There is a specific kind of man this is written for and he is not the one anybody worries about.
He can find anything. Give him a phrase and he can tell you the book, usually the chapter, often the verse. He knows which prophets overlap and what order the kings came in and why one Gospel puts a story in a different place than the others. He has read commentaries for fun.
He was the kid who won the competitions. He is the adult everybody asks. If a question comes up at a table, three people look at him before he has said anything.
And what nobody knows is that he cannot remember a single occasion, in his entire life, when he felt like he was talking to somebody rather than about somebody.
He would not put it that way out loud. It sounds ungrateful and it sounds like a complaint about a gift. He has decided, mostly, that this is just how he is wired and that some people get feelings and he got information, and that it is fine.
It is not fine. And the sentence that says so is spoken by Jesus to the best readers of His generation.
The sentence, and who it was said to
Here it is, in the King James Version:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me: And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. (John 5:39-40)
Read who this is aimed at. Not people who ignored the text. People who searched it. The verb is theirs and He does not take it away from them.
They are they which testify of me. The book is a witness. A witness points at somebody. The whole function of the searching, He says, was to end up in front of a person.
And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. There is the gap, in nine words. Everything correct, and the last step not taken.
And notice what He does not say. He does not tell them to stop searching. He does not say the study was wasted or that their knowledge was worthless. He says it was pointed somewhere and they stopped a foot short of the destination.
You are not being told your reading was a waste, and you were never doing the wrong thing, only stopping early. John 5:39 says the Scriptures testify of Him and keeps the searching intact, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a change in temperament who carries a man the last foot.
Why a man stops a foot short
It is worth being honest about how this happens, because it is not laziness and it is not pride, whatever it looks like from outside.
Knowing about something is safe. Meeting somebody is not.
A man who has read everything has a great deal of control over the material. He decides when to open it and when to close it, what to think about it, how far in to go. That is a real relationship with a subject, and it can be a good and holy thing, and it can also become the exact place a person hides.
Coming to a person means the other party gets a turn. That is the whole difference. And a man who grew up being the one with the answers has usually never in his life been in a position where somebody else was going to say something he had not accounted for.
Paul, who had more of this than anybody, puts his own credentials in a column and then does something startling with the column:
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3:8)
The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Not the knowledge of the material about Him. The knowledge of Him, said the way a man says he knows his brother.
You have access to that kind of knowing and you were never limited to the other kind by how you are built. Philippians 3:8 has the most learned man in the New Testament distinguish the two and choose one, and it is His Spirit who makes the second kind available to somebody who has only ever had the first.
What the coming actually requires
Here is where this becomes good news rather than one more thing to be behind on. Two chapters on either side of that sentence, in the same Gospel, He says what the coming costs.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)
In no wise cast out. That is a double negative in old English and it is the strongest form the language has. Not maybe. Not on review.
And then, said out loud in public on the last day of a feast:
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. (John 7:37)
The qualification is thirst. That is the entire entrance requirement, and a man who has spent thirty years reading about water and has never had a drink is exactly the person that sentence is describing.
No credential is asked for. No feeling is asked for. Not even certainty. Thirst, and arrival.
You have an open invitation with nothing attached to it and you were never going to be turned away at the door. John 6:37 says him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out and John 7:37 sets the requirement at thirst, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes coming a thing a man can actually do rather than a thing he can only understand.
And if what is under the flatness is heavier than a dry mind, if it has gone as far as not wanting to be here, that is not a thing to sit alone with. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.
The reading changes when the aim changes
There is one more thing in John 5 worth having, and it is a practical difference rather than a mystical one.
If the book testifies of a person, then the question a man brings to a chapter changes. It stops being what does this passage teach, which is a good question, and becomes what does this show me about Him, which is a different question with a different result.
A man can read the same chapter he has read forty times with that second question and find that it has been doing something the whole time that he was not looking for.
He is not required to feel anything about it. That is not the measure. The measure is whether the reading is aimed at a person, and aiming is something a man can do on purpose on a Tuesday with no emotion available at all.
You are able to aim a chapter at a person today and you have not been shut out of that by thirty years of doing it the other way. John 5:39 says the Scriptures testify of Him, which makes that aim the text's own idea rather than a technique, and it is His Spirit who is named in that Gospel as the one who takes what is Christ's and shows it.
So say it to Him, not about Him. That is the last foot.
He told the best readers alive that the searching was pointed at a person and that they had stopped short, and He did not tell one of them to stop reading.
You are not disqualified by how much you know and you have not been reading the wrong book. The written word says they are they which testify of me in John 5:39, which makes the whole library a witness pointing somewhere, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a personality change who walks a man the rest of the way.
And the requirement at the door is not what you have been assuming. You are welcome as you are and you have a promise with a double negative in it. John 6:37 says him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out, and John 7:37 asks for thirst and nothing else, so the credential you have been quietly assuming you lacked was never on the list.
Nothing here promises the feeling arrives. The man who taught for nine years says the first year produced nothing he could report. What is promised is that the book was aimed at a person all along and the door has a promise attached to it, and you were the one that invitation was shouted to on the last day of the feast (John 5:40, John 6:37), and it is His Spirit rather than your learning who makes reading one verse out loud a receiving.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own condition is genuinely yours, handed to you and never invented. Jesus told expert readers that the Scriptures testify of Him and that they had stopped a foot short, and He never told one of them to stop reading, so speak to the knowledge that has never turned into meeting anybody: you have standing to address it because He addressed it first and did it without contempt. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is John 5:39 and John 6:37 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not the precision of your saying, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Knowledge that never turned into meeting Him, you are not the whole of what is on offer to me. The Word of God says the Scriptures testify of Him, which means every page of that book I know cover to cover was pointed at a person the whole time.
- Fear that I am only wired for information, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out, and there is no credential anywhere in that sentence.
- Father, You said if any man thirst, let him come, and You set the requirement at thirst and nothing else. I receive what Your word says in John 5 and John 7, and I am reading one verse out loud to You today, and Your Spirit is the one making that an address.
John 5:39-40
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.