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Jesus is Lord, not the Bible
When Scripture becomes witness instead of weapon
There is a sentence that still feels dangerous to some of us:
“Jesus is Lord, not the Bible.”
I understand why it feels unsettling.
Many of us were raised to believe that faithfulness meant defending the Bible at all costs. We were taught, sometimes directly and sometimes just by the air we breathed, that if we questioned the Bible, we were questioning God.
If we struggled with a passage, we were being rebellious. If we asked how something could fit with the character of Jesus, we were probably on a slippery slope.
So we learned to stay quiet.
Or we learned to explain away the ache.
Or we learned to pretend the tension wasn’t there.
But
What if the problem was never that we took Scripture too seriously?
What if the problem was that we were taught to start in the wrong place?
The earliest Christians did not begin with a completed New Testament. They did not gather around a leather-bound Bible with red letters and study notes. They gathered around a risen Christ. They told stories about him. They broke bread in his name. They baptized people into his life, death, and resurrection.
They prayed.
They listened.
They remembered.
They argued.
They discerned together.
And over time, the church wrote, collected, treasured, and canonized the writings that now form our New Testament.
Christianity did not begin with a book. Christianity began with Jesus.
John’s Gospel says it this way:
“In the beginning was the Word.”
— John 1:1
Not the book. The Word.
And then, just in case we miss it, John says:
“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”
— John 1:14
Flesh.
A body.
A face.
A voice.
Hands that touched the sick. Feet that walked toward the excluded. Tears at a friend’s grave. A table wide enough for the wrong people. A cross that exposed the violence of the world and answered it with forgiving love.
The Word of God is not first an “it.” The Word of God is a Person.
That does not make Scripture less sacred. It makes Scripture more properly sacred.
The Bible is not diminished when we call it a witness to Christ. A witness has holy work to do. A witness tells the truth. A witness points beyond itself. A witness says, “Look there. Look at him.”
The Bible matters because it bears witness to the living Word.
But the Bible is not the living Word.
Jesus is the living Word of God.
This is where some of us have had to do a lot of unlearning. We were handed a version of Christianity where the Bible functioned almost like the fourth member of the Trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Bible. We may not have said it that way, but we often practiced it that way.
The Bible became the center. Jesus became the proof text. And that can become dangerous quickly.
Because when the Bible is treated as a flat collection of equally weighted verses, we can make it defend almost anything. We can use it to bless empire, silence women, excuse racism, justify violence, protect abusers, shame the wounded, and keep people afraid. History has already shown us this.
The issue is not whether people can quote the Bible.
The issue is whether our reading looks like Jesus.
That is the question I keep coming back to.
Does this interpretation look like Jesus?
Does it sound like the One who welcomed children, touched lepers, forgave enemies, challenged religious hypocrisy, fed hungry crowds, and crossed boundaries of purity, ethnicity, gender, and status?
Does it bear the fruit of Christlike love?
Or does it make us more certain, more afraid, more suspicious, more controlling, and less compassionate?
I love Scripture. I read it daily. I preach from it weekly. I wrestle with it constantly. I return to the Bible when I am tired, grieving, confused, hopeful, angry, and searching.
But I do not worship the Bible.
Christians worship the living God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And for Christians, Jesus is the clearest picture of what God is like. We learn the heart of the Father by following the Son in the presence and power of the Spirit.
The Bible is a gift, but it is not God. It is inspired, but it is not incarnate. It is authoritative, but its authority is always found in relation to the One who is the image of the invisible God.
Jesus is the exact imprint of who God has always been. Jesus is what God has to say.
So when Scripture feels confusing, I do not think the faithful response is to shut down the question. I think the faithful response is to bring the question to Christ.
What do we do with passages that seem violent?
We bring them to Jesus.
What do we do with passages that have been used to wound people?
We bring them to Jesus.
What do we do when the Bible seems to contain different pictures of God?
We bring them to Jesus.
“And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
— Hebrews 12:1-2
Maybe this is why so many people are finding their way back to faith, not by clinging tighter to certainty, but by loosening their grip on fear.
They are not rejecting Scripture.
They are trying to read it with Jesus at the center. They are trying to trust that the Word made flesh is more faithful than the systems that taught them not to ask questions. They are trying to believe that God is as loving as Jesus.
And maybe that is not a slippery slope. Maybe that is the narrow way.
A way of reading that does not begin with control. A way of faith that does not require us to defend every interpretation we inherited. A way of following Jesus with our whole selves, including our questions.
The Bible is a sacred witness. But Jesus is Lord.
