Are You Trusting in Scripture or Yourself?
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When my first son finally spoke, joy burst in my new, mothering heart. For two years I communicated with my little boy through grunts, sounds, and actions. One mealtime, he sat at the table crying to us, “Hee-haa!” in hot tears of frustration because neither my husband nor I understood him. While I knew much about my son simply through his non-verbal ways, I was excited to get to know him in another way: through his words.
Piece by piece, he learned to verbalize his feelings, thoughts, questions, perceptions, and even jokes. I loved hearing his little voice tell stories to me and pose inquiries about the world around him. I adored hearing names such as Mommy, Daddy, Immy (Grammy), Ohpo (Grandpère), and Nan.
We can’t live in a way that’s pleasing to God without being grounded in his Word.
Our relationships are founded on communication of some kind. I’ve developed a relationship with my twins, who don’t speak yet, through their own wordless messaging such as different cries for anger, sadness, and fear. If I never paid attention to them or listened to their unique form of communication, I wouldn’t have a closer bond with them. The same goes for my husband, my mother, my in-laws, and my friends. We all communicate and process in similar and unique ways through our body language, voice alterations, and expressions. Listening to and watching this kind of non-verbal communication is necessary for any relationship to succeed.
Yet in the Christian world, we can lose this basic understanding of relationships when it comes to God. We believe that we can know God and live in a way that’s pleasing to him without being grounded in his Word, which is his communication with us. Here is just a handful of the statements I’ve read or heard concerning the Bible recently:
“That’s just Paul’s opinion.”
“Sola Scriptura isn’t even in the Bible.”
“The Bible will not last for eternity … It is not the Bible that saves us or sanctifies us.”[1]
“It is important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority … And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to.”[2]
Dear reader, if you follow Jesus and claim to love him, you cannot neglect his Scriptures. Let’s analyze these claims and create a defense for our own hearts.
Scripture sanctifies us because it is the life-giving breath of God.
Peter didn’t think Scripture was just Paul’s opinion:
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Pet. 3:15–16)
Peter thought Paul’s words were Scripture. But what does God say about the authority of his Word?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16–17)
Jesus likewise prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Scripture sanctifies us because it is the life-giving breath of God.
When we don’t like what the Bible says, we brush it off as the work of fallible men.
Every word of the Bible comes from God, and he declares that every word of it equips our faith. What about experience? What about wisdom from others? God upholds the wisdom he grants to his people and calls us to seek it; however, he gives us this reminder:
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:6b–8)
When people don’t like what the Bible says, they sometimes brush it off as the work of fallible men riddled with their own cultural problems, or they look to their own experiences that seem to declare another easier and “better” truth to them.
At the end of the day we are either placing our hope in Scripture or we’re placing it in ourselves. If we want to argue that the authors of the Bible were fallible men, we need to acknowledge that we’re trusting in our own fallible self or the fallible words of another that are also filled with cultural problems as well.
Related Articles:
10 Words Every Christian Should Know (and Be Able to Explain)
8 Covenants in the Bible and What They Mean for You Personally Today
“American Gospel: Christ Alone” Film Exposes False Teachings of the Prosperity Gospel Movement
Recommended:
Sacred Bond: Covenant Theology Explored (Second Edition) by Michael G. Brown and Zach Keele
Notes:
[1] Lore Ferguson Wilbert, @lorewilbert Instagram post, May 12, 2022.
[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, “Homosexuality and the Church,” Commonweal Magazine, June 11, 2007.
