The Bible is not a mere devotional guide, a source book for inspirational thoughts, or a how-to manual for living.  It is God’s revelation of Himself.  So, while there are 66 books in the Bible written by 40 authors over the course of 1,500 years, it is God who inspired and superintended all of it and He is therefore the ultimate author of Scripture.  Thus, there is a unity to the Bible and an integration of the Old and New Testaments.  All Scripture is useful for the Christian, not just the New Testament or the words of Christ Jesus.  Because of this, we need to receive God’s revelation humbly and reverentially, and trust that it is utterly reliable.  There may be things we do not and will not understand about God’s Word, but that lack is on us, not God.  We cannot and should not stand in judgment over God’s Word.  Along with this, we can trust that God will make those things in His Word about Himself and our salvation understandable to us using ordinary means.  If God made the heavens and the earth, then He certainly is able to clearly communicate to us through His enscripturated Word.  With all this in mind, we need to read Scripture covenantally, confessionally, and devotionally.

Covenantally

Reformation theology, as enshrined in the Westminster Standards, has long recognized the centrality of God’s covenantal dealings with His people to His redemptive program. In the ancient Near East, covenants were typically between a suzerain king and a vassal king, although they could be between a ruler and his people or between rulers of equal stature.  They were not just promises, oaths, or contracts, but rather, they were more in line with what we think of as treaties.  They were a legally binding codification of a relationship between two sovereign entities.  The LORD in His providence used covenants as the means to underscore the unbreakable nature of His relationship with His people. He truly will be their God and they will be His people. Understanding how God’s covenants provide a unifying coherence to all of Scripture shapes how we read and interpret the Bible.

The divines writing the Westminster Standards understood there to be two fundamental covenants in Scripture, a Covenant of Works in Adam and a Covenant of Grace in Christ.  These two overarching covenants have as their end goal man’s full and intimate fellowship with God in righteousness. Adam could have had such communion with God if he had perfectly and personally obeyed God in the testing surrounding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (hence the term, the “Covenant of Works”).  With his sin, that way to coming into the presence of God in intimate fellowship has been foreclosed. Men cannot get to God by means of their own righteousness. After Adam’s fall, the rest of the narrative of Scripture is focused on God’s redemption of a people for Himself by grace, centered on the Person and Work of Christ Jesus (hence, the “Covenant of Grace”).  Thus, the pivot point between the two covenants is not between the Old and the New Testaments, but between Adam and everything else that followed. The Old and New Testaments are different administrations of the Covenant of Grace, the Old Covenant (i.e., the Old Testament) preceding Christ and the New Covenant (i.e., the New Testament) was inaugurated with the First Coming of the Lord (as recorded in the Gospels) and will find its culmination with the Second Coming of the Lord at the end of time in the Final Judgment. This distinction is important to understand because it shows that the Old and New Testaments are not antithetical to each other.

Confessionally

We need to think about how a text relates to the systematic teachings of our faith.  Over the centuries, pastors, teachers, and theologians have reflected on Scripture and compared Scripture with Scripture on specific key topics, coming to particular conclusions. Because God is the ultimate author of all Scripture, what Scripture says in different places on issues like who God is, who man is, and different facets of the Christian faith, have been usefully brought together to get a fuller picture of the Bible’s teaching on those matters.  Scripture does not contradict Scripture so careful reflection needs to be made in how disparate verses and passages are harmonized.  The agreed upon conclusions have been codified over time into the creeds and confessions.

The Reformers were particularly adept in pulling together the teaching of the faith into creeds and confessions.  Creeds and confessions, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechism or the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort, are summaries of Scripture’s teaching on different key topics.  Many evangelical Christians are wary of creeds and confessions, mistakenly thinking that those who do hold to them put them over and above Scripture itself. The Westminster Confession of Faith, however, makes it clear that “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures” (WCF I.10).

This systematic or doctrinal approach is important in helping us understand the biblical narrative rightly, and at the same time, the overarching biblical narrative can help us rightly understand the doctrines of the faith.  So, in reading through Scripture, we also will benefit greatly by simultaneously reading through the confessional standards.

Devotionally

Not only is Scripture God’s revelation of Himself, but it is His revelation of Himself to His people.  There are both corporate and personal elements to this. 

On a corporate level, as we think about what a given text of Scripture means, we need to consider both what it would have meant to the original readers and what its application might be to the church, not just to us as individuals.  When Paul writes the Corinthians, for example, he is not simply writing to a collection of individuals, but to a church struggling with its collective witness for Christ.

On a personal level, we need to come to Holy Scripture with an attitude of being open to being shaped by the Bible.  The Apostle Paul says “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  Most devotional guides have a Bible verse or two, followed by some meditative insight for the day, but because Scripture is the Word of God, it, in combination with prayer and the Spirit, will produce a deeper devotion to our Lord over time than simply a Bible quote and some pithy insights.  Cultivating devotion to our Lord takes work, and there are no magic shortcuts.  In our reading of Scripture, we should:

• Pray that we receptive to listening to the Lord. We need help in focusing, as we often come to our devotional time distracted or harried.
• Pray submissively for the illumination of the Holy Spirit to guide our hearts and minds and correct and guide our understanding in reading Scripture.  God’s Word is not always easy to understand, so we need wisdom from the Lord through His Spirit.
• Use the Psalms for adoration. The Psalter covers a wide range of emotions, including some very earnest cries and pleadings.  It is not superficial, unlike how we tend to be in our own prayers if left to our own devices.
• Reflect on what the passage says about God, His character, His works, and His relationship with His people.  Pray this back to Him as a confession of praise and truth.
• Use the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13) as categories for structuring prayers to the Lord, and use the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:1-17) to guide in confessing sin.