In my last two posts I shared with you some of my favorite verses in Scripture, ones that have encouraged or challenged me, ones that I have turned to in my preaching and teaching, and ones that are expressions of our faith and testimonies to God’s glory. As I said before, there are many other favorite passages of Scripture besides those I listed, but I limited my comments to those verses that to me are most succinct and powerful. Or that I just like to read.
Some of my selected quotes ended up spanning two or more verses. In some cases, more than one verse was needed to fully express the thought. In other cases it had to do with the way the verses are numbered, since one sentence may extend through two or more verses. Remember that the chapter and verse divisions in the Bible are not original to the texts. Other than the Psalms and a few other poetic passages where divisions seem clear, chapter and verse numbering came much later as a tool to make scriptural references easier to find. A little history lesson may help:
Chapters were not designated until the early 13th Century when Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, proposed the divisions we use today. The chapters were not broken down into verses for another 200 years, when after attempts by other scholars, a printer named Robert Estienne included them in his French translation of 1553 and in a Latin Vulgate edition of 1555. His system was adopted and is what we still use today.
Interestingly, if you read Martin Luther’s commentaries, he only refers to the chapters from which he quotes, and not the verses; that’s because Martin died in 1546, before the verse divisions were made. Modern editors of Luther “retrofit”the verse numbering into his writings for clarity, and usually set the verse numbers into brackets like this – John 3[16].
. . . it is what the Word of God says, and not how it’s numbered, that’s important.
I wanted to mention this not only to explain why a favorite “verse” may go longer than one verse, but also to remind ourselves that it is what the Word of God says, and not how it’s numbered, that’s important. Thus, it doesn’t really matter which verse is the longest or the shortest or is the middle verse or whatever. Such numberings are interesting, but they come from sometimes arbitrary decisions as to where such divisions should be made. In fact, a long-held tradition that explains some of the unusual numbering is that Estienne did his work while riding on horseback, and that whenever the horse jostled him his pen marked a new verse!
So, now that our history lesson is over . . . let me present some of my favorite verses from the New Testament.
John 1:1-3 ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.’ Actually, the entire first 14 verses of John are favorites, but this beginning of John’s Gospel is special in that it proclaims both (1) the undeniable deity of Christ – “the Word was God”- and (2) Christ’s active participation in the creation of the world. These verses parallel Genesis 1:1 and expand the Old Testament account to identify the “and God said . . .” verses of Genesis 1 with Christ who is the Word of God.
John 1:12 ‘But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,’ Okay, so I like this verse because it was my Confirmation verse given to me some 50 years ago. I love its open call to all to believe with the promise of adoption by God for those who do. It is one more affirmation of salvation by God’s grace through faith and not by works. And I enjoyed reciting it almost every Sunday as part of the Absolution in the Lutheran Book of Worship.
John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ One of the first sermons I preached before going to seminary was on this verse. I had no idea what to say since it is so well known and clear; to speak about it would be like “gilding the lily.” So I looked up a commentary on John to see what it said about the verse, and the first thing the scholarly commentator said was how difficult it is to comment on something so clear and well-known! So I will leave it alone and just affirm that it is a favorite expression of God’s grace and his call for us to believe for salvation.
John 8:58 ‘Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”’ I just love this statement of Jesus when some of the Jews confronted him. After he told them that their ancestor Abraham had looked forward to seeing his arrival, the people mocked him as too young to have seen or been seen by Abraham. So Jesus spoke these words, not only to show that Abraham did indeed rejoice to know him, but also that Jesus himself was God – the great “I AM” revealed to Moses and the Israelites in the book of Exodus. That this is what Jesus meant is clear by the Jews’ immediate response to Jesus’ words: they picked up stones to stone him to death – the prescribed punishment for blasphemy (which it would be if Jesus were not God).
Ephesians 2:8-10 ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.’ This is one of those essential, defining passages of the Bible that lay out the relationship between salvation, grace, faith, and works. It is so important that we required memorization of it by our Confirmation students, and it forms the basis for a 3-year cycle of teaching for our church’s youth ministry. What I especially like about it is the connection between faith and works; works do not save us, but those who believe will do good works. As Luther said, “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works,” and “good works follow and proceed from the good person . . . ” Note especially that we are created in Christ Jesus and that even the good works we do were first prepared by God for us to do. Even our works are by God’s grace! It causes us to think and pray as to whether God has special works for us to do that we haven’t done yet – and time is ticking!
It causes us to think and pray as to whether God has special works for us to do that we haven’t done yet – and time is ticking!
Philippians 2:5-11 ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ Okay, here’s where my one- or two-verse limit goes out the window. But I can’t shorten this passage because it is so beautiful as a whole in describing Jesus’ humiliation of suffering and dying as one of us, and his exaltation as glorious Lord of all. As one who longs for Christ to receive the recognition and worship he is due, I love the triumphant closing verses: that every knee will one day bow before him. And every knee includes believers, non-believers, angels and demons. All will one day acknowledge him by submitting to him; to some he will be their Lord and Savior, to others their Lord and Judge. But all will bow.
Colossians 1:16-17 ‘For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.‘ This is another affirmation both of Christ’s deity and in his role as our Creator. He created all things and holds all things together. Note also the purpose for which we were created, or rather, for whom we were created: Christ made us for himself.
This blog could go on and on – but it’s getting long so I better wrap it up. There are more favorite New Testament verses which I could describe, but let me just list a few here without comment as I close: Matthew 16:15-17; Luke 4:16-21; Luke 23:24; John 19:30; John 14:6; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and 51-55; Ephesians 1:11-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17; and 2 Timothy 3:16-17, among others . . . Who knows? Maybe I’ll describe what I like about them another time. In the meantime,
May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favor, and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Revelation 21-22.