For many Christians, the term Scripture memory means rote memorization of Bible verses. And this conjures up feelings of past failure (over how often they’ve tried and given up), or futility (over how little they recall of what they once memorized), or fear (over memories of having to publicly recite verses).

Who wants to pursue Bible memory if it means more failure, futility, or fear?

No one, if that’s what Bible memory means. But that’s not what it means. It means so much more than rote memorization. And it’s crucial that we see the bigger picture of Bible memory so we understand why it’s so important to the Christian life — why God repeatedly commands us to remember.

Here’s how I describe it:

Bible memory means stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

Let me try to briefly unpack this.

Your Amazing Memory

Your memory is amazing. If you’re thinking, “No, it’s not,” you’re probably overly aware of your memory weaknesses. And you probably measure yourself against people with extraordinary memories, like Charles Spurgeon, who, as J.I. Packer described, had “a photographic memory, virtually total recall, and as he put it ‘a shelf in my mind’ for storing every fact with a view to its future use” (Psalms, 4).

“Bible memory means so much more than rote memorization.”

But don’t let phenomenal memories blind you to the marvelous gift of God that is your own memory. Your ability to recall information to your conscious mind is just one function your memory performs. But it does far more than that.

Your memory is a vast library, far more sophisticated than the Library of Congress, where you’ve been collecting information since before your birth. In that three-pound lump of wet grey tissue inside your skull, in ways that remain largely mysterious despite wonderful recent advances in neuroscience, you have stored enormous amounts of information in the form of impressions, sensations, sights, sounds, smells, cause-and-effect observations, propositional statements, stories, and dreams, as well as real, unreal, or anticipated experiences that produce joy, sorrow, pleasure, anger, delight, horror, desire, fear, and on and on. And you draw from this mental library all the time, every day, consciously and unconsciously, to do everything you do.

And more marvelous still is how your memory works with all levels of your consciousness to allow you to imagine.

Why You Understand Anything

By imagination, I’m not talking about our ability to create fantasy worlds in our minds. I’m talking about our ability to draw from our vast store of information and construct an image (or model) of reality, and then draw implications for what it means. That is the primary function of our imagination. It allows us to conceptualize things we learn are true, but cannot see. Which is crucial for those of us called to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18), to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

And what empowers our ability to imagine is our memory.

Augustine, in his jaw-dropping meditations on the human memory in book 10 of his Confessions, explained it this way:

From [my memory] I can picture to myself all kinds of different images based either upon my own experience or upon what I find credible because it tallies with my own experience. I can fit them into the general picture of the past; from them I can make a surmise of actions and events and hopes for the future; and I can contemplate them all over again as if they were actually present. If I say to myself in the vast cache of my mind, where all those images of great things are stored, “I shall do this or that,” the picture of this or that particular thing comes into my mind at once. Or I may say to myself “If only this or that would happen!” or “God forbid that this or that should be!” No sooner do I say this than the images of all the things of which I speak spring forward from the same great treasure-house of the memory. And, in fact, I could not even mention them at all if the images were lacking. (215–16)

It’s our immense memory that provides our creative imagination the information from which to make sense of reality and draw the correct implications. And we can’t imagine anything that isn’t meaningfully present in our memory.

This is why Bible memory so important.

‘You Shall Remember’

Have you ever noticed how often the Holy Spirit inspired biblical authors to stress the importance of memory? Over and over God commands us to remember his word (for example, Numbers 15:40; Psalm 103:17–18; Isaiah 48:8–11; Luke 22:19; 2 Timothy 2:8). In fact, it would be worth a week of your devotional Bible reading to look up all the texts that mention these words as they relate to what God has revealed to us: memory, memorial, remember, remembrance, remind, call to mind, recall, forget, forgot, and forgotten.

To re-member is to call to mind something we’ve previously learned, something that exists in our memory. We can see such remembering in Lamentations 3:21–23, written while the author was experiencing terrible distress and suffering:

But this I call to mind,     and therefore I have hope:The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness.

The truth that the author called up from his memory, which sustained him in great need, was something he learned prior to his need. And it was something he was learning in more profound ways at that very moment.

That’s Bible memory: calling to mind and keeping in mind biblical truth we’ve learned, so that it expands and deepens our understanding over time, and continues to shape the way we live.

