Biblical Essays
SUFFICIENCY AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES
We agree with an email received from a user of this website: “I recognize the voice of Jesus alone in His Word.” Where else could we hear it? It is on that blessed Word we are cast for everything. It is the solid foundation on which faith reposes. We need nothing else that His faithful Word to give us full assurance. No outward evidence, no inward feeling can possibly add to the truth and stability of the Word. How do we know we are sinners? By the Word. How do we know that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners? By the Word. How do we know that our sins are forgiven? Is it by our feelings? No, but by the Word. That Word tells us that “Christ hath once suffered for sins.” But how do we know He suffered for our sins? Because the Word says, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” We know we are “unjust” because the Word tells us so. Hence, Christ suffered for our sins and we are forgiven according to the effectiveness of Christ’s atoning suffering. We are brought to God according to the virtue and value of the Person and work of Christ. “He was delivered for my offenses and raised again for my justification.” Thus, “being justified by faith, I have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Like a little child, we must lean on the Word. True, it is by the power of the Holy Spirit we believe in and feed on the Word, but the Word is the solid foundation on which our souls must ever rest. May all our doubts and fears vanish in the pure and precious light of that Word which is “settled forever in heaven.”
Infidel thoughts proceed from the father of lies, and we must treat them as such. Judge them and utterly reject them. We should never be troubled for a moment by a suggestion from one whom we know to be “a liar from the beginning.” Ask an ignorant man how he knows the sun shines. Ask a simple believer how he knows the Bible is the Word of God. They both have felt its power. If God cannot make us know that it is He who speaks to us in His Word, who else can?
Were we to believe in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures merely from human testimony – be that testimony ever so powerful – it would not be faith at all. We believe what God says because He says it, not because of any human authority. If all the fathers who ever wrote, all the doctors who ever taught, all the councils that ever sat, all the angels in heaven and all the saints on earth, were to agree in declaring the Bible is the Word of God and we were to believe on their testimony, it would not be divinely-given faith. On the other hand, were all to agree in declaring the Bible is not the Word of God, it would not for a moment shake our confidence in that peerless revelation. Let us always fling back into the enemy’s teeth his foul and blasphemous suggestion and rest like a little child in the love and truth of that blessed One whom we have known for so many years.
What an unspeakable comfort to have a divine revelation. What should we do, where should we run if we were left to men's thoughts on the subject? What a poor affair it would be for us if we had to look to men to accredit the Word of God. They would very soon rob us of its authority and value. What an impudent presumption for earthly man to dare sit in judgment on the Word of God, pronouncing what is and what is not worthy of God. If God cannot make us understand His Word, if He cannot give us the assurance that it is He Himself who speaks to us in Holy Scriptures, what are we to do? Can man manage the matter better? If God cannot make us understand His Word, no man can; if He does, man is not needed.
The inspired Volume carries its own credentials. It speaks for itself. It comes to us with an overwhelming body of evidence, both internal and external. On the contrary, the Apocrypha carried its own condemnation. It contains passages which one has only to read to be convinced that they were never inspired by the Spirit of God. We reject it on the ground of evidence, both internal and external.
The word in 1 Corinthians 11:2 should be rendered “traditions” or “directions.” The apostle does not specify what they were, but thank God, we know that whatever ordinances, traditions or directions are essential for the Lord’s church to the end of time, are clearly laid down in the Scriptures of the New Testament. This is quite enough for us. Men have no authority whatever to set up rites and ceremonies in the church of our Lord; and doing so can only be regarded by every heart loyal to Christ as a daring usurpation of His authority which He will soon judge.
We feel increasingly impressed with a sense of the urgent need of testing everything by the Word of God – rejecting whatever cannot stand the test. It is not only deeply sorrowful, but most solemn to contemplate the way in which the authority of Christ, as laid down in His precious Word, is so often carelessly set aside by those who profess to be His people and His servants. It never seems to occur to such people that they are responsible before God to judge the various things in which they are engaged by the light of His Word. Hence, they go on from week to week and year to year with a whole host of things that do not have a shadow of foundation in Holy Scripture – how appalling when one thinks how all this will end. It will not be with a scourge of small cords that all such things will be driven out of the temple. May God the Holy Spirit, by His mighty ministry, arose all Christians to a more profound sense of the supreme authority and all-sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures.
May the Lord’s people be kept from the spirit of this age. We want to cultivate a truly humble contrite spirit, a spirit of lowly obedience, a spirit that will lead us to bow down with unreserved submission to the authority of Holy Scripture. “It is written” is a sentence of commanding power – a sentence uttered by our blessed Lord and Master at the opening of His public career and referred to again and again in the course of His marvelous ministry. It was reiterated with solemn emphasis to His disciples as He was about to pass into the heavens. May this weighty sentence be engraved on the tablets of our hearts.
If we were asked to state what we consider to be the one grand need of the day in which our lot is cast, we would say without hesitation, we want to give the Word of God its true place as the basis of our individual peace – the sole and all-sufficient authority for our individual path. Let us unite in earnest prayer to our God that He will give us grace to do so, to the praise of His holy name.
