Our Attitude Toward God's Word

The other day in Hershael York's preaching class he told us something that Bruce Ware said that struck him when Ware was being interviewed for a faculty position at Southern. It seemed pretty great to me, too, so I'm going to say it here...

If there is any portion of the Bible that we don't love, then our attitude is not in line with God's will. Those of us who are "conservative" claim that every word of Scripture is God-breathed, but too often there are portions of it that we simply tolerate instead of embracing them whole-heartedly. It's too easy for our attitude about some of its claims to become, "I don't like it, but since it's God's Word I'll accept it and live by it." If we don't like it, the problem is not with the Bible but with us. Either we don't understand it properly or our own sinful presuppositions are hindering our ability to believe, and it's more likely the latter.

One example that I think many of us can relate to is that of the Bible's multiple claims that men and women have different roles in the family and the church. It says very unambiguously that men are to be the leaders in both of those institutions. For a long time I had an attitude that this didn't really make any sense, but that I would grudgingly go along with it because that's what the Bible says. You know what that attitude is? It's pharisaism, and Jesus had something to say about it: "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.'" I want not only to honor God by saying that He's right in what he wrote about men and women, but to draw my heart close to Him and love every word He has said about the matter. I want to get rid of every worldly influence that has crept into my mind about gender's meaninglessness and replace it with an admiration of God's glorious plan in distinguishing the two halves of humanity from one another. I want to embrace the beauty of marriage as a picture of Christ giving himself up out of love for the church. I want to see how our distinct gender roles reflect those within the Trinity, with the Father as the head and the Son and Spirit in perfect submission. In short, I want what God has said about men and women to make me love Him more. Any hint of disbelief is my problem, not His.

Of course this applies not just to gender role passages but to everything that in Scripture that makes us uncomfortable. We must not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.