Your Brother Daniel
For more great blogs as
this one go to Daniel’s blog site at: www.Mannsword.blogspot.com
Scripture: Knowing God vs. Experiencing God
In our mad dash to enjoy
the things of the world, we have embraced an assortment of new theologies – for
instance, feeling-based theologies as opposed to Scripture-based theologies -
that make this accommodation easy. One early casualty is the doctrine of
Scripture itself – the belief that Scripture is completely authoritative and
God-breathed.
As with any innovation,
it is hard to fathom the price attached to this accommodation, at least in the
short-run. Theologian R.C. Sproul thinks that the price is enormous:
- History has demonstrated again and again that all too
often there is a close relationship between rejection of inerrancy [that
in its original form, Scripture is without error and completely
God-breathed] and subsequent defections from matters of the Christian
faith that are essential to salvation. When the church loses in the
authority of sacred Scripture, it inevitably looks to human opinion as its
guiding light. When this happens, the purity of the church is direly
threatened. (Can I Trust the Bible,
65)
Unfortunately, we don’t
even need history to affirm this truth. It is obvious and ubiquitous. Many two-legged
examples of this are inescapable. It seems that whenever we begin to reject the
doctrine of the full authority of Scripture, we compromise and ultimately
become indistinguishable from the prevailing culture. This is because
Scripture, along with the Spirit illuminating it for us, is foundational for
the entire Christian life.
Therefore, if we lack
the assurance that Scripture is fully divine, there is little to prevent us
from absorbing the surrounding influences, and this is exactly what we do.
To defend the departure from the authority of
Scripture, many justifications are offered:
1.
Scripture is invented by
us in an attempt to explain our religious experience.
2.
Scripture is the word of
man and not of God.
3.
God has changed his
mind, and so too should we.
4.
Scripture contains many
errors, so we have to be careful about what we believe.
5.
Jesus never expected us
to regard his teachings as unchanging and absolute.
Okay, let’s start with
the teachings of Jesus on the subject of Scripture! He regarded Scripture as
absolutely authoritative. When the devil challenged him, after 40 days of
fasting, to change a rock into food if He is truly the Son of God, Jesus
responded:
· “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread
alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Mat. 4:4)
According to Jesus, life
is a matter of feasting upon every
word of Scripture. As such, Scripture had to judge us and not we standing above
Scripture to judge it by deciding which verses were inspired and which aren’t.
Instead, every word was unchangingly divine.
Jesus even set the
example for us, demonstrating how we are to live by Scripture. In His response
to the Devil, He Himself quoted Scripture (Deut. 8:3). Consequently, if He
resorted to Scripture – and as the Son, He didn’t need to do this – how much
more must we resort to Scripture!
In fact, whenever Jesus
quoted Scripture - and He did this often – it always displayed the fact that He
regarded it as fully authoritative. When His disciples failed to believe in the
Scriptures, He castigated them for this failure. For instance, when, after His
resurrection, He encountered His two despairing and unbelieving disciples on
the Emmaus room:
· He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how
slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to
suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all
the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures
concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
Scripture was supposed
to be believed unchangingly in its entirety,
and His disciples were remiss. Instead of merely correcting them, He led them
back into Scripture to demonstrate how it was fulfilled. Likewise, when He
appeared to His disciples hiding behind closed doors
· He said to them, “This is what I told you while
I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about
me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their
minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is
written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead. (Luke 24:44-46)
Everything in Scripture
is inerrant, because Scripture comes from God, and consequently, “Everything
must be fulfilled.” Rather than simply giving them an ecstatic experience, “He
opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” – the very thing He
continues to do for us today through His Spirit. He could have opened our minds
to an experience of God, but instead, He opened them to Scripture, thereby
demonstrating its centrality! Besides, nothing is more important than this, as
Peter affirmed:
· Grace and peace be yours in abundance through
the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything
we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his
own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:2-3)
Scripture is so
foundational to the Christian life, that all spiritual blessings are imparted
“through our knowledge of Him.” Likewise, Jesus prayed that we would be filled
with God’s love, and this too would be granted through our knowledge of Him and
not a mountain-top ecstatic experience:
· “I have made you known to them, and will
continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in
them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:26)
Our experience of the
love of God has to rest upon the knowledge of God. Did Jesus know that His own
words were equivalent to Scripture? When He sent His disciples out into the
world, He instructed them to preach His own
words:
· “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am
with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mat. 28:19-20)
He had instituted the
promised New Covenant with His blood, and now it was His words of Scripture
that they were to bear throughout the world. Nor were these new teachings, as
if God had changed. Rather, these were teachings that found their roots in the
Hebrew Scriptures.
If we are His disciples,
we must also carry forth His words! We are not free to pick-and-choose among
them. One who insists that we can depart from His Word is not truly His
disciple. Faithfulness to our Master means faithfulness to all of His words
(John 15:7-10).
There is nothing in
Scripture that would suggest that it is man-made. Peter claimed that:
· For prophecy never had its origin in the
human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried
along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:21)
Paul claimed that,
although Scripture came through mere humans, it was also the Word of God, fully
inspired:
· All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the
servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)
As God’s Word, Scripture
is fully trustworthy to thoroughly equip us. Instead, if Scripture contained
errors, we could not be “thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The errors
or uninspired material would prevent us from being “thoroughly equipped.”
Rather, Paul regarded his teachings as fully inspired - “the Word of God”:
· And we also thank God continually because, when
you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a
human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in
you who believe. (1 Thess. 2:13)
Paul added that the Word
is not stale or sterile head knowledge. Instead, he claimed that it is “at work
in you who believe.” This is what I had discovered.
For decades, I had been plagued
with severe depression. I won’t call them “bouts” of depression, because it had
been more like an unending winter. Then it was joined by panic attacks which
deprived me of the possible luxury of staying in bed. The agony was so great
that I could find little rest, let alone peace. I didn’t know if I could
survive from one day to the next. I tried to read the Bible, but my mind was
usually too tormented to even get through a verse. However, there were times
when a phrase – like “And God heard him” - would suddenly spring to life.
It was like an explosion
of intense light but just for a brief moment. However, that was enough! It
totally drove all the darkness – the depression and panic – away. I looked for
them, but I couldn’t find them. They were gone, driven away by a greater force.
However, the next day
they had returned, but the light had left me with something – the indelible
impression and conviction that my God
had heard me. And He would remain with me and eventually bring me through my
hell.
This same experience
visited me on numerous occasions but always in conjunction with the Word. And
on each occasion it seemed to deepen my conviction that God was my Savior and
that He would never leave me. However, the last time it visited me was perhaps
25 years ago.
I am still inspired,
convicted, guided and encouraged by Scripture, albeit without such intensity.
However, these powerful visitations left this diehard skeptic with a special
inheritance – a conviction that faith in God is faith in His Word and a
confirmation that the Word is true, as it has proclaimed.
No comments:
Post a Comment