As someone who has devoted a significant chunk of my life to the study of God….from time to time, I find myself asking the question—why?
Why study God? Why learn about the Bible, theology, and doctrine? Why read, write, and study these things?
It’s this question I’d like to briefly answer today.
Fear of the LORD
One common reason is this, we’re afraid of God.
Many of us learn and study because we’re afraid of doing the wrong thing and meriting God’s displeasure. So we read and study and listen to lectures and go to seminary because we want to know “what the law requires” and keep ourselves pure in a wicked generation.
And this creates two realities.
One where we’re convinced our salvation—and God’s delight in us!—depends on our ability to believe all the right things, at the right time, and in the right way.
But that’s not all.
Another reality this creates is Christians who are far more anxious about dotting our doctrinal i’s and crossing our theological t’s than loving the person next to us—serving our neighbor.
Thankfully, there’s another way.
Loving the LORD our God
We study because the more we know about God, the more we can love about God.
Knowledge of Jehovah doesn’t breed self-righteous anxiety but self-forgetting intimacy.
We go to Bible studies, read books, listen to podcasts, and get Seminary degrees to heighten our communion with our Savior. Not to heighten our sense of self-worth or righteousness.
Greater knowledge leads to a deeper experience.
And a deeper experience of our God always pushes us outward into a deeper encounter with our neighbor.
The Jesus Way
Consider the life of Jesus.
He had the deepest, most intimate communion with God. From eternity past he has lived in lockstep with his Father. No enfleshed soul has lived in closer communion with God the Father than God the Son.
And his life wasn’t filled with pious withdrawal from those around him. His life was enmeshed in the wounded, bruised, beat-up, and broken around him.
His intense knowledge of his Father was matched by an intense love of God and an equally passionate love for others.
This is the calling of those who study God. To grow in our knowledge of God so that we can grow in our love of God and our neighbors.
This isn’t simply the best way.
It’s the Jesus way.