There has almost certainly never been a time when people read as much as we do today. Adding up all the time we spend reading books, magazines, social media, messages on our devices, or other such texts, we probably spend multiple hours of every week engaged in some sort of reading activity. Despite reading so much, however – or, perhaps, because we read so much – we are often careless and inattentive readers. Indeed, much of the writing we encounter is written for distracted and impatient casual readers, neither demanding nor rewarding close, sustained, and repeated attention.

But this is not what we want. And we know that. We remember, many of us, another kind of reading: the experience of closely reading, alone or with others, a text that seems infinite in its subtleties, meanings, and implications. This craving finds its satisfaction in our engagement with Holy Scripture.

Holy Scripture is not written as a text to be swiftly consumed and digested; you cannot “have read” Holy Scripture, but must always be in the process of reading, rereading, and chewing it over. The skills and habits this reading requires might not only be unfamiliar to many of us, but might often run against the grain of habits that have become second nature to us.

Holy Scripture, read appropriately, will form, not merely inform us. Our typical habits and practices of reading prepare us for texts that chiefly place themselves at our disposal: they are there for our entertainment, use, or information. While Holy Scripture does teach and equip us to read it properly, we must place ourselves at its disposal, approaching it on its own terms. Modern readers can lightly dispense with words, treating them chiefly as disposable vehicles for ideas or truths. Many Bible studies seek rapidly to move from reading the text to extracting the devotional nuggets, doctrines, or moral teachings within it, at which point the actual words of the text can be left behind. Yet Holy Scripture charges us differently, calling us to tarry with, memorize, chew over, and treasure its words. We are to read them publicly, teach them to our children, talk about them (Deut. 6:6–9). We are not to settle for the CliffsNotes.

After the public reading of Holy Scripture in worship, lectors in several Christian traditions will conclude with “this is the word of the Lord.” While this is a claim concerning authorship, perhaps akin to pronouncing “this is the word of Plato” after a reading of The Republic, Christian claims about the “word of the Lord” go beyond this. Hebrews 4:12, for instance, declares, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Likewise, 1 Peter 1:23 speaks of “the living and abiding word of God.”

This word of God is not lifeless text on a page, nor even a divinely inspired and thus uniquely reliable recounting of and reflection upon historical events and agents, like a conversation in some heavenly commentary box. Rather, it is a dynamic and powerful actor in history. Indeed, it is a primary actor both within the history it recounts and in the continuing life of the people of God.

It was by his powerful word that God created the heavens and the earth (Heb. 11:3); the story of creation is primarily a series of speech acts. The word of the Lord is also that which propels the story forward, in revelation and in prophecy. God’s providential purpose in history is expressed in terms of his effective word, as God assures his people in Isaiah 55:10–11:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

The Gospel of John begins with an astonishing passage concerning the Word (Greek Logos), by whom God created all things, identifying this figure with both God and with Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh. Through this passage, we move into an even more remarkable account of the lowercase word of God. The Word of God, in whom God acts and reveals himself, is ultimately none other than Jesus Christ. The creative words of Genesis 1 are grounded in this creative Word, the Lord’s effective judgments proclaimed by the prophets are none other than the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 19:10), and Christ still acts by his word in the power of his Spirit in his church. This disclosure should illumine our understanding of the word of God more broadly: in the final analysis the word of God reveals the Word of God, who manifests himself in this and acts through it.

Our understanding of what it means to read Holy Scripture should develop out of such a theological account of the word of God. When we attend to the word of the Lord, we are connected to the work of the Word of God in history. The incarnation – the Word become flesh – is the central truth around which all else must be drawn. When this truth is given its proper place, much else will come into focus.

Holy Scripture is not written as a text to be swiftly consumed and digested; you cannot “have read” Holy Scripture, but must always be in the process of reading, rereading, and chewing it over.

Holy Scripture, and the history it recounts, is ordered in its entirety toward the Word taking on flesh. The incarnation of the Word in history is not merely about Jesus Christ as an individual, but includes the body in which he dwells by his Spirit, the church. It is Christians and the church that can be described as “a letter from Christ … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3). Holy Scripture recounts a redemptive historical movement from the word made stone in the gift of the law to the Word made flesh in the incarnation, and in the writing of the law on human hearts in the new covenant by Christ’s Spirit. In this movement, Holy Scripture itself is an actor; in reading and hearing it, the glory of Christ himself transforms us as the veil over our hearts is removed by the work of his Spirit (2 Cor. 3:12–18).

Looking beyond such a juxtaposition between the old and new covenants, much of Holy Scripture describes and effects a transformative movement from an external word of divine command to a word that takes on flesh and animates it by the Spirit of God. The law given at Sinai has a focal and foundational significance, and subsequent revelation develops upon and out from it, until it is fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ, who perfectly embodies God’s holy will.

Given the law at Sinai, Israel was charged to submit to its commandments, in a trusting obedience to the God who delivered them from oppression in Egypt and revealed his law as the charter of their new free existence. Israel’s fundamental posture toward the law was to be their fundamental posture toward God himself: faith and obedience. Like young children under their parents’ instruction, however, the law also served a formative role. They were to move beyond a blind and slavish adherence to God’s commandments to an understanding and willing pursuit of and delight in them. This is the education of a whole people in the way of God’s kingdom, in the way of life.

Consequently, besides instructing Israel to submit to its commandments, the law itself repeatedly summons the people to make those commandments an intimate part of their life. The law must be instituted at the heart of Israel’s communal and familial life. Its words must be constantly repeated, and more closely attended to. Memorization of the law and meditation upon it was to be fundamental:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:6–9)

Israel was to internalize the law through these practices, much as the musician needs to internalize the principles of music and his instrument through extreme repetition and training of attention (a comparison I first encountered in the work of James Jordan). Merely knowing things in theory and in the abstract is not enough; it needs to be made second nature.