Meditation’s Servant

That’s perhaps why the Bible doesn’t say much about rote memorization, but it says a lot about meditation, because meditation is the way we both learn and remember. If you take that week of devotional exploration, it will add to your understanding of how meditation relates to remembering if you look up all the texts that mention these words: meditate, meditation, understand, understanding, know, knowledge, wise, and wisdom.

Biblical meditation (or reflection, rumination, contemplation) takes place when our God-given imagination processes the God-breathed information we store in our God-given memory in an effort to understand, or further understand, God-revealed reality, so that we might live wisely. We can see this process at work in Psalm 119:97–99:

Oh how I love your law!     It is my meditation all the day.Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,     for it is ever with me.I have more understanding than all my teachers,     for your testimonies are my meditation.

Implicit in this text on meditation (and most others in Scripture) is repetition. We all know from experience that repetition is what drives most information into our long-term memory. And this is the great value of memorization — it is a servant of meditation.

That’s certainly been my experience. Few practices have helped me meditate on Scripture more than memorization. The method I’ve found most effective has me repeating the same section of text over many days. This repetition not only has driven these texts into my long-term memory, but it has given my imagination the opportunity to ruminate on them.

As a result, I’ve gained a deeper, richer understanding of these texts and how they relate to other Scriptures and the world. That’s been the greatest benefit for me. Even though I don’t retain perfect conscious recall of many Scriptures I’ve memorized, meditating on them has woven their meaning and application into the fabric of my understanding. And they do come to mind much more readily, especially in times of need.

Keep the Goal in Mind

If Scripture memory has negative connotations for you, don’t think of it as memorizing Bible verses. Rather, think of it as

stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

“You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.”

It is a gift of God, a means of grace, to help you meditate on God’s word and bring reality to life.

As someone who struggles with memory weaknesses and who used to believe that Bible memorization wasn’t for me, I strongly recommend memorizing Scripture, especially larger sections. This is something you can do — you really can. You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.

For accurate understanding comes from careful meditation on true information. And accurate understanding results in our discerning right implications for what true information means. And when we live according to this understanding, the Bible calls it wisdom (Psalm 111:10).

This is the goal of Bible memory.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15937528/christians-made-glorious-for-the-glory-of-christ

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for listening. If you have joined us in reading the Bible together this year, thanks for joining us in that as well. We use the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, a schedule you can find online and print off. As we read the Bible together, a lot of questions emerge, as you can see in this email from Matt in Concord, New Hampshire, who writes in based on what he saw last year in the Bible reading plan. He puts together five texts that we are again encountering over the next three weeks. That’s gotta be a record!

“Pastor John, hello, and thank you for the APJ podcast. I have a question about how much of the Christian faith is revealed and how much of it is hidden and not revealed. Of course, we are told that the secret things belong to God, things he does not reveal. But there are some things he reveals to us. That’s Deuteronomy 29:29. We read that Paul says, ‘The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.’ That’s an eager anticipation of a future revealing, in Romans 8:19. And Jesus promises us that we will ‘see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ That is in Matthew 26:64, a revelation of Christ’s physical radiance in the future, as I understand it.

“But as Paul did ministry, he celebrated the gospel as ‘the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations.’ That’s Romans 16:25–26. And he talks about imparting ‘a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory,’ in 1 Corinthians 2:7. That secret wisdom, the secret of the gospel — long held — is now out. So, how much of the faith is revealed? And how much of it remains a secret unrevealed?”

My answer would go something like this: Our knowledge of God now in this life is limited, true, enough, and glorious. And our knowledge of God in the age to come will be immediate, eternally inexhaustible, ever-increasing, glorious, and all-satisfying. So, let me try to show from the Bible why I describe our knowledge this way.

The Knowledge We Have

So, first, the knowledge we can have now. Jesus prayed in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” So, Jesus has a glory today in heaven, which we do not see the way we will when he comes. Our knowledge, therefore, of his glory is limited. It’s real, but it’s limited. Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And John says in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Paul says again in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

But even though it’s clear from those passages that our knowledge of God is limited now, it’s true. It’s real knowledge if we stay true to what is in the Bible. Proverbs 30:5 says, “Every word of God proves true.” If you stay with the word, you can have true knowledge.

“Nobody has ever reached the limit of seeing the glory of what God has revealed to us already in this life.”

