03.02. On Searching the Scriptures.

On Searching the Scriptures.

John 5:39.

There is no more familiar verse of Scripture than John 5:39, and no exhortation is more common or more needful than "Search the Scriptures." So constant and simple is this reading of the famous passage that some Christians may wonder at our including the verse among ambiguous texts. The reason will be apparent if the Revised Version, both text and margin, is read. The verse is thus translated:

"Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they that bear witness of me." The marginal reading (Or, "Search the Scriptures") reproduces the rendering of the common version. One of these translations of the word used by Christ is as legitimate as the other. The Greek verb is "ereunate," and may be either imperative ("Search") or indicative ("Ye search"). The need of Bible study. When an earnest preacher pleads with people to "Search the Scriptures," he is giving excellent advice, and indicating one of the great needs of the Christian world. The Bible is not studied as once it was. It is not even read very much. We used to warn people against reading books about the Bible rather than the Bible itself. Even that warning may miss the mark in this busy and pleasure-loving age. No one can "grow in grace and knowledge" who neglects the Book of God. Our Saviour nourished his own soul on the Scriptures, and re-affirmed that man lives not by bread alone but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. The Apostle Paul tells us that the Scriptures are able to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. They are profitable for instruction in righteousness, and are given that the man of God may be complete and furnished completely unto every good work. So nobody can he complete or completely furnished who neglects the sacred writings. The verse penned on the fly-leaf of John Richard Green’s Bible sets forth a truth:

"I fear you are ill," said Dr. Latham to Faraday, whom he found in tears with his hand resting on an open book. "It is not that," said Faraday with a sob; "but why will people go astray when they have this blessed book to guide them?" The duty of right searching. The fifth chapter of John furnishes a good illustration of the fact that the ambiguity which lurks in a word or text when taken by itself may be completely and satisfactorily removed by a study of the context. There need he no real doubt that it is the revised translation, "Ye search the Scriptures," which is correct. So certainly is this the right rendering that we confess to a feeling both of surprise and of pain to find preachers and writers obscuring the meaning of the passage by using the other reading. We have heard a Conference Sermon on the duty of Bible study, based on John 5:39, and on the common rendering. It is a pity to begin a carefully prepared address on such a theme with au obvious misinterpretation. Before us lies a book containing helpful interpretations of texts "hard to be understood." The distinguished and scholarly author puts in the preface the following sentences: "We are told to ’search the Scriptures’ (John 5:39). We are not merely to read, but to ’search’ for hidden treasures. The meaning of Scripture does not always lie on the surface . . . No attention we pay can be too great or too minute, for the smallest points of Holy Writ have often a deep meaning." The sentiment is excellent, but these lessons are not found in John 5:39.

Few better working rules can be given to a speaker than that he see that his homiletics harmonize with his exegesis. It is well to resist the temptation to strain a text, or give it a twist in order to illustrate a point or make a sermonic hit. If we wish to inculcate the duty and helpfulness of Bible reading, there are other excellent texts awaiting our use. The Jews whom Jesus condemned in the address reported in John 5 did search the Scriptures. Those who were destined to be lawyers or rabbis devoted very much time to their study. The scribes, as their name denoted, mere "scripturalists," and their ideal office was to search into the meaning of the Scriptures. He who so searched felt that he was sure of life everlasting. Rabbi Hillel said, "The more law, the more life." Yet all their study availed little. Though searching the sacred books because they thought that in them they had life, they yet rejected the Christ of whom those very Scriptures testified. Herein is the pathos and tragedy of the Jews’ position. They boasted of their privilege as possessors of the oracles of God (the first "advantage" of the Jew; see Romans 3:2). They professed to reverence these oracles, and certainly they studied them but they missed the meaning of the message. They looked and prayed for the advent of the Messiah, yet knew him not and crucified him when he came. So Christ says: "Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may, have life." "The intense, misplaced diligence is contrasted with the futile result." The true function of Scripture. Our great text teaches it’s the true function of Scripture, viz., to testify of Christ and to lead men to him. The Jews believed that in the careful study of the Scriptures, and in the laborious keeping with minute scrupulosity of the requirements of the law, they would find life eternal; but the purpose of God was that the Scriptures should prepare for Jesus Christ, his Son, and lead to him, as the real source of spiritual life. No one who uses the Scriptures aright can possibly study them too diligently or prize them too highly. But not even the study of Scripture is an end in itself. Dr. Marcus Dods gave the following continent on John 5:39 :" The true function of Scripture is expressed in the words, ’these are they which bear witness of me’; they do not give life, as the Jews thought; they lead to the life-giver. God speaks in Scripture with a definite purpose in view, to testify to Christ; if Scripture does that it does all. But to set it on a level with Christ is to do both it, him, and ourselves grave injustice." The Scriptures, the church, the ordinances of our Lord’s appointment, must be prized and cherished by every Christian. They are all means, however, and not ends in themselves. Very many of the errors in the realms of religion and morals are due to the turning of means into ends. We do not have life in ordinance, or Bible, or church: we have life in Christ. We need these because we must have him.

There is a perennial lesson for its all in the well-known text of our study. O the tragedy--to profess to love the Book, and yet not to come to him in whom life is to be found; to know of Christ as revealed in the Scriptures, and yet not to "know him" whom to know is life eternal.

John 5:39 is not so much an injunction to search the Scriptures as it is a warning against Scripture searching to little purpose.