As I draw nearer to completing a personal study on Luke, I was struck this morning by Luke 24:45: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…” and Jesus goes on to explain – in similar words to what He said to other disciples on the road to Emmaus previously – how His life and death are the Good News that the apostles are now being tasked to share with all people.
What struck me upon reading these verses was the emphasis on how Christ needs to give us understanding if we are to make sense of the Scriptures. This isn’t to say that a person can’t pick up the Bible, read, and genuinely learn how to trust and follow Jesus. Rather, my point is that the Bible is a supernatural book. Its truths are accessible – they are meant for us, they are given for our understanding (2 Timothy 3:16-17). But being accessible does not mean that they come naturally to us. We need the Lord to give us minds that comprehend every bit as much as eyes that see and ears that hear. In this case, the disciples had seen the story firsthand, indeed, they were in it! But only with Christ’s illumination were they able to more fully put the pieces together. Could this Christ-given understanding be part of what drives them to such confidence in the Lord as they go about the task of spreading the Gospel and planting churches in Acts? I’m convinced that it is.
As I was thinking these thoughts, I was encouraged to see that J. C. Ryle commented along similar lines, specifically calling out that what we need aren’t just better human authors and teachers (whom God most definitely does use to bless us), but that what we most deeply need is for the Lord himself to give us understanding:
He that desires to read his Bible with profit, must first ask the Lord Jesus to open the eyes of his understanding by the Holy Ghost. Human commentaries are useful in their way. The help of good and learned men is not to be despised. But there is no commentary to be compared with the teaching of Christ. A humble and prayerful spirit will find a thousand things in the Bible, which the proud, self-conceited student will utterly fail to discern.
Ryle, J. C. 1879. Expository Thoughts on Luke. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers
