Love the Author, and you will love his Word
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“We love because he first loved us.” —1 John 4:19
I ran across a quote this week that I wanted to share with all of you. Dr. William Mounce is a well-known theologian who was chosen to serve on the teams for both the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible. Bill Mounce is brilliant in the Greek language and has taught at some of the finest seminaries. His website, BiblicalTraining.org, is an important biblical site. His dad was also a brilliant theologian, and his grandparents were ministers too. God has used his family to teach the Bible as truth for a very long time.
Dr. Mounce was interviewed by Jonathan Peterson at BibleGateway.com, who asked the theologian, “Why do you love the Bible?” His response made me smile, then think. Dr. Mounce answered, “I love the Bible because I love its Author.”
I’ve taught the Bible for many years, but have I taught people what the Bible says and taught them to love the Author? That was food for thought, and I imagine I will think about that often in the days to come.
It’s natural to care about what our loved ones think and say. Maybe the best way to teach people to trust God’s word is to help them learn to love the Author.
Do you love Jesus as God?
My favorite definition of Jesus is that he is God with skin on. I cannot accurately explain or teach the Trinity. There are thousands of volumes of theology on the subject. If there were a perfect explanation of the Trinity, then we would all have memorized it. In fact, the Trinity is one of the reasons the Muslim faith considers Christianity a false religion. We teach that God became a man. To them, that is heresy.
We shouldn’t be frustrated that we can’t explain the Trinity. If we could define God in human terms, we would have reduced him to less than the supernatural Creator that he is. I wonder if one of the main reasons God became man was to help us truly learn to love him. It’s hard to love what cannot be known or experienced in this world. God so loved everyone that he became Jesus so that it would be easier for the human mind to comprehend and experience his love. If we know Jesus as our Savior, we have only begun to know our eternal God. Human beings cannot fully know God this side of heaven. That’s why Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Jesus taught us how to love God
Our hearts and our souls learn to love God through faith. Love occurs when we place our faith in a person and trust them. We love people even though we know they are imperfect and will, at some point, let us down. How much more should we love God! We can trust him, and all that he allows in our lives, because we know our God is incapable of imperfection. Our faith in God’s perfection is the basis for our trust in his word.
The Bible is the inspired word of God. When Jesus spoke, he was speaking God’s word, God’s thoughts, to those around him. When others like the apostles and the prophets wrote the books in our Bible, their words were inspired. We often study the people behind the words when what matters most is that their words were given by God’s Holy Spirit to teach us. The words are not their own thoughts; they are God’s. We call the Bible “God’s Word” for a reason.
Jesus taught that the most important commandment was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Then Jesus said, “This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:38–40).
Jesus taught you to love the Lord your God “with all your mind.” Dr. Mounce said, “I love the Bible because I love its Author.” Do we echo those words in our own hearts and lives?
The next time you pick up your Bible, take a moment to love the One who wrote it to you. Our first and most important “commandment” is to love our God. It is that love that enables us to love others as we should.
Our legacy of faith and love
I’ve often hoped that when people remember me at my funeral someday, they will say, “She taught me to love the Bible.” Now I have another hope. I also want them to say, “She taught me to love God more deeply.”
I want to close this blog post with Dr. William Mounce’s words. Dr. Mounce’s father lived to be ninety-seven and was a brilliant theologian, like his son. Bill Mounce wrote a blog post after his father died that is simply profound. I hope you will take a minute to read the entire message. Dr. Mounce closed his post saying, “As my grandma used to quote, ‘Only one life will soon be past, and only what’s done for Jesus will last.’ If my legacy is a family and group of friends who love Jesus more because I was in their life, then that is enough.”
I doubt many of us will achieve Dr. Mounce’s level of theological expertise and cultural impact. Each of us will create a unique legacy for others. We all have an individual calling and gifting, and we are accountable only to God for our obedience to what he assigns us. As Mounce wrote, if our legacy is a group of people who love Jesus more because of us, that is enough. We need to love the Author, and we need to love his Word. That is our daily witness to others.
Who will know and love God more because they knew you? If that is the purpose of this day and each day that follows, we will have spent our lives well.
