly laying down his life. “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18).

The aim of his sacrifice, he said, was the forgiveness of sins. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). This was the greatest love that had ever been shown in all of history, because the greatest person made the greatest sacrifice for the greatest gift to the least deserving. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

Risen, Reigning, Coming

When he rose from the dead on the third day, as he said he would (Luke 24:6–7), he appeared to his disciples for forty days, giving them many proofs that he was not a ghost but the very person—body and spirit—whom they had known for three years (Luke 24:39–42; Acts 1:3). He gave them a global command to make disciples from every nation (Matt. 28:19) and promised to send his Spirit and be with them to the end of the age (John 14:26; Matt. 28:20). He ascended into heaven where he reigns over the world (Rev. 17:14; 1 Pet. 3:22) at the right hand of God the Father (Matt. 22:44; 26:64). And he promised he would come again to the earth in power and great glory (Matt. 16:27; 24:30) and bring all his people into everlasting joy (Matt. 25:21).

This is one sketch of the biblical portrait of Jesus. My argument in A Peculiar Glory is that the peculiar glory of God in Scripture comes to its clearest expression in this Jesus. His glory shines through the biblical account of his life and work. This glory is a real, objective, self-authenticating reality. It is a solid foundation for a well-grounded faith in the truth of the Bible.

Answering the Charge of Circularity

Someone may raise the objection that I am arguing in a circle. They may say that I am assuming the reliability of the biblical portrait of Jesus (by citing all these texts), even as I argue for it. There are two kinds of answer to this objection. One is the scholarly answer that says, no, even if you assume the most critical stance toward the New Testament records, there is noGospel writer, and (to use the language of critical scholars) no layer of the tradition, where this kind of portrait is not present. This is the Jesus we know from history. There is no comfortable, natural Jesus that fits into preconceptions. There is no reconstruction of another Jesus more historically reliable than this one.3

The other answer to the objection of circularity is that the portrait of Jesus in the New Testament is self-authenticating. Most people have no access to the scholarly historical arguments for the reliability of the Gospels. My argument is that this need not be a hindrance to well-grounded faith. The reality of Jesus himself, as the New Testament portrays him, carries in it sufficient marks of authenticity that we can have full confidence that this portrait is true. I am calling the self-authenticating beauty, which shines through the New Testament portrait of Jesus, the peculiar glory of God.

Well-Grounded Faith for Nonhistorians

In fact, one of the key impulses behind the argument of A Peculiar Glory is the concern that there must be a way for the simplest person to have well-grounded confidence that the gospel is true. For example, what about a preliterate tribesman in the mountains of Papua New Guinea who has just heard the gospel story unfolded for the first time by a missionary? Or what about a child who is nine or ten years old and has heard the gospel from his parents for years? These people have no access to historical arguments about the authenticity of the New Testament documents. Can they come to a well-grounded confidence (not a leap in the dark) that the gospel is true and that the Scriptures are reliable?

Jonathan Edwards shared this concern more than 250 years ago. He had taken a position as missionary to the Native Americans of New England. He knew that if they were to have a well-grounded confidence in the truth of the gospel, it would not be by scholarly, historical reasoning. My approach to this problem builds on Edwards’s answer. He said, “The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a-begging for its evidence, so much as some think: it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself. . . . The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory.”4 Extending that argument to all of Scripture—that is what I tried to explain and defend in A Peculiar Glory.

The Scope of the Whole Is to Give Glory to God

Another way to put it is to say that A Peculiar Glory was an extended investigation and explanation of the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism. Question 4 reads, “How doth it appear that the Scriptures are of the Word of God?” Answer: “The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by . . . the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.” In other words, the whole Bible, properly understood, has this divine purpose to communicate and display the glory of God. This pervasive aim of the Scriptures is carried through in such a way that God himself stands forth unmistakably as the unerring author guiding the human authors of the Bible.

The Bible, God’s Book

Therefore, my conclusion (with about three hundred pages of argumentation and explanation) is that “the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.”5 This also implies that the Scriptures are the supreme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and right and beautiful. It implies, in matters not explicitly addressed by the Bible, that what is true and right and beautiful is to be assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture. All of this implies that the Bible has final authority over every area of our lives, and that we should, therefore, try to bring all our thinking and feeling and acting into line with what the Bible teaches.

I do not write those words lightly. They make a staggering claim. Breathtaking. If they are not true, they are outrageous. The Bible is not the private charter of a faith community among other faith communities. It is a total claim on the whole world. God, the creator, owner, and governor of the world, has spoken. His words are valid and binding on all people everywhere. That is what it means to be God.

