The bible - Chambers, Oswald
The revelation of gods will has been brought down to us in words. The bible is not a book containing communications from god, it is gods revelation of himself, in the interests of grace; gods giving of himself in the limitation of words. The bible is not a faery romance to beguile us for a while from the sordid realities of life, it is the divine complement of the laws of nature, of conscience and of humanity, it introduces us to a new universe of revelation facts not known to unregenerate commonsense. The only exegete of these facts is the holy spirit, and in the degree of our reception, recognition, and reliance on the holy spirit will be our understanding. Facts in the natural domain have to be accepted, and facts in the revelation domain have to be accepted; our explanation of facts is always open to alteration, but you cannot alter facts. The bible does not simply explain to us the greatest number of facts, it is the only ground of understanding all the facts, that is, it puts into the hand of the spirit-born the key to the explanation of all mysteries.
In dealing with revelation facts the aim is not to produce specialists, but to make practical workers in the bible domain. The research of specialists, both in the natural world and in the revelation world, is of the very greatest value, but remember, it is essential to be born of the spirit before we can enter the domain of bible revelation. The only method of bible study is to prove all things, not by intellect, but by personal experience. The context of the bible is our lord Jesus Christ, and personal relationship to him. The words of god and the word of god stand together; to separate them is to render both powerless. Any expounder of the words of god is liable to go off at a tangent if he or she does not remember this stern undeviating standard of exposition, viz. , that no individual expe- rience is of the remotest value unless it is up to the standard of the word of god.
The bible not only tests experience, it tests truth. I am . . . The truth, said Jesus. Just as the words of god and the word of god are the counterpart of each other, so the commandments of our lord and the conduct of his saints are the counterpart of each other; if they are not, then we are none of his. The test of truth is the revelation of the son of god in me, not as a divine anticipation, but as a delightful activity now. It is perilously possible to praise our lord as saviour and sanctifier, and yet cunningly blind our own hearts to the necessity of his manifesting in our mortal flesh his peculiar salvation and sanctification.
The bible tests all experience, all truth, all authority, by our lord himself and our relationship to him personally; it is the confession of conduct. . . . He that confesseth me before men, said Jesus; the word confess means literally that every bit of my bodily life speaks the same truth as our lord exhibited in the flesh. It is this scriptural scrutiny that reveals the superb standard of the grace of god: christian experience is possible only when it is the product of the supernatural grace of god at work in our hearts.