I recently had the opportunity to go back to Missouri for a quick visit with my family. During that visit my dad showed me a newspaper listing the upcoming court docket. You know that boring page about property exchanges, boring court cases, etc. I am pretty confident that my dad would have normally skipped over this section of the paper, but this time it was worth showing me.
This listing was different because it was my grandfather’s estate. That sounds like he was a wealthy plantation owner or something doesn’t it? My grandfather was a humble man and lived according to humble means and left a humble inheritance. But this “will”, this court case, was different than any other. It was different because it was my grandfather’s.
The point is that you read a will/settlement case differently than when you are a benefactor than when you are a lawyer or just boredly flipping through the paper on the john.
And this difference is why we cannot simply argue an unbeliever into the kingdom. There are certain things that a person must taste or have an interest in before they will notice. Christ as revealed in the Scriptures looks different to a believer with eyes wide open and vested interest. And it is the blessedness of this communion with the Lord that John Newton picks up on when he says:
To read the Scripture, not as an attorney may read a will, merely to know the sense, but as the heir reads it, as a description and proof of his interest; to hear the Gospel as the voice of our Beloved, so as to have little leisure either for admiring the abilities or censuring the defects of the preacher; and, in prayer, to feel a liberty of pouring out our hearts before the Lord, to behold some glances of his goodness passing before us, and to breathe forth before him the tempers of a child, the spirit of adoption; and thus, by beholding his glory, to be conformed more and more to his image, and to renew our strength by drawing water out of the wells of salvation; herein is blessedness.
Do you hear in the Gospel the voice of your Beloved? Do you read the Scriptures as an attorney reads a will or as an heir reads a will? May you experience the blessedness of communion with the Lord today.
