Grace Presbyterian Church

As we have made our way through the book of Revelation in Adult Sunday School, it has become very clear that this book that is often considered controversial, obtuse, irrelevant, or just too hard to grasp, is a book that from beginning to end is entirely pastoral, practical, and profound.

The book of Revelation is to help us now: it is to deepen our faith in Christ, it is to spur us on to greater obedience, it is to comfort us in our affliction, it is to promote within us heavenly affections. In short, the book of Revelation is for you, and it is for you right now.

The more we have plunged into Scriptures final book, the more I am convinced the book really has very little to do with the future, and much more to do with the present. We have seen how the book is best understood not as a literal chronology of the last days, but rather as a chronology of visions given from Christ to John for the upbuilding of the saints.

These visions show God’s masterful protection and perfection of his church, and God’s systematic and exacting judgment of all his and our enemies. Like we have said, Revelation’s thesis can be put in two very relevant words:  Jesus Wins.

And as we come to the final sections of Revelation, we will see this thesis in full force. While learning that Revelation is largely about now, the final act of the book does reveal to us the great future that awaits those who refuse to worship the beast. That is, believers who die in Christ have such a wonderful inheritance awaiting them that Revelation actually refers to believers’ death as their first resurrection (Rev 20:5)!! This is truly a future of great promise. It should cause us to continue to endure the present sufferings in this life and to press on to greater obedience in the power of the Spirit, for we know that at death our souls go to reign with the King of kings and Lord of lords.

In light of this great future we should say in our souls along with the apostle Paul that, “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17 ESV)

That is the good news of Revelation. Praise God for this glorious book that builds our faith in the here and now and helps us grow in our hunger for greater communion with our Lord.

Often times we hear well-meaning Christians asking for the “chapter and verse” that will prove a church’s belief or practice. What is usually behind this impulse to ask for “chapter and verse” are the good intentions of wanting all beliefs and practices to be grounded in the word of God. However, it’s simply the nature of Christian living that everything a Christian does or wants to do cannot be found as being backed up by a chapter and verse in an atomistic way. This is also true for the church. Indeed, not every practice of the Christian church can point to a bible verse for its validation.

The Westminster Divines (those who authored the Westminster Confession of Faith) understood this reality. The Westminster Confession of Faith states that, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.”

It’s true then that some things are “expressly set down in Scripture” but it is also true that some things must be deduced by “good and necessary consequence.” So yes, everything we do as Christians should be in accordance with the word of God. Yet just how it accords with the word of God is important to realize. One often cited example of a Christian belief not explicitly stated in Scripture is the great doctrine of the Trinity. There is no chapter and verse for that. The word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible, yet Christians have historically considered someone a heretic for denying the trinity. The doctrine is indeed in the Bible, just not in a simplistic kind of way.

So it is important then to understand that the Bible must be understood in a larger, richer, and fuller way than the “chapter and verse” mentality often allows for.

Jeremiah Burroughs, one of the framers of the Westminster Confession, in talking about matters of worship brings out this principle of “good and necessary consequence” in Bible interpretation in a very helpful way. He writes:

In matters of worship we must have warrant from the Word, but it does not follow that we must have a direct, expressed warrant in everything. As it is many times in some kind of picture, the great art is in the cast of the looks. You cannot say it’s in the drawing of this line or the other line, but altogether. It is the cast of the looks that causes the beauty of the picture. So in the Scripture you cannot say that this one line or the other line proves it, but let them all be laid together and there will be a kind of aspect of God’s mind. We may see that this is the mind of God rather than the other and we are bound to go that way.

In the same way that paintings communicate powerful truths when taken as a whole rather than by just looking at the parts, so it is that the Bible communicates great truths by “good and necessary consequence” as when one is paying attention to the broader contours of the word of God.

Many things that Reformed churches believe and practice may not have a “chapter and verse” to validate it, but hopefully they do have warrant from the broad thrust of God’s word and from understanding the spirit and heart of the scriptures as a whole.

It is my prayer that as thoughtful Christians seek to think God’s thoughts after him, that they would seek to do so not by looking at this line or that line per se, but by looking at the beauty of the whole picture and see God’s wonderful design for things in all he has revealed.