Christless Christianity by Michael Horton

Author:Michael Horton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 2010-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Missing the Point: Turning the Bible into Life’s Instruction Manual

Is it possible to be a Bible-believing fundamentalist and miss the point that Christ is the sum and substance of its message?

The Pharisees were the guardians of Scripture, so concerned about following it strictly that they even devised numerous hedges to protect its commands. If the law commanded you to rest from your ordinary labors on the Sabbath, these religious leaders insisted that a poor person could not pick grain on the Sabbath even for survival. In fact, just after Jesus was rebuked by the Pharisees for letting his disciples do this very thing, he told them, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40 NRSV). The Scriptures he had in mind were what we call the Old Testament. They were zealously committed to the Bible, but they missed the point.

After his resurrection, Jesus met up with some of his depressed disciples along the Emmaus road and cheered them up by reminding them of what their Scriptures said: “‘Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:26–27 NRSV). No wonder their hearts burned within them as he opened up the Scriptures (v. 32).

Apart from Christ, the Bible is a closed book. Read with him at the center, it is the greatest story ever told. The Bible is trivialized when it is reduced to life’s instruction manual. What is the point of the historical books, the Psalms, the wisdom literature, and the Prophets? According to the apostles—and Jesus himself— the Bible is an unfolding drama with Jesus Christ as its central character. As the narratives themselves make plain enough, the Old Testament saints were not heroes of faith and obedience but sinners who, despite their own wavering, were given the faith to cling to God’s promise. According to the apostle Paul, the Old Testament itself proclaimed this gospel of free justification in Christ alone through faith alone: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (Rom. 3:21 NIV).

In his first letter, the apostle Peter reminds believers of the “indescribable and glorious joy” resulting from the fact that they are “receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Then he adds,

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now

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