I read this comment by Charles Swindol that made me ask this question: Is it possible to love the Lord and not love His Word? Swindoll wrote: “I’ll never forget a letter I read from a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, where I serve as chancellor. He wrote of his gratitude for his years at our fine institution. What troubled me was that he also lamented that when he arrived, he was deeply in love with Jesus Christ; but when he left, he had fallen more in love with the biblical text. For all the right reasons, our professors did their best to teach him the Scriptures, but he left loving the Bible more than he loved His [sic] Savior” (Charles R. Swindoll, So, You Want to Be Like Christ? p. 40).
I believe it is possible to KNOW the Bible and not love the Lord. The Pharisees were the Bible scholars of the first century, but they rejected the Lord. Jesus challenged these religious leaders: “Search the scriptures; for in them you think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And you will not come to me, that you might have life” (John 5:39-40). Paradoxically, we can not love the Lord without loving His Word. It is God’s Word that tells us about Christ, which according to Colossians 3:16 is His Word. It is God’s Word that feeds our soul so that we might “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). For 2013, let’s pray with David, the man after God’s own heart these two prayers, “Oh how love I your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97) and “Open mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).