The Baptist Faith and Message- I. The Scriptures (Part 2)

Ib.“It [the Bible] reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.”

Having a Bible that is without error and authoritative is good, but simply having such a book in existence isn’t enough. We need to know the purpose for which God gave us His inspired Word. The Bible doesn’t just give us spiritual information; it unveils a story from eternity past to eternity future, with Jesus Christ at the center. All of Scripture points to Jesus, whether in anticipation in the Old Testament, in fulfillment at His coming for our salvation, or in further anticipation of His return. He makes that point on the road to Emmaus when He teaches His two followers about Himself from the Jewish Scriptures (Luke 24:44-46). God gave us an inerrant an authoritative word so we could know the truth about Christ.

The Bible also reveals God’s standards to us. There are many today, even in the church, who want to minimize or even ignore what the Bible teaches us about God, about salvation, about humanity, and about the way we should live before our Creator. They would prefer to find standards that are acceptable to themselves and to the world around them. There is a desire to make some sort of Christianity acceptable to the masses, even if it isn’t exactly what the Bible teaches.

Yet if the Bible is only relevant and applicable where it agrees with what humanity consents to, it instead becomes irrelevant, since it only tells us what we already think or know. To truly understand an infinite God, we need a Word that comes from Him and that tells us the truth, whether it is what we want to hear or not. Thus the Bible is the standard by which each of our lives is judged, and is the standard by which even the creeds and statements of churches are judged.

We are examining the statement of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention, yet this statement is only valid insofar as it reflects the teaching of Scripture. Creeds and statements of faith are helpful to enable us to organize and recall the basic doctrines of our faith, and to put together the teaching of the Bible in one place. They cannot, however, take the place of Scripture. When we put more trust in the human construction of a creed than in the Bible that provides the content of that creed, we can effectively make that statement an idol that obscures our view of Christ as it takes our eyes off of His inspired Word.

The Bible also is the center of Christian unity. No one can deny that the church is presently divided, and that some of those divisions are serious (not to mention ancient!). Many seek to bring all of the churches and denominations together, and to do so they want to downplay anything that separates them. While this effort is laudable on the surface, it often is more interested in creating a unity of structure rather than one of faith. We cannot lay aside the truths of God’s Word just to make it appear that we are one with others who call themselves “Christian” but who do not value the truth of Scripture.

We have God’s inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word in the Bible. God did not give it to us so we could have some divine declaration to enshrine on a shelf. The Word of God is given to us to show us God’s standards, to regulate our lives and our churches, and most importantly to show us Jesus and teach us about Him.

30 Days in the Bible, Day 7: Revelation 22:6-11, 18-19

While there are many who would agree that the Bible is God’s Word, some want to define what that means in their own way. Cults may accept the Bible, but want to add other writings that are on the same level with it. Various denominations may want to add the traditions of the church as an equal authority. Others might want to ignore parts of the Bible because they are “outdated” or “don’t speak to our modern society.” You can find many ways that the Word of God is given proper lip service, but essentially rejected in practice.

There is another way that we can “add to” or “subtract from” the Word of God without going so far in our doctrine, however. If we fail to learn, understand, and apply the whole Bible to our lives, we effectively take away from its authority. By choosing which passages we want to accept and simply ignoring those we don’t, we have placed ourselves above the Word.

One example of this kind of selective acceptance of Scripture is found with many “prosperity gospel” teachers. They emphasize the promises of the Bible regarding health, wealth, and success, while downplaying or even skipping over passages that teach about trials and tribulation. In the end, they have created a new Bible, and taken Biblical teaching out of the Word as surely as Thomas Jefferson’s scissors.

Accepting the full authority of Scripture doesn’t mean that we all will agree on every point. Christians have historically disputed doctrines like predestination and the end times. All sides in these disputes, however, recognize that they have to account for the whole of Biblical teaching. You can’t make a good case for a point of doctrine by choosing a few texts and not addressing the rest. I believe we will continue to debate many points within the church, but that those involved will do so with a proper understanding of what the Bible is and where its authority comes from.

As we read and study the Bible, we need to come to it as God’s authoritative Word. We may find parts of the Bible that are confusing to us at first, and maybe even some teachings that we wish weren’t there. There will be some passages we love to study, while others may be a real challenge to us. We need to accept all the Bible teaches, and understand the focus on Jesus as Lord and Savior, if we want it to unleash its power in our life.

Sometimes we might find that the most challenging passages aren’t the ones hard to understand, but those that we can comprehend but that tell us we need to change our lives. For example, the wonderful good news of Jesus starts with bad news: we’re sinners, separated from God, and we can’t help ourselves. People don’t like to be told they’re both evil and helpless. Without that tough foundation, though, there is no gospel, no story of how Christ came to take our place and how through faith in Him we are made right with God. You may find other teachings just a uncomfortable, but remind yourself whose Word you are reading. Then ask for the power to make the changes the Word commands.

