Why God Gave Us the Bible

​What is the purpose of the Bible?  Why did God give us the scriptures?  Many Christians have an unbiblical view of scripture and would not answer these questions correctly.  Many think God gave us the Bible to help us navigate the struggles of living life.  The Bible provides us with answers we need and the wisdom to be better parents, to be better husbands and wives, to avoid sin.  Others think God gave us the Bible to point the way to heaven for us, to teach us how to get saved and have our sins forgiven.  I’ve once heard it said that the B.I.B.L.E. is ‘basic instructions before leaving earth.’  However, while all of the aforementioned points are true on some level, none of them is the primary reason God gave us holy scripture.  In John 5:39 Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”  All of the Old Testament scriptures bear witness about Christ; they all spoke about Christ and point toward Christ.  As though this were not amazing enough, he then says in 5:46-47, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.  But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”  Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.  Who has never struggled to read through Leviticus and Numbers?  Most Christians I know who have tried to read through the entire Bible and failed, tell me they made it as far as Leviticus or Numbers and then stopped and went back to the New Testament.  Yet, Jesus says Moses wrote about him!  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are all about Christ!  Then in Luke 24:44 Jesus says to the disciples, who are still trying to wrap their minds around the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”  This three-fold description is the way Jews then and now summarize the entire Hebrew Bible.  In fact, today they call their Hebrew Bible the Tanakh, an acronym which comes from the Hebrew words Torah (the Law, meaning the first five books of Moses), Nevi'im (the Prophets and poetry), and Ketuvim (the Writings, everything else).  Jesus uses this same division to say that everything in the Old Testament is about him.  Thus, the primary reason God gave us the Bible was to teach us about Christ, to exalt his Son, to glorify and point people to Christ.  Christ walks through every page of scripture.  All the Old Testament points forward to Christ and the New Testament point us back to Christ.  Christ is the apex of all of Scripture!  It is all about Him!