Bible

The Bible is not a resource for the church or for the Christian life.  It does not exist so that the world or the church may draw upon the elements of knowledge, understanding and wisdom that are found in it.  It is not a resource for liturgy, or for personal sanctification.  It is not a resource for academic study, or the accumulation of doctrinal knowledge, or any or such like use.  The Bible is not a passive resource under our hands, and if we make it so, we rebel against it!

Consider Paul's exhortation to Timothy:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.  (2 Tim 3:14-17)

By understanding the text in red above, it is clear that the word of the Apostle Paul (preaching the New Covenant) is on the same level of authority as the Sacred Scripture (by which Paul means what we call the "Old Testament").

Furthermore, just as Paul was not primarily a resource which allowed himself to be passively used, but on the other hand was an active instructor, so it is with the Scripture.  The Scripture is not a passive "resource" which we use, but is an active power, through the Spirit, that has within it the ability to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

In fact, as seen in the words in blue, above, the very words of Scripture are breathed by God.  This is reminiscent of the divine in-breathing into Adam at his creation.  New life comes to us by the Spirit as we hear the creative Word spoken by God.  The Church of Christ lives by the actual, active speech of the Word of Christ, bringing spiritual life to our souls.

How serious it is, then, that we listen to this Word in every way that it speaks to us.  How serious it is to study the Bible, not as a "resource," but to be taken hold of by it, and by it to be recreated into new men and women of God!  We should marvel at this divine speech, pine to hear it, and seek to understand it.

A church which is not characterized by this hunger is a church which merely uses the Bible as a resource, implicitly under men's control, to justify their own projects, and to bring a nostalgic smell of Christianity into her life!  Cut off from her food, this church will eventually die.  Her spiritual soul will fade away into a haze, her work mechanically operated by those who trample her courts, until finally the Lord himself takes away her candlestick!

May it not be this way.