‘Open eyes on an unveiled Word’ by Alastair Roberts

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As we enter 2019, perhaps we are considering our Bible reading plans for the year ahead. But how should we read our Bibles? This article by Alastair Roberts offers some basic guidelines. He writes that the Bible “is a book that we can never truly have read: we remain students of it for the entirety of our lives. We may have been reading for decades, yet, when it comes to reading our Bibles, we are all very much beginners.” He then offers seven fundamental principles for our reading of Scripture.

His first principle is to practice attention. He explains: ”As we seek to be faithful to Scripture, we must learn truly to hear its voice, rather than just hearing what we expect, want, or are primed to hear. [Roberts’ emphasis.] This requires us to develop the discipline of attention to the text. We may need to suspend our questions (and our answers) and learn how to listen. . . . . Attentiveness is a skill, the sharpening of our senses as readers or hearers of Scripture, which will become more developed in us the more deliberately and consistently we practice it.”

Another principle is to recognise that Scripture is our story. He writes, ”One of the most startling passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul is found in 1 Corinthians 10, when he retells the story of the Exodus and relates it to the life of the Corinthian church. . . . . The striking thing about these statements is the way that Paul stresses the fact that, when we are reading the story of the Exodus—and other stories in the Scripture—we are reading our story, a story that is both for and about us. Whether we are Jewish or Gentile Christians today, we need to see the children of Israel who escaped from Egypt as ‘our fathers’! Likewise, in the story of the Exodus we see the same patterns playing out in Christ’s forming of the Church today. The music continues, and we are being caught up into it! When we read our Bibles, we can easily become accustomed to reading it as a series of accounts of things that happened to them back then. But God has given us the Scripture so that we might hear its music continuing in what is happening to us right now.”

Read the whole article HERE.