SPECIAL REVELATION
So, what is so special about Special Revelation—or we could simply ask what’s so special about the Bible? What does the Bible tell us, or better yet, what does the Bible reveal us? 1. The Character of God; 2. God is unknowable to us without him revealing himself; 3. The moral dimension of knowledge and ignorance; 4. Guard Rails to knowing God
1. From the point of view of a person, the most special thing revealed in the Bible is the character of God. When Moses first met God, it was because God came to Moses, not because Moses found God. When Abraham first met God, it was because God revealed himself to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, a long way from Israel (and a long time before it was even called Israel). Even the first couple, Adam and Eve, didn’t find God, God revealed himself to them. When they met God, they were immediately aware of his condescending love. Condescending refers to a greater being (God) reaching down to the lesser being (man/woman). And you know what love means, but it isn’t just a feeling of love, love is primarily a verb, an action that is performed by one person for the good of another. God revealed himself throughout the Bible as a loving being (and ultimately Father), who forgives, calls his people into his care, and makes his will known.
2. God is unknowable to us without him revealing himself. The Bible’s role in revealing God and his work is vital for mankind. He’s beyond us, and beyond our ability to understand, so his Bible shows us who he is, because otherwise we wouldn’t know him at all. Logically, we might come to the conclusion that a god exists, because where did everything come from if someone didn’t make it?, but we wouldn’t come to know the true God.
3. The moral dimension of knowledge, or we might call it the immoral dimension of ignorance. Our unrighteousness and predilection to do what is wrong keeps us from being able to know God. Romans 1:19-23 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. . . Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” In our immorality and unrighteousness we ignore God and rebel against him. It’s not that we want to know about God, but can’t, it’s that our unrighteousness makes us not care to know him at all—in our sin, we’d rather be ignorant and immoral.
4. Guard rails to knowing God. The Bible gives us the necessary boundaries in our search to know God more deeply. Consider again Deuteronomy 29:29 from above, “the secret things belong to God, but what he has given to us is ours”. There’s two aspects to this—we should explore to its edges what God has given us to know and we shouldn’t try to go too far, beyond what has been given to us. Why can’t we go further than what the Bible teaches? Because God is unknowable without the Bible (see #2), so our reason has to be guided into truth by the Bible. We can’t know more than what God has given us. Also our unrighteousness (see #3) causes us to misinterpret who God is, sometimes even in his special revelation, so imagine how far astray we can get without relying on the Bible! Some of the smartest people can have some of the most mistaken notions about God, because they don’t remember the truths of the Bible.
What to take away from this:
You need the Bible to know God. In your natural state (which isn’t your created state, more on that later), you deny God, deny your need for him, and deny his goodness. The Bible is a great gift for which we all should be very thankful and make a priority in our lives, to guide us into all knowledge and keep us from error by observing its truths closely.