This is the fourth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.
We’ve received two precious gifts from God—His Word and His Spirit. The Word reveals God to us so that we can know Him, and the Spirit transmits God to us so that we can possess Him. The Spirit without the Word is intangible, while the Word without the Spirit is mere letter. God’s Word makes the intangible Spirit substantial to us, and God’s Spirit makes the Word of God living to us. The Bible makes known to us the things of the Spirit, and the Spirit makes real to us the things in the Bible. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are one.
Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” clearly indicating that God’s Word is His Spirit exhaled. Thus, the logical way for us to take in God’s Word is to breathe in the Spirit who is incorporated in the breathed-out Word. Since the Word is embodied in the Spirit and the Spirit is received through the Word, the most basic and important thing in our reading of the Bible is to exercise our regenerated spirit to contact the Spirit in the Word.
In his book, How to Study the Word, Watchman Nee says:
“John 6 says that the Lord’s words are spirit. The basic principle is the same: Since the Lord’s words are spirit, we have to read them in spirit. In other words, we can only touch spiritual things with the spirit.
“The Bible is not only a book with words or letters printed on pages of paper. The very nature of the Bible is spirit. For this reason, everyone who reads this book must approach it with his spirit; it must be read with the spirit.”
Ephesians 6:17-18 tells us to “Receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.” Note 1 on verse 18 in the New Testament Recovery Version says, “This indicates that we need to receive the word of God by means of all prayer and petition. We need to pray to receive the word of God.”
The way to read the Bible is not by a particular method, but with prayer. By prayer we exercise our spirit. When we pray properly, we exercise our spirit, we are in spirit, and we touch the divine Spirit. Since the same Spirit who dwells in us is also contained in the Scriptures, whenever we read the Word with a prayerful spirit, we enjoy the riches, receive the enlightenment, and appropriate the power in the living Word of God. In this way, the Bible will cease to be merely a book of history, ethics, doctrines, or prophecies to us and become rather a source of spiritual supply.
Both the Word and the Spirit are Christ Himself. In John chapter 1, He is the eternal Word, in Revelation 19:13 He is called the Word of God, and according to 1 Corinthians 15:45, in resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. Christ is therefore the reality of the Word and the Person of the Spirit. Each time we open the Bible we must be conscious that we are approaching Him; we are not only reading His Word, but also communing with Him as the Word.
In John 5:39-40, the Lord Jesus reproved the Jews for searching the Scriptures without coming to Him that they might have life. His message was clear: reading the Bible without coming to the Lord Himself can be an empty pursuit. The knowledge of the Word alone, however precious, should never replace our receiving of Christ as life in the Word.
Although we should read the Word of God primarily for the nourishment of our being and not the gratification of our intellect, we must apply our renewed mental faculty—a mind under the rule of the Spirit—to understand the Scriptures. Throughout the centuries, the divine truths in the Bible, like hidden treasures, were seen only by those who toiled in the study of the Word book by book, passage by passage, verse by verse, and even word by word. As each stood on the shoulders of previous expositors of the Scriptures, with a spirit of wisdom and revelation, they saw something further and interpreted the mysteries of God, Christ, the Spirit, life, the believers, the church, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem.
Following their example, we as believers should read the Word regularly and thoroughly with understanding so that our Savior God’s desire for us to come to the full knowledge of the truth can be fulfilled. We ought to first familiarize ourselves with the Bible by reading it and learning its contents fully in their breadth and depth.
Thus, for us to reap the most benefit from our Bible reading, we must adhere to the following five points:
First, we must exercise our spirit in prayer when we come to the Word in order to receive the Spirit.
Second, we should love the Lord Himself who is the Word and who spoke the Word.
Third, we need to use our mind to grasp the facts, meanings, interpretations, and significances of the Word.
Fourth, we should be ready to heed the Spirit’s speaking and obey the truths in the Word.
And finally, we ought to read a fixed amount consistently on a daily basis.
Be sure to listen to the next episode in this special series on reading the Bible when we investigate how we ourselves—the readers of the Bible—affect what we perceive when we read God’s Word.
