"You can prove anything you want to from the Bible."

That’s what cynics say when Christians who disagree appeal to the same Bible in order to back up their different points of view.

Someone says Christians should refuse to fight in wars, quoting the Sermon on the Mount with its call to give up violence and to love your enemies (Matt. 5). Someone else, defending Christian warfare, says God told the chosen people to crush, and show no mercy to, its enemies (Num. 24; Deut. 7).

Someone says women and men are equal, telling the story of Mary and Martha or quoting Paul or noting Priscilla’s teaching role in the early church (Luke 10; Gal. 3; Acts 18). Someone else, disagreeing, says Old Testament priests are always sons, never daughters, or cites 1 Timothy’s directive that no woman should "teach" or have "authority over a man." (Lev. 1 and 2; 1 Tim. 2).1

You might end up thinking the Bible is just confused. People unsympathetic to religious faith never tire, it seems, of pointing out the "contradictions" in the Bible. If you try hard to read the Bible honestly, you may find your own faith teetering under the onslaught.

Hebrews 1 provides the answer to these dilemmas. The first three verses are the best guide to the (Christian) interpretation of Scripture you will ever find.

The author’s beginning is his book’s theme to the very end: God spoke "to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son" who is "the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being" (Heb. 1:1–3).

God’s dealing with humanity, in other words, covers a long time and involves many messengers. And redemption’s story really is—a story, with characters and a direction and an outcome. It is only now, with the Son’s placement "at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (v. 3), that the defining clue to the story’s meaning has come to light.

From start to finish, the book of Hebrews says that Jesus is the supreme revelation of God’s will and way. And the point is that Jesus is supreme in comparison with all the faithful—even all the prophets—who have gone before him. Faith goes back to the heroes of the Hebrew Bible—back, as chapter 11 says, to David, Gideon, Rahab, Moses, Abraham, Noah and Abel. But according to chapter 12, Jesus alone is the "perfecter" of faith, and he alone the one who "has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God" (v. 2).

Think of it this way: You see God in many faithful lives that belong to the story of redemption. These lives are part of the Big Story, and are worth reviewing again and again. But in all the stories of these lives God’s face, though evident, is blurred. Only in the story of Jesus does God’s face come into perfect focus.

You can set off a rip-roaring conversation in your Sabbath School class if you say, "Okay, how does all this get us through the whitewater of biblical interpretation?" If you can make a case for or against Christians in military combat, and for or against the full equality of men and women, just by quoting different bits of Scripture, how does Hebrews help?

Here’s how. Now you have the key principle—the gold standard, you might say—for figuring out what to make of all the complexity in the Bible story. The characters weren’t cut from cardboard—they were human beings, with all the circuitry and passions, all the dreams, entanglements, and weak spots of human beings.

With God’s Spirit in their lives, these characters were often generous and hopeful, stepping to music others did not hear, loving and laughing and making a better day for all. But sometimes, being human, they were tyrannized by things, aflame with anger or thoughtless desire, arrogant as crows, lackluster in the face of challenge. So their lives and thoughts revealed God—imperfectly.

Over time, wisdom accumulated in Israel. The best insights got better and better until, from God’s standpoint, the time was right for Jesus of Nazareth to undergo baptism, set out on a public mission, and become the beacon for the storm-tossed hearts of men and women.

It’s a mystery how Mary’s son could end up so exceptional, how he could end up the "perfecter" of faith, "the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being." But under the impact of resurrection, that’s what men and women began to believe, and it’s what the book of Hebrews insists on from beginning to end.

I said that Hebrews 1 provides the answer to dilemmas we may encounter when we read the Bible. But it’s not a simple answer. Just see if, outfitted with the insight from this chapter, you can get to consensus on Christians and the military, or on whether opportunity for women should be fully equal to opportunity for men.

You will be faithful to the message of Hebrews if you let the Jesus story be the deciding factor in the conversation. But knowing that won’t get you to easy consensus on these or other issues Christians face, not in thirty minutes, not in a lifetime. Still, if you have the gold standard to go by, you can make headway.

And headway is the point. It’s why Christian conversation matters.

Notes and References

1. All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.

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