TOPIC #2: THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

A. THE INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

The first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith is devoted to Holy Scripture, and speaks in these terms: "Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the Books of the Old and New Testaments...all of which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life... The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God."

1. The Authorship of Holy Scripture

We believe that the Bible had but one author, God, who inspired it to be written in a completely different way than other great authors are said to be "inspired" in their writing. The Biblical writers were completely under the control of the Holy Spirit and wrote as God directed them. This puts the Bible in a different class than other great literature, and the forty different men from whose pen flowed the 66 books of the Bible, were only "writers" of Scripture and not its "author", who was God. This explains why all parts of the Bible are in harmony, and have a style that uniformly exalts God. The inspiration of Scripture referred to in 2 Timothy 3:6 is explained by 2 Peter 1:21 - "For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved (borne along) by the Holy Spirit."

(a) Inspiration means that the Bible is God's message to man, not man's ideas about God. When we assume that fallible men were the authors of Scripture, we thereby remove the authority of God from the Bible's message. When we say of a portion of Scripture, "That was just what St. Paul thought -- I prefer what Jesus said", we are forgetting that God was the author of both passages, and that St. Paul was not writing his own ideas about God, but God was giving us His message through St. Paul. All passages of Scripture have the same authority.

(b) Inspiration means that every writer of the Bible wrote without any error. When we make the false assumption that the Bible was designed and written only by men, we cast doubt on its accuracy, also assuming that it contains contradictions and mistakes. If there appear to be contradictions and mistakes, it is because we don't have all the facts required to harmonize the information given. To reject Scripture because our intellect cannot accept supposed errors, is to exalt our intellect above God.

(c) Inspiration means that God was not limited by the knowledge of the writers of the Bible. Another false assumption is that the writers of Scripture were limited by their own knowledge, cultural background, and experience. However, when we realize that God's thoughts are higher than ours, and that He has given us His thoughts in the Bible, we see that those thoughts are of eternal importance and everlasting application. Jesus told us that "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). Therefore, science cannot have discovered anything that God did not know when He inspired Scripture. If science has evidence that Scripture is wrong, it cannot yet have come up with all the facts. Similarly, we may falsely assume that the Bible was simply the product of the culture of the day, and therefore, since culture has changed, the Bible no longer applies. This is often used by Christians who are embarrassed by the teachings of Peter and Paul on the roles of men and women, because they conflict with popular views today. God's ways are not only higher than ours, they usually conflict with ours. We believe that the authority of the Bible will stand unchanged, while human cultures and fads come and go, and popular views prove to be destructive. Once we introduce any exceptions to the authority of Scripture, however harmless, there is no way of stemming the flood of exceptions that will follow, however harmful. The Bible is God's Word for all time.

2. The Interpretation of Holy Scripture

The inspiration of Holy Scripture relates not only to its original writing, but also to its interpretation and use by us today. Many a great Bible expositor dates his deeper understanding of Scripture back to a crisis in his own personal relationship with God, whereby he received a fuller measure of God's Spirit.

(a) Inspiration means that the Holy Spirit teaches us how to understand the Word of God and how to apply it to daily living. The same Spirit Who inspired the Bible is present as we read it, and if He fills, controls, and empowers us as we read it, He will show us its meaning. But unconfessed sin in our life destroys our relationship with God, and causes our understanding of Scripture to be inadequate or even erroneous. Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith states: "We acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word." Before we read Scripture, we should search our hearts for any attitude or action that would impair our relationship with God; we should surrender our hearts afresh to God; and we should pray for the inward illumination of God's Spirit.

(b) Inspiration means that our ability to understand the Bible is not determined by our mental ability, but by our fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Some Christians often feel that if only they had more education, more knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and access to commentaries, concordances, Bible dictionaries, and volumes of theology, that they would be able to understand Scripture better. They see intellectual skill as the important thing that they lack. However, we believe that the source of understanding comes solely from our relationship with God the Holy Spirit. The Confession goes on to say: "All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, not alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them." What joy it is to know that even the simplest person, inspired by the Spirit, can have a sufficient understanding of Scripture.

(c) Inspiration means that the Scripture must be our final authority for daily decisions. We believe that "the Word of God (is) the only rule of faith and obedience" (Larger Catechism Q#3), and it is precisely here that the great debates about the interpretation of Scripture arise. We have no trouble interpreting Scripture where it does not affect our lifestyle, but when the obvious meaning of Scripture means that our behavior must change, then arises the temptation to reject that meaning by searching for other Scriptures that seem to support our viewpoint. When someone tries to justify a questionable activity by claiming that the Bible can be interpreted several different ways, it is likely that that person has a problem with moral purity. A person without moral purity will be open to "theology" which excuses it, and a person who knows and rejects the truth about morality will believe a lie. We must be totally pure and in tune with God's Spirit, and surrendered to obey Him, to understand spiritual truth.

(d) Inspiration means that Scripture is its own best interpreter. The Confession continues: "The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly."

B. THE AUTHENTICITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

Another of Satan's attacks on the Bible can be found in the fact that the major religions of the world possess writings which are considered by their followers to be holy and uniquely inspired. Satan never gives up his attempts to discredit the Bible by inspiring his own counterfeit scriptures. We must deal seriously with this challenge to the authenticity of Scripture as being the only expression of God's truth among competing claims.

(1) The Bible stands alone in that it is the only writing which presents Jesus Christ as the unique Son of God. In the Bible, Jesus is presented as divine as well as human. Other religious writings and cults regard Jesus as only a great prophet or respected teacher. It is on the divinity of Christ that the Bible stands apart from all other supposedly holy writings. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me". (John 14:6). This statement was backed up by God when He raised Jesus from the dead (Jesus is the only religious leader whose grave is empty). Therefore we believe that any supposed holy writing which proposes another way to God than through the blood of Jesus shed for the sins of man, is a false scripture. The result of this belief for Christians is that we have the responsibility (or the mission), of taking this Biblical truth to people who do not know the way of eternal life through Christ, for they will perish in eternal death without Him, regardless of the religion they adhere to.

(2) Because the Bible is inspired, or "God-breathed", this means that the words of the Bible are life-giving expressions of God's wisdom, character, and power. The test of the true God is always the test of power, as Elijah demonstrated on Mount Carmel, when Baal was discredited (1 Kings 18:20-40). Therefore, the test of the Holy Scriptures' truth lies in their power, and in fact, it can be easily demonstrated that the words of the Bible can be used to conquer Satan, in a way unlike any other supposed holy writings. Our Lord Jesus, demonstrated how to use the words of Scripture to defeat Satan when three times He resisted Satan by quoting Scripture verses to counter his temptations (Matthew 4:4-7). Ephesians 6:10-20 speaks of the spiritual warfare against the devil that we as Christians are engaged in, and our weapon to attack with is "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (verse 17). God commands us to "resist the devil and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). We can resist him by quoting appropriate Scripture as Jesus did. For example:

(a) When we are afraid, resist him by quoting 2 Timothy 1:7 - "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind."

(b) When we are tempted into immorality, quote Romans 6:1-2 - "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?"

(c) When we are tempted to worry about finances, quote Philippians 4:19 - "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

(d) When we begin to feel depressed, or we're tempted to complain or feel sorry for ourselves, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 - "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

(e) When we are tempted to doubt the Scripture, quote 2 Timothy 3:16-17 - "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

When we quote Scripture to expose Satan's lies, we prove its power and authenticity.

C. THE PURITY OF THE WORD OF GOD

Another attack on the Holy Scriptures comes from the suspicion that perhaps through the ages, errors have crept into Holy Scripture in the process of recopying. This problem is serious, because many people, who can accept the inspiration of the original manuscripts, seriously question whether what we have now can really be trusted as to its accuracy. A related doubt springs from having so many modern translations that appear, so they say, to have widely differing meanings. It will be helpful to quote the Westminster Confession on this point: "The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately (directly) inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical." In other words, God has taken care to maintain the purity of the Scripture through the years.

