In my early seminary years, I handed a sermon draft to my preaching coach the week before I was to preach for the first time. He flipped through it, looked up, and with kind but honest wisdom said, “Your intro is too long. Get your people into the text soon. That’s where the power is.” It was a simple yet clarifying reminder: real spiritual hunger is satisfied when people meet God in his Word. It’s what feeds, forms, and fuels people for his work.
When the Table is Empty
If God’s Word is the bread that nourishes the hungry soul, what happens when people are kept from the table? The result is more than mere ignorance. It is spiritual malnourishment.
This was precisely the problem the Reformers faced in the late medieval church. The Bible had been kept under a closed lid of Latin. It was only accessible to the educated, religious elite. Lay people were facing real spiritual hunger—unable to read Scripture for themselves. Instead, they had to rely on priests to hear God’s voice and rituals to experience God’s grace. In this spiritual climate, people were starved of truth, stunted in maturity, and left striving in their own strength.
Answering Spiritual Hunger with a Feast
The Reformers understood it was not enough to win theological debates. The real task was to put the Scriptures back into the hands and hearts of God’s people, so they could encounter the living God for themselves.
This is why Martin Luther translated the Bible into colloquial German, so mothers, children, and workers could hear God’s voice in their language. He insisted, “You must ask the mother in the home, the children in the street, the common man in the marketplace, and look at their mouths to see how they speak, and translate accordingly. Then they will understand and know that one is speaking German with them.”
In England, William Tyndale shared the same vision and translated the Bible into English. He surmised that “the boy that drives the plough” would one day know more of Scripture than the religious elite.
For both Luther and Tyndale, translating the Bible was not simply an academic pursuit. It was laying a feast for hungry souls, giving people a seat at the table to experience the viva vox evangelii—the living voice of the gospel. By lifting the Latin lid off God’s Word, the Reformers nourished a church that was desperately hungry.
New Hunger: The Current Reality in India
This Reformation burden remains urgent for the Indian church today. Although Scripture is accessible in several Indian languages and in various formats, it is often distanced through neglect, diluted by novelty, or displaced by moralism, emotionalism, and other substitutes.
Think about it: Why do so many Christians, despite faithful church involvement, find themselves with spiritual hunger? Because mere participation without a sustained, Spirit-illumined, Christ-centred immersion in God’s Word leaves the soul perpetually undernourished.
The Remedy: Textualising People into the Text
What will it take to reclaim the full feast of God’s Word, the rich nourishment the Reformers laboured to restore? As Harold Senkbeil argues in his book The Care of Souls, the answer is to “textualise people into the text of Scripture.” We must help them truly encounter God by steeping their lives in his Word.
Textualising means drawing people into the story of Scripture. It is letting God’s Word frame their lives, so their deepest questions, struggles, and hopes find their true place within God’s unfolding drama of redemption.
Why the Text Satisfies Spiritual Hunger
Paul’s counsel to Timothy shows why textualising people into the text of Scripture is the sure path to spiritual nourishment—for our lives, our churches, and our communities. The sacred writings are God-breathed: powerful for salvation, profitable for formation, and the playbook for Christ’s mission in the world (2 Tim. 3:14–17).
The Text is Powerful for Salvation
Paul’s appeal to Timothy is not a call to nostalgia. It summons us into a living, ongoing encounter with God in his Word: “Continue in what you have learned…the sacred writings” (2 Tim. 3:14).
Paul does not merely ask Timothy to recall stories from his childhood. He is charging Timothy to linger in the theatre of God’s Word. It is why he insists that “Scripture is able to make one wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
As Jesus taught, “the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets” all find their fulfilment in him (John 1, Luke 24, John 5:39).
To be textualised into the text of Scripture is to be tethered to Christ. The work of textualisation is labouring together to bring souls into the immediate presence of Christ in his Word, where forgiveness, healing, and purpose can be found.
The Text is Profitable for Formation
Scripture forms us into the image of Christ in four ways (2 Tim. 3:16)
Teaching: The Bible teaches us what to believe about God and ourselves. Our intuitions and imaginations are not the standard for truth. When you turn to the Bible, ask yourself, “Am I allowing Scripture to teach me?”
Rebuking: The Bible also rebukes our self-centred, sinful inclinations, appetites, and habits. It exposes our hearts and calls us to repent and return to Jesus. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to be challenged when I read the Bible? Or do I just seek its affirmation?”
Correction: Scripture teaches and rebukes, but it also corrects. Sin works to destroy us, but God works to restore us. So when Scripture corrects your life, the invitation is to embrace it. Ask yourself, “Do I allow God’s Word to correct me when I have fallen? Am I willing to acknowledge my missteps and receive restoration into the image of Christ?”
Training in Righteousness: Scripture trains us in righteousness. It is a formation that requires effort. Dallas Willard clarifies: “Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning.” So the question is, “Are we opening the Scripture so that our lives are formed and profited for God’s glory?”
The Text is the Playbook for Mission
Scripture is not only powerful to save us (v. 15) and shape us (v. 16), but also to strengthen us for God’s mission in the world (2 Tim. 3:17).
Though Paul is speaking to Timothy about his gospel ministry, the principle is wider. All God’s people, no matter their calling in life or place in society, are prepared by God’s Word for service in the mission of Christ. In effect, he says, “The man of God may be completely equipped by God’s Word for every good work.”
The Word of God is not low on fuel, but a full tank. It lacks nothing.
The Ongoing Reformation
Every Sunday, when your pastor says, “Look with me at the text,” he picks up the same thread that Paul handed to Timothy and the Reformers grasped generations later to continue in the “sacred writings.” It is the God-breathed Word, where salvation, formation, and mission flow.
May we continually textualise ourselves and our listeners in the redemptive power of Scripture, so that people encounter Christ and the hungry soul is truly satisfied.
