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Volume 1 · Honest HereticsLesson 4About 22 minutes

How Jesus Read the Bible

If Jesus sat beside you with an open Bible, which parts would he read first?

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Lesson 4 · Honest Heretics
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The center · Matthew 9:13
13But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

In this lesson

Jesus had a Bible: the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. He heard them read aloud every Sabbath and quoted them constantly. So it is fair to ask how he read them. Did every line carry the same weight, or did he have a key?

If you have ever had a Bible verse thrown at you, this lesson is for you. Many Christians treat every line of the Bible as equally binding, so anyone can find a verse for almost anything, and people have: to defend slavery, to silence women, to bless wealth and war. Jesus read differently. When someone quotes an ancient law to settle a question, ask: how did Jesus read that part of the Bible? Being the one person at the table who isn't moved by a verse thrown out of context is a lonely spot. Call it what it is: you're an honest heretic, and this lesson shows you how Jesus himself read Scripture, which is the strongest ground you could stand on.

Read it3 min

Who's who: Jesus' Bible was what Christians now call the Old Testament: the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Isaiah and Hosea were two of Israel's great prophets. A synagogue was the local meeting place for prayer and Scripture reading; Nazareth was Jesus' hometown. The Pharisees were a devout group of Jewish teachers who studied the Law closely.

In his hometown synagogue, Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah. He chose the passage himself.

Luke 4:16-21
16He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He entered, as was his custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17The book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, 18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, 19and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” 20He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

He was asked which commandment in the whole Law was the greatest. His answer gave a key to all of it.

Matthew 22:36-40
36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” 37Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and great commandment. 39A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

When the religious leaders objected to him eating with tax collectors, he sent them back to their own Bible with an assignment.

Matthew 9:10-13
10As he sat in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. 13But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, he quoted the Law six times and went deeper each time. Here are two of them.

Matthew 5:38-39
38“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:43-45
43“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, 45that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

The world behind the words4 min

In Jesus' day, the question of how to read the Scriptures was alive and argued over. Teachers debated which commandments mattered most, and how to apply ancient laws to new situations. The Pharisees, often pictured as villains, were serious, devout readers who wanted every part of life to honor God. Jesus argued with them precisely because they cared so much about the same Scriptures he did.

Notice what Jesus did with the Law in the Sermon on the Mount. He began, "Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill" . Then, six times, he quoted a command and took it further. "You shall not murder" became a warning about anger. "An eye for an eye," a law first given to limit revenge , became "turn to him the other also." "Love your neighbor" became "love your enemies."

He did not read the Law as a list of rules to be applied one at a time. He read it for its purpose. When his disciples were criticized for picking grain on the Sabbath, he pointed to David, who once ate the holy bread of the Tabernacle when he was hungry, and he quoted the prophet Hosea a second time.

Matthew 12:7-8
7But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you wouldn’t have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

In Mark, he put it in one sentence: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" .

He did the same with divorce. When the Pharisees pointed to the law of Moses that allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce , Jesus did not deny that Moses wrote it. He explained why.

Mark 10:5-6
5But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. 6But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.

"For your hardness of heart." Jesus read even the words of Moses by asking what God intended "from the beginning," and he treated some laws as concessions to human weakness.

Look again at what he read in Nazareth. Isaiah's sentence ends: "to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God" . Jesus stopped reading in the middle of that sentence. He proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor, closed the scroll and sat down. He left the vengeance unread.

Point to this: Jesus didn't throw out the Bible of his day. He read it through a center, love of God and neighbor, and he said everything else "depends on" those two. A Christian who treats every verse as equal is not reading the way their own founder read.

How it drifted5 min

Ring 3: church tradition
Reading every verse as if it carried the same weight
The further an idea sits from the center, the more it needs a reason to outrank his words.
Who's who: The Talmud is the great collection of Jewish teaching and debate, compiled over the centuries after Jesus. Origen was a third-century Christian scholar in Egypt. Augustine of Hippo, a North African bishop, is the most influential theologian in Western Christianity. Luther, from Lesson 3, began the Protestant Reformation.

Jesus was not the only teacher of his time to sum up Scripture this way. The Talmud tells a story about Hillel, one of the most respected rabbis of the generation before Jesus. A man came to him and asked to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one foot.

“
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.
Hillel, in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

Jesus said something very close: "Whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets" . Both teachers read the Scriptures with a center. Over the centuries, Christians often lost theirs, and the history runs in three stages.

Hidden meanings. Around 230, the brilliant scholar Origen of Alexandria taught that Scripture has layers, like a person has a body, a soul and a spirit: a literal sense, a moral sense and a spiritual one. Medieval teachers expanded this into four senses and taught it with a rhyme. Allegory produced beautiful readings, but it also meant almost any verse could be made to mean almost anything.

Single verses as weapons. Around 408, Augustine of Hippo defended using imperial force against a rival Christian group, the Donatists. One of the verses he leaned on was a line from a parable of Jesus about a banquet: "compel them to come in" . A sentence about a host filling his dinner table became a justification for coercion. Later centuries used the same verse the same way.

A flat Bible. The Reformers of the 1500s rejected allegory run wild and taught that "Scripture interprets Scripture": clear passages should explain unclear ones. Luther went further and gave a test for the whole Bible.