People naturally want to make themselves the ultimate authority for their own lives. The Bible has a name for this; it’s called sin, putting yourself in God’s place. As we humble ourselves to approach God’s revelation, placing ourselves under its authority and seeking to understand its teachings better, we can overcome that desire and find our place in God’s family and kingdom.

30 Days in the Bible, Day 3: 2 Peter 1:16-21

There are so many theologies and philosophies around today that it can be overwhelming. I think one of the chief motivations behind people who hold to some kind of relativism is the desire to avoid thinking about and evaluating the truth claims of all those systems. If we pretend that they all are somehow equal, maybe even the same deep down, we don’t have to examine them and decide which are true and which are false.

This can’t be held for long, however. There are contradictory claims made by different thinkers, and these contradictions can’t just be swept under the rug. For example, Christians believe that Jesus is God, while Jews and Muslims do not, and atheists don’t believe that there is any God. All of those groups cannot be correct, no matter how much wishful thinking we engage in.

Peter is emphatic here in today’s passage that the followers of Jesus have a solid foundation of truth for their faith. There are two solid foundations for the beliefs we hold. The first is that Jesus’ life was seen by many eyewitnesses. Some of those witnesses wrote about Him themselves, while others received their information directly from eyewitnesses. Unlike the myths about gods in human form in Greek or Roman mythology, those who were alive at the time of Jesus saw Him as He lived, taught, and performed miracles, and the stories about Jesus were told by those who saw Him.

The second solid foundation is the Word that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The authority of the Bible does not rest on the wisdom and genus of human authors, but on the God who inspired them to write. We aren’t reading the opinions of people, but the revelation of God. I enjoy reading early Christian writings, and I admire the wisdom and thoughtfulness of many authors from the first centuries of the church. However, I don’t mistake their wisdom for God’s Word. They themselves used the Scriptures to make their points, and relied on the power of the Word rather than their own minds to teach the truth.

If we want to know the truth, we need a reliable source. As we read the inspired Word of God, and we see what those who saw Jesus have to say about Him, we can have confidence that He is the Way to the Father, and that He is the Wisdom we need for our lives today.

Textual Criticism and Biblical Reliability

I will be preaching on a passage this Sunday that requires me to explain a little bit about textual criticism. (I didn't preach this past Sunday, which is why there is no Sunday sermon.) Just saying the words "textual criticism" in an evangelical setting, especially among those who have not had Bible college or seminary training, often brings a highly negative response. Most church members, if they have heard about Biblical criticism at all, have heard about the way it was used by liberal theologians to tear down down the authority of the Bible by calling large portions of it into question.

Now it is certainly true that there has been much damaging criticism made in the past 200 years or so. Scholars have latched on to any device that seems to allow them to ignore Biblical teaching where it opposes what they wish to believe, or what the culture tells them is right. I have found even in evangelical circles that many commentaries have become almost worthless due to the relative proportion of time they spend reconstructing a hypothetical setting and origin for a passage, rather than dealing with what that passage teaches.

Still, there is a valid work of textual criticism that needs to be engaged in by Biblical students. This isn't done with the intent of throwing chunks of the Bile into the trash because they don't fit our preconceived ideas, but with the intent of discovering exactly what the authors of the Bible wrote. As someone who is a firm believer in Biblical inerrancy and authority, I want to know the original wording of the Biblical books.

This criticism, often called "lower criticism," is actually a quite interesting area of study. While no language scholar, I have read much on the subject over the years. I appreciate that those who engage in such criticism generally have a cautious attitude toward any speculative reading of the manuscripts. They seek to pull all the available evidence together, with the goal of finding the exact wording of a passage.

This is, of course, controversial. Some find that any work that "changes" what they hold to be the infallible text of Scripture (often in a particular translation, not the original languages) must be heretical. Others start to lose sight of the existing textual evidence, and create readings that are not found in any existing manuscript but seem to make sense to them. Handling God's Word requires careful, thoughtful, respectful study.

For those of us who teach, it also does no good to shield the people in our churches from the existence of these issues. They will pick up a Bible and see footnotes that such-and-such a passage does not exist in the oldest and most reliable translation, or that another manuscript tradition has a variant reading, or perhaps even see an extensive passage of Scripture (John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 being the prime examples) set off by lines. They will wonder what that means, and start to question either the reliability of the Bible or the reliability of the translators. We need to explain what is at stake.

So I embrace the opportunity to teach about text-critical issues. I may blog later this week on the particular issue I am dealing with in my Sunday sermon, and I will certainly provide teaching to the congregation on the passage. But in the end, what I want is the Bible as it was written, and I am willing to undertake whatever study is necessary to come as close to that wording as possible.