Why everyone should learn, trust, and love the Bible

We should learn the Bible because it’s true. We should trust the Bible because it’s good. We should love the Bible, because it’s beautiful.

Different generations struggle with different things. Older generations are often more concerned about whether or not something is true. Millennials will often consider whether something is good. Younger generations like Gen Z will want to know whether something moves them emotionally, whether it’s beautiful.

British apologist Amy Orr-Ewing has explained that different generations thus stumble over different aspects of God and the gospel. Older generations are more likely to ask, “Is it true?” Millennials, “Is it good?” And younger generations, “Is it beautiful?” Obviously, every generation wrestles with all three, but the times when we grow up shape our views.

Thankfully, God is all three. God is true, good, and beautiful—in fact, truth, goodness, and beauty themselves. Because God is true, good, and beautiful, his Word is true, good, and beautiful, too. We should learn the Bible, because it’s true. We should trust the Bible, because it’s good. We should love the Bible, because it’s beautiful. Let me try to convince and remind you of these three things.

1. We Should Learn the Bible, Because the Bible Is True

Jesus said, God’s “Word is truth” (John 17:17). The Bible is true theologically and true historically. Theologically (or we could say, “existentially”), the Bible explains the reality of the world as we actually experience the world. The Bible narrates a story that explains both the beauty and the horror of human existence. Life in this world stuns us with the glory of beauty and shocks us with gory brokenness. Beautiful and broken. Glory and gory. The Bible explains how this tension makes sense. A Good Lord created a good world, but the good world turned bad when it turned away from its Good Lord. The Bible tells us the story of the goodness of creation in the first two chapters (Gen. 1-2), and the Bible tells us the story of the badness of rebellion in the third chapter and beyond (Gen. 3). The Bible’s story makes sense of the actual world and our actual lives.

But the Bible is not merely true theologically. It isn’t a “poetic” or “symbolic” truth. The Bible roots its reliability in history. Things that actually happened, recounted by people who actually saw those things happen. Then those people in some cases were willing to die rather than deny that those things did happen. We have exponentially more manuscript evidence for the New Testament than for all other ancient literature combined. Sean McDowell has illustrated it this way. If someone stacked all the copies of the manuscripts for a typical work of ancient literature, the stack would be about four feet high. If someone stacked all the copies of the New Testament, the stack would be over a mile high.

Numerous times in history, scholars have questioned the accuracy of the Bible’s story of a historical event—only to have archaeological discoveries confirm the Bible’s account. For example, some scholars questioned the accuracy of the stories of David and his kingship, a pivotal question for the reliability of the biblical plot line. No external evidence for David and his kingship had been discovered. Some argued that later Israelites had created the stories of King David as fictional accounts. Then, in 1993 at a site called “Tel Dan,” archaeologists discovered an inscription in northern Israel from the 9th century BC that described “the king of Israel” and the “house of David.” Critical scholars had to adjust their skeptical views, because the Tel Dan Inscription corroborated the biblical account. We could add many more examples.

The books in the Bible are called the “canon” or the authoritative list or rule of the books of the Bible. Some skeptics push back against the Bible, arguing that the church didn’t decide which books to put in the Bible (the canon) until hundreds of years after Christ. But this objection misunderstands canonicity in two ways. First, the church did not “decide” on the books of the canon. They discerned which books the church had already acknowledged as biblical. Churches all over the ancient world recognized and studied most of the books of the Bible from the earliest years. We have an example of that in 2 Peter 3:15-16, because Peter explains that Paul’s letters are Scripture or part of the canon: “Also, regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our dear brother Paul has written to you according to the wisdom given to him. He speaks about these things in all his letters. There are some things hard to understand in them. The untaught and unstable will twist them to their own destruction, as they also do with the rest of the Scriptures.” In 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul quotes the gospel of Luke as “Scripture” and puts it on the same level as Deuteronomy. We could go on and on.

Both existentially-theologically and historically—the Bible is true. The Bible tells us the truth. If the Bible tells us the truth, we should study it and learn it. We should read it. We should seek to understand it.

2. We Should Trust the Bible, Because the Bible Is Good

The goodness of the Bible is based on the goodness of God himself. “You are good, and you do what is good; teach me your statutes” (Ps 119:68). God is good in himself. He does good in his actions. Therefore, we should learn and trust his Word.

The center of the biblical storyline is the gospel of Jesus Christ—the good news. The Bible is good news, because the Bible narrates how God redeems the world and the people in the world from the broken and gory reality of life. He returns rebels to himself, and he will make all things new. The Bible, in other words, is good news for sinners.

