Piper - Reading the Bible supernaturally: seeing and savoring the glory of God in Scripture

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Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law .

Meaning and Glory

In the first part of our treatment of prayer (chapter 16), I ended by referring to my experience of hitting a wall in trying to understand a biblical text, then pausing to pray for help, and finally getting a breakthrough. Then I commented that this personal experience introduced an aspect of prayer that I had not yet mentioned. Up till then, the focus was on the power of prayer to open the eyes of our hearts to see the glory of God where we otherwise would be dull and unresponsive. But the new point is that prayer has an effect not only on the hearts spiritual perception of Gods glory, but also on the minds intellectual grasp of the basic meaning of the text through which the glory shines.

I pleaded guilty of getting ahead of myself because, in using the phrase basic meaning , I am assuming things that I am going to discuss later (in chapter 20) about what we actually mean by meaning. But I pleaded that I need to get ahead of myself for the sake of showing the fullness of what prayer is meant to do for us in reading the Bible.

When we pray for God to show us his glory in the Scripture, we are not asking him to bypass the meaning of the text, but to open the fullness of the authors meaning. Therefore, in our quest to see and savor the glory of God in Scripture, we pray for his help to grasp the basic meaning of the words. Glory does not hover over the text like a cloud to be seen separately from what the authors intended to communicate. It shines in and through what they intended to communicatetheir meaning .

Illustration from Philippians

Even this is not quite the way to say it, because the glory is part of what they intended to communicate. But I think it is helpful to distinguish the basic meaning of a passage, on the one hand, and the worth and beauty of the message , on the other hand. I know they are not really separable. And both are part of what the author wants us to experience. Perhaps an illustration will help us see why I think the distinction is important, and how it relates to prayer.

In Philippians 1:23, Paul says, My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. Suppose some careless reader knew that Paul was in Rome and assumed Paul meant that his desire was to depart from Rome and be with Christ in a more rural, peaceful place than the dangerous urban center of the empire. And suppose the reader feels that this is a wonderful thought, full of sweet implications about the value of nature and peacefulness for the souls refreshment.

Well, he would be wrong. First, this careless reader got the basic meaning wrong. Paul did not intend to say anything about departing from Rome to the countryside, or about the value of rural peacefulness. He intended to say that he desired to depart this life and be with Christ in heaven. So our reader simply missed Pauls intention. But it gets worse. On the basis of the wrong meaning, this careless reader also saw a kind of glory that was not there. He felt a sweetness about peaceful, rural living for the refreshment of the human soul. That feeling has no basis in this text. He has seen something he would call glorious or wonderful. But the glory and the wonder are not there.

The point of that illustration is this: when the psalmist prayed, Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Ps. 119:18), he did not mean that the sight of wonders could skip the natural process of careful reading. Therefore, prayer does not take the place of careful interpretation. Prayer serves careful interpretation. This is what I was getting at in the previous chapter when I said that sometimes I hit a wall in trying to understand a text, then I pray for help, and often a breakthrough comes. My prayer is not just for the sight of glory, but for the help in grasping the meaning through which the glory shines.

Pray about All, Because God Governs All

However we describe the levels of a texts meaning, prayer is fruitful at every level. God not only opens the eyes of our heart to see his glory; he also guides us providentially in the whole process of interpretationeven the most natural parts. He is sovereign over all of it. He governs every part of our textual observation or thinking or research. Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from our heavenly Father (Matt. But in the case of believers, the mystery of believing prayer is operating.

As incredible as it may seem, God mysteriously weaves the prayers of his people into the way he runs the world. Things happen because we pray that would not happen if we did not pray. That is what James means when he says, You do not have, because you do not ask (James 4:2). And it is what Jesus means when he says, Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you (Matt. 7:7). This does not make us Godas if our will were the final arbiter of what happens in the world. But it does mean that our requests, made to God in faith, are part of the way God causes his will to happen. That includes his gracious will in helping us see the fullness of the meaning of his wordits basic message and its glory.

That We Prayed Does Not Make Us Infallible

This does not mean that we can ever make a case for our interpretation by saying, I prayed for Gods help, and so my interpretation is the right one. That kind of argument is not compelling, for at least three reasons. First, the person making the case may not be telling us the truth. Maybe he prayed; maybe he didnt. Second, God sometimes withholds the fullness of his illumination for wise and holy reasons, even when we ask him for help in interpreting a text. If he didnt withhold some insight, one hearty prayer might turn a reader into an infallible commentator on Scripture. God evidently does not think that is a good idea. Just as he wills to sanctify us gradually rather than perfecting us overnight, so he also wills to lead us to the full meaning of biblical texts gradually rather than making us infallible overnight. Infallible interpretation awaits the coming of Christ (1 Cor. 13:12).

Third, and most importantly, we cannot make a case for our interpretation by claiming divine illumination in answer to prayer, because the way God illumines the text is by showing what is really there . This means that when we want to make a case for how we understand a text, we must show what is really there. One good, solid grammatical argument for what the text means outweighs every assertion that the Holy Spirit told me the meaning. The reason that statement is not irreverent is that it takes more seriously the glorious work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the grammar than it does the subjective experiences of an interpreter who ignores it.

Pray for Help to Pay Attention to What Is Written

Therefore, even though the guidance of the Holy Spirit in Bible reading does not give us an argument that our interpretations are true, his guidance and illumination are essential. So we should be praying for them repeatedly during the entire process of reading and studying the Bible. We should pray, for example, that he would help us pay close attention to all the features of the text. Oh how frustrating and defeating is the tendency of our minds to wander! Indulge me in a personal example from my journal: