Dr. Daniel Wallace:
Did the Ancient Church Muzzle the Canon?
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Monthly Archives: April 2017
Ten Marks of the Holy Spirit in a Believer
BY J. C. RYLE
What then are these general effects which the Spirit always produces on those who really have Him? What are the marks of His presence in the soul? This is the question which now remains to be considered. Let us try to set down these marks in order.
1. All who have the Spirit are quickened by Him, and made spiritually ALIVE. He is called in Scripture, “The Spirit of life.” (Rom. 8:3.) “It is the Spirit,” says our Lord Jesus Christ, “who quickens.” (John 6:63.) We are all by nature dead in trespasses and sins. We have neither feeling nor interest about true religion. We have neither faith, nor hope, nor fear, nor love. Our hearts are in a state of torpor; they are compared in Scripture to a stone. We may be alive about money, learning, politics, or pleasure—but we are dead towards God. All this is changed when the Spirit comes into the heart. He raises us from this state of death, and makes us new creatures. He awakens the conscience, and inclines the will towards God. He causes old things to pass away, and all things to become new. He gives us a new heart; He makes us put off the old man, and put on the new. He blows the trumpet in the ear of our slumbering faculties, and sends us forth to walk the world as if we were new beings.
How unlike was Lazarus shut up in the silent tomb, to Lazarus coming forth at our Lord’s command! How unlike was Jairus’ daughter lying cold on her bed amidst weeping friends, to Jairus’ daughter rising and speaking to her mother as she was accustomed to do! Just as unlike is the man in whom the Spirit dwells to what he was before the Spirit came into him.
I appeal to every thinking reader. Can he whose heart is manifestly full of everything but God–hard, cold, and insensible—can he be said to “have the Spirit”? Judge for yourself.
2. All who have the Spirit are taught by Him. He is called in Scripture, “The Spirit of wisdom and revelation.” (Eph. 1:17.) It was the promise of the Lord Jesus, “He shall teach you all things.” “He shall guide you into all truth.” (John 14:26; 16:13.) We are all by nature ignorant of spiritual truth. “The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God—they are foolishness to him.” (1 Cor. 2:14.) Our eyes are blinded. We neither know God, nor Christ, nor ourselves, nor the world, nor sin, nor heaven, nor hell, as we ought. We see everything under false colors. The Spirit alters entirely this state of things. He opens the eyes of our understandings. He illumines us; He calls us out of darkness into marvelous light. He takes away the veil. He shines into our hearts, and makes us see things as they really are! No wonder that all true Christians are so remarkably agreed upon the essentials of true religion! The reason is that they have all learned in one school—the school of the Holy Spirit. No wonder that true Christians can understand each other at once, and find common ground of fellowship! They have been taught the same language, by One whose lessons are never forgotten.
I appeal again to every thinking reader. Can he who is ignorant of the leading doctrines of the Gospel, and blind to his own state—can he be said to “have the Spirit “? Judge for yourself
3. All who have the Spirit are led by Him to the SCRIPTURES. This is the instrument by which He specially works on the soul. The Word is called “the sword of the Spirit.” Those who are born again are said to be “born by the Word.” (Eph. 6:17; 1 Peter 1:23.) All Scripture was written under His inspiration—He never teaches anything which is not therein written. He causes the man in whom He dwells to “delight in the law of the Lord.” (Psalm 1:2.) Just as the infant desires the milk which nature has provided for it, and refuses all other food–so does the soul which has the Spirit desire the sincere milk of the Word. Just as the Israelites fed on the manna in the wilderness, so are the children of God taught by the Holy Spirit to feed on the contents of the Bible. Continue reading
In A Worthy Manner
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:27)
John Calvin:
In seeking to prepare for eating the Lord’s Supper worthily, men have often dreadfully harassed and tortured miserable consciences, and yet have failed to reach their goal. They have said that you must be “in a state of grace” in order to eat worthily. What does it mean to be in a state of grace? They have interpreted this to mean being pure and free from all sin. By this definition, all the men that ever have been, and all who are on the earth now, are barred from the use of this sacrament. For if we are to seek our worthiness from ourselves, it is all over with us; only despair and fatal ruin await us. Though we struggle to the utmost, we will not only make no progress, but we would only be more unworthy after we have labored most to make ourselves worthy.
To cure this ulcer, they have devised a mode of procuring worthiness: After having, as far as we can, made an examination and taken an account of all our actions, we are to be cleansed of our unworthiness by contrition, confession, and satisfaction. I say that such things, at best, give poor and fleeting comfort to alarmed and downcast consciences, struck with terror at their sins. For if the Lord admits only the righteous and innocent to partake of his Supper, every man would have to be very cautious before feeling that he had righteousness of his own which God requires.
How could we be assured that we have truly done everything in our power to discharge our duty to God? Even if we could be assured of this, who would then venture to assure himself that he, in fact, had done all that he could do? So, we would have no certain security for our worthiness, and access to the Supper would always be excluded by the fearful warning, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:27)
It is now easy to judge what is the nature, and who is the author, of this kind of teaching. Certainly the devil could have no shorter method of destroying men than by thus excluding them from the taste and savor of this food which their most merciful Father in heaven is pleased to feed them. To avoid running off such a cliff, let us remember that this sacred feast is medicine to the sick, comfort to the sinner, and bounty to the poor. To the healthy, the righteous, and the rich (if any could be found) the Lord’s Supper would be of no value. For Christ is given us for food in the Supper, and we perceive that without him we fail and waste away, just as hunger destroys the vigor of the body. As he is given to us for life, so we perceive that without him we are certainly dead.
So, the best and only worthiness which we can bring to God, is to offer him our own vileness, and unworthiness, that his mercy may make us worthy:
to despond in ourselves, that we may be consoled in him
to humble ourselves, that we may be elevated by him
to accuse ourselves, that we may be justified by him
We are also to aspire to the unity which he recommends in the Supper; and, as he makes us all one in himself, we are to desire to have all one soul, one heart, one tongue.
If we ponder and meditate on these things, we may be shaken, but will never be overwhelmed by the consideration of this vital question, “How shall we, who are devoid of all good, polluted by sin, and half dead, worthily eat the body of the Lord?” We shall rather consider that we, who are poor, are coming to a benevolent giver, sick to a physician, sinful to the author of righteousness, in fine, dead to him who gives life.
The worthiness which is commanded by God, consists especially in faith, which places all things in Christ, nothing in ourselves, and in love, which, though imperfect, may be sufficient to offer to God, that he may increase it, since it cannot be fully rendered.
Some, agreeing that worthiness consists in faith and charity, have demanded a perfection of faith to which nothing can be added, and a love equivalent to that which Christ manifested towards us. And in this way, they, too, bar all men from access to this sacred feast. For, if they are correct, everyone who receives the Supper must receive unworthily, since all, are guilty of great imperfection. And certainly it is too stupid, not to say idiotic, to require, as the basis for receiving the sacrament, a perfection which would render the sacrament vain and superfluous. The Lord’s Supper was not instituted for the perfect, but for the sick and weak, to stir up, excite, stimulate, exercise the feeling of faith and love, and at the same time correct the deficiency of both.
[From Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Ch. 17, Sec. 41-42, trans. by Henry Beveridge, ed. by Jason Van Bemmel.]
Did God Die on the Cross?
This is an excerpt from Fred Sander’s essay “Chalcedonian Categories for the Gospel Narrative,” from Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective (B&H Academic, 2007). Fred is a systematic theologian with an emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity. He and his wife Susan have two children, Freddy and Phoebe. They are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church.
God Died on the Cross by Fred Sanders
In the days leading up to Good Friday, I’m going to post a few theological answers to questions I get every year around this time. The answers will be unblushingly doctrinal, so prepare to put your thinking caps on.
This little series isn’t mainly about getting the theology right for its own sake (though I’m strongly inclined to do that, because who wants to get the theology wrong?). It’s mainly to clear a few theological questions out of the way before the Good-Friday-to-Easter church sequence arrives.
My dream is that we could think hard about theology online during the first part of the week, and then have our thoughts in order before we experience the annual remembrance of the death and resurrection of Christ in the last part of the week in church. These posts are intended to clear away some theological confusions that might prevent intelligent participation in the life of the church.
The first one is what it means to say that God died on the cross. My answer is an excerpt from a book I edited about ten years ago:
In one of his hymns, Charles Wesley wrote: “O Love divine, what has thou done! The immortal God hath died for me!” This is a bold thing to say, because it claims so much: “God . . . died.” The Bible itself says it that bluntly in a few places, such as Acts 20:28, “God purchased the church with his own blood.” This is how the voice of faith speaks when it confesses what God has done. This is a good Christian sentence. When theologians get hold of stark, paradoxical statements like “God died,” they have an instinct to clarify what is being said. They do not want to remove the shock or the force (that would be very bad theology), but they do want to make sure that the true paradox rather than something else is being communicated. They want to rule out misunderstandings that either take away the shock, or substitute for it the fake shock of logical incoherence. Continue reading
Jesus Rose from the Dead – Eight Reasons
Article: Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead by Dr. John Piper (Website: www.desiringGod.org)
1. Jesus himself testified to his coming resurrection from the dead.
Jesus spoke openly about what would happen to him: crucifixion and then resurrection from the dead. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31; see also Matthew 17:22; Luke 9:22). Those who consider the resurrection of Christ unbelievable will probably say that Jesus was deluded or (more likely) that the early church put these statements in his mouth to make him teach the falsehood that they themselves conceived. But those who read the Gospels and come to the considered conviction that the one who speaks so compellingly through these witnesses is not the figment of foolish imagination will be unsatisfied with this effort to explain away Jesus’ own testimony to his resurrection from the dead.
This is especially true in view of the fact that the words which predict the resurrection are not only the simple straightforward words quoted above, but also the very oblique and indirect words which are far less likely to be the simple invention of deluded disciples. For example, two separate witnesses testify in two very different ways to Jesus’ statement during his lifetime that if his enemies destroyed the temple (of his body), he would build it again in three days (John 2:19; Mark 14:58; cf. Matthew 26:61). He also spoke illusively of the “sign of Jonah” — three days in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4). And he hinted at it again in Matthew 21:42 — “The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” On top of his own witness to the coming resurrection, his accusers said that this was part of Jesus’ claim: “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise'” (Matthew 27:63).
Our first evidence of the resurrection, therefore, is that Jesus himself spoke of it. The breadth and nature of the sayings make it unlikely that a deluded church made these up. And the character of Jesus himself, revealed in these witnesses, has not been judged by most people to be a lunatic or a deceiver.
2. The tomb was empty on Easter.
The earliest documents claim this: “When they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (Luke 24:3). And the enemies of Jesus confirmed it by claiming that the disciples had stolen the body (Matthew 28:13). The dead body of Jesus could not be found. There are four possible ways to account for this. Continue reading
The Case for God & Scripture
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-8
There is a God and He has revealed Himself clearly both in nature and in Scripture. All facts are God’s facts. There is no neutral ground (for an unbeliever). Man is without an apologetic (a logical, rational and plausible defense). The fear of the Lord is the very beginning of knowledge and the Bible is self-authenticating, bearing the evidence within itself of its Divine origins. According to God, this is the foundation for any further discussion.
All agreed?
OK then, let’s talk.
The Christian Apologetic
Three Articles: How to Believe in God in the 2000s by John M. Frame (original source here)
1. Why It Is Hard to Believe in God Today
1 Cor. 1:18-25
Many people are telling us that it’s just too hard for people today to believe in the God of Christianity. We have to face it that the leading opinion makers of our culture– the academics, the media people, the politicians, the scientists– for the most part find Christianity utterly incredible. Not just slightly incredible, but utterly incredible. Not even worth considering. Way out in left field.
Two hundred years ago, there was a period in intellectual history known as the “Enlightenment.” During that period, scholars proudly proclaimed all the wonderful things the human mind could accomplish, if only it could set itself free from bondage to religion. The human mind, they said, should be autonomous (that means “self-legislating”), subject only to its own authority. Intellectual autonomy was the highest principle of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment, of course, was not really anything new. The same attitude, the same emphasis on autonomy, was present two thousand years earlier in Greek philosophy, four hundred years earlier among the Renaissance humanists, and has existed whenever and wherever people have tried to carry on the work of the mind without God. From a biblical viewpoint, it is simply the attitude of unbelief. It’s the attitude that says “My mind is my own.”
For people who claim autonomy, the biblical message of salvation is irrelevant. Who needs salvation from sin? For one thing, the would-be autonomous thinker says, we are not sinners; for we decide what sin is, and we’re not guilty of it. And if we have any imperfections, we will either leave them alone or else deal with them the way we deal with everything else: by autonomous thought.
So, during and since the Enlightenment, more and more philosophers, scientists, historians, psychologists, economists, political theorists, even the main body of theologians, denied the authority of the Bible. They scoffed at the idea that God created the heavens and the earth, that man fell into sin through Adam’s disobedience, that God worked miracles on earth, that the Son of God came to earth as a man, that he lived a perfect life, shed his blood for sin, and rose from the dead. How, they asked, can modern people believe in such ancient, barbaric ideas? Humanity has come of age! We cannot any longer believe in angels, devils, miracles, resurrections from the dead, blood atonement, an infallible book?
Fifty years ago, the theologian– theologian, mind you,– Rudolf Bultmann, said that one cannot believe in angels and demons if he uses a telephone and travels in an airplane. I’m not sure what using the telephone and traveling in airplanes has to do with the existence of angels and demons. He never said exactly what the connection was; these people never did. Evidently he thought it was obvious. He kept saying, over and over, that Christianity would have to come to terms with the Enlightenment. Today, Bultmann is gone; he knows better now. But his attitudes are still very much with us.
Now some people will tell you that things have changed today from fifty years ago. Some will say that around the 1960s the intellectual world shifted from “modern” to “postmodern.” While the moderns were very proud of their intellectual powers, the postmoderns recognize that intellect isn’t everything; indeed, they’re even inclined to be skeptical or relativistic. They deny that the human intellect can discover final or absolute truth. And, besides the intellect, postmoderns say, intuition and feeling have their rights, too. While the moderns were skeptical about the supernatural, we’re told, the postmoderns appreciate the supernatural. Along with science, they have come to appreciate the religions of the Far East and of Native Americans. They have come to appreciate meditation, psychic phenomena; even sometimes astrology, channeling, tarot cards and past-life regression as paths to truth.
Does this mean that the postmoderns are more open to the Bible than the moderns were? Are they more favorable to the idea that the Son of God came to earth in human history, that he taught with absolute authority, worked miracles, lived a sinless life and offered his body as a blood atonement? Are they willing to bow the knee before the risen and ascended Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior of men?
Certainly not. For under the skin they too are Enlightenment people. They do not intend to bow the knee to anyone; particularly, they do not want to bow the knees of their mind. The difference between modern and postmodern is that while the moderns followed the autonomous secular intellect, the postmoderns add that they have a right also to follow their autonomous intuition and feeling. They will accept, now and then, some strange beliefs; but only on their own inner criteria. What they believe they believe on their own authority. Indeed, that lust for autonomy is more powerful than ever. The postmodernist rejects the idea of absolute truth, so that he can be even more autonomous, so that he can be even freer in choosing his beliefs for himself.
And some postmoderns,– the New Age monists, to use Peter Jones’s terminology– look within themselves to find God: not the God of the Bible, but the God of their own inner selves, the God which is their own inner selves. This is the ultimate autonomy, the self as God, the very worship of self.
So the postmoderns, like the moderns, find Christianity quite incredible. The reason is that the God of Christianity will not bow to the autonomous mind of man. Believing in the biblical God and believing in one’s own autonomy are absolutely contradictory, totally at odds with one another. You cannot do both. The God of the Bible is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. He will not permit himself to be found by a human intellect that shakes its fist in pride and says, “I will be the final judge of truth and right.” No two views can be further apart than believing in the biblical God and believing in human autonomy. To one who believes in his own autonomy, Christianity will always seem totally ridiculous, utterly foolish, not worth considering. The believer in human autonomy has already denied the God of the Bible. He cannot even consider the evidence. He cannot even believe in the possibility of the Bible being true.
It is not, you see, as though the moderns and postmoderns have studied the evidence objectively and come to a reasoned conclusion that God does not exist. Rather, they reject the biblical God from the outset of their investigation. The unbeliever starts with the idea that Christianity can’t be true. He cannot take the evidence seriously. He knows that if the evidence does prove the Bible, then he will have to bow the knee, including the knee of his mind. And he will not seriously consider that. Oh, he may be polite in a conversation about religion. But in the final analysis, he is not an unbiased party to the discussion. He has already made up his mind. For him, the discussion is over. For he will not, he cannot, seriously question the autonomy of the human mind.
The claim of autonomy; that’s what makes Christianity so hard for people to believe today. That is why Christian views of the family, of sex, of education, of justice, of the sanctity of human life are increasingly marginalized in modern society. Our secularized society looks at us with increasing condescension and pity. They do not listen to our arguments; they don’t take us seriously. Our positions are simply incredible. They violate the main premise of secular thought, the premise of autonomy, man’s right to be the final judge of truth and falsity, right and wrong.
You can argue any crazy idea and get a hearing from Oprah or Phil. But try to get some serious attention for the Lordship of Jesus, or the reality of the Resurrection, or even the Ten Commandments. No, you’ll be told; those are “religious” views. We can’t consider them as part of the public dialogue. You may believe them privately, but don’t promote them on TV; don’t teach them in school; don’t mention them in a political campaign. If you dare to proclaim the relevance of Scripture to society, well, then, you are a fanatic. You are trying to force your religion down people’s throats. (Never mind that Christians can say the same things about secularists with equal plausibility.) Of course, some religious views are o.k.: transcendental meditation is o.k.; native American spirituality is o.k.; Islam and Buddhism should be given a place in any public forum. Only biblical Christianity is excluded. Continue reading
All Scripture – Sufficient for Every Good Work
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17
ALL SCRIPTURE
“If part of the Bible is true and part is not, who is to tell us what the true parts are? There are only two answers to that question. Either we must make the decision ourselves, in which case the truth becomes subjective. The thing that is true becomes merely what appeals to me. Or else, it is the scholar who tells us what we can believe and what we cannot believe… God has not left us either to our own whims or to the whims of scholars. He has given us a reliable book that we can read and understand ourselves.”
EVERY GOOD WORK
“I want to say here, that important as I believe the matter of inerrancy is—and I do believe it, I believe churches will flounder and die if this is forgotten. Important as this is, I do not think it is the most critical issue about the Bible facing the American church today. The issue I would pinpoint today is the sufficiency of God’s Word.
I would ask the questions: Do we really believe that God has given us what we need in this book? Or do we think we have to supplement the Bible with other man-made things?
Do we need sociological techniques to do evangelism? Do we need psychology and psychiatry for Christian growth? Do we need extra-biblical signs or miracles for guidance? Is the Bible’s teaching adequate for achieving social progress and reform?
The reason I believe this is important is that it is possible to believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and yet neglect it and effectually repudiate it just because we think that it is not great enough for today’s tasks and that other things need to be brought in to supplement the revelation. I think this is exactly what many evangelicals and evangelical churches are doing.”
– Dr. James Montgomery Boice
Does Inerrancy Matter?
Does Inerrancy Matter? The Legacy of James Montgomery Boice
by Dr. Derek Thomas (original source here)
“[I]f part of the Bible is true and part is not, who is to tell us what the true parts are? There are only two answers to that question. Either we must make the decision ourselves, in which case the truth becomes subjective. The thing that is true becomes merely what appeals to me. Or else, it is the scholar who tells us what we can believe and what we cannot believe… God has not left us either to our own whims or to the whims of scholars. He has given us a reliable book that we can read and understand ourselves.”
These words, arguing the logic of an inerrant Scripture, were part of a sermon preached on May 23, 1993 by James Montgomery Boice (see, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009], 69). The sermon was preached on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his pastorate at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Boice began by drawing attention to the fact that the doctrine of Scripture had been the most important thing that Tenth Presbyterian Church had stood for in its (then) one hundred sixty-four year existence.
At the close of 1977, ten years into his pastorate at Tenth, Dr. Boice helped in the foundation of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, and subsequently chaired it. A few years later, Boice published, Standing on the Rock: Upholding Biblical Authority in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1984) in which he answered the question, why does inerrancy matter? He noted that most of his contemporaries seemed more preoccupied with having a “personal relationship” with Jesus than addressing the doctrine of Scripture. But who is this Jesus with whom we are to have a personal relationship if not the Jesus accurately (inerrantly) portrayed in Scripture? We live a relativistic age, Boice argued, where there is no such thing as truth, only “what’s true for me.” “When people operate on that basis, they usually think they have found freedom because, in not being tied to absolutes, they have freedom to do anything they wish. They are not tied to God or to a God-given morality. They do not have to acknowledge any authority. But the consequence of this kind of freedom is that they are cast adrift on the sea of meaningless existence.” (Standing on the Rock [1994 edition], 17).
Absolute truth
Inerrancy is important, Boice argued, in a postmodern culture, to provide the individual with a basis for absolute authority in doctrine and morals. Without absolutism, we are adrift in a sea of relativism and subjectivism. Without a trustworthy Scripture, there is only a mere potentiality of meaning actualized differently in differing circumstances. We are trapped in the present, our own historical circumstances, and cannot understand the past or have any certainty of the future. Truth lies in community and the voice of the Spirit – all subjective entities – wisps that appear for a moment promising much and delivering little.
Ultimately, as Boice argued all too well, if there is no ultimate meaning, nothing I say makes any sense, including the words “there are no absolutes”! What Boice saw was that without inerrancy, the relevance of Christianity diminishes. Why should anyone commit their lives to the institution of the church if there is no certainty that what she stands for is true. Relativism as to truth leads to relativism as to behavior and commitment. The moral drift of the last thirty years with its accompanying.