The Bible has also been good news for the most vulnerable people in the world. From ancient cultures to present peoples, certain people have always been overlooked, abused, cast out, marginalized, and harmed. The Bible tells the story of a God who cares for those on the margins. The Old Testament repeatedly affirms God’s care for “the quartet of the vulnerable:” the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.

No culture ever consistently protected vulnerable people before the story of the Bible and the gospel leavened into the cultures of the nations. Historians like Tom Holland and Christian apologists like Glen Scrivener have demonstrated that the biblical story has deeply shaped how we value and protect minorities, women, and children.

When the Bible has deeply influenced a culture, that culture treats kids with dignity and care, empowers women for their purpose, and undermines ethnic and racial animus. Jesus was the one who said, “Let the children come to me” (Matt. 19:14). So, then, Christians were the ones who started orphanages, rather than viewing fatherless kids as parasitic street urchins. Jesus was the one who refused to let the mob execute an adulterous woman (John 7:53-8:1). So, then, Christians were the ones who shaped society so that rape and polygamy was illegal and unthinkable. Jesus was the one who met a Samaritan woman, and spoke to her, scandalizing his disciples. So, then, Christians were the ones who overturned the slave trade in Britain.

The Bible is good. Because it tells a Good Story of a Good Lord, and that Good Story has born good fruit. Yes, some abused and misused the Bible, but that in some ways highlights the proper, good fruit of the Bible. The fruit didn’t rot on the tree, but it rotted when it fell from the tree into the dirt of the world.

So we should trust the Bible. We should trust God. We should trust Jesus and his Word. We should turn from our own ways and turn to him. We should repent and believe. We should trust the Bible, especially when it disagrees with us. Tim Keller once said, “If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.”

So we should trust, and then obey the Bible. As the old song says, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus…”

3. We Should Love the Bible, Because the Bible is Beautiful

The Bible is a work of divine, literary art. “The command of the Lord is radiant” (Ps. 19:8). When I was first learning theology, I found myself wishing that God had just given us an index and glossary of truth. A dictionary of divine theology. I have learned better since then. The Bible is a story, and a story is more powerfully beautiful than a reference volume. Nobody reads a dictionary for joy and beauty. Nobody brews a cup of tea, cozies up by the fire in a reading chair, and settles in for an afternoon with the dictionary. The dictionary is a literary tool, not a literary work. The dictionary is a paintbrush and a book is a painting. The Bible is more like a masterpiece of a novel than like the dictionary, more like a painting than a paintbrush. A novel in which every word is true and good, a stunning portrait of real beauty.

The Bible’s literature spans centuries, languages, and genres. It has Hebrew narrative and poetry. It has Greek biography and epistle. Its pages fill up with allusions and alliterations, wordplays and personifications. With metaphors and chiasms. With irony and hyperbole, types and prophecies and parables and proverbs.

The Bible is beautiful as literature and beautiful as theology. The Bible is beautiful because it describes the beauty of God.

“I have asked one thing from the Lord;
it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking him in his temple.”
(Psalm 27:4)

We should love and treasure the Bible, because the Bible is irreplaceably beautiful. Beauty transforms people. Look at the beautiful effects of the Bible on the lives of people. Turning selfish people in serving people. Turning mean people into kind people. Turning abusive people into loving people.

The Bible is like an irreplaceable work of art of personal significance. Once as a kid in Southern California, wildfires were burning dangerously close our house. As my parents discussed what to do if we had to evacuate, they said, “Make sure the kids are safe, and grab the photo albums if we can.” They treasured their people, and the things that connected them to their people.

If your house caught fire, you would save your kids before your laptop. If your house caught fire, and all your people were safe, you would grab whatever you most treasure. If you could take one thing, you would take something that you could not replace. You would take a hand-written letter from your dad, a picture of your grandma, a painting by your daughter or a drawing by your son. A stack of cash could be covered by insurance. A new laptop could arrive the next day from Amazon. But some things have an irreplaceable beauty in your life.

Because the Bible is true, we should learn the Bible. We should go to Bible studies, enroll in seminaries, read and translate, listen to and teach expository sermons. Because the Bible is good, we should trust the Bible. We should agree with the Bible’s take rather than our own opinions—especially when the Bible contradicts our takes. We should love and treasure the Bible, because the Bible is beautiful. We should treasure it more than our smartphones and TV shows.

The Bible is true, good, beautiful, for Boomers, Millennials, and everyone before, in between, and after.