New.Demonstration

“I love the Bible. I love Sola Scriptura.”

In the comforts of the Church pew, or on a weekday at work, how many of the millions of Christians today would be willing to make such a statement in honest?

Of course it should be granted that as Christians the basic assumption must be had that we in general uphold the Bible with much reverence, but the question to be asked is, is it given the reverence it deserves?

What about Sola Scriptura? (One of the five solas from the Protestant Reformation)^[i] In some shape or form the majority of evangelical and protestant churches openly affirm that they believe the Bible to be inerrant and infallible. Though that is a positive thing, James Montgomery Boice, in his last book, “Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace”, wrote:

Inerrancy is not the most critical issue facing the church today. The most serious issue, I believe, is the Bible’s sufficiency.^[ii]

Dr. Boice’s words ring true with greater clarity today. Christians all over the world affirm the inerrancy of Scripture but they do this in the same heartbeat of denying it’s sufficiency.

The Cambridge Declaration, formulated by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, defines the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in this way:

We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.

Yet in the acceptance of postmodernism, the wide spread movement of liberal protestantism and the rise of the Emergent/Emerging movement, to affirm Sola Scriptura is to be seen as an act of arrogance and bigotry. Mystery is embraced, certainty is denied. In essence it is to say that God is unable to make Himself known clearly in His written word and we are not to bother much about it.

Once a person puts on the proverbial glasses of this perspective, when he reads a passage of Scripture that is made up of words that expresses a clear and emphatic thought, mystery takes first base. He doesn’t allow the Bible to say what it means and mean what it says, rather, the thought arises wherein there really is no definite expression that the Bible makes so the “humble” thing to do is search out what it means for himself.

This can be seen more often than not in the Word-Faith movement where almost each and every passage of Scripture is emotionalized and spiritualized. For many Christian movements and denominations that have bought into this trend, they can make assertions for example where the Bible plainly speaks about the laying down of a husband’s life for his wife as Christ did, a person can take that passage and subject it to his own fancies and go so far as to say that women can take the position of the spiritual leader over a man in the family institution.

Fundamentally it is to say that God cannot properly explain Himself anymore. And since God cannot speak clearly anymore we need some other order of authority—for others it is the “still small voice of God”, or maybe what your favorite Sunday teacher says about a verse, or what the latest evangelical fad says about it.

A Return to Rome

In another sense it is but a return to Rome. Instead of needing the Magisterium to interpret the text of Scripture we now need the latest pragmatic church guru to do so, or our feelings, or even our experiences. We bring point to fact that God has spoken but He failed to make Himself clear. God took thousands of years to reveal Himself in Scripture, yet He utterly fails to make Himself and His precepts clearly known and knowable to His people.

These of course, to any honest and sane person is not just a fall into serious error, but in the final analysis of it is heresy in and of itself rooted in unbelief.

John MacArthur in his recent book “The Truth War” said in his introduction:

The idea that the Christian message should be kept pliable and ambiguous seems especially attractive to young people who are in tune with the culture and in love with the spirit of the age can’t stand to have authoritative biblical truth applied with precision as a corrective to worldly lifestyles, unholy minds, and ungodly behavior. And the poison of this perspective is being increasingly injected into the evangelical church body.^[iii]

I think that observation is very true today. Instead of subjecting our lifestyle, thoughts and behavior to what the Bible says, we instead subject the word of the Bible to ourselves. This may be in the form of preferences, political inclinations, cultural exposure, but all it is is a subjection to our traditions—whatever way, shape or form it may be.

The Church Should Love the Truth of God’s Word

The Church should love the Truth of God’s word. In the words of Francis Schaeffer the church should love the “true Truth” as expressed by God’s word. Nothing is more valuable than this. 1 Timothy 3:15 speaks of the church being the “pillar and ground of truth”. Thus it is a mass of contradiction for people everywhere, especially Christian men and women, even ministers to disregard truth and the supremacy of Biblical authority.

What happens then? As people do not have the love of truth they will embrace a lie (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11). The effects of this can come in different forms. It is my observation that in contemporary or even conservative congregations all over the world the radical redefinition of all terms in Christian religion is much prevalent today as ever. This redefinition is based on a weak and insufficient understanding of the text of Scripture.

Thus when things like God’s holiness is proclaimed, all that is meant is “God is great”. When the substitutionary atonement Christ accomplished on the Cross is mentioned, all that is meant is “Christ died in your place”. Many other examples can be given, but fundamentally the weight of these truths are stripped away because truth today must be based from emotion, rather than emotion being a response to Christ exalting truth.

