WHAT DOES THE Bible say? What is its overarching message?
In the general culture, the Bible is often perceived as a bunch of old stories and rules about how to live righteously. In the church, the Bible is more accurately seen as a revelation of how accepting the death and resurrection of Jesus makes us righteous before God.
Both of these answers focus primarily on what God might want from us (our righteousness, our faith) but don’t touch on the more pertinent question: What does God want for us?
The Bible is actually quite clear on the subject: God wants us to live in love. He wants us to grow in maturity. He wants us to embrace a new spirit. He wants us to enter fully into life, not being afraid to suffer, for he is our strength. He wants us to understand ourselves well, to be neither blind to nor disillusioned by our own humanness, so that we can come alongside others in theirs. He wants us to exercise our creativity, passion, and authenticity as we join in his work in the world. He wants us to enjoy communion with him. He wants us to know joy, courage, and hope. All of which can be summed up in one singular imperative: He desires for us to become imitators of Jesus Christ. He wants us to live in relationship with, and take on the character of, his Son. To put it in a single word: Christlikeness.
The “Searching the Scriptures” series is my chapter-by-chapter journey through the Bible, to highlight and reflect on the hundreds of passages that show that God is less interested in our behaviors and our words and is far more interested in our hearts. He doesn’t care about compliance but about motivation. He doesn’t value achievement but pliability. He wants our hearts to be open, our instinctual reactions to be transformed, and for our very nature to embrace mercy and love, as Christ did.
The overarching purpose of Christlikeness Groups is to cut through the clutter of what the modern Christian life requires of us and to instead pay careful attention to the state of our hearts, our character, our maturity. The posts that follow will explore, from Matthew to Malachi, every passage that encourages us to press on in that difficult and glorious journey.
(Click here to access every post from the “Searching the Scriptures” series.)
