Written by: April J. Buchanan
I’ve never met a saint whose sanctification has become so perfect as to have no regrets over sin, not merely prior to their conversion but since it. The saint does not merely speak of grace but grows accordingly. His heart is changed and being changed. Be careful if there’s no continual changing. No man has mastered his own flesh to the degree that he has no ongoing changes to be made. His mind is renewed and being renewed. No man has mastered the Scriptures, and no man has been entirely mastered yet by them.
Only the fool thinks he needs something more. There’s enough in the text that a man may live as long as Methuselah and still never master all the Scriptures have to teach men. There’s no new thing of which men must take up in addition to the text. It is enough. And that is both a comfort and a truth that reveals that we will never entirely master it.
The saint who loves God loves His Word and desires to be changed all the more by it and for His glory. To think lightly of the text and much of ourselves is the cry for something more. “It is good, but I need more” is the foolish cry of men who do not see God rightly, themselves rightly, and think they have so mastered the Scriptures that now they may go on to something more, or that it is so insufficient that it has failed to give them something just for them. Only the foolish heart would bring such a charge against God. He has not failed to give us all we need in His Word.
Once a man learns how to rightly study the Scriptures, he has begun to put away the foolish thoughts that he could ever master them or that he could need something more. For no man has ever looked into the Scriptures rightly and thought, “I need more than this. I need a word just for me.”
I recently heard the words a pastor, who has gone to glory, once explain that his problem was not that he needed more revelation, his problem was with himself and obeying the revelation already given. He was not excusing sin. He was demonstrating that God has given us enough revelation. We don’t need more. The problem is with us. We ought rather to pray that God help us not merely to take up more knowledge, which is good, but to be sanctified by it and that we would obey the revelation He has already given. The more we learn and grow, it is humbling because the more we see that we have to still learn and grow. The man who would think he needs more revelation has already shown that he does not understand the revelation already given, he may be unregenerate, and he has a very wrong view of God, himself, and the Scriptures.
We don’t need more revelation as if Scripture were insufficient. We need more sanctification because we still wrestle against our remaining sin.
The man far removed from good hermeneutics will skim the surfaces of the Scriptures and never look into them and be truly humbled and changed by them, coming up again and again with a renewed heart, renewed mind, changed life, and worshipping God as He is worthy. A shallow view of Scripture is evident in the man with a low view of God, a high view of himself, and the demand for something more. The text may be sufficient for other men, but for him it’s not enough. He needs more.
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