What are we then to make of variations in the Greek text of the New Testament, which are referred to in the footnotes of modern translations? It is interesting that the King James Version of the Bible still outsells all modern translations put together, and there is a very good reason for this. When the King James Version was translated in 1611, the Greek texts in use everywhere were all in agreement. It is still the case that the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, called the Byzantine text type, support the Greek text underlying the King James. However, in the late 1800's, archaeologists dug up a very small number of Greek manuscripts dating from about 300 A.D., which were found in the Alexandrian area of Egypt. The Alexandrian texts were assumed by scholars to be more reliable and closer to the original, simply because they were older. However, these Alexandrian texts differed from the Byzantine texts commonly in use, in that the Alexandrian texts had thousands of omissions of words, phrases, verses and whole passages. As early as 161 A.D., translations of the Greek into Italic and Syriac had been made, and these translations (or versions) show that the earlier Greek included all the words omitted by the Alexandrian texts. In spite of this, all English translations of the Bible in the last 120 years (except one) have been based on the Alexandrian texts. The third-last verse of the Bible says, "if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life." The majority of Christians have taken this warning seriously and have not accepted the modern translations based on the Alexandrian texts. Some have even gone so far as to theorize that because over 200 of the deletions are of words or phrases that support the divinity of Christ, the Alexandrian text resulted from editing done to please the Arian heretics of the fourth century, who denied that Jesus was divine. For an excellent, but shocking, example of such a deletion, the popular New International Version removes the Ethiopian eunuch's profession of faith in Acts 8:37, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" (a statement that would disturb any Arian!), and makes it a footnote.

It is as a direct result of this controversy that the "New King James Version" appeared in 1979, for this is the only modern translation to revert to the Byzantine text type used by the original King James Version, and supported by the vast majority of Greek texts available. The King James Version took fifty years to win out over all the other versions then available, but it did so because the Spirit of God has always witnessed to the hearts of Christians that this is the pure and true expression of the word of God for English readers. In other words, the King James Version speaks with the authority of God himself. Since 1611, there have been at least 4 revisions of the King James, to update spelling and punctuation, the last one being in 1763. This modern revision, the New King James Version, undertakes to update the language, to take account of changes in meaning over 370 years.

Whether any of the new versions will receive the witness of God's Spirit in the hearts of Christians that this is again the pure expression of God's Word in English, may take another fifty years or more to establish.

D. WHAT WOULD LIFE BE LIKE WITHOUT THE BIBLE?

Many people balk at the very mention of "authority", and the reason for this is that man is basically a rebellious being. This is the sinful nature of Adam that has passed down through the generations. So, when it comes to the authority of Scripture, whereby God lays down His commandments for human living, some people respond, "No one is going to tell me what to do!", thus rejecting both Scripture and God its author. But think for a moment what the alternative would be.

(1) Unless God's will had been revealed in Scripture, we would be in a position of not knowing what was really right and really wrong, and would have no way of deciding the issue except by human opinion on the subject. When one opinion conflicts with another, without an authority to decide, anarchy reigns. There are people who believe in "secular humanism", a philosophy or religion that believes there is no God, that everything has evolved by chance, and that man has the right to choose his own standards. This looks attractive on the outside, because it releases us from authority, but this attitude has led our society into moral decay that results from "doing your own thing".

(2) Unless God had revealed in Scripture the only way to salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, the only religious experience we could have would be (a) trying to please God with good works, without ever knowing if we'd been good enough to be acceptable, or (b) emphasizing emotions as the test of faith, without ever knowing if we had reached the ultimate emotional experience of God. Neither of these routes give us any certainty.

How the Bible gives us certainty and assurance

There are two helpful kinds of information given in Scripture:

(1) God's commandments - It is possible for a person to feel that God wants them to do a certain thing. In such a case, if our feelings run contrary to what we know God has commanded in Scripture, then our feelings about God's will are wrong and should not be followed. If God is to be Lord of our life, we must commit ourselves to fulfill God's commands in Scripture.

(2) God's promises - God's promises are usually conditional, and can amazingly be used to give us certainty about anything we need to know in the Christian life, in this four-point pattern:

(1) God cannot lie.
(2) God said it.
(3) I believe it.
(4) That settles it.

We can use this basic pattern with almost any promise. Let's try 1 John 1:9 and show that we know that our sins are forgiven:

(1) God is faithful to His promises.
(2) He has promised to forgive our sins IF we confess them. (1 John 1:9)
(3) We have confessed our sins.
(4) Therefore our sins are forgiven.

