We prioritize daily Bible reading because without it we fail to achieve life’s great purpose: “to make God in Christ look magnificent—to make him look precious and valuable, to look like the supreme treasure that he is” (Phil. 1:20). And yet, “there’s so much in us that is inclined to think or feel or act in ways that don’t make Christ look great.” To accomplish our great purpose, we must see glory. “If we don’t desire and cherish and enjoy and savor and treasure Christ, we will not commend him as magnificent in what we feel and say and do. Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and we cannot be daily satisfied in the depths of our soul in Christ if we don’t see him and savor him.” And that will “only happen” by a “steady meditation on the word of God in the Bible.” In Scripture we behold Christ’s glory, and this glory transforms us from the inside out (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:4).

Proper Bible reading is motivated by a desperation to see God. “The reason I read the Bible is because I am stone-cold dead without Christ and his word. But I want all my life—every part of it—to be glorious. I want life to be beautiful. I want life to be vastly more than it is if I’m left to myself. I want to see how astonishing reality is at every turn—every person, every rock, every tree, every animal, every work of salvation. I know that, left to myself, I am an absolute dud. I am blank, nothing deep, nothing moving, nothing intense, nothing beautiful, nothing precious, nothing sweet or wonderful—just empty, blank, unmoved, coasting along from one worldly preoccupation to another.” There’s “one hope for John Piper: that I would have eyes to see the God-entranced magnificence of everything—namely, that God would be pleased in my Bible reading to cause me to see the glory that is really there.” We must see and savor the glory that shapes us into redeemed sinners who magnify God by being satisfied in him. Set in this context, Bible reading is truly an “awesome quest.”¹

Notes:
APJ 1140: “A New Year, A New Bible Reading Plan” (January 1, 2018); in ‘Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Important Questions’ by Tony Reinke. Crossway, Wheaton Illinois; 2024.