Authoritative Preaching
What is preaching? It is either Truth delivered through personality (as Philips Brooks suggested), or it is the opinion of men (and women). The steps from the original autographs to text, translation and meaning is a complex one, involving a commitment to providence as well as a rigorous hermeneutic (and hence, the Council of Biblical Inerrancy also issued a statement, “Formal Rules of Biblical Interpretation”). “It is only when ministers of the gospel hold to this high view of Scripture that they can preach with authority and effectively call sinful men and women to full faith in Christ.” (Standing on the Rock, 24). Continue reading
Sola Scriptura: The Sufficiency of Scripture in Expository Preaching
Dr. Steve Lawson (original source here)
As the church of Jesus Christ enters the twenty-first century, she once again finds herself standing at a dangerous crossroad. Two roads stand before her, both of which are marked “truth.” One is paved with the lethal lies of Satan, the other with the life-giving truths of Scripture.
Confronted with these two choices, many sectors of the present day church have abandoned their once tightly-held commitment to the authority of Scripture, and the consequences have been nothing less than devastating. Choosing to follow liberal theology with its higher criticism, many have arrived at destinations previously thought to be unthinkable: inclusive universalism, radical feminism, same-sex marriages, annihilationism, and open, even worse, theism. Sad to say, this broad path has proven to be a deadly detour to the destruction of many.
Yet, in the midst of this rampant apostasy, a most amazing phenomenon has occurred, a modern Reformation of sorts. A renewed commitment to biblical inerrancy has emerged in isolated pockets of the church, a conservative resurgence that has signaled a return to a fundamental belief in the inspired, infallible Word of God. In these days, many have chosen to return to old paths, a road paved with biblical authority, and for this much thanks should be offered to God.
But having safely negotiated this crossroad, a second intersection now looms on the evangelical horizon, one equally threatening. Writing shortly before his recent death, James Montgomery Boice, pastor of the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, observed that while many churches now assert biblical authority, they equivocate on biblical sufficiency. Boice writes, “Our problem is in deciding whether the Bible is sufficient for the church’s life and work. We confess its authority, but we discount its ability to do what is necessary to draw unbelievers to Christ, enable us to grow in godliness, provide direction for our lives, and transform and revitalize society.”1
With penetrating insight, Boice then added, “In the sixteenth century, the battle was against those who wanted to add church traditions to Scripture, but in our day the battle is against those who have to use worldly means to do God’s work.”2 The sufficiency of Scripture, Boice argues, is the urgent issue of the day which must be addressed. He is correct.
The sufficiency of Scripture can best be defined as the Bible’s supernatural ability, when rightly proclaimed and properly followed, to produce any and all spiritual results intended by God. Referred to as sola Scriptura by the Reformers, this core truth does not claim that all truth of every kind is found in Scripture, nor does it imply that everything Jesus or the apostles taught is preserved in Scripture (Jn. 20:30; 21:25). Rather, the sufficiency of Scripture affirms that everything necessary for the salvation of sinners, the sanctification of believers, and the spiritual direction of ministry is provided by God’s Word. Psalm 19:7 affirms this central truth when it declares “the law of the Lord is perfect” (emphasis added), meaning it is whole, complete, lacking nothing, a comprehensive treatment of truth.3 The Scripture, Paul writes, makes the man of God “adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17). This said, the Bible claims a divine potency, for itself, a supernatural ability, if you will, to more than adequately carry out God’s work in the world.
This commitment has long been the time-tested position of most evangelical churches over the last 350 years. Written in 1647, the Westminster Confession of Faith affirmed “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men”.4 Thus, the sufficiency of Scripture has long been a defining mark of evangelical faith and a chief cornerstone of biblical orthodoxy. Sola Scriptura was the battle cry of the Reformers and has shaped the church for the centuries that have followed.
But in this present hour, there has been a strange departure from this once firm position on the sufficiency of Scripture. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the shrinking power of the evangelical pulpit. Trendy worship styles, worldly entertainment, crass pragmatism, pop psychology, and the like are all competing against the centrality of biblical exposition. Throughout the evangelical world, preaching is becoming watered down with heavy doses of cultural wisdom, therapeutic advice, psycho babble, mystical intuitions, positive thinking, and political agendas, all mixed together with a barrage of personal anecdotes.
This present famine of biblical preaching is light years removed from the theologically steeped expositions of previous generations and can only be explained by a vanishing confidence in the power of Scripture itself. The crisis now confronting Bible-believing, churches, organizations and institutions, whether they realize it or not, is this matter of the ability of Scripture to accomplish God’s intended work. Continue reading