If you do not read the Bible with the ultimate goal of seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, you don’t understand Scripture. We need to see Christ’s glory through his illumining power to truly appreciate why his Word is and what his Word does. Without illumination, Scripture is a textbook at best. With the light of Christ, the Scripture is our doorway to heaven.

The truth of Scripture is like the sun. During the day, the light from the sun is clear to anyone who can see. Not everyone can see, but blind eyes don’t dim the sun. For the blind to see it, the sun doesn’t need to shine brighter or clearer – they need to be given sight to see what’s been there the whole time.
So it is with the sun, so it is with Scripture. God has spoken clearly in the Bible for any who have ears to hear because God is good.. That some claim God’s Word is a jumbled mess of impenetrable mysteries only reveals the hardness of their hearts, not the obscurity of the text. And if those hard hearts would joyfully embrace the truth of God’s Word, nothing needs to change about the Word itself. They need to be given eyes to see what’s been plainly there the whole time.
So, how can blind men see the clear light of the truth of Scripture? “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). How can the blind see? Who can give them sight?
Let me make it more personal. How is it that you have any hope of understanding Scripture? In the face of interpretive anarchy, esoteric theological debates, and the world’s ceaseless scoffing at Scripture, how could anyone be so smug as to think they have nailed down the true meaning of the eternal Word of God? Under the devil’s dark veil, how can you see the clear light of the gospel?
Christ is our clarity. The Son of God lights the Word of God. In other words, you need to know Jesus to understand the Bible.
Jesus the Light
The theological term that’s used to describe the lighting up of dark eyes, the giving of spiritual sight to the spiritually blind, is illumination. And we usually think of illumination as an action of the Holy Spirit, and it is. Paul prays for the Ephesian church that “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened” (Eph 1:17-18). To the Corinthian church, Paul explains his ministry by saying, “And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Cor 2:13). The Spirit opens up darkened eyes to give spiritual sight.
But while the Spirit of God is the agent of human change in illumination, Jesus Christ is the object of that illumination. He is “the light of the world” (John 8:12). It’s in Jesus’ face that we see the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor 4:6). God is light (1 John 1:5), a revealer of the truth, and Christ is the one who makes him known (John 1:18).
While he was on earth, Jesus not only healed the physically blind but also the spiritually blind. In Luke 24, when Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection, he illumines them to rightly read the Old Testament.
“Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’”
Luke 24:44-47
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We should not be dismayed at belonging to a “little holy group.”  We are, indeed, pilgrims and priests. Insofar as we are faithful, we can still be salt and light to a world that does not understand us.

“A church is like a human being,” I have often heard. “If it is not growing, it’s dying.” But is that really true? Our models and our expectations for “successful” churches tend to focus on growing in numbers. But is that realistic? If our culture is becoming increasingly secularized, the number of Christians, by definition, is going to get smaller. But Christian minorities gathered into small congregations can still function effectively as the Body of Christ. In fact, that may be the Biblical norm.
Jeremy Hoover is a Canadian minister and church planter who writes about his frustration that the Ontario congregation that he had started —while in some ways doing quite well—just was not growing. He writes about this at the Patheos blog The Evangelical Pulpit in a post entitled Church Growth.
He says he was helped by a comment from one of his members to the effect that the small group meeting together was not just “trying to start a church” but that they were “the church.” And he read a book by Stefan Paas, a Dutch church planter working in Denmark —societies even more secularized than Canada, which is even more secularized than the United States—entitled Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.
“Pass noted that, in secularism, where choices abound and following the Christian faith is simply one choice among many,” Rev. Hoover writes, “the church will always be small.” He says that, in this context, Christians in their congregations must think of themselves as (1) pilgrims, banding together as they travel through a strange land headed towards their heavenly destination; and (2) priests, bringing God’s blessings to the world. That would include, I assume, the Gospel of Christ, Christian service, and other priestly tasks, such as prayer and intercession. “The church will always be a small band of believers, who see themselves as priests,” Rev. Hoover writes, “offering blessings to the community around them.”
Paas’s book draws on the experiences of Christians and their churches in highly-secularized Europe as he explores “Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.” It may well be that the far more religious United States will soon resemble today’s Europe, which is not so much atheistic but, to use Hoover’s term, “apatheistic,” being completely apathetic about religion. And yet, what Paas is describing seems to accord with what I have observed in Denmark, where he serves, and also in Finland and Australia. Namely, Christian believers of great spiritual vitality. There just is not many of them. And they gather in congregations that also demonstrate great spiritual vitality. They just tend to be very small. Nevertheless, I always find visiting these Christians and these congregations, with their dearth of “nominal” Christians, to be bracing and inspiring.
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In season and out of season he met his engagements. His custom was to catechize at regular periods, throughout his charge, and not only the children but also the heads of families—households. This was done by announcing from the pulpit certain days in the week, to meet those of a particular district, at a place named, and so he continued from week to week until the whole congregation was visited, and instructed in a pastoral way.…A little before he breathed his last (my brother Samuel having been sent for the physician, and not yet returned), he had his other children brought to his bedside, of whom my sister and myself were the oldest present. He looked upon us all, and said, “My poor girls!” — paused, and then asked, “What is the chief end of man?” This question I answered, in the words of my catechism, “To glorify God, and enjoy him for ever.” 