And third, it’s enough. This knowledge is limited — it’s true — but it is enough. So, enough for what? Enough for salvation and for leading a life of obedience pleasing to God. That’s really clear from 2 Timothy 3:15–17: “The sacred writings . . . are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for” — and here’s the key word — “every good work.” Now, that word every means not that you do every conceivable good work that somebody’s doing on the other side of the world. Every means every good work that God would expect of you in your situation. You have what you need in the Bible to equip you to do it. So, for a life fully pleasing to God, it is enough.

And not only is our knowledge limited and true and enough; it’s glorious. The limitations are such that nobody has ever reached the limit of seeing the glory of what God has revealed to us already in this life. Nobody has exhausted the Bible. It would be absolute folly to say, “Well, God has restricted what we can know here, so there’s no point in digging into the Scriptures to see what more glorious things there are to find.” That would be insane. That would be crazy — utter foolishness. Paul said in Ephesians 3:8, “To me . . . this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles [now] the unsearchable riches of Christ.” So, the riches of the glory of Jesus Christ are unsearchable — not meaning they can’t be searched, but they can’t be searched to the end because they’re inexhaustible. They are being preached now through the inspired words of Scripture.

So, even though in this life we see through a glass dimly, nevertheless, what we are given to see is so glorious that never in this life will we get to a point where we can say, “There’s no more to learn, no more to see till we get to heaven.” The Bible is like an ocean without shores and no bottom. Nobody has come close to seeing everything there is to see of God and his ways in the Bible.

The Knowledge We Will Have

Second, what about the knowledge we will have in the age to come, when all of our sin is banished, there are no hindrances of our sin anymore, and we inhabit the glory of Christ’s presence? And I said that knowledge will be immediate, eternally inexhaustible, ever-increasing, glorious, and all-satisfying.

By immediate, I mean the difference between knowing Christ through his word and knowing him face-to-face. Paul said in Philippians 1:23, “My desire is to depart” — that is, to die — “and be with Christ, for that is far better.” In other words, our knowledge of him and our fellowship with him will be more immediate after death than it is now. It is precious now. But Paul says it will be better when it is immediate. “We shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

And not only will our knowledge in that day be immediate; it will be eternally inexhaustible. One of the most amazing promises in the Bible is in Ephesians 2:7, where Paul says, “In the coming ages” — that’s a lot of ages; they’re all coming, and they last forever — “[God will] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” In other words, since the riches of God’s grace are infinite — since he’s God — Paul calls them immeasurable. You can’t measure them. You never can get to the end of measuring them.

And since we are finite and cannot contain all the infinite riches of God’s grace, it appears that this is why we will have ages upon ages upon ages of being shown them. Eternal life — it will take all of eternity. Paul calls it “coming ages” in which God continually reveals more and more and more of the riches of his grace forever and ever and ever. That’s what it means for us to be finite and him to be infinite. The revelation of the glory of his grace goes on forever.

Which also implies, thirdly, that we will be ever-increasing in our knowledge. God takes us further and further into the storehouses of his own riches, which are immeasurable. This increase begins in this life, and then goes on and on forever and ever, because the love of Christ passes knowledge. You remember that amazing, staggering prayer in Ephesians 3:14–19: “May [you] have strength” — he’s praying — “to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” We will know what surpasses knowledge. I take that to mean that our knowing of the inexhaustible love of Christ will go on and on forever, ever-increasing. So, it remains comprehensively unknowable, and yet we’re growing in the knowledge of it all the time. I love this picture of our future. It’s just the necessary implications of God being God.

And not only will our knowledge be immediate, eternally inexhaustible, and ever-increasing; it will be glorious. Paul said in Romans 9:22–23, “[God desired] to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy.” Our knowledge will be the knowledge of infinite greatness and beauty and worth. That is glorious. God has chosen “to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Finally, not only will our knowledge of God be immediate, eternally inexhaustible, ever-increasing, and glorious; it will be all-satisfying. “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy” — that’s where I get the idea of all-satisfying — “at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” — and there, I get the idea of satisfying forever (Psalm 16:11).

I think the practical upshot of all of this is that today, in this life right now, God has given to us the revelation of Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). And he did this, he gave us this, to set us on a quest starting at our conversion that will last forever and will prove to be eternal and all-satisfying as we go “further up and further in” to the immeasurable riches of God’s grace.