The reason that this four-point logical argument works, is that God's faithfulness dictates that if we meet His condition, He is obligated to do what He promised. Let's use Revelation 3:20 to show that Jesus lives in our hearts:

(1) God is faithful; He cannot lie. (Titus 1:2).
(2) He has promised to come into our heart IF we ask Him (Revelation 3:20).
(3) We know we have asked Him to come in (if we actually have).
(4) Therefore we know that He has come in, and lives in our heart.

Similarly, we can know that we have eternal life:

(1) God is faithful.
(2) He has promised eternal life to those who believe on the name of the Son of God (1 John 5:13).
(3) We believe on His name (we've surrendered to His supreme Lordship in our life).
(4) Therefore we have eternal life.

E. WHAT IS THE BIBLE ALL ABOUT?

Many people who read Scripture are at a loss to know what to make of it. They can't see any connecting link that ties it all together. First of all, remember that the power of the Spirit of God (its author) must dwell in us before we can interpret Scripture correctly. This indwelling begins as we ask Jesus to live in our heart and continues daily as we let Him reign there.

1. The Bible as a Library

It will help us understand the Bible to know that its 66 books are grouped in this organization:

2. The Bible as Salvation History

The scarlet thread that runs through the entire Bible and ties it all together is the story of how God persisted in seeking sinful and rebellious mankind, finally bringing about the offer of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of man. When Jesus explained the Scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, He showed them how every part of the Old Testament speaks about Himself (Luke 24:27), and, of course, the New Testament does the same in an obvious way.

The first three chapters of Genesis set the stage for the drama that unfolds. Adam is given one rule to obey, with the instruction that if he disobeys, he will die (Genesis 2:17). So, eternal life consists of obedience to God, and the penalty for disobedience (sin) is eternal death. God's enemy, Satan, through a serpent, managed to entice Adam into disobedience. Adam, now imperfect, cursed, and eternally dead, was exiled from the perfect garden. Genetically speaking, every human being was in the loins of Adam when he sinned. Therefore we are all born with a sinful nature (or "original sin", inherited through our father), and are living in eternal death deserving God's condemnation.

However, God had purposed to send a Saviour to mankind, and to do this, He chose a particular line of people, from Adam through Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel). In particular, the children of Israel became known as God's chosen people, through whom God chose to bring His Saviour. In the course of history, the children of Israel became, for 400 years, slaves in Egypt (just as we become slaves to sin). Through Moses, God was able to deliver the people out of slavery (just as He sets us free from sin through Christ). Through Moses, God gave the people a set of detailed laws (part of which are the Ten Commandments), which, if they kept them, would be righteousness and salvation. However they disobeyed God, and He sent them into exile in Babylon. Then God sent a series of prophets to call His people to repentance, but few responded.

Every recourse having failed, God came into human flesh Himself, in the person of His Son, Jesus. He had a human mother, Mary, but because His Father was God, He did not inherit Adam's sinful nature. In human flesh, but without sin, Jesus lived perfectly, as God had always wanted men to live. Men hated Him, for His righteousness showed up their sin, and they put Him to death on the cross. The penalty for sin is death, but when Jesus died, it was our sin, not His, for which He paid the penalty. Since Jesus did not deserve to die, God raised Him to life on Easter, victorious, living, and triumphant.

Since then, all those who have received His victorious Spirit have been set free from sin, have been forgiven, and have received a glorious new relationship with God, the "eternal life" God wants for us.

F. BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY

It really helps us to make sense of the Bible if we are able to fit the Biblical events into order, so we know approximately where in the order of events anything particular happened. It should be noted that in Genesis 1:1, the word "created" does not necessarily mean "made out of nothing", and implies the pre-existence of the earth. We are therefore not assigning a date to creation.

When examining the following dates, keep in mind that B.C. dates (Before Christ) advance in decreasing order to the year 1 B.C., while A.D. years (Latin "Anno Domini" or "the year of our Lord") increase from the year 1 A.D. to the present. The year 1 A.D.was assigned to the year historians thought Christ was born, but later historical research revealed that Christ was actually born somewhat earlier, approximately 5 B.C.

All dates are approximate.
Scripture references are in parentheses.

TOPIC 3. OUR LIVING GOD