What kind of book is the Bible? 
How should we read and interpret the Bible?
How should we tell the Bible’s story with our words and our lives?

Pre-order now on Amazon

These are the questions at the heart of this marvelous book by Dr. Brad Jersak. (A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way is now available for pre-order: CLICK HERE). 

The fancy word for the art and science of interpreting the Bible is Hermeneutics. For the first twenty years of my adult life, during and after college and seminary, I devoured everything I could get my hands on regarding the interpretation of Scripture, the doctrine of Scripture, the nature and authority of Scripture, you name it. It remains one of my life’s passions. One of the things I discovered early on is that there is indeed an art to it. Some people are good at it and some people aren’t – regardless of how much academic training they had obtained. I’m not saying that learning the basic principles of good Bible interpretation isn’t important. They are invaluable. I immersed myself in studying the importance of genre, context, figures of speech, progressive revelation, redemptive trajectory, translation theory, and the editing, collecting, and canonization of Scripture. I also studied the use of Scripture in the liturgy of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. But beyond all of that, there remains an art to it. I guess you could call it a mixture of intuitive insight, Holy Spirit-led common sense, and the guiding, protecting, guardrail-like presence of the interpretive community, both past, and present. Ultimately, we interpret the Bible together or not at all. Having said that, however, there’s one more essential element to this whole enterprise. There’s something more to reading the Bible well. And that something more is what Brad Jersak’s book discusses and discovers.

In the 1980s, Clark Pinnock wrote a book entitled, The Scripture Principle, which launched me on that lifelong quest I mentioned. In the last twenty years or so, I began to encounter a cascade of writers and thinkers who were helping me understand what I now consider to be the crucial ingredient in Biblical Interpretation: that of reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. I knew in my gut that this was the right path. I learned that Jesus is the best place to start and the best place to end. I was reminded that Jesus is God’s Word in the fullest and truest sense. I was reminded that the best way to read the prophets and the poets and the apostles was to read them as Jesus taught us to read them: as being about Jesus, as pointing to Jesus, as witnesses to Jesus, as leading up to Jesus. In other words, the best way to read God’s Holy Bible is with Jesus Christ by our side: reading the Bible in Jesus, through Jesus, from Jesus, to Jesus, centered in Jesus, and beginning with Jesus. I began to learn that it is folly to journey into the Old Testament (or the New Testament) without Jesus as my guide. I committed myself to never venture into the Bible ever again unaccompanied by Jesus.