Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus

Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus, Dave Ripper. InterVarsity Press | Formatio (ISBN: 9781514013106) 2025.

Summary: How the approach of Dallas Willard to reading scripture may transform us as disciples.

The late Dallas Willard was not only a distinguished academic philosopher. He also was known for his teaching on spiritual formation. At the heart of that teaching was the idea of experiencing transformation from the inside out, becoming more like Christ. Willard understood this in light of the biblical idea of discipleship. He observed that “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament whereas “Christian” occurs only three times. For Willard, that transformation as disciples came, at least in part, through his reading of scripture. His own Bible was marked up on every page with underlines, circles, and notes.

As Dave Ripper read the works of Dallas Willard and then had the chance to meet him, Willard’s engagement with scripture fascinated him. Whereas for many, reading scripture was about information, Willard encountered Christ as he read scripture. So, Ripper wanted to read the Bible like Dallas Willard. Both during Willard’s life and through his writing, he came to understand how Willard immersed himself in the text But Willard never wrote a book about this. This is that book.

Ripper begins with Willard on John 17:3. Jesus says to his disciples, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (NIV). Willard stressed that this is relational, intimate, personal knowledge and by this we experience that eternal life of God in us now. Willard urged expectancy that as we read, we will experientially know God. He goes on to elaborate Willard’s view of scripture as establishing the boundaries of what he will say to us. While we may hear God in prayer, it will always be within these boundaries. But Willard expected God to speak, as Ripper describes in writing about Willard as a mystic. He believed God would both speak through this text and speak personally.

But how do we read like Willard? Similar to Mortimer Adler, Willard was a believer in marking up the text. He believed in the over-arching story of scripture of God forming a People for himself, a theme he traced in fifteen movements. Willard also believed it was more important to get scripture through us than to get through a lot of scripture. He stressed meditating on shorter texts and doing so through memorization of those texts.

Ripper explores Willard’s adaptation of both lectio divina and Ignatian approaches. Ripper then distills Willard’s ideas into a seven-step process defined by the acronym IMMERSE. These steps are;

1. Immersion. Our posture of reverence and expectancy that God will speak.
2. Meditation. Spending extended time mulling over what we’ve read before God.
3. Memorization. Start with key passages and memorize as much as you can.
4. Encounter. Using our imagination, we become a participant in the text, addressing and being addressed by God.
5. Response. How are we being invited to act upon what we’ve heard? What does it mean for us to trust and obey?
6. Supplication. Asking God for what we need for what we’ve heard to become so for us.
7. Experience. Knowing God to be truly present with us amid our circumstances.

Through this process we move from communication to communion to union with God.

Then Ripper devotes two chapters to elaborating how Willard experienced the Old Testament and then the New. Finally, Ripper discusses how to teach scripture like Dallas Willard, offering ten short aphorisms. For example, the first is “speak from the overflow of a satisfied soul.” I liked the fourth as well: “Give ’em heaven!” If all of us who teach heeded these ten, the church would be immeasurably enriched. And it would not be at the expense of our souls.

This book is hardly a substitute for either the scriptures themselves, nor the writings of Dallas Willard. But the ideas here may well whet your appetite for a richer engagement with scripture and the Lord who waits to speak to us. It was twenty years ago that I heard Willard speak and read his books–and not all of them. Ripper’s study of Willard is a spur to me that led me to move a couple of the unread books to my TBR pile.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.