The goal of the Bible has always been to bring us into an encounter and relationship with God (see John 17:3). If knowing the Word and knowing God were synonymous, then the scribes and Pharisees, who memorized the entire Old Testament, would have been the first people to recognize and receive Christ. But their very approach to the Scriptures set them up for spiritual blindness. They abandoned the true purpose for studying the Word by exchanging a relationship with God for academic arguments, and never demanded that their theology lead to an encounter. [Kris Vallotton]
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life [John 5].