Samuel was born to the William Waugh household in 1749 within the parish of Lower Marsh Creek Presbyterian Church in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, his mother’s name could not be determined with certainty. The pioneer settlers of the region were Scots Irish and if they attended church, it was Presbyterian. Education in preparation for college was received from a man named Dobbin who lived somewhere in the region of Gettysburg. He moved east to the College of New Jersey to begin preparation for the ministry. Languages were of particular interest for him and he excelled in learning their nuances. He found political comradery as a member of the American Whig Society, which was a debating society that followed the principles of John Locke through promoting virtue, the rights of citizens, and separation of powers. The year before he graduated he won prizes for reading Latin and Greek and for translating from English to Latin. Included among his thirty colleagues graduating with him in 1773 were, William Graham (Presbyterian minister and founder of what is currently Washington & Lee University), Hugh Hodge (the father of Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge), Harry Lee, Jr. ( “Light Horse Harry Lee” and father of Robert E. Lee), John Linn (childhood friend, ministerial colleague, and founding board member of Dickinson College), Presbyterian minister and educator brothers John Blair Smith and William Richmond Smith (brothers of Princeton University president Samuel Stanhope Smith and the three were sons of Robert Smith), and John Witherspoon, Jr. At commencement, Waugh demonstrated his linguistic skill in a debate using only the Latin language.
Returning to Pennsylvania, Waugh was tutored in theology by a local minister, then he was licensed to preach during the meeting of Donegal Presbytery, December 4, 1776, at the Upper West Conococheague Church in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. The Cumberland frontier, Maryland, and northern Virginia had settlements sprinkled hither and yon with many needing worship leaders, so Waugh tested his gifts supplying remote churches by traveling on horseback into Maryland and Virginia. In Virginia he directed worship at churches in Turkey Run, Culpepper Court House, and Kittocktin. He was ordained May 1781 after more than four years preaching as a licensed missionary and he continued supplying churches as a minister.
In April 1782, he was installed pastor of the united congregations of East (or Lower) Pennsborough and Monaghan. His guaranteed annual salary was £150, and he was promised a gratuity of £75 from each of the two congregations with one paid shortly after his installation and the other when he had been minister for three years. It is unclear what constituted a gratuity, but it may have been given only if the storms didn’t come and the creeks didn’t rise to set back the local economy. By about 1783 Waugh’s church changed its name to Silver Spring Church. As often occurred for a single minister in his first church, he was attracted to one member of his flock particularly, Eliza, the daughter of David Hoge. They were married April 14, 1783. Samuel and Eliza moved into their home about the time Silver Spring Church completed its stone building to replace the rustic log meeting house in East Pennsborough.
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