To our astonishment, God’s way of speaking with infallible authority in the twenty-first century is through a book! One book. Not many. Not this one! But the Bible. That is the breathtaking declaration of the Christian Scriptures. The implications of this are huge—including implications about how to read the Bible.

Two Facts Full of Implications

But now we’ve seen that there is another spectacular fact that is full of implications about how we should read the Bible. First, there was the fact that the Creator of the universe has spoken through a book. And, second, there is the fact that he has shown this book to be completely true by the divine glory revealed through it. Both of these facts are laden with implications for how to read the book. On the one hand, it is a book composed with ordinary human language that needs to be understood—it is, after all, a real human book. And on the other hand, it is luminous with the supernatural light of divine glory. Which means, as we said at the beginning, the Bible calls for more than your natural kind of reading. Not less. But more. Natural and supernatural. If either is missing, we will misread God’s word.

The Structure of the Book

This book has three parts. Part 1 poses the all-important question, What does the Bible tell us is the ultimate goal of reading the Bible? I propose an answer with six implications and then devote ten chapters to unfolding and testing those implications. Part 2 works out the inference from part 1 that reading the Bible really must be a supernatural act, if God’s goals for our reading the Bible are to be reached. Finally, part 3 treats the practical outworking of such a claim in the seemingly ordinary human act of reading—the natural act of reading the Bible supernaturally.

1. A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016).

2. Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensées., no. 227, Kindle ed., loc. 1,531.

3. I have argued for this more fully in John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 29–39.

4. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 2., The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 299, 307.

5. Paragraph 1.1 of the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith.

Part 1

The Ultimate Goal of Reading the Bible

. . . that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation.

Introduction to Part 1

The Proposal

Some authors leave marks of their authorship that have nothing to do with the point of their book. That seems to be the case, for example, with the letters of the apostle Paul. He wrote, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thess. 3:17). Again in Galatians 6:11, he wrote, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” In other words, these marks of his authorship are not the great burden of his letters. They are not the vision of God and Christ and the Christian life that moved him to write in the first place. These are signatures. And even though signatures are important for authentication, they are not essential to the message.

Other authors develop a style of writing that is so unique that it functions as a mark of their own authorship. One thinks of G. K. Chesterton’s use of paradox, or Ernest Hemingway’s staccato sentences. Or Charles Dickens’s florid descriptions. Or Emily Dickinson’s deceptively simple brevity of verse. Of course, these styles are not artificially disconnected from the message or the purpose of the writings. But neither are they the main point. Probably each author would say they are essential to what they are trying to do overall. But I doubt that any of them would say, “The main thing I want people to take away from my work is my style.”

The Meaning of Glory Is the Marker of Divinity

But things are different when we think of God’s relationship to the Bible. He did not sign it with a distinctive signature. And when he inspired it (2 Tim. 3:16), he did not overrule the individual styles of the human authors so as to create a style of his own—such as a divine diction, or heavenly vocabulary, or Godlike cadence. When the officers of the Pharisees said of Jesus, “No one ever spoke like this man!” they were not referring to his accent or his vocabulary or his oratorical skill. They were referring to the overall nature and impact of the man as he spoke. The Pharisees saw where this was going and said, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?” (John 7:47–48). In other words, they saw that the officers were starting to see something that awakens faith. But it was not a signature or a style.

What is different about the way God authenticates the Bible is that the ground he gives for the Bible’s truth is the same as the center and aim of the Bible’s message. The peculiar glory of God is both the substance and the seal of the story that the Bible tells. It is not as though God speaks in his word, revealing his nature and his purposes, and then must add a separate marker for his divinity—like a signature or a style. His glory, through his word, is the message and his marker.

To be sure, God often “bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders” (Acts 14:3). But the signs and wonders were not decisive. They could be denied, distorted, and rejected as completely as his word was—which we know from the life of Judas, and from certain people who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead and then helped his murderers (John 11:45–53). Rather, those miracles were woven together with God’s word into a tapestry of the revelation of the peculiar glory of God. That glory is the ultimate meaning of the tapestry and the decisive mark of its divine reality.

Implications for the Big Picture

If that is true, then we would not be surprised that the Bible calls for a supernatural reading, since seeing divine glory in human words is not your ordinary way of reading a book. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Is it, in fact, true that the peculiar glory of God is the ultimate meaning of the tapestry of Scripture? Is this what we should aim to see when we read the Bible? That is our first key question in this book. That is what part 1 is about.