In my office, literally within arms reach of my desk I have 18-20 English Bibles. That doesn’t count my Bibles at home or in my car, the many versions on my computer, or the hundreds of commentaries on my shelves that also contain English translations of the Scripture.
I affirm that having Scripture so readily available is a gift, yet it is also easy to take the availability of Scripture for granted — to assume it has always been this way. It hasn’t. Perhaps I (we) sometimes take Scripture a little less seriously because of this availability — I (we) confuse its presence with commonality. It’s just another word and not the Word.
In his account of the life of William Tyndale, who gave the world the first translation of the Bible into English, John Piper offers this account of Tyndale and some of his co-laborers.
[Tyndale] watched a rising tide of persecution and felt the pain of seeing young men burned alive who were converted by reading his translation and his books. His closest friend, John Frith, was arrested in London and tried by Thomas More and burned alive July 4, 1531, at the age of twenty-eight. Richard Bayfield ran the ships that took Tyndale’s books to England. He was betrayed and arrested, and Thomas More wrote on December 4, 1531, that Bayfield “the monk and apostate [was] well and worthily burned in Smythfelde.”
Three weeks later, the same end came to John Tewkesbury. He was converted by reading Tyndale’s Parable of the Wicked Mammon, which defended justification by faith alone. He was whipped in Thomas More’s garden and had his brow squeezed with small ropes until blood came out of his eyes. Then he was sent to the Tower where he was racked till he was lame. Then at last they burned him alive. Thomas More “rejoiced that his victim was now in hell, where Tyndale ‘is like to find him when they come together.'”
Those who gave us this translation also gave their lives to provide us the Scriptures. And those who hated the Word of God hated those who loved it. But no one assumed it was some common and trifling Word. It was weighty and significant. May this precious gift of God that is so common and convenient similarly always carry a weight of gravitas in our lives.
Words of Grace 