What we are looking for in reading the Bible is the ability to turn the two-dimensional words on paper into a three-dimensional encounter with God, so that the text takes on life and meaning and depth and perspective and gives us direction for what to do today.

God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it.

God did not give the Bible in order that we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it. The moment we think we've mastered it, we have failed to be readers of the Bible. Of course, I think we should read the Bible and know it—but it is the specific element of reading for mastery versus reading to be mastered that grows out of this shortcut.

Torah is not theoretical morality but lived theology, a life enflamed by knowing God.

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.

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

We aren't called to live first-century lives in the twenty-first century, but twenty-first-century lives as we walk in the light of the revelation God gave to us in the first century.

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

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.

Some people read the Bible as if its passages were Rorschach inkblots. They see what is in their head. In more sophisticated language, they project onto the Bible what they want to see.

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.