We Love God's Word

Opening Prayer: 

We love your Word in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and we echo the joyful delight of the psalmist in the Torah, ‘I love your commands more than gold . . . Oh, how I love your law.’ We receive the whole Bible as your Word, inspired by your Spirit, spoken and written through human authors. We submit to it as supremely and uniquely authoritative, governing our beliefs and our behaviors. We testify to the power of your Word to accomplish your purpose of salvation. We affirm that the Bible is the final written Word, not surpassed by any further revelation, but we also rejoice that the Holy Spirit illumines the minds of your people so that the Bible continues to speak your truth to people in every culture. Amen.

Reflection:

a. The Person the Bible reveals. We love the Bible as a bride loves her husband’s letters, not for the paper they are, but for the person who speaks through them. The Bible gives us God’s own revelation of his identity, character, purposes, and actions. It is the primary witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. In reading it, we encounter him through his Spirit with great joy. Our love for the Bible is an expression of our love for God. 

b. The story the Bible tells. The Bible tells the universal story of creation, fall, redemption in history, and new creation. This overarching narrative provides our coherent biblical worldview and shapes our theology. At the center of this story are the climactic saving events of the cross and resurrection of Christ which constitute the heart of the gospel. It is this story (in the Old and New Testaments) that tells us who we are, what we are here for, and where we are going. This story of God’s mission defines our identity, drives our mission, and assures us the ending is in God’s hands. This story must shape the memory and hope of God’s people and govern the content of their evangelistic witness as it is passed on from generation to generation. We must make the Bible known by all means possible, for its message is for all people on earth. We recommit ourselves, therefore, to the ongoing task of translating, disseminating, and teaching the Scriptures in every culture and language, including those that are predominantly oral or non-literary. 

c. The truth the Bible teaches. The whole Bible teaches us the whole counsel of God, the truth that God intends us to know. We submit to it as true and trustworthy in all it affirms, for it is the Word of God who cannot lie and will not fail. It is clear and sufficient in revealing the way of salvation. It is the foundation for exploring and understanding all dimensions of God’s truth. We live, however, in a world full of lies and rejection of the truth. Many cultures display a dominant relativism that denies that any absolute truth exists or can be known. If we love the Bible, then we must rise to the defense of its truth-claims. We must find fresh ways to articulate biblical authority in all cultures. We commit ourselves again to strive to defend the truth of God’s revelation as part of our labor of love for God’s Word. 

d. The life the Bible requires. ‘The Word is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it.’ Jesus and James call us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. The Bible portrays a quality of life that should mark the believer and the community of believers. From Abraham through Moses, from the psalmists, prophets, and wisdom of Israel, and from Jesus and the apostles, we learn that such a biblical lifestyle includes justice, compassion, humility, integrity, truthfulness, sexual chastity, generosity, kindness, self-denial, hospitality, peacemaking, non-retaliation, doing good, forgiveness, joy, contentment, and love—all combined in lives of worship, praise, and faithfulness to God. 

Closing Prayer: 

We confess that we easily claim to love the Bible without loving the life it teaches—the life of costly, practical obedience to you, our God through Christ. Yet ‘nothing commends the gospel more eloquently than a transformed life, and nothing brings it into disrepute so much as personal inconsistency. We are charged to behave in a manner that is worthy of the gospel of Christ and even to ‘adorn it, enhancing its beauty by holy lives’ [1]. For the sake of the gospel of Christ, therefore, we recommit ourselves to prove our love for your Word by believing and obeying it. Write it on our hearts that there is no biblical mission without biblical living. Amen.

Call upon God for such an outpouring of his Spirit that we, his people, will be assured of his love through his Word.

[1] The Manila Manifesto, paragraph 7.