Gospel Eyes: The Bible Isn't About Me

Through the years of ministry, many people have expressed appreciation for the "practical Bible teaching" they received from my ministry.  They meant it as a complement, and I always received it as such. In ways that I have only lately come to see though, much of what made my Bible teaching "practical" was simply instructing and exhorting people on particular behaviors.  It was "biblical" because the instructions had a Bible reference.

Without me realizing it, I had assumed that the Bible was about me. Or you.  Or our finances, or our family or the end times, or how we can have a relationship with God or any number of things that we needed to know or do.  Things other than - or maybe just in addition to - God and His Majesty, His love for all humanity and of course, the Gospel of His Grace.

Understand that I told people how to have a relationship with God through faith in Christ and saw people come to authentic faith.  But from that initial step of surrender, it really was like the tables got turned and things seemed to naturally become about us and what we should do from then on.  For God.  Because of God.  For God's glory.  But us at work at work all the same.

I've had a paradigm shift since those days.  A sort of personal "Copernican Revolution" of faith that has now ejected me from the center of my life in favor of One Who created me to have Him at that center.  OK, that shift is by no means finished, but now I see that it is what the Father wants to do in me: Get me out from the center and live with Him placed right where only He can fit - the God-sized hole in the center of my heart.

This Copernican Revolution underway in my life changes how I read and teach the Bible in profound ways.  I see now that I used to read the Bible as if it were about me.  What I should do for God. What I could expect if I did this for God and on and on.  Now though, I'm seeing that the Bible isn't about me except in some very secondary ways.  It's about God.  And more specifically, it's about Jesus and the Gospel - Announcement - of His grace.  I call this reading with Gospel Eyes.  It's reading the Bible just as Jesus explained it to his friends on the Road to Emmaus.  (Luke 24:27)  Reading with Gospel Eyes means I see that every story is the opportunity to see more clearly who God is, and what He has done.  How He has changed my world, and even my heart.  And there is nothing more practical than that.

Here's a great example of seeing the Old Testament through Gospel Eyes by my favorite, Pastor Tim Keller.