What the Bible Is

The Bible, of course, is a book. Better yet, it is a collection of books. Better still, it is two collections of books that tell the story of God’s redemptive action in history. This book is far and away the number one best-seller of all time. You will find one in nearly every home in the Western Hemisphere. And where it is hard to find, those precious few copies are treated with the utmost care and sanctity.

But we know that the Bible is so much more than a book. It is special—unlike any other book that has ever been written. I propose that the Bible is, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, these six things.

The Bible is God’s revelation through the written word. It is God’s Word, and it is divine in that it comes to us from God. It is, certainly, not itself God. We do not worship the Bible. (Though some might claim that evangelicals believe the Holy Trinity consists of Father, Son and Holy Bible.) The Bible is subject to God, and he could change it if he chose to do so.

Because it is God’s Word, the Bible stands in authority over believers. We are subject to the Scriptures, compelled to understand them and obey them. Some insist that the Bible is just another voice at the table, on par with our own thoughts and words and experiences. But we maintain that the Bible contains the very words of God, and, as such, holds a place of such honor and esteem that we submit our words and thoughts and deeds to it.

The Bible is holy and sacred. We revere it and honor it. We worship through it because in it we find the words and thoughts of God.

It is alive and active. It speaks light into darkness and life into death. It gives us courage in our cowardice and humility in our pride. It chastens and trains us, building us up into Christlikeness through the power of the Spirit who illuminates it.

The Bible is also human. Its many books were written by human beings in specific spaces and times over a period of about 1500 years. The language of Scripture carries the personalities, quirks, circumstances and vocabulary of its human authors. “Historically the church has understood the nature of Scripture much the same as it has understood the person of Christ—the Bible is at the same time both human and divine. ‘The Bible,’ it has been correctly said, ‘is the Word of God given in human words in history.’” (Fee & Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 21)

The sixty-six books of the Bible were written to human beings in specific locations and circumstances. Every book was written for a very specific reason and addressed to very specific people. All of the Scriptures have an original, intended meaning for its very first audience.

The human authors of Scripture employed many different literary styles and genres in their writings: stories, parables, histories, covenants, laws, poems, proverbs, letters and apocalypses. Each literary genre carries its own rules for reading and interpretation. Laws and poems, for example, ought not to be read in the same way.

Leland Ryken observes that the Bible is literature because it is about human experience rather than abstract ideas. The Bible is neither a theological treatise nor a constitution of acceptable moral behavior. It is mostly a collection of stories about God and people. Through these stories, the Bible brings us present to the way the world really is. It does not paint an idealistic portrait of some unattainable utopia. Rather, it tells us how God has interacted in the dirty and bloody world in which we live.

The Bible is history from a very specific point of view—God’s. The Bible is chiefly concerned with telling the story of God’s redemptive action in human history. This is the lens through which the Bible views the world.

The Bible is theology because it tells us who God is by telling the story of the Creator’s interaction with his creation. The Bible develops its theology through the stories it tells about God and his people.

The Bible, finally, is our book, and we are the people of the book. God has revealed to us all that we need to know about him through this book. He has graciously left us with a testimony of his words to mankind, and his Spirit to illuminate them to us. We are, therefore, stewards of the book, responsible to know its contents, and through it, to know him.