More than nineteen hundred years ago St. Paul wrote to a young man named Timothy: “From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 3:15).
Timothy was a fortunate young man. His father was not a believer, but his godly mother made up for the lack, and her mother helped as, day after day, from his earliest childhood, they taught him the Word of God. As a result he came to know Christ as his Savior at an early age, and later became Paul’s faithful co-worker and closest associate in making known the wonderful “gospel of the grace of God.” In his very last letter the Apostle recalls Timothy’s “unfeigned faith… which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice” (II Tim. 1:5).
If only we had more such grandmothers today, and mothers, with husbands to help them! If only our American children were not set adrift on a tossing sea of human speculation, but were taught the eternal truths of the Bible!
Certainly the rebellion of so much of our youth against law, authority and morality is directly related to the disappearance of Bibles from our homes and lives. It is not those young people who have been brought up in Bible-reading homes and in Church and Sunday School, who are making us ashamed today; it is those, from backgrounds both rich and poor, who have been brought up without Bible teaching.
We all need to “know the holy Scriptures,” not only because they teach reverence for God and build moral character, but most of all because they “are able to make [us] wise unto salvation through faith… in Christ Jesus.” The theme of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the riches of whose saving grace are unfolded to us in the Epistles of Paul, the chief of sinners saved by grace. source