Wednesday, December 31, 2025
New Year’s Eve
Bible Reading
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Book Installment)
The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible
Chapter 8: In Jesus Christ the Bible Came Together
In the previous three chapters, I spoke to you about the New Testament from a strictly historical perspective – that is, as the word of men. And it is that. But because we reached the conclusion to which it led us – that Jesus is Lord – we now need to see how the entire Bible – both Old Testament and New Testament – must be understood as the word of God as well as the word of men.
The Old Testament
During His earthly life, Jesus confined His ministry to His fellow Jews in Israel. At that time, the Bible consisted only of what we call the Old Testament. Because books as we know them did not exist, its contents were handwritten on scrolls and kept by the priests and scribes of Israel. This collection began when Moses wrote the first five books, starting with Genesis, roughly 1,500 years before Christ. What the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are for America, Moses’ books were for Israel – founding documents. Given the series of miracles God had performed through Moses to get the Israelites out of Egypt, and given that God had instructed Moses to write what he wrote, these texts were considered by Israel to be not merely the nation’s founding documents, but also the word of God.
In the generations after Moses, God spoke through other men from time to time. Men who spoke for God were called prophets. Like Moses, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit – that is, God’s Spirit – to say and write what they did. While retaining their individual personalities, they were speaking the thoughts God gave them. Their writings were preserved and added to those of Moses. Thus the Scriptures grew in size for about a thousand years. Then such prophecy ceased for about 400 years before the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus and His religious opponents in Israel never fought about which writings did or didn’t belong in the Scriptures. They accepted without question what had been handed down by the generations before them.
While Jesus and the ruling Jewish teachers agreed about what the Scriptures were and what they said, they disagreed greatly about what the Scriptures meant. Jesus attributed this to two factors: 1) He believed the Scriptures while His opponents only said they believed them, and 2) He was the Messiah who had been promised by Moses and all the prophets, and therefore He had come to teach people a new way to act on the Scriptures. Thus Jesus never sought to challenge or change a single word of the Old Testament; He just applied it fully to the heart and thereby demonstrated how it could instruct all the nations and not just Israel. Thus Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament, but rather to give it new life. That Jesus was raised from the dead and made Lord of all creation ratifies His faith in the Old Testament as not just the word of men, but of God as well.
The New Testament
The New Testament is not just the unique historical record for firsthand knowledge of Jesus, it’s an interpretive lens for the Old Testament. We want – and need – to understand the Old Testament as Jesus understood it. The New Testament is constantly quoting and explaining the Old Testament…from Jesus’ point of view. Both testaments are the word of God…and in Jesus Christ they come together and speak in unison. As the OT is the prophets speaking for God, so the NT is the apostles speaking for Jesus.
Jesus Christ and the Bible
Devotion to Jesus Christ as Lord is impossible without the Bible, for the Bible is the foundational means through which He speaks to the world today. If we don’t know what Jesus has said, calling Him “Lord” is meaningless. Conversely, devotion to the Bible alone is useless without greater devotion to Jesus Christ for He is the main point of the Bible. If we’re not rightly relating to Him, we’ll misunderstand what the Bible is saying. The Bible is the treasure map and Jesus is the treasure.
The same Holy Spirit given to the prophets who wrote the OT and the apostles who wrote the NT is given to every human being today – even though it’s clear not all human beings are heeding that voice. The Holy Spirit has more to say than just what’s written in the Bible; but what’s written in the Bible gives us a standard we can use to judge any thought or word that purports to be coming from the Holy Spirit today. God never contradicts Himself.
Even though we can hear God today just as people heard Him in the biblical age, there is never going to be another Bible, nor is this one going to be expanded. When the kingdom of God came late in the 1st century, the biblical age ended. Therefore, let no one add to the Bible; neither let anyone take away from it. It is the ancient foundation of all that God is saying in modern times.
The Duty of a Man 