Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of its Founding Fathers was known for being a creative inventor and tinkerer. 

As Jefferson grew older, a personal project began. He laid some pages across his entire study and delicately and slowly began to use razors and scissors to carefully cut out small squares from these pages. After months of tedious work, these new edited pages were bound in red leather and stored away for private times of study and contemplation. Never to be found until after Jefferson’s death. 

The book? The Bible. 

The edits? Parts that he considered to be over the top or offended his Enlightenment-area sense of reason. Things like the miracles of Jesus. The resurrection. The ascension. Heaven. Or teachings that prevented him from keeping his slaves (because there’s simply no way that a Christ follower wouldn’t have slaves!! Sarcasm added).   

What was left after this intense and laborious work was a small, pamphlet looking book that he titled, “Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth” and then the second edition, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”.. You can actually find this in the Smithsonian. Jefferson mutilated and changed the Bible to fit his worldview and preferences. 

  Well… at least Thomas Jefferson was honest. 

Because a lot of us do the very same thing. It’s just not as obvious. You see, he didn’t want to submit to the Bible, He wanted it to submit to Him. And I would make the claim that a lot of us do the very same thing. We claim to be followers of Jesus, and yet we don’t fully agree with the Bible, let alone even give it the time of day. Studies for years have made this claim even more true as rates of Biblical literacy fall more and more year after year. 

What’s biblical literacy you ask? The rate at which Christains read (and actually understand) the Bible. And yes, you read that right, the number of people who can do this is dropping every single year.  

Our problem with the Bible is we don’t understand, submit to, and trust it as our authority and because of this, we don't read it at all. And we surely don’t read it well. A prettier way to state the problem is that we don’t TREASURE or TRUST the Bible. And because of that, we simply won’t read it at all, or we won’t read it well. This has to change. If we want to follow, represent, and live for Jesus in a world that desperately needs Him, we must course correct our problem with the Bible. 

I could go on and on about how highly we should view the Bible. I could walk out a robust way for us to see it as truth in our day and age, but I want to keep this short and give you one important thing to consider: 

Jesus loved Scripture. 

This is undeniably obvious if you read the Gospels. Jesus quoted, taught from, and valued Scripture so incredibly highly in His life that it begs the question, shouldn’t we if we claim to be His followers? We are called to imitate Him every day that we can, and I would make the simple case that this includes adopting His high view of the Bible into our own lives. Because of Jesus, the story of the Bible has become our story! And because we’ve been adopted into the family of God because of the cross, we can begin to wear His name and hunger and thirst for the things that He hungered and was thirsty for, which includes the truth of the Bible!  

The solution to our problem with the Bible, that we don’t treasure or trust it and therefore we simply don’t read it at all, or we don’t read it well, is to focus on the main character of it all. The solution is to trust how much Jesus treasured us.  

 If we’re honest with ourselves we’re not going to treasure and trust it until we see how much Jesus treasures us. Until we understand that the Word who became flesh (John 1) treasure us above all else when He gave His life up for us on the cross, we won’t trust this Word and submit to it as authority in our lives. The Bible isn’t an authority for everyone. It surely isn’t an authority in our country or our world. But for those who have decided to follow Jesus because of His love for us, we submit to Him out of love for Him, and therefore we submit to the Bible as authority in our lives. We enter into God’s story, step into the 5th Act, and give our lives to the mission of showing the world who Jesus really is

And ONLY then, does this process make sense. Let’s end with the words of Jesus. 

31 Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. 32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

John 8:31-32