The Autobiography of God

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Reading God’s Autobiography

Genesis 1:1, Revelation 22:16

“In the beginning God…I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches.  I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning start.”

                  From the beginning until the end, the Bible is more than a storybook of anecdotal messages instructing us for life.  The Bible is, first and foremost, the autography of God. The Bible is not a biography in which the writers give an account of God and His activity in the world.  Nor is the bible a memoir by God. A memoir is different than an autobiography.  In a memoir, the writer shares his/her experiences, emotions, and events that happened during their life.  A memoir does not seek to be factual but aims to convey their perception of the events. Instead, the Bible is an autobiography. An autobiography is a nonfiction account of a person’s life in which they write about their life events so that people might know them and the things they have done.  The Bible is written by God, who guided the writers to record His story so that we might discover and know Him.  

From the opening words to the final chapter, the book is written to communicate who God is and how we can have a relationship with him.  When we read the Bible, we often approach it as a book about how to find happiness in life. The Bible is God’s instruction manual for us on how to live.  However, it is more than just that.  While the Bible communicates how to live, Its ultimate purpose is for us to gain an understanding of God. On every page, in every action, and every event, the centerpiece of the story is God; who He is, and how He acts.  Without the Bible, God remains remote and mysterious, unknowable and unrecognizable by man.  We may have an innate awareness of him, but we cannot really know Him, for He is spirit, and we are confined to the physical.  We may even have a vague awareness of His activity as we see the testimony of creation pointing to the Creator.  But even the most perceptive scientists cannot fully perceive God in creation alone. To fully know God, He must reveal Himself to us.  He has done it in two ways.  First, He has given us His autobiography by inspiring the Bible's writers to record His message.  The Bible is not a collection of religious writers who wrote about God, sharing their perspective of Him. The Bible is a book written by God as He inspired and guided the writers to record His thoughts and His message.  Second, God had revealed Himself to us through the revelation and incarnation of Christ. Christ came to walk among us so that we might fully see God in a tangible way.  In Hebrews 1:1-2, we read, God, after He spoke long ago to the Fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His son.” 

                  Today, we are starting on a new journey of discovery.  For the next year, we will read through the whole Bible.  The purpose of the devotionals will not be to discover the meaning and significance of the events but to see their implication for how we live. While that is important and needed, I would like us to take a different approach.  The focus of the devotions will not be the events that happened or even the moral lessons they have for us. Instead, the focus will be on how the events, writings, and pages reveal the nature of God.  Instead of asking the question, “What does this mean to me?” (an essential and necessary question), we will be asking, “What does this tell us about God?”  Each devotional will involve reading four chapters of the Bible with the purpose of knowing God. When Jesus himself came, it was not just that we might have salvation. Christ came so that we might know God, which is the purpose of God’s redemptive work (John 17:3).  The goal of salvation is not eternal life; the goal and purpose of salvation are that we might know God in all His multi-faceted glory. I challenge you to join me on this quest of reading the greatest autobiography ever written.

                     

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