When I first gave my life to Christ, at the age of 16, I was given money to buy a Bible. I went on the 240 Bus from Lanark to Glasgow, and found my way to Pickering and Inglis, in those days the leading Christian bookshop in Scotland. I chose one in soft black leather and with a zip. The sight of a long haired teenager in jeans and a leather jacket, reading a shiny new black Bible sitting in the top front seat of a double decker bus, on a Saturday afternoon probably bemused some of the other passengers. For the next year or two I read that Bible till it began to wear through, the spine split and the zip became detached. I wish I had kept it.
A month or two after buying my first Bible, I was at the Filey Christian Convention on the Yorkshire coast, a huge annual gathering of Christians at the Butlin’s Holiday Camp. This was Spring Harvest for families in the 1960's. They had books. Oh they had books, a huge tent filled with tables, groaning under the weight of Christian books by the thousand. I bought a book – the first of so many! It was my first Bible study book, and it introduced me to the joy and the wonder, and the formative discipline of Bible study as a form of Bible reading. The book I bought was Only One Way. The Message of Galatians, by John R W Stott. Soon after, I also bought his Tyndale commentary on the Epistles of John. These are two parts of the Bible I have loved and studied ever since, and that’s now a long time!
Let’s stay with Galatians. There are verses in this passionate and sometimes angry letter of Paul that are now part of the way I think. Isn’t that true of each of us? Aren’t there one or two verses of Scripture that we know have changed us, have made us think of God differently, that strengthen us when life has been hard to get through, and they live somewhere deep inside and are the bread of life to us? They are just like the hymn says:
Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,
speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,
teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us,
Lord of the word, receive your people's praise.
Galatians 2.21 is such a verse. Early on I learned this verse by heart, and it remains one of the words of God that pulls me back to Christ as the centre of my life. “I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2.20) At times when it is hard to know what to pray, or how to thank God for the grace that saves, just saying these words in the presence of God is itself a prayer of thanksgiving, confession, and renewal of love. As the hymn says, it’s a “word of life which fires us, speaks to our hearts and sets our hearts ablaze.”
That Bible study book written by John Stott was the start of a long education for me, culminating 25 years later in the publication of a book with a chapter exploring the spirituality of John Stott! But further education is for every Christian. Lifelong learning through Bible study is open to all of us, and is a journey to which every follower of Jesus is called. This isn’t a course for those who can produce qualifications and academic credentials to gain admission. We are saved by grace through faith which is the gift of God. What qualifies us for a lifetime course in reading and praying and living Scripture, is the call of God. What enables us is the grace of God, and the one who teaches us is the Spirit of God. The set text is the Bible whether a black leather one surrounded by a zip, (can you still get these?), a brick sized study Bible, or one of the multiple available Bible Apps.
So a final verse from Galatians that has been remembered and internalised as a reminder of what Christian living is about. “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5.25) For years now, Strictly Come Dancing has been a highlight for those who are into such reality shows. What makes for a good performance is timing, movement in unison, anticipation of the moves, mutual understanding, shared enthusiasm, familiarity with the music and rhythm, and practice; lots and lots of practice. If we keep in step with the Spirit, and perform the music of Scripture with practised precision, then we become like those Paul described as those who live by the Spirit, and receive the promise: “The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 5.8) And it all started with a Bible, and a paperback commentary on Galatians, written by a writer to whom my personal debt remains on the books.
(The tapestry above was designed and worked for a friend for whom it is an important theological image.)
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