And maybe the invitation is not to choose between Scripture and Christ.
Maybe the invitation is to let Scripture do what it was always meant to do.
Point us to him.
The living Word.
The wounded and risen One.
The One who still says, “Follow me.”
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View this message in your browserJune 12, 2026
Possessing the Mind of Christ
By Francis Frangipane
To See as Jesus Sees
"He who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:15-16).
This is one of the most staggering statements made in the New Testament. Paul says that it is actually possible to be free of our carnal, jealous, fearful, unbelieving thought-life and, in its place, possess "the mind of Christ"!
This promise is wonderfully profound. Indeed, it is one thing to be taught edifying principles and truths about the Lord, yet quite another to actually possess the very thought-life of Christ! Listen to what Paul says,
"For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words" (1 Cor. 2:11-13).
When we were born again, we received into our spirits the Spirit of God. A spiritual man is one in whom God’s Spirit has risen in internal ascendancy. Paul tells us that a spiritual man can discern or appraise all things. It is unfortunate that some versions translate "appraises" with the word judges. Some Christians have actually used the word judges as a green light to become judgmental, which they associate with being spiritual. God does not want us to be judgmental, He wants us to be discerning. Indeed, a spiritual man is one who has renounced a judgmental attitude and, in its place, he possesses a redemptive attitude, which is the mind of Christ. How does Jesus view life? How does He look at the imperfections of our world? Paul taught in Philippians 2:5-8:
"Have this attitude (KJV: "mind") in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God . . . emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
Christ's attitude was simple. Jesus saw the fallen, rebellious condition of mankind and then did everything necessary to redeem it. Although the world deserved judgment, He "did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12:47). And, with this very same motive to spread redemption, He said, "As the Father has sent Me, I also send you" (John 20:21).
The Son of God saw the need of the world and emptied Himself to meet it. He gave up all that was His in the Godhead - His privileges, powers and position as the very form of God - and took the form of man. Then He humbled Himself further, remaining obedient to death in order to secure our eternal redemption. This is the mind that we are to have in us "which was also in Christ Jesus."
Out of the nature of selfless love emerges the mind of Christ. The moment we accept that we are called to lay down our lives for others, we are beginning to understand what it means to possess the mind of Christ. The spiritual man appraises all things: he sees both the need and the answer and he is willing to be a bridge to complete redemption. The spiritual man possesses discernment: he knows the activity of the human heart, its vulnerability to demonic manipulation, its inability to rise out of woundedness. Knowing God's grace toward himself, he pays the price to see freedom come to another.
Beloved, if your motive is love, if you are guided by hope, if you desire to possess Christlikeness, if you love humility and walk with an unoffendable heart, you will certainly find the thought-life of God. You are possessing the mind of Christ.
Lord Jesus, how much I want to think like You. Lord, I want to possess Your mind and be moved by Your heart. Grant, Master, that I would receive in a greater way the character and nature of the Holy Spirit, that I might know the thoughts of God toward the world around me. For Your glory I pray. Amen.
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Adapted from Francis Frangipane's ebook, Spiritual Discernment and the Mind of Christ, available at www.arrowbookstore.com.
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Spiritual Discernment and the Mind of Christ
- ebook
Ebook - $9.75 (Retail $12.85)
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Discernment and the Mind of Christ -
Audio / Video series
Message titles:
The Discernment We Need | The Mind of Christ The Holy Spirit’s Voice | Think Redemption
CD Audio Series - $15.00 (Retail $20.00)
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The antidote for spiritual emptiness is
the pursuit of Christlikeness.
In Christ's Image Training
In Christ's Image Training is an international online course developed by Francis Frangipane, designed to take Christians at all levels and lead them into a deeper understanding of what it means to be like Christ.
Start today and go at your own pace. What's holding you
back from becoming more like Jesus today?
ICIT provides focused training in four essential stages of spiritual development:
The vision of attaining Christ's likeness
Possessing Christ's humility
Developing a strong prayer life
Becoming one with other Christ believers
We have several enrollment plans to choose from. Consider facilitating a Level I group through the course for the lowest tuition using our Group Study Plan.
Sample of audio portion of the training course.
Learn more at www.icitc.org.
Training also available in Spanish / Español
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Visit Arrow Bookstore to order these and
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Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture quotations
were taken from the NASB.
A service of Advancing Church Ministries.
Copyright (c) 2026
All rights reserved.
Office address: Advancing Church Ministries, 465 Northland Ave NE Ste 102, Cedar Rapids IA 52402