“
All the genuine sacred books agree in this, that all of them preach and inculcate Christ. And that is the true test by which to judge all books.
Martin Luther, Preface to James and Jude, 1522

In the modern era, many churches came to treat the Bible as a single, level collection of true statements. In 1978, more than two hundred evangelical leaders signed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which affirms that Scripture is without error in all that it teaches. The statement itself asks readers to pay attention to each passage's literary form and to let Scripture interpret Scripture. But in popular use, the idea that every verse is equally true often slid into the idea that every verse is equally weighty, so that a line from Leviticus and a teaching of Jesus could be quoted as if they settled a question in the same way.

c. 20 BC–10 ADHillel teaches that love of neighbor is "the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."
c. 30Jesus: "The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
c. 230Origen describes literal, moral and spiritual senses of Scripture.
c. 408Augustine uses "compel them to come in" to defend force against the Donatists.
1100s–1400sMedieval teaching of the four senses of Scripture.
1520–1522Luther: Scripture interprets itself; the test of every book is whether it preaches Christ.
1978The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
Whose purpose it serves: A Bible where every verse weighs the same is a powerful tool, because someone can always find a verse for what they already want. Defenders of American slavery quoted Scripture; so did defenders of segregation; preachers of wealth and of holy war have done the same. A center takes that weapon away. Most people who read this way learned it from sincere teachers, but the method itself serves whoever is holding the verse.

What they'll say back3 min

"Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the Law. You can't pick and choose." He did say that, and this lesson takes it seriously. But read the rest of the chapter: he "fulfills" the Law by going to its heart, not by applying each line the same way. He set aside the letter of the Sabbath for the sake of a hungry man and a sick one, and he treated the divorce law as a concession "for your hardness of heart." To read the way Jesus read is to follow his choices.

"All of the Bible is God's word, so all of it has equal authority." Many Christians believe the whole Bible is inspired, and this book does not ask anyone to stop. But even the Bible's own writers ranked its parts. Jesus named the greatest commandment and said the rest "depend on" it. He told the religious leaders to "go and learn" what "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" means, putting one line from Hosea above the whole system of sacrifices. If Jesus weighed Scripture, then weighing it is not disrespect.

Be fair: Origen was one of the most devoted scholars the church ever had, and allegory gave Christians many rich readings. The Chicago Statement does not tell anyone to ignore context. The drift lies in losing the center they all, in their own ways, were trying to protect.
When you hear these: Expect "you're just picking the verses you like." The calm answer is that you are trying to pick the verses Jesus picked, and to read the rest the way he did: through love of God and neighbor, and "I desire mercy."

Measured against the center2 min

A contradiction
Treating every verse as equally weighty contradicts how Jesus himself read Scripture: by its center, love of God and neighbor.

Measured against the center, the flat Bible does not hold. Jesus named the greatest commandment and said the rest depends on it. He sent experts back to learn "I desire mercy." He set aside the letter of the Sabbath for hungry and sick people, called a law of Moses a concession to hard hearts, and closed the scroll before the day of vengeance. A way of reading that lets any verse settle any question is not his way.

This is a real failure with real victims. Verses read without a center have been used to defend slavery, silence women and shame people who never heard a word against them from Jesus. If a verse was ever used against you, you are entitled to ask who said it, and whether Jesus read it that way. Often he did not.

A keeper1 min

When a rule and a person collide, choose the person. Jesus said it about the Sabbath, the most sacred rule of his day.

Mark 2:27
27He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Rules exist for people, not the other way around. "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" works as a test in any setting: a workplace policy, a family rule, a church tradition. If keeping the rule means hurting the person it was meant to protect, mercy wins.

You don't need to believe anything to use this. It is one of the wisest principles anyone has offered about rules, and it comes from the person many rule-keepers claim to follow.

Reflect2 min

  1. Has a Bible verse ever been used against you or someone you know? Who actually said it: Jesus, or someone else?
  2. What rules in the religion you grew up around seemed to exist for the rule's sake rather than for people?
  3. If "I desire mercy" were the test, which church teachings you know would fail it?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

This week, whenever you hear a Bible verse used to win an argument, online, in the news or in your family, ask two questions: "Who said this, Jesus or someone else?" and "Does it hang on love of God and neighbor?" Write down one example that fails the test.

Bring it back1 min

1
Common ground
"We both agree the whole Bible matters. What I want to know is how Jesus read it, since he's the center."
2
The bridge question
"When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, what did he say the rest of the law hangs on?"
3
Back to his words
Read Matthew 22:40 together (Follow Me §16): "The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." Then ask: "If a verse is being used in a way that isn't loving God or loving people, is that how Jesus would read it?"
They sayYou can say
"The Bible says it, and that settles it."
"Jesus read the Bible too, and he weighed it. He said everything hangs on love of God and neighbor (Matthew 22:40). Can we read this verse the way he would?"
"That's just picking the verses you like."
"I'm trying to pick the verses he picked. He told people to 'go and learn' what 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice' means (Matthew 9:13)."

Remember it

A lens over the center

"Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy." Matthew 9:13. Jesus gave the religious experts homework, and the homework was one line from Hosea.

A lens over the center: a clear circle laid over the center, with loose strips scattered all around it. Read everything through him.

  1. What did Jesus say the whole law and the prophets depend on?
    Loving God and loving your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40).
  2. What line did Jesus leave out when he read Isaiah in Nazareth?
    "The day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2).
  3. What was Luther's test for every book of the Bible?
    Whether it preaches Christ.
Sources
  1. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a (Hillel and the man standing on one foot).
  2. Origen, On First Principles 4.2.4 (c. 230), on the three senses of Scripture.
  3. The medieval four senses: the couplet "Littera gesta docet…" attributed to Augustine of Dacia (13th century). See Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 1 (1959; English 1998).
  4. Augustine, Letter 93 to Vincentius (c. 408), and Letter 185 (c. 417), citing Luke 14:23 against the Donatists.
  5. Martin Luther, Assertio omnium articulorum (1520), on Scripture as its own interpreter; Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude (1522), Luther's Works vol. 35, p. 396.
  6. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (October 1978), Articles XII and XVIII. Accounts of the number of signers range from about 240 to 334.
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