Are the Scriptures ABOUT You or FOR You?

By Rev. George F. Borghardt

The Scriptures can be read two ways: about you and for you. One speaks about your condition before God and those around you. It’s all about you. The other delivers Christ crucified for you, for the salvation of sinners.

Modern Christianity wants to look for what the Scriptures have to say “about us.” We are to read the Bible as though it were an instruction manual and then figure out what the words mean to us. How do the Scriptures make us feel? How do we apply them to our lives? What lessons do we glean from the written words in order for us to succeed or to have a better and more prosperous life?

That’s how you read the Scriptures to find out about you. And, to be sure, there really is a lot of useful stuff about life in the Bible. You can find out how to be a nicer person. You can learn how to (and how not to) handle your anger and how to deal with the people who hate you. You can learn how to seem like the smartest person in the room and how to never make friends with the stuff you have. You can learn how to properly treat your neighbor and be a good steward of your money. All of that good stuff about you can be found in the Scriptures!

Unfortunately, the more you read the Scriptures for what they say about you the more you’ll find out that what’s actually true about you is that you are blind, dead, and an enemy of God. The Scriptures say you sin daily and much and that nothing inside you is good. You’ll also learn just how angry God really is about you and the things you do and don’t do. How everything about you is evil, ever since you were in the womb; how all that you do, think, and feel is twisted by sin; how, even knowing this about you, you still want everything to be about you. You want it to be at the center of it all. You are that self-centered— even in how you are tempted to read the Scriptures: about you.

Even if you could do all that the Scriptures say you should do, all by yourself, you couldn’t make up for all the things you haven’t done. And any message all about you, or your relationships, or how to be a better parent when you grow up than your crazy parents are, or what you can do for God to devote yourself to His Word, will inevitably end in guilt because you don’t or won’t do these things—not well enough and not perfectly, which is what God demands.Not doing what you are commanded to do always ends in condemnation. If your reading of the Scriptures is that all or most of the Scriptures are about you, then they are only Law for you—Law that ends in your death and going to hell.

But the Gospel is in the “for you” of Scripture. All of Scripture speaks of Jesus. Jesus is all about you: born for you, baptised for you and for your righteousness. Jesus preached, taught, healed the sick, raised the dead for all those people and for you, too. For you, He kept every “about you” of the Law perfectly and then counted all those things He kept as having been kept by you. He died the death you deserve for you—suffering on the Cross the penalty for you and your sins. After three days, He rose again from the dead for you. Everything about you became about Him on Calvary so that everything about Him is now for you. Jesus is your life, your forgiveness, your holiness, your justification, your sanctification, your eternal life.

For Lutherans, the Scriptures aren’t merely a history book or a set of basic instructions before leaving Earth (B.I.B.L.E.). They testify of Jesus for you. Every word points to Jesus on the Cross for you. Every sentence delivers Jesus’ holy life and bitter sufferings and death for you. “For you” is how Lutherans read the Bible!

And the “for you” isn’t just a little bit of the Scriptures and then you can get back to everything being “about you”. The Gospel is not just a single in the Scriptures’ virtual iTunes library. The “for you” of the Gospel is the center of every single song! Everything in the Scriptures points to Jesus for you! The “about you” of the Law kills you so that the “for you” of the Gospel can raise you again. The “for you” of the Gospel enlivens you to live no longer about you but for those around you.

We read the Scriptures—or better, the Holy Spirit reads us the Scriptures—to see how the Word shows us Jesus. The Old Testament tells us how the prophets testified of the Son’s coming into our flesh to save us. The New Testament delivers this Jesus to us—God in the flesh for you—to save you from only being about you.

That Lutherans look for Jesus in the Scriptures doesn’t mean that Lutherans ignore the Law. The Law was given to save you—not by you keeping it, but so that you would die to it. God gives His Law about you in order to kill the you-centered you so that you might be raised to life again in Christ by the “for you” of the Gospel. Without Jesus for you the “about you” of the Law is nothing but a word that accuses and condemns you. And apart from Christ, that’s all it can do. Only in Christ can the “for you” of the Gospel show you how the “about you” of the Law may guide you in living for others.

For others! When you read the Scriptures centered on the “for you” of Jesus, you’ll see that God is not only for you but for those around you, too! He makes you alive not just so that you would go to heaven, but that you would do the good things in His Law for those around you! Your neighbor could really use you being “about them.” You’ll miss that completely if you are only looking for stuff about you! Jesus is so “for you” that He is even “for others” through you.

So read the Scriptures looking for Jesus for you. The Words are more than just information on how to live. The Scriptures have been given by God to make you alive with Jesus. He’s the center of the Scriptures: the “for you” and the “about you”.

Rev. George F. Borghardt is the senior pastor at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in McHenry, Illinois. He also serves as the president of Higher Things.