The book of Psalms begins with the law. Describing the blessed man, the psalm that opens and frames the entire book speaks of someone who delights in the law and meditates upon it day and night. In the psalms, we see something of the law internalized in song, which conscripts our will and affections and unites assemblies in common voice and expression. Here the law is not merely an external imperative to which we submit, but a word that is treasured and delighted upon within. The psalm is a song that wells up inside the person who treats the word in this way, and singing it is the joyful communal response.

The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
(Ps. 19:7–10)

The law is also a source of wisdom. In Deuteronomy, Moses told the Israelites that, if they were to adhere to the Lord’s commandments in the land, surrounding peoples would marvel at their wisdom (Deut. 4:5–8). Such wisdom would also come as Israel and its rulers meditated upon the law. As the law became second nature to them, its deeper principles would give them moral insight and prudence that would mark them out. The king in particular was called to write out a copy of the book of the law for himself, to which he would continually return (Deut. 17:18–20). Psalm 119:97–100 notably describes meditation upon the law and studious keeping of it as a source of extraordinary wisdom:

Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
for I keep your precepts.

The law itself provided a pedagogy in jurisprudence. In Deuteronomy, for instance, the Ten Commandments are repeated in chapter 5, which is followed by the principal body of the book – chapters 6 through 26 – devoted to the unpacking of each of the commandments in succession. The reader whose attention is heightened through the constant memorization, meditation, discussion, and observance will discover within the relationship between the core commandments and their refraction in the extensive body of case law that follows a deeper moral logic with wide application. As we tarry with it and attend more closely to it, the law is found to exceed a mere random miscellany of commandments, disclosing a deep coherence and unity.

The wisdom literature is grounded in the principle of fear of the Lord and obedience to his commandments, principles first taught in the law. The faithful apprentice of the law and its instruction will learn wisdom through it, which gives uncommon insight into the world. The identification of the law with the teaching of (personified) Wisdom helps us to appreciate something of the unity of Torah and wisdom literature in Holy Scripture.

These books, the books of the law, the psalms, and the wisdom literature, are thus the ultimate Mirrors for Princes: the books which are intended to be handbooks for those who rule. In a sense they are of the same genre as Aquinas’s De regno, the genre that Machiavelli mocks in his Prince. These texts are appropriate for us as we are, here, intended to be rulers of our own selves and our households, and because we are in training to become part of that divine council by which God rules the universe: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” (1 Cor. 6:3).

The very obscurity and difficulty, the polysemic and multilayered nature of Holy Scripture, is part of its regal character: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Prov. 25:2).

In our practice of the word of God, we seek to encounter Jesus and to be transformed by his glory. We seek to deepen our delight in and love of him.

If the psalms and wisdom literature exhibit – and encourage – the internalization of the word of the Lord in affections, reflection, memory, understanding, and insight, in the prophets we see the internalization of the word of the Lord in men being set apart and authorized as effective bearers of it. Accounts of prophetic initiation describe the word of the Lord being placed upon and purifying the prophet’s lips and in his mouth, enabling him to speak with holiness and power as an effective mouthpiece of God’s word (Isa. 6:6-7; Jer. 1:6–10; Ezek. 2:8–3:11). The prophet takes the word of the Lord into himself, embodies its holiness and power, and utters it to the people as a messenger of the Lord and participant in the divine council. In the prophet, the word of the Lord takes on flesh in fuller measure. Beyond their own internalizing of the word of the Lord, the prophets foretold a time when God would write his law upon the hearts of all his people (Jer. 31:31–34), when his Spirit would be within them (Ezek. 36:26–27), and when all would speak with prophetic insight and power (Joel 2:28–29).

Considered from the perspective of the New Testament, the ways that the word of the Lord takes on flesh in the Old Testament anticipate and foreshadow the Word become flesh in Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law in love. He is the king who, truly delighting in God’s law, leads his people in song. As Paul puts it in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Christ is Wisdom come in person. He is the culmination and realization of the prophetic word, and the climactic revelation of God.

In Jesus Christ the teaching of the word of God finds its goal: our devotion to the study of the word of Holy Scripture must be growth in devotion to him. In our practice of the word of God, we seek to encounter Jesus and to be transformed by his glory. We seek to deepen our delight in and love of him. We find in him the perfect model of the love by which the law is fulfilled. We seek to mature in Christlike wisdom and insight, seeing the world as God would have us see it. We seek to be faithful bearers of the authority of the word, speaking with a humble effectiveness and power as servants of Christ by his Spirit into our world. We practice the word of God so that Christ’s word might richly dwell within us and enliven us. We practice the word of God together, so that we might be more fully knit into the life of his body. True reading of Holy Scripture is a training in Christ, God’s word made flesh.

If we are driven by such convictions about the character of Holy Scripture, our manner of reading it should be transformed. We are not mere casual readers seeking to extract information from our Bibles, but devotedly and continually meditating upon, treasuring, and declaring it, as those who expect to meet with and be formed by Christ in the process. Holy Scripture is not dead letters on the page, but the living word of Christ at the heart of the church’s life, a word in which we must seek the power of his Spirit, a word that has been given to us so we can take part in the kingdom it describes, and to which we have been called. Reading Holy Scripture is a formative practice by which words once outside us become the animating principle of our existence, their coherence and unity discovered in the eternal Word made flesh.