Life's Greatest Story

CAN YOU RECITE FROM MEMORY the most famous Bible verse, John 3:16, “the gospel in a nutshell”? I bet you can:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Now recite John 3:15. No? John 3:14? How about John 3:17?

It wasn’t until well into my ministry that I realized that while I had memorized hundreds of Bible verses, I had never memorized a Bible story. I had “hidden . . . in my heart” (Psalm 119:11) only the parts, not the whole.

The Bible is too often stripped of story and mined for minutiae; it becomes not “the greatest story ever told” but the greatest story never told, or half-told.

Nicodemus—Jesus’ conversation partner in John 3:16—is the patron saint of all of us suffering from “versitis.” He could understand truth as text, as words, as laws, as left-brain logic. But Nicodemus could not process Jesus’ right-brained imagery and poetry of being “born again” (John 3:3). A faith that doesn’t know what a metaphor is can’t sustain us, nor can it grasp who God is and how God relates to us. Meaning in life is not found from reducing things into smaller categories and making finer distinctions. Meaning in life is found in putting things together, connecting the dots, and getting the “big picture.” To testify to truth is not to versify but to storify.

• Think of some verses you’ve committed to memory. Open the Scriptures and read each verse in context. How is your understanding of the verse changed?

• Is there a person in your life this week that could benefit from hearing an important concept about Jesus or a story from the Scriptures that gives hope? Who is that person and what could you share?

Adapted from From Tablet to Table, copyright © 2014 by Leonard Sweet. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Let the Scriptures Lead You

Doug Nuenke and Jerry Bridges, Five Traits of a Christ-Follower (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2015).