Audio Transcript
It’s a common struggle all of us face. Maybe you are there now. You sit down with the Bible, trying to read it. But you are really just skimming words on a page. It feels routine and dry. We know we’re looking for deep reality, but how do we get past the mental effort and actually taste the goodness of God through these words on paper? That’s today on Ask Pastor John: how to read the Bible like a Christian Hedonist.
The question comes from Tyler in Kansas City, Missouri: “Pastor John, hello to you and Tony! My question comes out of APJ 1713: ‘John Piper’s Ministry in One Bible Text.’ In that episode you mentioned habits of ‘observation and analysis and text querying’ that were extremely fruitful and irreplaceable for you when you studied in Germany. You said they formed a ‘habit of mind’ that made you impatient with the gamesmanship that stayed at the grammatical-logical-historical level but never pushed beyond the words to the realities behind them. My question centers on those habits. What are they, specifically? Do they differ from standard seminary classroom hermeneutics? And what do you mean by pushing beyond the grammatical-logical-historical level? As an aspiring pastor, I have been taught the grammatical-historical method. Is this method insufficient?”
Tyler is pointing out that my goal in reading — I think every Christian’s goal in reading, especially in reading the Bible — should be to know reality in as many ways as God has designed for it to be known. So, here are my five steps in pursuing this knowledge through reading.
1. Be Aware of Reality
Be aware that knowledge of God is not God. Be aware that the word love is not love. Be aware that the doctrine of delight in God is not delight in God. A shorthand for this awareness is the phrase “reality factor.” So, step one is to always be aware of the reality factor: that behind words and phrases and grammar and syntax and doctrine and theology, there is reality, or we’re just playing games. And the aim is to know the reality in all the ways that God has designed for it to be known.
“The path to know the mysteries of Christ with true, deep, tasted knowing is reading. No shortcuts.”
Take the phrase in 1 John 4:16: “God is love.” The first step of reading to know reality is simply to be aware that, behind the word God, there’s a reality of a person to be known. And behind the word love, there is a reality that is probably very different from the ordinary human experience of what we call “love” because this is the very nature of God. And behind the word is — “God is love” — is a reality that probably does not refer simply to equation (God equals love).
So, the awareness that we are pushing through words and grammar to reality is the starting point of this kind of reading.
2. Desire Spiritual Sight
The second step of reading to know reality is to desire — that’s the key word — the fullest kind of knowledge of reality. If you’re happy just to read the way most people read and stay on the surface of things, that’s where you’ll stay. But if your heart desires to taste and touch and smell and see as many dimensions of reality as God designs, then you’re halfway there — more than halfway there, I would say. I’m basing this on the conviction that there are different kinds of knowing.
For example, Paul says that we need to “[have] the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened” — eyes of our hearts, strange — “[to] know what is the hope to which [we’ve been called]” (Ephesians 1:18). Why do we need to have eyes in our hearts to know this? Because there’s a kind of knowing that goes beyond the awareness from the eyes of our head that something exists or even awareness that it is true and good and beautiful.
There is the knowing that comes with the actual tasting of the goodness and the beauty so that the preciousness and the value is spiritually perceived, spiritually sensed, spiritually apprehended. We grope for words, don’t we? It’s the difference between knowing that honey is sweet because we read it in a book and knowing that honey is sweet because we tasted it. That’s a big difference. And the Bible says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). You can read that he’s good, or you can taste that he’s good.
So, I’m saying that the second step is that we desire this kind of knowing — or whatever kind of knowing God has designed — for the reality behind the words.
3. Pray for Open Eyes
The third step in reading to know reality fully is to pray and ask God to intensify our desires and to open the eyes of our heart. We’re talking about supernatural, spiritual transactions here because “the natural [man] does not accept the things of the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The natural man will never taste the cross of Christ as more precious than life, though it is. We must have divine help, so the psalmist cries out, “Open my eyes.” He’s asking God, “Open my eyes.” That’s the way we ought to pray every day when we read the Bible: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).
So, there are wonderful things beyond the words. There’s reality, and we need God’s supernatural help to taste it.
4. Read the Word
The fourth step is that we not short-circuit the natural process of reading — construing words, phrases, grammar, logic, syntax, context. We dare not presume to run around the nitty-gritty, hard, mental work of reading ordinary words.
Jesus was truly God and truly man. The Bible is truly divine revelation and truly human language. It’s heresy to deny the humanity of Jesus, and it will lead to heresy to leapfrog over the human grammar and logic of biblical texts.
Paul said to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). He did not say, “The Lord will give you understanding, so you don’t need to think about my words.” The only path to reality is through the inspired grammar and logic that reveal the reality. Paul said in Ephesians 3:4, “[By reading] this [letter]” — by reading this — “you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.” The path to know the mysteries of Christ with true, deep, tasted knowing is reading. No shortcuts.
So, yes, learn Greek, learn the grammar, learn the syntax, get inside the head of the writer so you can think what he thinks. Following biblical arguments is the pathway to glory.
5. Receive Spiritual Sight
Finally, the last step is a gift. It’s a gift. You can’t make it happen. You just have to acknowledge this is a gift. You can only receive it and be amazed and thankful. It’s an answer to your prayer. It’s the gift of seeing. It’s that supernatural tasting the glory of God in the reality of the text that is being pointed to.
I’m thinking here of 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” This is a supernatural seeing — sight of the glory — in the reality behind the word gospel. God wants us to see the glory of Christ in and through the gospel. Glory is a combination, I think, of the beauty and the greatness and the worth of Christ.
“We dare not presume to run around the nitty-gritty, hard, mental work of reading ordinary words.”
And what does it mean to know beauty, to know greatness and worth? What kind of knowing is this? It means, at least, that in the affections of the heart, we feel some measure of the worth of Christ. We don’t just say, “He’s precious.” The devil can say God is precious. He’s a liar, and he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t taste it — he doesn’t care — but he can say it. We actually treasure his preciousness. That’s what it means. We actually do it. We feel it in our hearts. We treasure it; we delight in it; we enjoy it. We value it above all things.
Two verses later, Paul says God causes this to happen. It’s a gift (2 Corinthians 4:6). I’m tempted to call this fifth step, this last step, the step of Christian Hedonism, because the final act of reading — the final act of knowing — is the act of enjoying. To know God in all the ways he means to be known includes joy in God above all things. That is a form of knowing value. The devil can say Jesus is valuable. But only by your enjoyment of God can you know he’s valuable.
So, Tyler, those are the habits of mind that I was talking about. I hope they will serve you as you press on toward the high calling of the ministry of the word.