The Relegation of the Authority of Scripture

As it was first expressed Scripture has taken the back seat over emotion, tradition and pragmatism. Only a precious few would believe and put into practice the doctrine of the Bible’s sufficiency as their first and last authority over all things.

In Tim Challies’ book, “The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment”, he wrote:

The evidence of this is visible in churches all around us. Many churches no longer look to the Bible as being the key to evangelism. Instead they put their trust in music, drama, outreach programs, and less imposing but more attractive church buildings. When people do come to church, they are not challenged by the gospel. Many churches no longer look to the Bible as their guide to counseling, opting instead to follow the latest methods of psychology. In so doing that they deny that the Bible is truly sufficient to guide us in even these matters.^[iv]

Why? Because the Bible is not given the authority and reverence it so rightly deserves. This too is one of the primary reasons why so many church-men today fall into error and heresy. Because they pick and choose what they want to believe from the Bible. If a certain text of Scripture goes against their tradition, if they don’t openly reject it, they just bend and twist it to make it fit with their theology. It is not the Bible’s fault that men fall into error because God’s revelation of Himself in His written word is neither unclear or ambiguous, rather it is because of our own sinful hearts that is why the preeminence of Scripture is denied suppressing truth.

The Denial of the Proper Place of Scripture is to Deny God and Christ

Clearly, the existence of absolute truth and its inseparable relationship to the person of God is the most essential tenet of all truly biblical Christianity. Speaking plainly: if you are one of those who questions whether truth is really important, please don’t call your belief system “Christianity,” because that is not what it is.^[v]

If understood with it’s overarching implications, in the same way it could be said that if you are one of those who questions whether the Word of God is really important or not, then please don’t call your belief system “Christianity,” because that is not what it is. That being, God has revealed Himself in all of creation (Romans 1:20), and as He revealed Himself  by putting His law written on our hearts (Romans 2:14-15)—He has revealed Himself in Scripture (Psalm 19:7-11), which is sufficient revelation of everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:3), in order to lead us to Him as Savior and Lord. And as the culmination of divine revelation, He sent the very embodiment of truth itself, the Lord Christ Jesus (Hebrews 1:1-3).^[vi] Thus, for a person to say that the Word of God is just an accessory to help us along in the Christian life, though it is said in different phraseology or expressed in other means, is to be entirely un-Christian.

It is an affront to God and His Christ. Though God’s revelation is all an act of grace where He could have just kept silent and left us to our own destruction, He was still pleased to do so, and to treat that same revelation as just a book of moral ethics, or maybe a  mere handbook to fix marriages, is to spit upon the face of God Himself. In essence it is like treating the Lord Christ Jesus as a self-help specialist, when in reality He is the Lord of glory. Like treating Christ like a pet in your home to relieve you of stress from work, when in reality He is the Lion of Judah.

All this is to blaspheme God, embracing heresy and loving a lie.

This is a Vital Issue

In the Lord Christ Jesus’ own words the truth sets us free (John 8:32). As this is as much as sin against God and an affront against Him, this too is an affront and an insult to our fellow man. If Bible Truth is disregarded it is to no surprise that many are put into bondage. Bondage to false doctrine, bondage to a lie and left in despair. When the Bible is not given the preeminence it deserves it ripples all throughout the Christian’s life and thought. It brings nothing but misery and suffering.

There is no comfort apart from comfort in God and His Word. There is not much comfort to be had if we trust other men’s interpretation of Scripture alone—but at the same time we do not trust the text Scripture itself. There’s even greater despair if we trust in such men who treat Scripture as poetry who romanticizes each and every passage to make people feel good about themselves. An even greater despair if these  things we do ourselves concerning Scripture. (We will be observing more of this in the next posts as we deal with God’s Sovereignty, Holiness, and His gospel)

There is no other place that a Christian can rest his head upon—His attributes, His decrees, His purposes and His Son—as revealed by the living Word of the living God.

“God has spoken” is an ocean of comfort to him. “Thus saith the Lord” is his creed. The Word of the Lord is his joy.

Footnotes

1. Including Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria [↩]
2. James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 72 [↩]
3. John MacArthur, The Truth War (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson, 2007), xi [↩]
4. Tim Challies, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2007), 46-47 [↩]
5. John MacArthur, The Truth War (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson, 2007), xx [↩]
6. John MacArthur, The Truth War (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson, 2007), xix [↩]