We love God more fully when we see his glory more fully. That glory is revealed supremely in Jesus Christ and the history of redemption recorded in the Bible. But his glory is also revealed in all that he has made (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 1:19–21). And that revelation through nature includes the revelation of Jesus Christ, because “all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” ( John 1:3). That was spoken of the Son of God, who in the fullness of time “became flesh and dwelt among us” ( John 1:14).
The apostle Paul worshiped Christ for the same reason: “All things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). All the natural world was created through and for Jesus. This is a spectacular statement. Every scholar who devotes himself to observing the world should think long and hard about the words “All things were created . . . for Christ.” Surely, the least we can say is that this means all thinking—all scholarship—of every kind exists ultimately to discover and display the glory of God, that is, the glory of Jesus Christ, in his Word and in his world. Let every reference to God in the rest of this chapter be heard as a reference to all the persons of the Trinity.
Therefore, the task of all Christian scholarship—not just biblical studies—is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it, and to make it serve the good of man. It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God’s glory is not scholarship but insurrection.
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