Dedicated to assisting the clergy in the preparation of sermons, the feature titled The Minister’s Workshop will appear in the first issue of each month. The section’s introductory essay will be contributed alternately by Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood and by Dr. Paul S. Rees. In addition, the feature will include Dr. Blackwood’s abridgements of expository-topical sermons, outlines of significant messages by great preachers of the past, or of messages by expository preachers of our own time.—ED.
An address (here abridged) before the International YMCA.
The main support of all individual Christian life, of all high Christian work, must be the truth of God. Truth is the lifeblood of piety. Truth is always more precious and more potent when we draw it ourselves out of the Bible. The Christian work we have today in the world will be wise and strong and mighty just in proportion, other things being equal, as it is directed and controlled and inspired out of the Word of God.
The Bible is one Book, but the Bible is many books. Each of them must be read as a whole life if we would understand it well. You cannot understand any book if you read it by fragments. Take an epistle of Paul as you would take any other letter. Sit down and read an epistle from beginning to end, and see what it is about. Then take it afterwards in parts, and see what each part says about the subject.
[Here Broadus tells how in college he had heard a professor advise reading the Bible by books. Before Broadus became a professor at 32, he delivered a series of evening sermons on the Epistles of Paul, treating each in a sermon and as a whole. Thus he crowded the aisles, and led in building a new church.]
Take the Epistle to the Romans. Some people think the epistle tremendously hard to understand. I remember a time when I found it hard to believe; certain portions were the most difficult writing I knew. It seems to me now [age 54] that there never would have been any great difficulty in seeing what the Apostle meant to say if I had only let him alone, and let him say what he wanted to say. But I had my own notions as to what ought to be said, and not said, on the subject. The plainer he was in saying what he wanted, and I did not, the harder I found it to make him say something else.
As you read the epistle rapidly you find that it breaks into two parts. Eleven chapters contain doctrinal arguments and instruction. Then five chapters treat practical matters slightly connected with the doctrinal. The first eleven treat justification by faith. The first three give the whole substance of this doctrine. They show that the Gospel reveals the righteousness of God, which is by grace. Then they show that men need justification by faith, as they can not find justification in any other way. Their works will condemn them. If they find justification at all, it must be by faith.
This takes up the first two chapters, with part of the third. The remainder of the third tells about the provision God has made for justification by faith. His provision takes out of repentant souls all pride and humbles them into receiving the great salvation that God gives. The next two chapters give further illustrations of justification by faith. One whole chapter shows that Abraham was justified by faith. This whole matter of cur being justified through the effect of Christ’s salvation is paralleled by the effect of Adam’s sin on his posterity. This takes a large part of chapter five. These are merely illustrations of our being justified through faith in the Redeemer.
Chapters six, seven, and eight treat justification by faith from another point: in its bearing on sanctification, or the work of making men holy. Then the next three chapters are on the privileges of the Jews and the Gentiles. So the epistle divides into different sections about the same topic. After you have read it through a number of times, have tried to find out the line of thought, and have been willing to let the Apostle mean what he wants to mean, you will find that the subjects considered are not so very difficult. Of course, there are questions we can ask about them, questions that nobody can answer, but we must content ourselves with what is taught us.
So let us read the Bible by books, first taking each book as a whole, then seeing how it is divided up, and so coming down to details. In that way we shall learn for ourselves how to interpret the various parts of Scripture with reference to their connection. Everybody will agree that you ought to look at the connection of a Scripture passage. One day my father said that he did not like to find fault with ministers, but he wished some of them would pay more attention to the connection of a text, as the preacher of the morning had not done. I suppose that preachers have since grown wiser, and now do always pay attention to the connection.
Each of the sacred books has its special aim and practical value, and we ought to get at the practical impression that each of them is designed to make. It is easier to eulogize the Bible than to love it. I have spoken with the hope that by God’s blessing I may awaken an increased desire to read the Bible attentively, by books. I pray that we may all turn away with an earnest desire in our souls, before Him who knows the heart, that in the remainder of our lives we shall strive to know his Word more, to read it more wisely, and to live more fully according to its blessed teachings.
Sermons and Addresses, by John A. Broadus (ed. by Archibald T. Robertson), George H. Doran Co., New York, 1896, “On Reading the Bible by Books” (pp. 167–197). Address, International Convention of YMCA, Cleveland, Ohio, May 25, 1881.
