Scripture

“How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103)

Delight. Life. Truth. Love. Hope. Wonderful. All of these words and many others like them are used in Psalm 119 to describe how the believer relates to God’s Holy Word. Yahweh’s people are encouraged in this extended psalm to meditate upon the divine testimonies, commandments, and promises of the Holy Scriptures, storing them up in their hearts, fixing their eyes upon them, and walking according to the illumination they provide. Just as food and water sustain the body, so a steady diet of the Scriptures nourishes God’s people, bringing comfort, guidance, and strength. As the psalmist concludes, “My heart stands in awe of your words. I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Ps. 119:161b–162). Why? Because through his Word God draws near; here one is invited to know the eternal, holy, majestic, loving, and merciful Lord. When we begin to talk about the doctrine of Scripture, we should always carry with us the attitude modeled for us by the psalmist.

Scripture Reveals God

One of the core concepts in Christianity is that God establishes his people in fellowship with himself. This means he makes himself known to us, not just in terms of fact (Matt. 22:29) but also relationally (Rom. 8:14–15). In our history as his people, he chose some servants (the prophets and apostles) to convey his will to the rest of us. They recorded these revelations in the books we now know as the Scriptures of the OT and NT, principally given to us that we might know what to believe about this God and how we are to live in his world.

  Remarkably, although the Bible is made up of 66 distinct “books” written by prophets and apostles in various literary genres over a vast historical period, it nevertheless possesses a divinely arranged unity of meaning. Here God reveals his ways to us. God reveals himself, not by dropping a note from heaven, but through real people in real times—thus we can never forget what is sometimes called the full humanity of Scripture. Even amid the particularities of authors, original audiences, and history, the one true and holy God—Creator and Redeemer of heaven and earth—calls us to himself through these writings.

Consequently, while not every reader will be able to comprehend everything that is contained in the Scriptures, the fundamental message of salvation in Christ by the Spirit is clear or perspicuous for all who are willing to receive it. Speaking of the sufficiency of Scripture, the 1561 Belgic Confession affirms, “We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it” (Art. 7).

Scripture Depends on the Trinity

Fundamental to the underlying unity of the Scriptures are the work of the Holy Spirit who inspired them (2 Pet. 1:20–21; 2 Tim. 3:16) and the promise that all of the Scriptures ultimately point to God’s great self-revelation in his Son (Heb. 1:1–2; 3:3; Matt. 28:18). The Son and the Spirit give the Bible its unity, purpose, and power. Repeatedly, for example, the NT comments on how the coming of the incarnate Word fulfills the Scriptures (e.g., Matt. 26:54–56; Mark 14:49; Luke 4:21; John 17:12; 19:36; Acts 1:16; Rom. 1:1–4; 1 Cor. 15:3). Jesus says plainly, “Scripture must be fulfilled in me” (Luke 22:37). Although he refers here to one particular OT passage (Isa. 53:12), this connection represents the larger purpose of the Bible, which is to know God in his Son and by his Spirit. This is why the resurrected Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, spoke to two disciples about “Moses and all the Prophets” and then “interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). The result? Their hearts burned within them as Jesus “opened to [them] the Scriptures” (Luke 24:32). Later, Jesus appeared to his disciples and “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

Here we rightly distinguish between inspiration and illumination. Inspiration points to the Holy Spirit’s work in the prophets and apostles (i.e., the original authors of Scripture) so that they would faithfully record God’s revelation to them, even in and through their own peculiar personalities, writing styles, and historical moments. Illumination is the Holy Spirit’s work enabling us to receive God’s Word. Whether the Word comes through preaching, reading, or memorizing the Bible, it is God’s Spirit who alone can open our eyes, soften our hearts, and make us receptive to God’s Word. The same Spirit who inspired the writings of these Scriptures is the one who applies them to our hearts, that by his illumination we might see the perfect image of God in his Son, Jesus the Messiah (1 Pet. 1:10–12).

Scripture Authoritatively Points to Christ

Early in his ministry, Jesus made it clear that the purpose of the Scriptures was never merely to impart data, but to be an instrument of relationship with God himself. That is why Jesus warns his religious opponents to stop using the sacred texts against him. Jesus chastens them: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). The words of the Scriptures were always meant to draw us to the Word—the Son of God—because Jesus himself is primarily and originally “the Word of God” (John 1; Rev. 19:13). We love and savor the Scriptures, not because they function as a textbook where we can simply learn stuff, but because in the Scriptures we truly and uniquely meet God himself.

In this way the Bible is different from any other book. Scripture’s authority rests upon God himself. As a seventeenth-century confession states: “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.4). We must never forget that the authority, infallibility, and power of Scripture always ultimately rest on the triune God himself. The Father reveals himself through his Son by his Spirit, and we most clearly receive this revelation through the sacred Scriptures.

Scripture Should Be Proclaimed

The Bible says that the Scriptures are to be received, given, spoken, heard, and passed on. Having received the divine Scriptures, we now employ them to point others to the God who has come in his Son and by his Spirit. Accordingly, Philip and Apollos base their proclamation of the good news upon the sacred texts (Acts 8:35; 18:24–28), even as Paul reasons from the Scriptures for his synagogue listeners (Acts 17:1–2). Similarly, those who received the proclamation were themselves commended for “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Since the triune God truly reveals himself in his Word, we should test all claims about God and Christian living according to these Scriptures.

Scripture Should Be Trusted

Orthodox Christians through the ages have had a very high view of the Bible. Coming from the heart of God through his prophets and apostles, the Scriptures are uniquely “breathed out” by the Lord himself, so that these texts are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Scripture is totally true (Prov. 30:5) and thus authoritative, trustworthy, and life giving. However, we must here distinguish, for example, between the inerrancy of Scripture and the inerrancy of interpretation. The Bible is without error (inerrant) in all it intends to teach, but that does not mean our interpretations of the Bible are always free from error—we can misinterpret or misapply the holy text.

Affirming the Scriptures as the “norming norm,” we always stand under God’s Word, subjecting our interpretations and our lives to the Bible. Since Scripture gains its authority from God—rather than an outside source, such as a private interpreter or ecclesial body—debates about interpretation can be solved only by constantly going back to the Scriptures themselves, submitting ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in illuminating our hearts. Protestants, while believing the church is vitally important, nevertheless usually affirm that the ecclesiastical authorities do not give the Bible its authority; instead, the church—guided by the Spirit—simply recognizes the Scripture’s own self-authenticating character (autopistos) and authority. The Reformation slogan that the “church is always being reformed” (ecclesia semper reformanda est) refers to its insistence that the church stands under the Scriptures and always repeated.

Scripture Should Be Obeyed

Handling the Scriptures requires care and calls us to faithful action. As Jesus memorably declared, “Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). The “royal law” of Scripture (James 2:8) is to love our neighbor truly, humbly, and graciously. Such love originates from God himself, is received by his Spirit through the Word, and then moves through us to others. Augustine argued that the fulfillment and end of the Holy Scriptures is love (On Christian Doctrine 1.39–40), understood first in terms of discovering God’s love for us, then finding how we can rightly love our neighbor. This “principle of charity,” as it is sometimes described, reminds us that the Bible is meant not merely to pass along information, but to reorder our loves and reshape our lives. The Scriptures ably draw us ever more closely to God and his people, even as they also send us out to a world desperately needing this Word of life.ly needs to submit itself to God’s Word.