Quotes about Bible

The most significant passage in the Bible about the Bible is not, however, those two poignant New Testament passages that have given to us words such as inspiration (2 Tim 3:14-17; 2 Pet 1:20-21). Rather, it is Psalm 119, and it can be read as the Bible's view of the Bible.

To say this once again, the focus of the Bible on fasting is not on what we get from fasting or on motivating people to fast in order to acquire something, but instead lands squarely on responding to sacred moments in life.

They set the kindling afire to consume the body of a man who had but one goal—to make the Bible readable for everyone.

That is, until we find the story that leads us to the gospel claim that Jesus is the Messiah, we don't have the Bible's story right.

we who seek to indwell the Bible's Story are indwelling the omniscient perspective of the divine's narration.

We in the Western world are obsessed with our individual relationship with God, which leads us to read the Bible as morsels of blessings and promises and as Rorschach inkblots. But reading the Bible as Story opens up a need so deep we sometimes aren't aware we need it: oneness with others under the King who rules his Kingdom.

Until we learn to read the Bible as Story, we will not know how to get anything out of the Bible for daily living.

It is impossible for us to indwell this Story and not assume that narrative's perspective. Again, that perspective is God's perspective. It is not our perspective; it is God's perspective. It is God's perspective on us, not our perspective on others. Bible readers, especially pastors (and commenters on blogs), inevitably begin to think like God about ourselves and others.

This otherness problem is what the gospel "fixes," and the story of the Bible is the story of God's people struggling with otherness and searching for oneness.

It is a fact that many statements about what the Bible says are derived from contextless exegeses of a former generation

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me; it is the parts I do understand." Whoever said that may well have been thinking about Matthew 5 or even our specific passage.

Fourth lesson in Bible reading: we are challenged to be better than nonfollowers. Followers are marked by a greater righteousness or by more righteousness. (Just what that more will look like can be found in the antitheses of 5:21—48.)